Oftentimes when a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructor is explaining a new motion, they will come to a loss for words about names of odd parts of the body, or particularly unique motions. Our natural human languages simply never had too much of a need to have short, concise names for these body parts. While they all do have names, they are almost all very long anatomical terms which the layman is oblivious to. Likewise, these motions almost never have proper names.

To aid this, I created an artificial, constructed language specifically to describe Jiu-Jitsu movements, with a couple extra words added on to allow description of other movements from other martial arts. We’ll start with the phonology(the sounds used) and phonotactics(rules for which sounds can follow each other)

Phonology And Phonotactics

The phonology was largely inspired by Japanese phonology, I chose Japanese over portuguese because Japanese has a very small phonetic inventory(set of sounds a language uses), allowing for generally easier pronunciation.

The consonants are as follows, all pronounced as in English:

The vowels are as follows, all pronounced as in the 5-vowel system used my most romance languages, and coincidentally, Japanese

a(ah)

e(eh)

i(ee)

o(oh)

u(ew as in crew)

As for phonotactics, we simply alternate between consonants and vowels, exactly like Japanese phonotactics. The only variance from Japanese phonotactics is that we do not allow “m(consonant here)” or “n(consonant here)” consonant clusters.

Morphology

A morpheme is the smallest part of the word that has meaning, e.g. “likely” has 2 morphemes, “like”, and “ly”.

Morphology is about these morphemes

We discard the notion of right and left in this language, instead we talk about “equal side” and “opposite side”. Equal side may mean either right or left, it does not matter, but whatever the equal side is, the opposite side is the opposite. If the equal side is right, then the opposite side is left, and vice versa. We do this such so that one motion is described in exactly the same way whether it is performed on one side, or the other, thereby removing chirality from our description. Note that we always use the perspective of the person who own’s the body part if my right hand shakes his right hand, then we are grabbing hands on the equal side(or opposite, does not matter).

Established Morphemes:

i-[body part noun];My body part(may be omitted for brevity) e-[body part noun];Opponent’s body part If neither of the above are present, it is assumed that you are speaking of your own body part

(i/e)-g-[body part noun](equal side) (i/e)-p-[body part noun](opposite side) (i/e)-gel-[body part noun](both equal side) (i/e)-pel-[body part noun](both opposite side) (i/e)-f-[body part noun](no relevant chirality, e.g. there is no left or right crotch)

Grammar

The grammar is very simple, Subject-Verb-Object, adjectives before nouns, adverbs before verbs, a particle marking the end of every sentence.

Nouns

Joints

Afu(posterior foot-pit)

Ani(knee-pit)

Aka(crotch)

Ahi(hip)

Ara(armpit)

Ale(elbow-pit)

Ari(wrist)

Non-Joints

Uku(palm of foot)

Ura(Heel)

Usi(shin)

Uta(thigh)

Uwe(waist)

Ubi(bicep)

Ufo(forearm)

Upe(chin)

Uga(head)

Usati(lower-back)

Usapin(mid-back)

Usaka(upper-back)

Hand

Oman(hand)

Onap(open palm)

Okak(closed fist)

Neck

Ira(front neck)

Isa(side-neck)

Iba(back-neck)

Ike(base of neck)

Environment

Epis(floor)

Epar(wall)

Esil(ceiling)

Verbs

Kon(contact)

Kag(grip)

Kor(Expel)

Kas(Pull)

Adjective(just one)

Ta(clothed, e.g. to grab a clothed wrist is to grab by the end of the sleeve)

Adverbs

Dak(With force, e.g. to contact with force is to strike, not technically legal in Jiu-Jitsu, but still useful to discuss)

Dot(Thumbless)

Dis(With thumb)

Dul(Gable grip)

Der(Champion grip)

Particles

Le(End sentence) Reku(End and negate sentence)

Examples and Shorthands

For common positions, there are shorthands to describe them, for example, a regular guard would otherwise be written like this:

Igafu kon ipafu

(My equal-side posterior foot-pit contacts my opposite-side posterior foot-pit)

Ipura kon efusati (My equal-side heel contacts their lower-back)

Ipaka kon efuwe le (My crotch contacts their waist, end sentence)

But this may be abridged to: afuwe

Similarly with butterfly guard:

Ipeluku kon egeluwe (both of my equal-side palms of feet on both opposite-sides of their waist)

Ipeloman kag ta egelari le (Both of my equal-side hands grip both of their opposite-side lower sleeves, end sentence)