zompist bboard

I said I'd make a thread on this and I have. I worked on this in OpenOffice expecting to use a Document-to-HTML converter and then a HTML-to-BBCode converter but when that didn't work, I decided to be a cool kid and use Google Docs.



As always, I'd appreciate being told about any mistakes I made. This language started out as Thōselqat's Japanese but has gained some unique features along the way. I think one of my favorite things is the use of locative verb stems and ī to form incredibly compact demonstratives.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

I have a question here. You have both Asian-style topic marking and personal agreement on the verb. My question is, which argument does the verb agree with?

Take for instance these two sentences:

1. Friend TOP book NOM be.expensive
As for my friend, the book is expensive (i.e. My friend's book is expensive).

2. Friend TOP book ACC bought
My friend bought a book.

How would the verbs agree here? It seems unusual for it to agree with the topic, since the topic in 1. is not an argument of the verb, so you would expect it instead to agree with book, which is the subject of the verb. But in sentence 2. there is no stated subject for the verb to agree with.

One possibility is that when the nominative argument is missing, you could have the verb agree with a dummy 3.SG subject, which would result in things like

1 NOM book ACC bought-1.SG
1 TOP book ACC bought-3.SG

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

In the last sentence, the topic and the subject are the same, so it makes sense that it would be marked according to the topic. But how about in sentences where the topic is not the subject, and the subject is entirely unstated? e.g.

that-country TOP Sunago ACC speak
Sunago is spoken in that country.

tomato TOP ate
I/you/(s)he/etc. ate the tomato.

present TOP parents'-house-life NOM be
Right now I'm living at my parents' house (Right now it's parent-house life (for me)).

I'm just giving you examples to see if I can clear up things you may not have considered. Each one of these is different in some way (in the first one the subject is irrelevant, in the second it is ambiguous in my sentence but may just be explicit in your language, and in the third, the subject is in fact stated, but in an unusual way. The last sentence seems strange, but it's not unusual in Japanese (現在は実家暮らしです。), so I'm wondering if you plan to include sentences like it, and if so, how you will mark them.

I see.

The first sentence would be 3rd-plural since the implied subject is a bunch of people.

haī zaku ne Sunbyaku ma byamase
DEM country TOP sunago PAT speak-3PL

The second would be ambiguous in a language like Japanese, but not Sunago as it has mandatory subject marking.

tamēto ne shimun(ji/ta/su/etc.)
tomato TOP eat-PST-(1S/2S/3S/etc.)

The third wouldn't even be like the Japanese sentence.

Nar ne en ī mao wo sunji
now TOP parent GEN house LOC love-1S

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

Nah, I was just borrowing the word "tomato" from English to use as an example. Technically tomatoes shouldn't even exist in Thōselqat since it's a different planet but there would probably be something similar.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

I've been working on a new update, but I've been working on the pronoun system of this language. It's a small post so I'll just put it here.

You've no doubt noticed that the 1st-person pronoun in the examples I've used randomly flies between īshva and kanga. This is because Sunago, much like Japanese, does not have a strict closed class of pronouns like, say, English. Sunago's pronouns are more like nouns--they're open, and there's a lot of them. What kind of pronoun you use depends on your personality and the situation at hand. Many of Sunago's pronouns are based on system of assertiveness--how assertive you want to be dictates what pronoun you use. Anyway, here are the 1st-person ones:

īshva: One of the most common, and usually the first pronoun taught to learners of the language. This one is somewhat formal and gender-neutral. It's used very commonly, especially in official documents and things like that. It can sound a little stilted at times, though.

kanga:: One of the most common as well. This is less formal than īshva and is probably the most commonly used 1st-person pronoun in normal speech. Don't use it with your teacher or boss, but with friends, parents, and other people on an equal standing to you in casual situations.

Note that the two above pronouns are neutral to number--they can be used to mean either "we" or "I", the difference only being clear when the speaker is the subject and the verb is inflected. There are some dedicated plural pronouns, however. Moving on...

Kizo/Naga: These are assertive pronouns. Kizo is for males, Naga for females. As an assertive pronoun, it's used when you want to make a serious statement, when you're a leader and talking to people below you, or when you just want to sound forceful. In Sunago, unlike Japan, being forceful, assertive, and proactive is considered good form, though overdoing it is possible (one should listen to this proverb to get the idea: miro myateba wohyota, kuzhinbero--"cleanly slice once, not wildly"). Young men and women may use these two pronouns almost exclusively to sound gruff and gung-ho--their use is VERY common among boisterous protagonists of adventure/fantasy fiction for young adults. To name some examples:

Kyōīnu: nērata mō?
do-PST-2S Q
Did you do this?

Kaīto: Kizo zō oron!
1S.ASSERT SUBJ copula.NEG
It wasn't me, jeez!

Here, kizo is used to show that Kaīto emphatically believes that it wasn't him, and also is somewhat offended that Kyōīnu even thought that it was him at all.

Ikohiga: chazo ne tvomaran. Nisu?
today TOP work-1P. be.good-3S
We'll be working today. Is that good?

Jvoruvozha: Naga ne mujiro!
1S.ASSERT TOP like-1SG-NEG
I don't like that! (i.e "I don't think we should")

Here, the use of naga indicates that Jvoruvozha believes that they shouldn't work today. By using it, she's being assertive and making sure that the others around her understand that she's serious when she's objecting. To the Sun, being assertive even to your boss/superior is a good thing. They do not like the idea of going with the flow to the point of losing your individuality one bit. That's not to say that they don't value being humble--but they don't value obsequiously sucking up to people either. Remember that these two are singular only. Anyway, moving on:

zenza: An extremely assertive pronoun for both genders. This goes far beyond the two mentioned above. Indeed, zenza is so assertive and over-bearing, that almost no one uses it in real life. You're most likely to hear this coming from fictional characters--namely, crazy-badass don't-give-a-fuck heroes and villains. Using this means you really do not give a shit about the other person. Kizo and Naga are assertive, but they still show a respect for the other person. Zenza, on the other hand, is just plain RUDE. It's almost profanity, in a sense. You're basically "no fuck you you stupid piece of shit" when you use this. Its also used when extremely angry. For instance, take this fictional exchange one might here in a manga:

Sunhizarī: Uhahahha! Guzzha ī nāru hiwero ne ikoji!
LAUGHTER! 2S GEN arm miss-GER.NEG TOP hope-1SG
Uhahahah! I hope you don't miss your arm, ya' little shit!

Yashigin: Gah...ZENZA zō guzzha ma UMEJIROOOOO!
INTERJ....1S.EXTREME.ASSERT AGT 2S PAT forgive-NEG-1SG-NEG
Guh...I'll never forgive you, YOU BASTARD!

In this little exchange, Yashigin's use of zenza shows just how goddamn serious he is. The kid gloves are off. Sunhizarī is going DOWN...but you'll only see it if you buy the next issue!

