Salovisian language (Saloviscio iĕzko)

Orthography

The orthography is generally identical to the way it would be read by an English speaker, with the following exceptions (and a few common others, that will be pointed out where they occur):

-          Sc – /ʃ/

-          C - /tʃ/

-          Ĕ - /ɞ/

-          R - /r/

-          Ch - /x/

-          A = /a/

-          E = /e/

-          I = /i/ (/j/ before vowel)

-          O = /o/

-          Eo = /ɛw/

-          U = /u/

Noun cases, types and declension

There are masculine, feminine and neuter nouns, each of which include both animate and inanimate nouns. Feminine nouns end in “-a” or “-ia”, and neuter nouns end in “-o” or “-e”. Unlike most other Slavic languages, the case system is somewhat small, with only nominative, accusative, genitive (possessive, “of”) and dative (“to” or “for”) cases.

The examples given here are:

-          Masculine: Vescir – afternoon

-          Feminine: Svita – light

-          Neuter: Daro - road

	Sing	Plu	Sing	Plu	Sing	Plu
Nom	Vescir	Vesciri	Svita	Sviti	Daro	Dara
Acc	Vescir1	Vesciri	Svitu	Sviti2	Daro	Dara3
Gen	Vescira	Vescire	Svitei	Svit	Dara	Dar
Dat	Vesciru	Vescirom	Svitĕ	Svitom	Daru	Darom

¹For animate masculine nouns, this ending is “-a”

²For anim. nouns, this ending becomes “-e”

³For anim. nouns, this ending becomes “-i”

It should be noted that a few nouns, such as “lĕd”, “person”, take the genitive singular as a “dual” plural, to mean “two of” a quantity.

Adjective declensions

Most adjectives end in “-ei” and follow this declension pattern:

	Masc	Fem	Neut	Plu
Nom	-ei	-ia	-io	-ii
Acc	-ei/-eo1	-iu	-io	-ii/-e2
Gen	-eo	-oi	-eo	-eis
Dat	-om	-oi	-om	-im

¹For animate nouns

²For feminine and neuter animate nouns

A few adjectives, such as “iedn” (“one”, “single”), are different:

	Masc	Fem	Neut	Plu
Nom	-	-a	-o	-i
Acc	-/-ia	-u	-o	-i/-e
Gen	-ia	-oi	-ia	-eis
Dat	-iu	-oi	-iu	-om

The adverbial form of most adjectives simply replaces the ending with “-ĕ”, and the comparative form usually ends in “-iei”.

Several words

-          Good – dobrei

-          To love – liĕb (perfective “oliĕb”)

-          To speak – ovor (perfective “sovor”)

-          All – selej

-          One – iedn (pronounced like “yen”, except with endings)

-          Two – dvĕ

-          Three – dri

-          Four – ceiri

-          Five – piĕt

-          Six – sces

-          Seven – scem

-          Eight – viem

-          Nine – dĕvisc

-          Ten – desc

-          What – cio (genitive “ceo”, dative “com”)

-          Who – cho (accusative/genitive “cheo”, dative “chom”)

-          But, although - non

Articles

While there is no indefinite article, a sort of definite article, with an English meaning somewhere between “the” and “this”, sometimes appears – “z”, a short form of “zei”, which more often means “that”. “Z” is declined almost identically to “iedn”, except that the genitive plural is “zes”. To avoid confusion, most of the endings of “zei” beginning with an “i” begin with an “ei” instead, e.g. “zeiu” rather than “ziu”, which otherwise is a dative form of “z”.

Verbs

Verbs generally do not have a specific ending for an infinitive, and are generally inflected thus:

	Present		Past
1st sing (iĕ)	-u	Masc	-(a)*l
2nd sing (ti)	-isc/-esc	Fem	-la
3rd sing (on, na, no)	-i	Neut	-le
1st plu (mi)	-im/-em	Plu	-li
2nd plu (vi)	-iste/-este
3rd plu (nie)	-ĕt/ut

*For the rare few verbs that already end in “l”, or impossible consonant forms, such as “chot” (“to go”)

It should be mentioned that subject pronouns, when they are used, come after the noun, but in the present form are generally only used to show an interrogative, questioning mood.

As with many Slavic languages, most verbs have a separate form to show a complete, “perfective” actions – these usually begin in “o-” or “s-“, but in some cases can take entirely different forms, such as “id” and “chod”, both meaning “to go”.

The perfective present generally shows a future action, but the perfective past is used to show a recent past action, similar to the perfective in English or French.

Pronouns

	I	You (sing/informal)	He/it	She	We	You	They
Nom	Iĕ	Ti	On/No	Na	Mi	Vi	Nie
Acc	Menĕ	Tebĕ	Ieo	Eiu	Nĕs	Vĕs	Nis
Gen	Menĕ	Tebĕ	Ieo	Eiu	Nĕs	Vĕs	Nis
Dat	Meni	Tebi	Iom	Ei	Nom	Vom	Nim

Prepositions

-          U – “in, at” (+ gen) (“through, in” with periods of time)

-          O (/oʔ/) – “from” (+ gen)

-          Ĕs (in older documents written “s”) – “out of” (+gen)

-          Sem – “with” (+ acc)

-          Besc – “without” (+ gen)

-          Ĕv (in older documents written “v”)– “in”, “in the time of”, “in the area of” (+acc), “into” (+dat)

