The Larua vowel distribution:

	front	back
semivowels	y	w
high	i	u
low	a	o

• The semivowels /w/ and /y/ are pronounced as in English.
• The high vowels /i/ and /u/ are approximately the sounds in fear and pool.
• The low front vowel /a/ sounds most like the sound in cat, even at the end of a word.
• The sound of the low back vowel /o/ is similar to the American standard pronunciation of caught or the British standard pronunciation of cot.

The Larua consonant inventory, in Romanized orthography:

	labial	dental	alveolar	velar
nasals	m	n		(n)
voiced plosives	b	d		g
voiceless plosives	p	t		k
affricates			tz
fricatives	f	th	s	h
laterals			l
rhotics			r

• Some of these sounds are pronounced more or less as in English: the nasals /m/ and /n/, the voiced stops /b/ and /d/, and the fricatives /f/ and /s/. Note that /n/ assimilates to a following /k/ or /g/.
• The voiced stop /g/ is always "hard" as in get (never the "soft" affricate in gel).
• The voiceless stops /p/, /t/, and /k/ tend to be unaspirated as in spare, stare, and scare (rather than aspirated as in pare, tear, and care).
• The affricate /tz/ is the sound in the German words blitz and Zeitgeist.
• The fricative /th/ is the sound in thin (not the sound in this).
• The fricative /h/ is a sound not found in modern English; it is the sound in the German name Bach and the Scots word loch.
• The lateral sound /l/ tends to be more velarized than in most varieties of English, but less so than the "hard" /l/ of Russian.
• The rhotic /r/ is a flap, similar to the sound in the Spanish word toro.

Consonant clusters in Larua are highly restricted. At the beginning of a word, /s/ may precede a voiceless stop, and /k/ or /h/ may precede /w/, /r/, or /l/: stohi "to steal", kwihsa "nephew". In the middle of words, geminate (double) consonants frequently occur, and the sounds /l/, /r/, /w/, or /y/ may occur in contact with virtually any other consonant (kolba "wolf, dog", murgal "pearl", nakyo "mother", morwi "ant"). Also, /s/ and /f/ may occur in contact with other voiceless sounds (iska "aunt", oftara "the planet Venus"), and nasals may precede co-articulated stops (kandaya "snake"), or a fricative in the case of /ns/ (nonsin "seven hundred"). At the end of a word, the only permitted cluster is /ns/: mons "to be whole". Note that /tz/ is considered a single sound: artzi "to dream", tzimis "shirt", matz "to rain". Generally, it does not occur as the first element of a cluster (*atzri). Note on spelling: when the cluster /s/ + /h/ occurs, it is spelled s'h in order to avoid confusion with the English sound in shoal.

Larua has three diphthongs, /ai/, /oi/, and /au/: paiga "hand", thoilu "woman, female", laura "stone". Any single sound can begin a word, but only vowels, diphthongs, the dental/alveolar series of consonants, or /m/ may occur at the end of a word. The actual pronunciation of each sound is relatively stable; there is hardly any phonetic variation, and the environment of a phoneme has little or no effect on its phonetic realization. Very often, a glottal stop is inserted between a vowel at the end of a word and another vowel at the beginning of the next word.

Larua is an entirely analytic (or isolating) language: there is no grammatical inflection whatsoever, so the root form of a word is the form in which it invariably occurs. Consequently, the language relies entirely on word order to express grammatical relations. Parts of speech are not marked. By far the largest word class is the verbs, but a member of this class may be translated with an adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, or abstract noun, depending on which word is in question and how it is used. Hence, lahan, with the absolute sense "to live", can also mean "alive" (relative sense) or "life" (nominal sense). There is a small set of auxiliary verbs, which are mostly analogous to the English modal auxiliaries (such as can, should, and must). The subclass known as coverbs consists of verbs with relative senses that convey semantic relations between words or clauses. Rather than with adjectives and adverbs, the coverbs are best translated into English with prepositions and conjunctions. So tzoi, with the root verbal meaning "to enter", can also mean "entry to" or "into". Any word in the class of verbs may serve as the main verb (or head) of a sentence, and that is how this word class is usually defined.