(Note that both use guzzha, and INCREDIBLY insulting second-person pronoun you only use when you truly despise someone or want to make them suffer. This is also rarely heard outside of fiction. You really have to want to just straight up murder someone to use it. It's why the sentences had "ya' little shit" and "you bastard" added in the translation, as that's the only way to get the nuance across)

hahon/hanū: The opposite of the ones before. These are humble pronouns used to show respect when talking to a superior. Note that they are REALLY humble. Overusing them can make you sound like a prisoner and creep people out. But they are very frequently used by people such as servants, waiters, cashiers, and the like, to show respect. hahon is used by men, hanū by women. They derive from the old phrases haī hon and haī nū; "this boy" and "this girl". Indeed, despite being first-person pronouns, they take 3rd-person singular inflection. Don't use these with your parents, it makes you sound like a creep and not related to them. Don't use it around your friends either.

ha'agu/hamushi: Very, VERY rare forms of the above used exclusively by adults, from the phrases haī aguro and haī mushim; "this man" and "this woman". Most adults however would use hahon/hanū.

issa: A childish pronunciation of īshva. This is mostly commonly used by girls to sound cute..stupid-cute. Can sound hilariously overdone and almost cloyingly sweet. Only a total kawaiiko would excessively use this.

jiji: Old person pronoun. This is actually the oldest of the lot--it was THE original first-person pronoun--well, it was once jiko until it got beaten down and then reduplicated. You'll notice that it looks like the 1S inflection -ji. Well, it is. The inflections in Sunago came from just affixing pronouns to verbs. However, the pronouns used are all considered super old and archaic these days, and only old people use them. Trying to use jiji when you're not old either makes you sound wise beyond your years or an obnoxiously pretentious jackass. Use with caution unless you've got gray hairs.

hana: A somewhat cute and feminine casual pronoun. Comes from an old work meaning "soothing". A girl may use this if she's shy and kinda cute, or if she's trying to be feminine. Men using this are usually either very young and cute boys or prettyboys.

biccha: An energetic and assertive cute pronoun. This is kinda like hana, but it's assertive and thus would be used by boisterous girls and boys who don't want to sound as forceful as kizo/naga would imply. This used to be basically female only, but some young boys are adopting it too. Nonetheless, it's still very childish and thus you should drop it by the time you reach about 15 years old or so.

razzha: The first dedicated plural pronoun. This means "we", and is used when talking as a superior to those beneath you. Comes from an old word meaning "great lord". A military commander might use this while talking to his troops for instance. Another usage is when you represent a group--for instance, if you are part of a company and meeting with representatives of another company.

hakeshi: the opposite of above. This is a plural pronoun used to speak to a superior and be humble. It is, historically, a VERB, meaning "we are not being impolite" (which would be hageshiro in modern Sunago). A student would use this when referring to his class as a whole when talking to a teacher.

[One's own name]: Absurdly humble and self-effacing to way refer to yourself. You would only, ONLY use this if you were trying to be as humble as possible, like if you got punished by a teacher/parents. You really only use this when you have been utterly humiliated and have acted shamefully:

Mewanū:SHIRAMAO! Mao te kaero aenba uari ne hvaketa!
shiramao! house LAT aŀot to.be.late-CONJUNCT go.away-GER TOP have.the.gall-2S
SHIRAMAO! How dare you leave the house when it's THIS late!

Shiramao:AH! e..enzaj! Shi-shiramao ne u-umōyomata...
INTERJ! be.sorry-1SG. shiramao TOP forgive-CONSTR-recieve-2S
AH! I...I'm sorry! P-please forgive Shiramao/me!

Shiramao knows she's boned and is thus using her own name to refer to herself to show shame.

ma-: technically not a pronoun--this is a prefix used to pluralize the other pronouns. They always undergo lurzyuzu. So, magizo, managa, mazenza, mavana, mavahon, mavanū....its use it not obligatory. Indeed these plural forms are somewhat rare, but they do exist.


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That's it for the 1st-person. I'm working on the second person ones right now, I should have them done soon.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

Updating this to where the CBB topic is:

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2nd-Person pronouns (And 3rd-person as Sunbyaku has basically none of them):

Unlike Japanese, using 2nd-person pronouns isn't seen as rude in Sunbyaku, and thus it uses them more often. There's actually quite a decent amount of them. And thus:

tada: the traditional, ultra-old pronoun. Obviously the source of the 2SG inflection -ta. Not much besides this.

rashi: The only dedicated 2PL pronoun.

zaltan: One of the most common ways to talk to somebody. This can sound somewhat formal and stiff, but it's what you'd see on official documents speaking to you and in formal business meetings and stuff like that. However, it is only to be used when you are equal to the person you are speaking to.

tayaī: A more casual pronoun, this would be used amongst friends/classmates/etc. Literally translates to "the one beside (me)". Roughly equivalent to Japanese omae and kimi.

uraī: Literally "the one above (me)", this, as you could probably guess, is used to respectfully speak to those above you in status, such as a teacher or boss (though in that case you would probably just refer to them by their title).

mewa: Lit. "circle". This is used to talk to a lover/someone you like, and can be very sappy. The idea is that with the person you two are a circle; that is, you never end (the circle is a large part of Sun philosophy and tradition because it is a self-contained loop, and unlike all other shapes, never stops to change direction--it's a smooth ride all the way through, and can be drawn in one stroke)

guzzha: Lit. "demon, awful spirit". A noun used to refer to the closest thing to demons Sun Theology has, this is also an EXTREMELY rude and insulting 2SG pronoun. You will really only hear this in fiction. It's that charged. Using this on someone in real life would almost certainly make them start laughing at you, because it kind of sounds ridiculous except when the stakes are very high.

[Person's Title]: The most respectful way to refer to someone, especially an official like a teacher or boss, but also parents and people who are working (such as a receptionist grocery store-clerk). By putting emphasis on their title/job, you're basically saying that you acknowledge the hard work they do.

Like Japanese, one can also append someone's title to their name:

Kagaī (a teacher): kenshōken ne yaī?
question TOP possibility
"Are there any questions?" (lit. "Are questions a possibility?")

Iroī: aa, Hashiken-hizagau!
yes, NAME-teacher
Yes, Mr. Hashiken!

nōku: Lit. "being underneath". This is a condescending but affectionate way to refer to someone below you. So, a parent would call their child this, or an older sibling would use this to a younger one.

If you're a teacher and you call one of your students this though I hope you like registering as a sex offender.

yarahon/yaranū: Yet another one of those "hon/nu prefixed with something pronouns. This time it's from yaraku "to thank/be joyful". This is used to respectfully talk to a male or female. You're most likely to hear this from a cashier when you buy something, talking to you. Honestly, it's basically only used in retail.

yarahaya: Lit. "the one who is makes (us) joyful". This is VERY special pronoun, only used to talk to gods/spirits in religious traditions in Vyakado. It is never used anywhere else.

nazaī: from nazabi "to be unacceptable" (-za- is a funky infix that sometimes turns verbs negative; nabi means "to be acceptable"). This is used to scold someone who did something shameful, but not super-serious. Thus a parent might use it when talking to a kid who just did something bad like lie about a test or something like that--not TOO bad, but still bad. A teacher could use it when talking to a student who didn't turn in homework/fail a test or summat.

nijū/muhaya/ūchiga/hyūī/8 billion others: These are all OLD, OLD pronouns that only show up in period works or ancient texts. The ones listed here translate to "the good one", "the liked one", "the equal one", and "that great one". There's plenty of others (saraja, hirolan....) but they're basically non-existent. These old pronouns number in the hundreds, mainly because there was no real "set" and people would fiction them up out of thin air from verbs and nouns to fit the occasion or person.


With that, the third-person ones, as there are basically none:

wōho/wonū: yet ANOTHER one of these sets. Generic way to say "he" or "she". Lit. "that boy" and "that girl".

wōī sun: lit. "those people". Rather stiff 3PL pronoun for those in your sight.

suzu: another old one which contributed to the personal inflections. Unlike jiji and tada, however, this is used frequently in modern times to refer to those whose gender is unknown, or to inanimates that are genderless.

mase: Generic 3PL pronoun


However, now that we're talking about the 3rd-person pronouns, we come to the demonstratives! Like any language, Sunbyaku has demonstratives corresponding to "this/that" (inb4 Micamo points out a natlang that has no demonstratives). All demonstratives in Sunago take the genitive marker ī, which is usually written on the demonstrative itself.

The most generic are ha "this" and wō "that". It's a simple two-way distinction of length from both the speaker and listener. When used to refer to things that don't actualy exist physically, ha is usually for things close to the speaker and wō for things close to the listener.

