Eshil- To Be
I am: sir
you are: ihora
he/she/it is: ir
we are: eshir
they are: shir
Marev- To Have
I have: mai
you have: mair
he/she/ it has: mari
we have: marel
they have: marai
Velli- To Go
I go: vill
you go: varil
he/she/it goes: villi
we go: var
they go: vilar
Domurnia- To Do/To Make
I do: domun
you do: dom
he/she/it does: dommu
we do: durn
they do: domurn
Vellim and Eshilim- To Come (here)/ To Be (here)
Vellimen and Eshilmen- To Go (there)/To Be (there)
These are conjugated the same way that "velli" and "eshil" are. The suffix "-im" means "here" and the suffix "-men" means "there" (as you probably could have guessed). There are many such compound words in Ashkay.
Pronouns are only used as direct objects. So if I wanted to say to you, "I am Penelope" I would say simply, "Sir Penelope." There is no word for "I". However, there is a word for "me"- Hesh.
I do: domun
you do: dom
he/she/it does: dommu
we do: durn
they do: domurn
Vellim and Eshilim- To Come (here)/ To Be (here)
Vellimen and Eshilmen- To Go (there)/To Be (there)
These are conjugated the same way that "velli" and "eshil" are. The suffix "-im" means "here" and the suffix "-men" means "there" (as you probably could have guessed). There are many such compound words in Ashkay.
Pronouns are only used as direct objects. So if I wanted to say to you, "I am Penelope" I would say simply, "Sir Penelope." There is no word for "I". However, there is a word for "me"- Hesh.
Sir Penelope! Is that anything like Sir Leila? :-D
ReplyDeleteI was so wrapped up in the internal logic of my elven language when I made it that I did not even notice that the respectful form of address for adult males, like Mister, is actually "Sim". It took me weeks before I noticed that it was "Sim Vash" and "Sim Osh" and etc. It probably didn't help that it's actually pronounced like more "Seem". So I am going to guess that Sir is actually pronounced more like it rhymes with Beer. Am I right? (mmmm beer)
The forms of "to be" are so lovely. "Ihora"... and all those "sh" sounds.
So anyway are you saying that the bare conjugated verb serves without an explicit subject in the cases where we would have used a pronoun in English? I.e. "Penelope goes" is "Penelope villi" but "She goes" is just "Villi"? Is the word order [Subject]-Verb-Object?
Okay, okay, I'll wait for further installments. :-)
hehehe "Sim Vash". Yeah, I noticed "Sir Penelope" as I was writing it but naturally, I kept it. It does rhyme with beer but the "e" sound is a little longer. Seeeer, says Penelope as though the number of e's were an indicator of how long the "e" sound should be.
ReplyDeleteYou ask all the right questions, Lothere! I haven't thought very deeply about this yet. When a random rule occurs to me, I just run with it. It's probably a little suicidal, particularly if I get so far into it that I start working on complex sentences and what would be far more daunting- Dialects.
But I'm sure to run into some kind of conflict even in the early stages. For instance, let's say that there are three people in the room- gentleman #1, gentleman #2 and a lady. Gentleman #1 wishes to describe what one of the other two is doing but he does not know the name of either. If he says, "Dommu ur-jinshe" (he or she is making a noise) how are we supposed to know which person he's referring to? The verbs are all gender neutral! This is kind of a random scenario but I think you can see where problems might arise. In many cases, I'm sure that the subject of the sentence can be inferred from the context but it has to get confusing now and again.
When working on this language, I'm going to try to not use the fact that linguistic rules don't always make logical sense and are rarely intuitive as a crutch. But it's so very tempting.
However to answer your question, "Penelope villi" would be correct. Subject-verb-object is the sentence structure. "Villi" implies a subject all by its self but if you want to get very specific and use a proper noun, then it would get stuck in front of the verb. Adjectives and adverbs fall behind the words they're describing in every case.