The other major class of words is the substantives, which includes the words that can be used as the arguments of verbs, but not as verbs themselves; that is, the nouns and pronouns. Within this class is a subclass of determiners, substantives that can modify other substantives, including correlative pronouns ("this", "all") and quantifiers ("many", "a pair"). Besides the verbs and the substantives, there are three smaller word classes, namely the sentence particles, sentence adverbs, and interjections. Sentence particles are words that have no lexical content, that is they cannot really be translated, but modify the entire sentence in some way, such as by turning it into a question. Sentence adverbs also modify the entire sentence, but they generally have particular semantic content. In Larua, they mostly describe situations in time ("tomorrow", "seldom") or levels of certainty ("maybe", "unlikely"). Interjections, as in English, are words that carry emotive rather than semantic content: "ouch", "yikes", "woohoo", "whoa", and the like.

Compounding is not a formative process in the earliest recorded forms of the language, and any compounds that may once have existed had already evolved well beyond the possibility of identifying them. When Larua came into use as a literary language, many new compound words were coined; for instance, this is the normal mode of forming multiples of ten (and of powers of ten): nistau "twenty", aspitau "thirty", from nis "two" and aspi "three" with tau "ten".

Traces of formative elements can be seen in a few pairs and groups of words, notably kun "to be" and kur "person", and the negatives da "to not be", din "to not exist", and du "nothing". But the relationships among these words are not clearly understood, and in fact very few productive affixes have been identified. The two main ones are the agent suffix -ko and the suffix -ns, -ons denoting object created or affected by an action or changed as a result, or objects that exist in a state or typify a quality. Some illustrative examples will help to clarify.

arga	"to make"	argans	"creation"
artzi	"to dream"	artzins	"(a particular) dream"
gal	"to give"	galons	"gift"
ruda	"to be dark yellow"	rudans	"yellow ochre"
wila	"to host, make welcome"	wilans	"guest"
bakya	"to ride"	bakyako	"rider"
oya	"to celebrate"	oyako	"celebrant"
stohi	"to steal"	stohiko	"thief"
tanaho	"tin"	tanako	"tin-smith"

Larua is strongly head-initial, and the main verb generally comes first in the sentence. A simple sentence consists of the verb and its arguments.

Artzi dohal.
dream child
"The child dreamed."

Ataro wilans sibur.
visit guest healer
"The guest visited the healer."

Tense is not marked grammatically in Larua. There are two optional sentence particles to indicate the aspect of action as perfective, lai, or imperfective, inya. These always precede the main verb. As can be seen from the examples, they do not correspond to absolute tenses, but rather refer to whether the action is considered as a whole, or is ongoing. Usually this is clear from the context, or from the meaning of the verb itself ("to find" is hardly ever an ongoing action, for instance), so these aspectual particles are generally only used for emphasis or to resolve potential ambiguity.

Inya artzi murau on lautzi.
IMPF dream cat about mouse
"The cat is dreaming about mice."

Lai yun ni thosko.
PF eat we soon
"We will eat soon."

Two arguments may be equated using the positive copula kun "to be".

Kun kostia nayas.
be house home
"The house is a home."

Kun bai iska on u.
be I aunt of he
"I am his aunt."

The existential verb rau has a number of uses. Its basic sense is "to exist". Used with substantive arguments, it has the sense "there is, there are".

Rau katzu is kostia.
exist hare be.in house
"There is a hare in the house."

However, rau can also be used with a whole sentence as its argument. In this situation, it has a sense something like "it is the case that, I happen to know that (such and such is true)". This has the effect of emphasizing or drawing attention to the material in the main sentence, and is a technique often used to begin a spoken narrative.

Rau lagi kwihsa on bai ro maranta.
exist fall nephew of I exit deciduous.tree
"So, my nephew fell out of a deciduous tree."

The existential verb is also used in simple weather statements. Technically, weather verbs like matz "to rain" take no arguments, but to use one by itself as a complete sentence would be ambiguous: Matz. As an entire utterance, this could be a comment on the current state of the weather ("it's raining"), or the answer to a question ("rain"), or a stifled sneeze ("mmAAH-tzz!"). Usually the meaning would be understood from the situation, but if the speaker should wish to make the statement unambiguous, rau can serve this purpose.

Rau matz.
exist rain
"It's raining." lit., "It is the case that it is raining."

The copula kun and the existential verb rau have their negative counterparts, da "to not be" and din "to not exist". Between them, these two verbs can negate any statement. The negative copula da, like the positive copula, is generally only used in equative-type sentences; the negative existential din is basically a counterpart to the emphatic use of rau, and can thus be used to "negatively emphasize" any sentence not covered by da.

Da bai wilans pas la.
not.be I guest be.at you
"I am not your guest."