There's QUITE the list of others, however, such as nuī, for things close to the speaker but far from the listener (such as something the speaker is actually holding/carrying), or kuī, which is for things that don't exist anymore but now basically is the word for "no", as in "no people are here". Some of the more esoteric ones appear to have been formed from verbs, like nieī, for things which cannot be seen (but the speaker is sure exist).

tanī specifically refers to a previously mentioned statement:

Higiro: wonū ī kachi nazaba denrisu na. tanī ne muyesu.
that.girl GEN dress be.unacceptable-CONJUN put.out-3S QUOT. previous.statement TOP like-PST.NEG-3S
I said that her dress looked bad. She didn't like that.

Locative verbs can form a demonstrative that acts a little different than the others. This is never used before a noun, but rather after in a gentive phrase that is how Sunago deals with what English would use a prepositional phrase for. Some examples are īva "inside", uraī "area above", taya "besides", nōka "underside", havoī "the area between":

hima ī uraī wo
water GEN be.above-DEMON LOC
above the water

hoī nūyasi ī taya wo dirchunji
DEM.DIST-GEN girl GEN area.next.to LOC practice-PST-1SG
I practiced alongside that girl

wohyoī ne yero maji ī havoī te myorisu
sword TOP two wall GEN be.between-DEMON LAT throw-PST-3S
He threw the sword between the two walls (the sword went through an opening flanked by the walls and came out the other side)

wohyoī ne yero maji ī havoī wo myorisu
sword TOP two wall GEN be.between-DEMON LOC throw-PST-3S
He threw the sword between the two walls (the sword was thrown into an area between the two walls)

(I may have some unique words for the locational nouns like what Japanese does but I already have the locative verbs so I might as well use them here)

Of special note is yuī from yuku "be amongst, within". This is an alternate way of talking about cocurrent action:

dircha ī yuī ne yorta ma abunji
practice GEN be.amongst-GEN TOP slice AGT count.up-PST-1SG
While practicing I counted up slices (of a sword)

myateutvaku ne kagawohyo ī yuī mado-madosu
clear-remain-GER TOP kagawohyo GEN be.amongst-GEN REDUP-be.tough
Remaining calm while doing Kagawohyo* is very, very difficult

*: Traditional Sun swordmanship practice, where one blindfolds themselves and then practices with a waster in order to truly become one with their sword. Lit. "Darkness-Slicing")

These locational demonstratives frequently show up in names where they have several forms:

Vyakataya: "besides/next to the gods"
Shiruīva: "Inside friends/friendly territory"
Ninōka: "Underneath goodness"
Nauraī: "Above acceptable-ness (i.e striving to be more than just acceptable")
Kagua: "Outside of darkness (i.e temptation, wrongdoing)"
Pejoyu: "Amongst readiness"

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I don't have much else right now besides this on this topic.

Also wow this post got long.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

Another mostly short post.

Infixes in Sunbyaku:

Sunbyaku is a primarily-suffixing language. However, a strange feature it possesses are derivational infixes that can be used on verbal roots. The history of these, while I was making the language, is rather interesting. I once had two verbs, nabi and nazabi. Originally, the first meant "to be unacceptable" and the second "to be acceptable". However it felt strange to have the word for "unacceptable" be shorter than the word for "acceptable", so I flipped their meanings. Then I looked at how nazabi seemed to be basically nabi with an affix -za-. I decided to take this as a root negator morpheme (cf. English "un-"). Then, for whatever bizarre reason, I just decided to use it as an infix...

Anyway, infixes work differently depending on which verb they're used. In internals, infixes are placed before the final consonant of the root: (C)V-INFIX-C. In all verbs, infixes are put after the first syllable. In words with a one-syllable root they appear to be simpl suffixes, unless the syllable ends in a consonant, where the infix goes before the final consonant. To provide examples with -za-:

shimarī -> shizamarī
sunku -> suzanku
nabi -> nazabi
kurari -> kuzarari

There are four main infixes:

-za-: A root negator. This serves to negate the ROOT's meaning semantically, not syntactically. Compare English un-; words with un- are still syntactically positive and can be negated ("I did not undo it"):

shimarī "to eat" -> shizamarī "to starve"
kyōku "to burn, be on fire" -> kyōzaku "to snuff out (a fire)
toarī "to gift, reward, bestow" -> toza'arī "to withhold a reward, disqualify"
lizarī "to cry" -> lizazarī "(of tears) to dry up"

This is moderately productive.

-wa-: An EXTREMELY productive infix that shades the root with a sense of beginning, intending, or starting:

tsunarī "to light up: -> tsuwanarī "to brighten up (from a previous state of darkness"
ryūku "to excel at (something)" -> ryūwaku "to train to be good at something"
ieri "to find, discover" -> iwaeri "to seach for, quest"
gunarī "to buy" -> guwanarī "to go shopping"
naku "to hold" -> nawaku "to reach for"
rīsharī "to sleep" -> rīwasharī "to fall asleep"
vebiri "to fight" -> vewabiri "to antagonize"

One of the reasons this is so productive is because, with stative roots, it basically means "turn X/become X" (it is always intransitive as well). However, as the action is no longer a state, the verb cannot be stative anymore; it becomes an external:

utsubi "to be blue" -> uwatsuku "to turn blue/become blue"
iubi "to be black" -> iwauku "to turn black/become black"
shirabi "to be happy" -> shiwaraku "to cheer up"
nibi "to be good" -> niwaku "to improve (onesself)
kurubi "to be sad" -> kuwaruku "to grow melancholy, solemn"


-su-: Another highly productive infix, this is a valency-changer. More specifically, it works like a passive but in reverse--it raises the valency of a verb, and is used to turn intransitives in transitives, sometimes with a shade of a causative or an applicative:

akuku "to fall" -> asukuku "to drop, throw down"
ikoku "to hope" -> isukoku "to hope for"
kyōku "to burn, be on fire" -> kyōsuku "to light on fire"

Its is very commonly used with stative verbs, where is basically works as a causative marker, meaning "to make something X". Thus this serves to make transitive versions of the intransitives formed with -wa- explained above. Of course, since the action is no longer a state, the verb changes its class, but this time to an odd external:

kebi "to be long" -> kesuri "to lengthen"
amebi "to be red" -> asumeri "to redden (s.thing)"
daikabi "to be insane" -> dasuikari "to drive (s.one) mad"
iemabi "to be naked" -> isuemari "to strip someone completely, remove all parts from something, clean (a desk, room, etc.) till it's spotless"

Note that the transitivity intended determines your choice of verb:

tsubeku ne kewarisu "The skewer lengthened" (intrans.)
tsubeku ne kesurasu "He lengthened the skewer" (trans.)

It also provides this tongue-twister: usutsusu "he is turning (s.thing) blue"

-ho-: The fourth and most uncommon. This is very rarely used to make stative verbs from verbs:

izarī "to use" -> ihozabi "to be useful"
byaku "to speak, talk" -> byahobi "to be chatty, talkative"
kenshōku "to inquire, ask a question" -> kehonshōbi "to be intensely curious, inquisitive"
anyeku "to force something through something else" -> ahonyebi "(of an organization/group/etc.) to be prone to assigning the wrong people to tasks"

All of these derived verbs can take other derivational suffixes except other infixes:

byahoī "chatter, gossip"
iwaeken "quest, adventure, journey"

/////////

Well, that's done. I was thinking of adding another one, but I can't seem to figure out what I want to add.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

Gerund clauses in Sunbyaku:

Gerund clauses have been mentioned in a scattershot way several times before in this thread but this post serves to focus in and explain their overall purpose in the language.

