Friday, 21 December 2012

Conlang Card Exchange 2012b

Second Line:

Ní âre premye babik Yeu ve shapâmet premyeron nenon. 
Ossí premyeron nenon wo' a?
conj first.neuter word be.past interrogative

In the beginning first grandfather Yeu said the first word.
And the first word was 'eh?'

The interrogative particle a usually comes at the beginning of a sentence where it acts like the English verb 'do' in a question: A shapâmet Yeu? Does Yeu speak?  In this text I decided to play with it and use it as an utterance of surprise: oh! hey! huh!  So for the Shente they say, In the beginning was the word, and the word was D'oh!  Maybe things started out differently for them.

Thursday, 20 December 2012

Conlang Exchange Card 2012a

I posted my cards for the Conlang Exchange today.  Here is the first line:

Ní âre premye babik Yeu ve shapâmet premyeron nenon.
loc beginning.dat first.masc grandfather Y. nonpresent command.past first.neuter word
In the beginning first grandfather Yeu uttered the first word.

First grandfather Yeu is the primal ancestor of the Shente.  The Shente call him babik grandfather because everything originated from him.  Because of his importance the Shente use superior status language when talking about him.  He doesn't just say the first word, he commands the first word.

 The language of the Shente has grammatical gender.  Babik is masculine and nenon word is neuter.  The word for 'first' changes before each word, being premye before babik and premyeron before nenon.