Esei

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The grammar

I will introduce all the grammatical things with many examples so you should understand this clearly. Oh, I assume that you know what verb or present tense means.

The word order

The word order is normally SVO, subject - verb - object.

Inflecting the verb

Wapi meŋŋaena do segau.
A friend comes out from the house.

Wavin meŋŋaenan do segau.
Friends come out from the house.

-en is the suffix of present tense. You just add it to the basic form of the word. -in is the suffix of past tense. Use only either of these! I don't want anything to happen at the same time now and in the past :-)

NOTE: Wapi means a friend but wavin means friends. Note that change from p to v. This also happens to the verb meŋka. You can find a table about this degree variation from the phonology section. When a word is inflected, it uses weak degree.

After that you add the personal ending. They go like this:

The last three are rarely used, because the pluralness is indicated by the -n after the subject. This is why -n is in the end of word wavin. It means that the word is plural.

There is also another way to indicate the person, but this happens only when you only want to indicate that I, you or he does something. These are formed using personal pronouns.

Waen-mi nadeo.
I / we are young.

Waen-ta nadeo.
You are young.

Waen-sa nadeo.
He / they are young.

The number doesn't matter in this case. If you want to indicate pluralness, you have do like this: Waen-mi nadeon. "We are young. " But it's not wrong to say: Waen-mi nadeo. Meaning "We are young. "

Inflecting the noun

There are some cases, I haven't decided all them yet, but here is what I have now. These rules also apply in pronouns and adjectives.

Ba dalau waena perenao.
That food is hot.

As you have noticed subject is in the nominative case.

Nedau mis waena Tuomo.
My name is Tuomo.

-s indicates that the word is in genetive. Words in genetive don't inflect in number eg. Segaun mis waena den. "Our houses are over there. "

The basic word order is almost everywhere the same. Main word + attributes. Segau wopadis. "Man's house. " In which the Segau means house.

Laten-mi dalavu.
I eat food.

Kataen-mi sadatavun.
I hunt beasts.

-vu indicates that the word is infected somehow by the verb. So -vu is the suffix of accusative. It varies in the number, so you can add that little -n.

Negaren-mi bavu.
I find it.

bavu shows us that you can add the ending -vu to almost every pronoun.

Some prepositions

Ba waen den segau.
It is in the house.

I have three prepositions (for now) to indicate the place. den means in there, do means from there dore means to there.

Conjunctions

I have invented some of these but I really don't have enough will to invent twenty different-looking small words.

ka - and
but - sete
when - geru
as - teni

More pronouns

Here is the list of most common pronouns.

mi - I/ we
ta - you/ you (plural)
sa - he/ they
bi - this/ these
da - that/ those
ba - it/ they

Correlatives

Thank Zamenhof for this. I have same problem as wirh the conjunctions. I'm bad at inventing words.

Just some examples

This one is from the Language Construction Kit.

Nateri ani waen padao teni ti, terenau mis, ka lede ba so waen kevinavu.
Only god is as wise as you, my king, and that is not sure.

Some etymologics:

terenau - king
terena - conquer
nateri - god
padao - wise (comes from pada - think)
panana - know (also from pada)
kevinau - true (ke - un-, vinau - false --> unfalse)
kewari - untruth (ke - un-, wari - word --> unword)

Negation

So waen-mi dapadi.
I am not a woman.

Son waen-sa salao.
They are not ugly.

So is the negation word. It can (and it must) indicate plural. This is easy to handle.

Yes-no-questions

You exept yes or no answer to these questions.

Bolo waen-mi nadeo?
Am I young?

Bolo suderaen-mi?
Am I going?

You just add the word bolo in front of the sentence and you get a question.

Some conversational Esei

Kawa!
Nedau tas waena rai?
Nedau mis waena Lateli.
Deraen-ta natavu rao?
Deraen-mi lanavu ani-salani-katani.
Keka!

Hi!
What's your name?
My name is Lateli.
How old are you? (actually "How much oldness do you have?")
I am fifteen years old. (actually "I own fifteen time.")
Bye!

New word, dera means to own or to have and it has an object as you can see. In Esei you say lanau, time.

Plural rules

In Esei there are some rules about pluralness.

Terenaun nattao mis son deraena wavivun warao.
My old kings don't own beautiful friends.

• pluralness does not affect to the attributes

• to the verb you should add the personal ending (guess am I doing so!)

• the negation word is plural if the subject is plural

• the verb should not be plural

Huh! Lot of stuff here. If you are still interested have a lok at the Esei script.

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