A gerund clause in Sunbyaku is defined by one and only one factor: the main verb of the sentence is in the gerund form and is not inflected. Besides this, they cannot have a topic, but the difference between it and a normal clause are small:

vya ma wakīsu (inflected)
vya ma wakiku (gerund)

Both of these mean "he/she/it hears the cat", though the inflected one specifies the subject. As can be seen, gerund clauses lose the ability to mark the subject and tense of when an action took place. This is not so bad as one would think, as
frequently the tense of the action is specified in some other clause (as gerund clauses are almost always subordinate and used with another clause containing a fully-inflected verb).

Nonetheless, when the tense of a gerund clause MUST be specified, and this is quite rare, a combination of [GERUND] + nēri in the gerund can be used.

So what are gerund clauses used for? To provide a simple overview, they are used to provide additional information--they can be translated as relative clauses, participial phrases, and more depending on what they are used for. Frequently they take
particles. When used with them, the gerund lying at the end may be shortened down into a special form. These forms have already been laid out earlier but I will post them again:

Internal: The -rī of the positive and the -ro of the negative are reduced (shima te, shime te instead of shimarī te, shimero te)

External/Stative: Both may take off the -ku of the positive and the -ro of the negative (na te, nake te instead of naku te, nakero te)

Odd External: The -ri of the positive may be taken off, but the -rō of the negative must stay (otherwise there would be no way to distinguish the two; ya te, yarō te instead of yari te, yarō te)

Not reducing the gerund before a particle is considered highly fancy and hoity-toity. Use with caution.

In traditional Sunbyaku grammatical analysis, gerund clauses are recognized for their importance. They are referred to as kūrōhayarī nēzenpo "frozen verbs" (as they take a verbal phrase and "freeze", where it may be taken off and "thawed"
into another sentence), itself containing a gerund clause.

With that out of the way, the various ways in which gerund claues are used:

Nominalizing Verbal Phrases: A gerund clause may function as a noun, allowing verbal phrases to be used as subjects, topics, objects, and more. These would almost always be translated as an actual gerund in English.

shio wo īvarī ne udveyasu
storm LOC be.inside-GER TOP be.dangerous-3S
Being inside a storm is very dangerous

yuzeno kitsurumiku ma mujiro
always go.smoothly-CAUS-HORT-GER AGT like-1S-NEG
I don't like always having to make things go smoothly

moriku ī haī kyaī ne Heochigyaī deyo shonkōhayasu
paint-GER GEN DEM type TOP heocg-style from inspire-PASS-3S
This type of painting is inspired by the Heocg-style

An equivalent to English complementizer phrases with "that" also uses this method--in Sunbyaku the clause just becomes the object:

nar, karo ho yūde Ao naekakero masōhaya ma obviji
now, three day=within AO come.back-IF-NEG.GER punish-PASS PAT demand-1S
I now demand that Ao be punished should she not come back within three days

Relative clauses: When placed in front of a noun, a verbal clause modifies it. While this is seen with stative verbs going before nouns to act as adjectives, this can be done with ANY gerund clause. Indeed, it's best to analyze those stative verbs
as simply acting like relative clauses.

hizagau ne hizero nūyasi masunsu
professor TOP study-NEG.GER girl punish-PST-3S
The professor punished the girl who wasn't studying

ha ma moriku hon zō sōmyo
DEM AGT paint-GER boy AGT ten-six
The boy who painted this is sixteen

nikamō zentai zō iehayarī nānni ne zaiken wo
in.where weapon AGT find-PASS-GER stove TOP station LOC
The stove in which the weapon was found is at the station

iroiyumike sungau ma kizo te nisuta
think-repeat-PERMISS-NEG.GER person AGT 1S LAT show-2S
Show me a person who does not let their mind endlessly obsess over the past

Subordinate Clauses: The final and probably most important use of gerund clauses. Sunbyaku has many, MANY different particles which can modify gerund clauses. Quite often these serve as subordinate clauses, and many times they have
others uses besides this. A particle-modified gerund clause always comes before the "main" clause. Some examples:

waga: Normally, this particle means "but", and comes anywhere. When modifying a gerund clause, however, it means "despite/even though":

hiza waga, itsukureji
study-GER=but understand-NEG.PST-1S
Even though I studied/Despite studying, I didn't understand (it)

mī ma vacharī waga haī aguro kyabuku kaji usuro
truth PAT proclaim-GER=but DEM man save-GER enough be-3S-NEG
Even proclaiming the truth will not be enough to save that man
(Lit. "Despite claiming the truth, that will not be saving-that-man enough")

When the gerund has the verb kaku in it, which is used for "if" statements, the best translation is "even if":

bunsha ma bunkake waga, wazesugī ne kile nibansu
book PAT read-IF-NEG.GER=but moving-screen TOP still be.good-PST-3S
Even if you hadn't read the book, the movie was still good

majika waga, kvata
lose-IF.GER=but, learn_die-2S
Even if you lose, you'll learn or Even if you lose, you'll die(?)

sekade: A combination of two words--the first, iseka, which means "a lot" (i.e hizarī iseka "a lot of studying"), and deyo, that good old causal-instrumental particle. Put together, they make sekade, which is used to make
result clauses of the "so much that X" variety:

uzu sekade, ginzō-myo shike sunrisu
be.healthy-GER=RESULT, nine-ten-six until live-PST-3S
She was so healthy that she lived to ninety-six

shima sekade, byayataro
eat-GER=RESULT, speak-POT-2S-NEG
You ate so much, you can't speak

In very stiff and formal writing you may see the full form "iseka deyo", but it's not common.

When used with a negative gerund, the sense is "not enough":

irino zō wakīke sekade, hazhiba iseka-iseka shirgiōka waga
anybody AGT hear-NEG.GER=RESULT loud-CONJ much-REDUP scream-IF.GER=but
Even if I scream as loud as possible, it's not enough for anyone to hear me

kitsuru iyu te mewabe sekade
go.smoothly-CONJ roll LAT be.round-NEG.GER=RESULT
It's not round enough to roll smoothly

mō: This is the marker for polar questions. When used with gerund clauses in conjunction with a question word, it forms clauses for things such as indirect questions:

salta ma nēri mō ne bya te madosu
what PAT do-GER=Q TOP say.GER LAT be.hard-3S
It's hard to tell what she'll do

salu pur zō yagōhayero mō ma iroku īji
why ship AGT lock-PASS-NEG.GER=Q PAT know-GER want-1SG
I want to know why the ship hadn't been locked

Here the whole clause "why the ship hadn't been locked" is turned into a phrase and then used as the object for the clause "I want to know".

kawo: This is a particle usually meaning "in regards to, concerning", and the like (it is an extended form of the particle ka which has some slightly related uses (mainly forming adverbials...you'll have to wait and see for that). With gerund
clauses it has a lot of subtle uses, the most common being "if it concerns [CLAUSE]...":

nyūta kawo yuzeno sawasu
run-GER=concerning always win-3S
He'll always win if it's running

haī sirai ne kir morike kawo
DEM pen TOP write.GER paint-GER.NEG=concerning
That pen is for writing, not painting

Kaīto zō juhen ma nē kawo ne....na, esuro, kenshul lo
NAME AGT homework PAT do-GER=concerning TOP...INTERJECTION, previous.action-3S-NEG, problem COP
If you're talking about Kaīto doing his homework...well, he doesn't, that's the problem

yaza: This is exclusively for gerund clauses. It means "at least", or with the negative gerund, "can't even":

"Sōra" helke yaza...
"Sōra" sing-GER.NEG=at.least
I can't even sing "Sōra"*...