-          Pre – “through” (+dat), “in the time of” (+gen)

-          Ob – “about” (+gen)

-          Priv – “before” (+acc)

-          Zav – “behind” (+acc)

-          Del – “for” (+ gen)

Karseku language

1: Orthography

The orthography is generally identical to English save for the following letters (and the lack of “f” as a character):

-          a = /a/

-          c = /t͡ʃ/

-          e = /ɛ/

-          eu = /ə̃/

-          h = /ɦ/

-          i = /i/

-          j = /j/

-          o = /o/

-          s = /ʃ/

-          ss = /s/

-          u = /u/

-          v = /v/

-          w = /f/

-          z = /ʒ/

2: Verbs

2.1: Verb infinitives and basic conjugation

All verbs in their infinitive must have a final vowel of “i” – usually, there is no vowel afterwards, for example “sesi” (“to provide”), but sometimes another consonant will follow, usually in the pattern “-ik” or “-it”, e.g. “ssit” (“to offer, to deal”).

Verbs are conjugated for past, present and future and all six persons of pronoun, as well as distinctions for male and female genders. When the gender of the subject noun is in doubt or question, the feminine form is used.

	Present	Past	Future
1st sing.	-e/-o	-aj/-oj	-en/-u
2nd sing.	-ke/-ko1	-kaj/-koj1	-ken/-ku1
3rd sing.	-te/-to1	-taj/-toj1	-ten/-tu1
1st plu.	-pe/-po2	-paj/-poj2	-pen/-pu2
2nd plu.	-ce/-co	-caj/-coj	-cen/-cu
3rd plu.	-ne/-no	-naj/-noj	-nen/-nu

¹ “k”, “t” become “g”, “d” after voiced consonants

² “p” after unvoiced sibilants (“c”, “s”, “ss”), “b” after “z” and “m” after the rest

It should be noted that for verbs ending in double consonants, such as “pli” (“to go”), a vowel is inserted between the original consonants when an ending with a consonant is used (e.g. “pelto” – “she goes”)

2.2: Articles

Articles can often come either before or after the verbs to change their meanings or to add additional moods. Most importantly are the conditional and negative articles:

-          “da” = “not”

-          “ota” = “never”

-          “het” – “would”

-          “heta” – “would not”

And the two main modal articles:

-          “on sesi/sesi on” – “to be able to provide”

-          “de sesi/sesi de” – “to have to provide”

Simple interrogatives are formed with the article “he”, always placed after the verb (“henda” in the negative).

2.3: Compound verb contractions

For phrases where the subject noun is not a simple pronoun, the subject noun is itself shortened and prefixed to the verb, which is then conjugated in the first person (singular or plural, depending on the noun). Some verbs, known as “core verbs”, change their stem form as well in these compounds – for example, “sesi” becomes “se” (past “saj”, future “sen”).  

There are few real patterns for these changes, except for often removing the final syllable and inflecting the penultimate syllable in its place.

2.4: Predicate

Compounds cannot be formed with the predicate verb (“ti”, “to be”), but in present third-person expressions the verb can simply be omitted.

3: Nouns

3.1: Essential noun forms

Most nouns (the exceptions largely being members of species) are not distinguished by singular or plural, but do take certain different forms:

-          The lative form, which indicates motion towards the noun – this ends in “i” or “j”, except for in the few cases where the pronoun ends in “-i” beforehand (for example, the pronoun “udi” (“she/her”), which has a lative “dej”)

-          The possessive form – equivalent to the “’s” ending in English (but not the genitive, which is often shown simply with the original form) – that ends in “u”

For compound verbs (see 2.3.) nearly all nouns have a separate form, usually by removing the final syllable and adding “-i-“ between it and the verb. However, for single-syllable words, the ending is “-ssi” (e.g. “hot” (“cat”) – “hossi-“)

3.2: Formal nouns

Most animate nouns have a formal equivalent – for example, the formal address form of the name “Robert” would be “Roberten”. This is often equivalent to using the affix “Mr” or “Mrs” in English. This is usually “-en” or “-n”.

4: Adjectives, adverbs and prepositions

4.1: Adjectives

Adjectives are indeclinable, but they are nearly always formed with the ending “-u” (with a few notable exceptions, such as “ej” (“with” or “and”)). 

For adjectives of subject nouns which are not shown, but are incorporated into verbs, the article “nu” follows the adjective.

Adjectives generally follow the noun in question.

Prepositions are generally shown as adjectives, either with the normal or lative forms, such as:

-          Ku – in (“into” with lative)

-          Vju – from (“through” with lative)

-          Ej – with (sometimes “and”)

-          Visu – around, in the area of

-          Tu – over

-          Eu – under

-          Ou - for

4.2: Adverbs

Adverbs are formed from adjectives by dropping the “-u” ending (if present) and adding an “i-“ (or “ite-“ with comparatives) as a prefix. “Secondary” adverbs – adverbs that appear less important that the main ones – are generally not modified in this way.

5: Vocabulary

-         Kau – some

-         Ssku – all

-         Suj – who

-         Sen – what

-         Ske – how

-         Osek – why

-         Keju – one

-         Ssin – two

-         Ese – three

-         Eni – four

-         Bit – five

-         Mes – six

-         Otes – seven

-         Jab – eight

-         Inab – nine

-         Ksol - ten