The one I'm currently working on is kvaksulu, or kvaksea uair - the ancient language of island frog people. I imagine it changing over time, as well as other languages sprouting from it - such as lgarákru air of the dálgaroi kvaksas. There are also dialects in the works, defined are the basic version (tammerulu) and dálgarulu (how dálgaroi pronounce the elder language), I plan southern Dsáburoi kvaksas and inhabitants of the Dukr peninsula having also their own dialects. Lot to work on. As a consequence of this being a sort of proto-language of one language family I would like to build from more, there's not much irregularities and everything is pretty much set.
It has 7 grammatical cases - 1. nominative, 2. locative, 3. dative in context of place (we moved
to the mountains, we're heading
to the city), 4. accusative/instrumental, 5. dative in context of a person a living thing (it was given
to us, I gave it
to him), 6. genitive, 7. vocative. Words could be categorized into nouns, adjectives, verbs, and pronouns, which are subject to forms of inflection, and then everything else
, which stays always the same.
Adjectives are the most simple, they're subject to these grammatical cases, and have only different singular/plural forms. Nouns are inflected primarily by genders, then by the grammatical cases. There are four grammatical genders, masculine, feminine, neuter, and a special one used for a group or a nation of people in plural, or a member of that group/nation of unspecified sex in singular. Majority of the nouns use the neuter gender, only living things are masculine or feminine, depending on their sex, so nouns aren't fully gendered - I imagine that feature appearing down the line with dálgaroi, who would re-sort the nouns and give each a gender, such as it is in our languages. There are different pronouns used for people and animals. Personal pronouns are inflected in a different manner than nouns, "we" has no inclusive/exclusive feature. Adjectives can be made into comparative and superlative with prefixes and suffixes, similarly an adverb can be derived from a noun.
Verbs aren't inflected by the grammatical cases, but are being conjugated nevertheless. Each grammatical person has its forms of verbs. Verb can be in present, past, or future tense, there is an imperative form, hortative, passive, and transgressive. A question uses a slightly altered imperative inflection. There is also a conditional mood, and a prefix describing that the action is continual, and of course, an infinitive.
Because the words are very defined within their inflections, the sentence structure doesn't have to be set in stone, however, I am working on the speech patterns as well, that would be cheating otherwise
As of now it's mostly similar to Czech. Subject comes first, then predicate, then descriptors/object. If there are multiple verbs due to predicate being modal or so, it is preferable to put them near each other, but meaning is conveyed either way. Personal pronouns don't need to be used in sentences, as their verbs indicate them.
That's pretty much it. The rest is vocabulary and pronunciation
Grammar is definitely the most tricky one to nail. Pronunciation you can always change, vocabulary varies, but grammar are the rules, and one has to be quite careful with those!
Here's a text in kvaksulu so that you have an idea how the thing looks like, a kvaksa from the main island describing a hound to its tribal brothers who have never seen a one:
arp ahrrereo ralkaei
ralk uahrret óbui ahrrer dorui té kvaksa daemáf feru meweulu ilfú o jorlui feú óbú dlatui uahrret té máb vog nábrab kásule
rátak feraea gerev dlahuli orvaqjeulu ral feraei rehesqafylut gerut do oubemeu o do gektameu fajfalbuli ihtu o bákiu flakeulu gjetut vaú nlekú ih o lir ral tnarut nlékeg gerut os dukeulu hestnarut bato ba feraea vleú óbuli o os fepuli ahrreru likut hrro mvúríllu o tro lgarulu
hlagtum ferkau té vru daltuli orvkemuli ahrrereu dak uahrrev dakú ferkaei gerut suádenteulu o batek suákemu kliva oubeméu bma suádenteulu os qojkut ferledui regerun dakeulu fua gerun do dákru fepulati folekea tro hártakulu bma daku vhrrovnun feredeo qunau gerun wá pileulu
hesllebun vaei qunau deraei gerut vlitluli gaelu o gjetut kás nia pileulu hesoblut jettú
Do I even have a life
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Topic: Random Things you drew/shopped/made/etc. (Read 1260534 times)