*: Traditional and very simple Sun children's song, every Sun knows this. Means "10 Nights" and is about waiting for the Shikevanaya, a yearly festival (it literally translates to that) whose preparations begin 10 nights before the first day.

kizo ī senpo zō mī uri ma vāchōyari yaza; cha nōku ī haicho kotogoto umase
1S GEN word AGT truth be-GER PAT proclaim-POT-GER=at.least; and 2S GEN venom only-REDUP be-3S
At least I may proclaim that my words are truth; yours are nothing more than venom

yade: A minor variation of the above, this is "yaza" combined with the instrumental "deyo". It expresses "without even" and is only used with the negative gerund:

miro ken ma byake yade, zalrisu
one thing PAT say-NEG.GER=without.even, leave-PST-3S
(S)he left without even saying one word

mihoba nike yade masunsu
once look-NEG.GER=without.even punish-PST-3S
She didn't even look (at me) once while punishing me

naka: "up to, until, as far as". With the negative gerund means "unless":

īva naka dvīsaran
go.inside=until wait-1P
Until he comes back, we're waiting

Aya zō lenzai ma kisutsuke naka oyararo
Aya AGT car PAT fix.up-NEG.GER=until go-POT-1P-NEG
We can't go unless Aya fixes the car (though I guess "until Aya fixes the car" would work too)

ware: The final one I shall go over today, this has a very odd and specific meaning, creating basically proviso clauses. Thus, "should X be the case, Y" which in Sunbyaku is "X ware, Y". So IF-THEN statements. Examples will help far more than
my rambling:

ragatsu wo hiza ware, itsukōmita
all.night LOC study=PROVISO, understand-HORT-2S
Given that you studied all night, you should have understood it

Uyomi ma Ryukojunkyamuta te sawarī ware, hanakōmiran
uyomi AGT ryujojun-prefectual.elections LAT win-GER=PROVISO, celebrate-HORT-1P
Should Uyomi win the Ryujojun prefectual elections, let's celebrate

shitta ware, miryajiro!
dream=PROVISO, die-POT-1S-NEG
If I'm dreaming, then I can't die!

Note that this can only translate to an "if-clause" if the "then" part is a logical consequence of the "if" part (or, at the very least, the speaker assumes so). Otherwise you would use a verb suffixed with kaku. To show the difference:

pate ware, ui ne guzusu
be.sick=PROVISO, work TOP be.lacking-3S
If he's sick, then (obviously) his work wouldn't be very good (lite. "Should he be sick, his work is lacking")

patekasu, ui ne guzusu
be.sick-IF-3S, work TOP be.lacking-3S
If he's sick, then wouldn't his work not be very good?

(I'm not sure if this is the best example to show off what I mean...)

////////////

Wow, that's done. Next is how to comparison.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

Frinking BRILLIANT!

Before comparison comes this:

Nouns Used As Adjectives:

Sunbyaku's stative verbs serve the purpose of adjectives pretty well. However, they do not handle EVERYTHING. Thus, a second option exists: using nouns as adjectives. A lot of more complex terminology uses this method, but many "simple" terms also do so it's an important thing to remember.

Regardless, using a noun as an adjective is generally done through one of two ways. The first is the simplest; noun adjuncts. Sunbyaku is rather free in letting one just pile up nouns into compound words, and often a lot of scientific words are formed this way:

Sunkyu "biology" + go "way, process" = Sunkyugo "biological processes"

However, the words these compounds form are often used as distinct words with slightly more specialized meanings. We need a more general way to do this. Enter the U-adjective:

U-adjectives are formed with a gerund clause with the copula verb uri. Like any good copula, uri has some snags. The conjugation is perfectly regular (uji "I am", uta "You are"...), but the past stem is nai-; naiji "I was", naita "You were". The past negative form is nae- and NO -ro is added to the end; naeji "I was not", naeta "You were not". When verbs are affixed and the sentence is positive, the result behaves like normal. However, in a negative sentence, either of the two past stems are used and then the sentence does not take any further negative/past conjugation. Thus:

uyajiro "I can't be"
naeyaji "I couldn't be" (NOT *uyaraji or *naeyajiro or any nonsense like that)

The conjunctive forms are uba (Positive), naiba (Past Positive), and naeba (Past Negative). This means that uri is the only verb which maintains a tense distinction outside of normal conjugation.

Anyway, this clause with uri is then stuck in front of a noun, and thus literally is "[Noun] which/who is [NOUN]:

butsu uri nū
loyalty be-GER female
A loyal girl (Lit. "A girl who is loyalty")

mī uri senpo
truth be-GER word
True words (Lit. "Words which are truth")

Of course, people are lazy. Eventually it was changed from uri to just ū, which is why they're called u-adjectives. All u-adjectives, technically, nouns. However, a few either have lost their use as a noun or simply appear to have never been used as nouns in the first place. Some examples are kashen "quiet", hala "funny", sukiwa "praised, well-regarded". Note that Sunbyaku has some ways of forming them, too. For instance, while it isn't 100% productive, many u-adjectives are formed from affixing -tsu to a verbal root

nigetsu "rooted in place" (nigeku "to run")
hvēōtsu "broken, fractured" (hvēōri "to tear into pieces")
shiratsu "friendly, amicable" (shirabi "to love platonically")
iyutsu "aimless" (iyuku "to roll around")
kitsutsu "(of an event/proceeding) smooth, without trouble" (kitsuku "to go smoothly, without a hitch")
yatsu "possible, capable of happening" (yaku/yari "to be capable")
kurotsu "best" (kuroku "to be the best")

Many of these are used as straight nouns by now as well; for instanc hvēōtsu means "fracture, break" as well.

Regardless of how they're formed, they all work with the rules listed above. When used adverbially they just go with uri's conjunctive forms:

karo ho kawo ne iyutsu uba makaran maze!
three day=concerning=TOP aimless be-CONJ walk-1P INTERJECTION
Jeez, we've been walking aimlessly for three days!

Kurozenpo ne yuzeno ikutsu uba vewabirasu
NAME=TOP always playful be-CONJ tease-PST-3S
Always, she would playfully tease Kurozenpo

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

Comparison:

Sunbyaku possesses no inflectional methods of comparison (except for one borderline case), and thus uses periphrastic forms. The basic idea is that an "exceed" construction is used with a gerund (there they are again) for a comparative. The superlative-equivalent is similar except with a verb meaning "to be the highest".

One thing of note is that the constructions used differ depending on whether the adjective is predicative or attributive

First, the comparative. The verb shirarī means "to exceed" when used normally. Note that despite being an internal verb, it has the conjunctive forms of an adjective (shiraba shirabo NOT *shirur shiruro). To form the comparative, one uses a word (normally a gerund of a stative verb but not always) with the locational particle wo. If a direct comparison is made, then one uses the lative particle te with the thing compared (shirarī is a verb which takes te for objects):

aishi wo shiraji
be.cute=LOC exceed-1S
I'm cuter

aishi wo honū te shiraji
be.cute=LOC that.girl=LAT exceed-1S
I'm cuter than her

utsumi te ihoza wo shiresuro
NAME=LAT be.useful=LOC exceed-NEG-3S-NEG
(S)he's not useful as Utsumi

The word taking wo doesn't actually have to be a stative gerund. It can be a noun, for instance:

ao wo iseka shiramase!
power=LOC a.lot exceed-1P
They're way more powerful than me!

If a negative gerund is used, then the sense of "less X (than Y)" or "not as X (as Y)":

haī nū ne aishibe wo biccha te shirasu...
DEM=GEN girl TOP be.cute-NEG.GER=LOC 1S.CUTE=LAT exceed-3S
That girl's not as cute as me...