Din kafto is kostia.
not.exist basket be.in house
"There isn't a basket in the house."

Din dina bai lagi la.
not.exist see I fall you
"I didn't see you fall."

Din matz.
not.exist rain
"It isn't raining."

Yes/no questions are formed by preceding a statement with one of two interrogative particles, wa and foi. The first, wa, forms a straightforward question, while foi implies that you expect the answer to be "yes".

Wa daron dohal?
Q be.healthy child
"Is the child healthy?"

Foi rau hasal?
Q exist be.cold
"It's cold out, isn't it?"

The interrogative particles can be used with the negative verbs to form two more kinds of questions.

Wa da la mutz on u?
Q not.be you son of she
"Aren't you her son?"

Wa din artzi bai on au?
Q not.exist dream I of this
"Didn't I dream about this?"

Foi da so yoha?
Q not.be it iron
"It isn't iron, is it?"

Foi din lagi murau?
Q not.exist fall cat
"The cat didn't fall, did she?"

The answer to a yes/no question may be simply the corresponding one of kun, rau, da, or din, so that sometimes they can be translated as simply "yes" or "no". For a fuller answer, the question's verb is repeated.

–Wa lagi la? –Din lagi.
–Q fall you –not.exist fall
"Did you fall?" "No, I didn't."

Sometimes a question offers a choice between two or more possible answers. In such cases, wa must not only begin the question, but immediately precede the second choice, and every choice thereafter.

Wa yun kolba wa murau lautzi?
Q eat wolf Q cat mouse
"Did a wolf or a cat eat the mouse?"

Wa yun kolba katzu wa lautzi?
Q eat wolf hare Q mouse
"Did the wolf eat a hare or a mouse?"

Wa yun kolba wa murau wa katzu wa lautzi so?
Q eat wolf Q cat Q hare Q mouse it
"Did the wolf, the cat, the hare, or the mouse eat it?"

There are three ways to answer this type of question, depending on whether the question is about the subject or the object of the verb. First, in either case, the answer may be stated as a simple noun, with no verb. When the question is about the subject, the main verb may be repeated.

Yun murau.
eat cat
"A cat did [eat the mouse]."

When the question is about the object, the existential and emphatic verb rau must be used instead.

Rau lautzi.
exist mouse
"It was a mouse [that the wolf ate]."

Larua has an optional imperative particle, o "do!", and a prohibitive particle, mo "don't!". These are sentence particles and occur at the beginning of the imperative sentence.

O star pas au.
IMP sit at this
"Sit down here."

Mo lagi!
PROH fall
"Don't fall!"

For commands that include the speaker, the inclusive personal pronoun ni is used as the imperative particle.

Ni yun!
INCL-IMP eat
"Let's eat!"

Some verbs, such as "say" or "believe", can take an entire sentence as an argument. The argument sentence is known as an embedded or subordinate clause. In Larua, there is no equivalent of "that" as in "He said that I was pretty"; the only rule is that the subordinated sentence must come as the last argument of the main verb.

Yun kolba katzu.
eat wolf hare
"The wolf ate the hare."

Dina bai yun kolba katzu.
see I eat wolf hare
"I saw the wolf eat the hare."

Lagi dohal on u.
fall child of he
"His child fell."

Mona u bai lagi dohal on u.
say he I fall child of he
"He told me his child fell."

Larua does not distinguish gender in its personal pronouns, and distinguishes plural forms only in the first and second persons. In the third person, however, there is a distinction between the proximal and distal forms u and so, roughly the difference between "this one here" and "that one there," or between "the one we were talking about first" and "that other one;" the two are known in Larua studies as third person and fourth person.

bai	"I; me"	bayu	"we (not including you); us"
la	"you (singular)"	ni	"we, you and I; us, you and me"
u	"he, she, it, they; him, her, it, them"	baila (rare)	"we, you and I; us, you and me"
so	"he, she, it, they; him, her, it, them"	lau	"you (plural)"

There is also an impersonal pronoun, si, which is the same as the word for the number "one". This is also the only relative pronoun, corresponding to the English figure "the one that". It generally gives the sentence a meaning somewhat different from the meaning a personal pronoun creates.

Dina u bai.
see she I
"She saw me."

Dina si bai.
see one I
"Someone saw me."

Dina bai u yun so.
see I she eat they
"I saw her eating them."

Dina bai si yun u.
see I one eat they
"I saw who ate them."