If a noun is compared this way, then it must be used with the negative gerund of the copula, uri"

butsu urō wo zaissha te shira ma vachōhayarī ne hagana
loyalty be-NEG.GER=LOC criminal=LAT exceed-GER=PAT proclaim-PASS-GER TOP disgrace
To be proclaimed less loyal than a criminal is a disgrace

dasuikazuri waga ūchiga ī senpo ne haicho urō wo jala te shiramase
drive.insane-try-GER=despite 2S.HONOR GEN word TOP venom be-NEG.GER=LOC sweet.wine=LAT exceed-3P
Even though (you) try to drive (me) insane your words are less venomous than sweet wine

The main difference is when the adjective is used attributively. Since the comparison clause is a normal sentence, and any normal sentence may be put in the gerund and then prefixed to a noun to make a relative clause that translates to an attributive comparative:

kumi te mohoribi wo shirarī orsa naku nūyasi
snow=LAT be.beautiful=LOC exceed-GER hair hold-GER female-child
A young maiden possessing hair more beautiful than snow OR A young maiden who has hair more beautiful than snow

However, when there is no direct comparison being made, the verb shirarī can simply be suffixed to the stative verb in question, unless the "adjective" is a noun, where the copula must show up again to be suffixed:

jugeshirarī aguro
be.fast-exceed-GER men
A faster man

hoben ushirero kaīten ne iehvūmaran
lie be-exceed-NEG.GER sibling TOP fine-need-1P
We need to find a less mendacious comrade

These are the basic rules for all adjectival comparison. All the verbs used in comparison behave like shirarī--note that they always have a conjunctive in -ba, -bo when used like this even if they possess different conjunctive forms normally. Now, the other verbs:

kuroku, kurokero:
This verb means "to be the best, excel most highly" and is used to form the superlative. It behaves exactly like shirarī:

Mutagin ne ūchi wo ginkyugote kurosu.
choice-rule=TOP be.equal=LOC rule-workings-way=LAT be.the.most-3S
Democracy is the most equal of governmental systems.

Hohon ne iroku hon ī kiwekuroku ken usu.
that.boy=TOP know-GER boy=GEN be.shy-be.the.most-GER thing be.3S
That boy is the shiest boy (I) know.
(Lit. "About that boy, he is the shiest one of the boys I know")

With a negative gerund, the meaning is "least":

Ha ne nirikku moriku ī shūmibe wo kuroku ken
DEM=TOP see-PST.GER painting-GEN be.original-NEG.GER=LOC be.the.most-GER thing
That is the least original painting I have ever seen
(Lit. "That is the least original one of the the paintings which I have seen")

yuku, yukero

This verb is a locative verb meaning "to be amongst, nearby". When used normally it indicates where someone is, both literally and metaphorically:

Hyūjun wo yumase
great-city=LOC be.among-3P
They're at the capital

uwaneku wo yusu
sink.into.the.ground=LOC be.among-3S
It's about to sink into the ground (Lit. "It's near sinking into the ground")

Now, with adjectives, it retains this sense of "near"--it's used to mean "nearly as X as Y" or "about as X as Y". The point is that X is not quite as high in the trait as Y, but is close:

Tayee kurta zō kangee te hazhi wo yumase
2SG.POSS family=AGT 1SG.POSS=LAT be.loud=LOC be.among-3PL
Your family's about as loud as mine

Hyūī, ao wo muhaya te yuku kotogoto ochippo uri ne udveyarisu, waga hatta ken ne makuba usuro
TITLE, power=LOC 2SG.RESPECTFUL=LAT be.among only-REDUP enemy be-GER=TOP be.dangerous-POT-PST-3S, but such thing=TOP be-certain-CONJ be-3S-NEG
Sir, the existence of an enemy who is but nearly as powerful as you could be dangerous, but such a thing certainly does not exist

With a negative gerund the sense is "nowhere near as powerful as":

Kile kizo te butsu urō wo yuku majigau ne karo ho te ruwabyaku ken?
and.yet 1S=LAT loyalty be-NEG.GER=LOC be.among failure=TOP three day=LAT assume.leadership-GER thing
And yet a failure who is nowhere near as loyal as me is the one who will assume leadership in three days?

tayarī, tayero:

Another locative verb, this one means "to be next to, besides":

hana wo tayara!
1SG=LOC be.besides-IMP
Come over here!
(Lit. "Be besides me!")

(That form up there is the imperative, you'll learn about it later)

Hyūgin zō Vyaka wo tayōyakasu, Vyaka ne guzzha kotogoto
tyrant=AGT god=LOC be.besides-POT-COND-3S, god=TOP demon=nothing.more
If a tyrant may sit next to a god, (then that) god is nothing more than a demon

You might be able to guess the meaning with stative verbs; when used to compare, tayarī means "to be as X as Y" or "to be equal" at the trait. It is must stronger than yuku, which has a vaguer meaning of "near":

guzzha te surwitayarī nū? Uyasuro!
demon=LAT be.ugly-be.besides-GER girl? be-POT-3S-NEG
A girl as ugly as a demon? Impossible! (lit. "it can not be")

Ran ī hakor te hvēōtsu utayarī zaku zō hoivachi pejobi zaku
1P=GEN current.state=LAT broken be-be.besides-GER country=AGT turmoil be.ready-GER country
A country as fractured as ours currently is, is a country ripe for turmoil
(Lit. "A country which is besides our current state in being broken is a country which is ready for turmoil")

With a negative gerund the meaning is simply "not as X as Y":

Iku ne jugebe wo tayaī te tayasu waga vopa wo shirasu
NAME=TOP be.fast-NEG.GER=LOC 2S=LAT be.besides-3S but be.nimble-GER=LOC exceed-3S
Iku is not as fast as you but she is more nimble

///////////

That's that. I don't see many more verbs being used for this (though havoku "be between" to mean "not as X as Y, but X'er than Z" might be interesting). We'll see.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

I really need to make this thing look less unprofessional.

Final update for now.

The Imperative (and Commanding in General)

The imperative is a special form of the verb used for commanding people, or ordering them to things. Interestingly, the imperative is NOT conjugated for person at all. The forms used are the same regardless of the person being commanded.

The imperative also shows how the Sun, despite being inspired by the Japanese, deviate from them heavily (indeed, my basic idea when making the Sun was "The 'Evil Twins' of the Japanese"). The Japanese very rarely use the imperative and prefer to use a constriction literally meaning "please do [VERB]" to command. The Sun, on the other hand, are the exact opposite. They use the imperative for EVERYTHING. Even the most sweet and innocent Sun girl or boy will use it frequently. They do have a less blunt construction meaning roughly "please do X", but it's uncommon. Using it is very humble and humiliating.

For instance, if you wanted someone to give you a piece of paper, you would just say nachi toara with the imperative. If you said nachi toōyomata, "please give me the paper", you would like some kind of prisoner meekly begging for it.

Even if you are speaking to a superior, you would still probably use the Imperative. Hell, if you were asking for forgiveness, you'd STILL use it, saying umara, literally "forgive (me)!".

Hell, here are the various ways of saying "give me some paper":

nachi toara (Imperative, "give me paper!", most common)
nachi toōyomata ("please give me paper", makes you sound like a prisoner")
nachi toōmita ("you should give me paper", a little forceful)
nachi toarī ne nisu ("giving paper is good", makes you sound like an ditzy airhead)
nachi toero ne nazasu ("not giving paper is unacceptable", VERY rough, this is VERY blunt or rude)

Another very Sun thing is to use an imperative on yourself as a statement of absolute certainty. A competitor for instance would probably say sawara! "Win!" to themselves, pumping them up for the competition.

Anyway, the imperative inflects for polarity, but not for person, number, or tense. The endings are as follows:

Internal: -ara, -aro (hanakara! "celebrate!", hanakaro! "do not celebrate!")

External: -ra, -re (ora! "go!", ore! "do not go!")

External (Final /r/): -ika, ike (kirika! "write!", kirike! "do not write!"

Stative: either like External (hazhira! "be loud!", hazhire! "do not be loud!"), or -bara, -bare (shirabara! "be happy!", shirabare! "do not be happy!")

Odd External: -ma, -miro (zuma! "try!", zumiro! "do not try!")

The Odd Externals' anamolous endings derive from the old verb marī, mero "to demand", which only survives in those inflections and the words ginma "official decree", hyūma "a great task that requires a lifetime to accomplish", mago "negotiations", and māo "the authoritative power to demand, command". "to demand" in modern Sunbyaku is obviri.

The -bara/-bare endings for Stative verbs are a little more old-fashioned, but are used by those who want to appear prim and proper, and can serve to disambiguate. For instance shirara! could mean "be happy!" or "exceed!" but shirabara is unambiguously "be happy!"

Strength and force may be added with the particle za appearing after the verb. This is so forceful and gruff it can sound rude even to the Sun; care should be taken.
As said before, the imperative is used all the time in modern day Sunbyaku:

'ten, ora za!
guys, go-IMP PTCL
Guys, let's go!

zutta ma gyūsuma!
floor=PAT make.white-IMP
Clean the floor! (lit. "Make the floor white!")

ei, aya deyo masuyumiro za!
INTERJ star=INSTR dress.someone.else-IMP.NEG PTCL
Hey, don't fuck with me, got it!? (Lit. "Hey, don't dress me with stars!")

chōzara za!
be.worthless-IMP PTCL
Fuck you!/Go fuck yourself! (lit. "be worthless!")


/////////

A rather short description.

I think I might revamp the prounouns now, I'm not feeling them as much as I used to. Especially the 2nd-person ones, really not feeling those.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

A Detailed Look At Sunbyaku Phonology

I already talked about the phonology before in the first post, but I remained kind of vague and I've been working on it a little more. Here we go:

First of all, this is the phoneme inventory:

/m n/
<m n>
/p b t d k g/
<p b t d k g>
/s z ɕ ʑ h/
<s z sh zh h>
/c~tɕ ɟ~dʑ/
<ch j>
/l j w ʋ ɾ/
<l y w v r>

/a i e o u/
<a i e o u>
/aː iː eː oː uː/
<ā ī ē ō ū>

Phonotactics are (C)(y,v)V(n,m,r,l)

Voiceless stops, all approximants except for /w/, nasals, affricates, and fricatives may be geminated word-medially.

Unacceptable CV morae are /wu yi/. Unacceptable initial clusters are /ɕj ʑj tɕj dʑj jj wj/ and /ʋʋ wʋ rʋ lʋ/.

The stops and fricatives are pronounced mostly as expected. However, /t d/ are [ts dz] before /i u/, and are spelled accordingly (cf butsu "loyalty" and ondzī "lung" from ondarī "to breath").

The approximants are a little trickier. /ʋ/ is often pronounced as just [v] and indeed once was it, contrasting with */f/ which is now /h/. After the aforementioned change of /f/, /v/ had nothing to contrast against and frequently lenited to an approximant, though it remains inconsistent (Some dialects merge it with /w/).

/si sj zi zj/ do exist but are oddly uncommon, merging into /ɕ ʑ/ often though the prestige dialect preserves the differences (cf sirai "pen", shirai "friend", and zin "sound" zhin "wall", along with syuzuri "to buzz" and shu "lake"). /tj dj/ are even less common but are not merged into /tɕ dʑ/ by any dialects.

As said before, the final consonants tend to be pronounced differently than their initial counterparts. Of the nasals, final /n/ is far more common, final /m/ almost always showing up before labials or word-finally (kumbo "unforgiveness", mushim "woman"); this can't be analyzed as an assimilating/underlying /n/ as distinctions do exist (compare kumbo with kunbo "lethargy, slowness", and /m/ does show up, rarely, before non-labials; vamku "to kick" but this is EXTREMELY rare). /n/ also assimilates to the following consonant; kanga "I" and anche "poster, advertisement" are [kaŋ.ga aɲtɕe]. As for the others: /ɾ/ is /r/ mora-finally. . As for the others: /ɾ/ is /r/ mora-finally.

In terms of vowels, Sunbyaku is extremely free. Any vowel may lie in hiatus with another, their lengths not mattering in the slightest. Many VV instances exist: ao "power", ue "leaf", sungau "human", naī "possessions, property, assets", hvēōri "to tear into pieces"; and there are VVV instances even: uao "authority" hvēōī "destruction" (THREE long vowels in hiatus!). A vowel may lie next to one of the same quality; toō-, the construct form of toarī "to give". There are no diphthongs.

Before I banned final consonants from appearing before the same one but no longer. Externals in final /r/ still tend to have unique endings though.

Lurzyusu:

Lurzyusu (lit. "After-buzzing") is a consonant mutation process similar to Japanese rendaku where a combination of two words can voice the initial consonant of the second. For instance, the given name Naezhira is formed of the two elements nae- "returning to" (from naeku, "to return, go back home") and shira "friend, friendliness" (thus the name literally means "Returning to Friends"). Other examples:

iki "rain" + sukyo "cloud" > ikizukyo "rain cloud, gloomy person"
hyū "greatness, AUG" + pate "sickness" > hyūbate "illness, disease"
hana "sweet" + chi "voice" > hanaji "persuasion"
vyukatsu "international" + sawiku "competition" > vykatsuzawiku "international competition"

Sunbyaku also possesses more than a few adverbs which are a CVCV element reduplicated with the second voiced:

suki "soon" > sukizuki "very soon"
chila "a little" > chilajila "very little" (this feels very...Spanish, for a reason)
pachibachi "chaotically"

Lurzyusu occurs in many circumstances but not all. In most cases it occurs if the initial of the second word can voice, but 3 specific situations block it.
1: If the initial of the first word's last mora is a voiced stop or a voiced approximant (however the approximants are iffy in actually applying this), voicing does not occur. Thus:

ginga "heart" + sōn "pain" > gingason "heart attack"
gyū- "white" + katsu "always" > gyūkatsu "someone who is never in trouble"
kamaga "servant" + hon "boy" > kamagahon "servant boy, boy who traditionally does basic tasks for lords"
jun "city" + to "shop" > junto "business"


2: A compound will never voice. It may voice other words, but a compound which itself is then used in another compound does not voice:

ho "day" + kucchigyosha "winter festival" (kucchi "ice" + kyosha "festival") > hokucchigyosha "daytime winter festival"

3: The cluster /hv/ does not voice as this would create the banned /vv/ cluster.

Some words, nonetheless, do not voice even when one would expect. Some of these actually are historical compounds used as single words and thus simply follow rule 2 mentioned above. Others however simply do not voice for whatever reason, such as -kyu a suffix from the verb kyuku "to go on" which forms named of sciences; Sunkyu "biology" (sunku "to live"), Urikyu "physics" (uri "to be"), Ayakyu "astronomy" (aya "star"). However this instance is an artificial suffix.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

Formal Verb Conjugation

This is a really quick thing I came up with literally 30 minutes ago. The history is kind of long and convoluted but here's the best explanation:

Sunbyaku's three plural conjugations, -ran (1P), -rashi (2P), and -mase (3P) shorten before the negative marker -ro and when multiple verbs have been suffixed:

nararo "we don't hold"
nashiro "you all don't hold"
namaro "they don't hold"

nahayara "we are held"
nahayashi "you all are held"
nahayama "they are held"

But a mark of fancy/old-fashioned speech is not reduce in this case; naranro, narashiro, namasero and nahayaran, nahayarashi, nahayamase. Well, I thought that I wanted to make some formal speech markers from this, because the system as it was had no formal distinction for singular subjects. I also wanted to do something like Japanese's politeness distinction, but with a different axis, and finally I wanted to make a special set of markers. Enter the formal markers. These are used in highly formal speech, but it's not a politeness distinction. First, the forms. They are completely different from the normal markers. Here's the normal ones, for review, with the verb haburi "to proclaim, make a statement, comment on"--a fitting verb for formal speech:

habuji "I proclaim"
habuta "you proclaim"
habusu "he/she/it proclaims"
haburan "we proclaim"
haburashi "you all proclaim"
habumase "they proclaim"

Now, the formal forms (the translation remains the same--the difference lies more in context and when they are used):

habugayu "I proclaim"
habudake "you proclaim"
habunabu "he/she/it proclaims"
habugimu "we proclaim"
habutsubu "you all proclaim"
habussai "they proclaim"

In the negative, the final vowel of all of the forms turns to /o/ and -ro is suffixed by normal (internals still change their internal vowels into /e/ as well):

habugayoro "I don't proclaim"
habudakoro "you don't proclaim"
habunaboro "he/she/it doesn't proclaim"
habugimoro "we don't proclaim"
habutsuboro "you all don't proclaim"
habussaoro "they don't proclaim"

(Man, I LOVE the 3P -ssaoro)

Note that in the past, only the past positive ending is used, with the person ending determining whether or not the sentence is negative or not:

Normal:
nibanmase "they were good"
nibenmase "they were not good"

Formal:
nibassai "they were good" (the -n dropping is due to the geminated stop)
nibassaoro "they were not good"

These otherwise behave exactly like the normal endings (habuhayōrussaoro "they were not made to proclaim", the normal version being habuhayōrumasero.

Verbs ending in a consonant add a linking -i- before the 3P endings: Normal sunmase "they live", formal sunissai

So what are these forms used for? Quite a few things. First of all, they are, as one would expect, used in formal speech:

Ameni-kizo, īshiwagakko-haru tojū ne ka'assai
NAME-male.lord, south-sea=from merchant=TOP come-3P.FORMAL
Lord Ameni, merchants from the southern seas are coming

Nōjū, chazo wo "Tezashio cha Utsumyō" ī sugī deyo iwatsukarī ma attatsubu
student, today=LOC NAME and NAME=GEN story=about begin.to.understand-GER=PAT intend-2PL.FORMAL
Students, today you all will be learning about the story "Tezashio and Utsumyoo"*
(Lit. "you intend to learn...."**)

*: Traditional Sun fable

**: VERB ma attarī "to intend to VERB" is an adhoc way of representing the future

However, the formal conjugations are not limited to situations like two businessmen talking. Indeed, you could use it with your friends, where your intention would be to take over as the "leader", or to put forth a suggestion. Another use is to basically say "let's get serious". Take the following converasation:

Utsumī: Ee? Nalase ne nam. (Eh? Everyone's here.)
Shioharu: Ja, nika te oran? (Yeah, so where we going?)
Hattazaki: Ue wo akugimu. (I say we chill at Ue's.)

Hattazaki's sentence literally translates to "We fall at Ue('s house)", but since he used the formal akugimu and not akuran, his statement comes off as him taking charge and suggesting someplace. This may seem rather overbearing and rude to us, but to a Sun it's perfectly normal. You can also see how the formal can be used in even the more relaxed of situations: Hattazaki is using it with NOUN wo akuku "to chill at NOUN (lit. "to fall at NOUN")", a slang expression!

One interesting use is uranabu... "it was...", Sunbyaku's version of "once upon a time..."--of note is that it goes at the end of the first sentence of the story:

kumi te mohoribi wo shirarī orsa naku nūyasi ma naidzuna ginhon uranabu...
snow=LAT be.beautiful=LOC exceed-GER hair hold-GER female-child=PAT love.romantically-GER.PST rule-boy be.PST-3S.FORMAL
Once upon a time, there was a prince who loved a young maiden possessing hair more beautiful than snow...

If the beginning sentence is talking about multiple people, such as "Once upon a time there were three queens...", then you must use the 3P form urassai...

That use above actually shows off the formal conjugation's other main usage--adding a poetic flair to everything:

myō deyo wasumungayu, shi Abanjippaku ī ginga zō īvarī ware nizu'uōyarissaoro*
hand=INSTR unfurl-PST-1S.FORMAL, and NAME=GEN heart=AGT be-inside=PROVISO look-be.away-POT-PST-3P.FORMAL-NEG
I unfurled my hand, and they could not look away, for Abanjippaku's head laid inside

*:A line from the mythic hero Tezanesha (lit. "Unending Justice") in the epic poem Tezanesha ī Sugi "The story of Tezanesha". He has just defeated a demon which has been terrorizing a country for over 2 millennia called Abanjippaku (lit. "Festering Hatred"), who can only be defeated by ripping his heart out

////////

I am still undecided on a few of the functions. I want to extend this to something and add a few special formal forms for verbs like how Japanese has special suppletive polite verbs. But I want to also get this post out.

I'm really liking how this language is coming together in looks and feel.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

Counting in Sunbyaku:

I've finally worked out how this would work so it's time for a new post!

This post goes over the native Sunbyaku number system. This system does stop at a certain number (higher than one would expect) and in-universe there are higher ones for scientific/mathematic purposes but I'll deal with those later. This is the system the language has had since it first was a proto-lang. It's mostly logical and simple to follow, but there are technically two systems used--one when you count below one thousand, and one when you count above it. Finally, there is a counter system, but it's nowhere near the level of East Asia natlangs--the system is pathetically atrophied and has only three counters. Anyway, here's how to count:

First of all the counters. Sunbyaku used to have a flourishing counter system (and I may swap this out for one much more like Chinese's or Japanese's) but now the system is so dead there's only three counters:

ra: humans
shu: animals
ke: inanimate objects (cf. ken "thing")

The counter is put inbetween the noun and the number (NUM CLF NOUN). However, they are only used for 4-10, and any number considered "pure". To make it concise: a number is pure if, when written out in roman numerals, ends in at least one 0. Thus, 10, 120, 458289394000, and 188838130109399100 are all pure numbers. 29, 247, 2838102, and 919201094 are not. Basically, a pure number is divisible by ten, or is one of 4-9.

Note that the three counters are on a hierarchy. A group is always counted by the "highest" member. Thus, one hundred billion pencils and one human are still counted with ra. This has some interesting results--for instance, cities are almost always counted with ra despite being inanimate objects because they contain people. Counting a city with ke would imply that is utterly abandoned and everyone inside is dead or gone.

As said before, there are two systems for counting. Here is the first, which extends to 1,000:

hen: zero
mi(ro): 1
hyo(ro): 2
ka(ro): 3
mutsu: 4
bvū: 5
myō: 6
kele: 7
iyer: 8
gin: 9
sō:10
būn: 100
gul: 1,000

These numbers are called dohiro "low numbers". For 1, 2, and 3, the -ro suffixes are used when counting, but when compounding with other roots the stems mi-, hyo-, and ka- are used. "Ro" means "number" by the way and merely happens to be homophonous with the negative marker -ro.

Anyway, to count, simply use the number before with a counter if necessary: mutsu shu vya "four cats", sō ra nōjū "ten students", etc.

Compounding numbers creates bigger ones. In general, prefixing one multiples, and suffixing one adds it. Thus:

ginsō: 90 (lit. "nine-ten")
sōgin: 19 (lit. "ten-nine")
mutsubūn: 400 ("four-hundred")
iyerbūn-myōsōka: 863 ("eight-hundred-six-ten-three")
gingul-kabūn-kelesōmi: 9,371 ("nine-thousand-three-hundred-seven-ten-one")

Note that you cannot use sōgul to make 10,000. It just wont work. Why? Because when you reach ten thousand you get to the higher system. In this, the base numbers start going "number", "ten-number", "hundred-number". The native system goes very high:

vyūr: 10,000
beul: 100,000
mū: 1,000,000
koi: 10,000,000
natsu: 100,000,000
jīn: 1,000,000,000
chū: 10,000,000,000
hango: 100,000,000,000
zhun: 1,000,000,000,000

Very high.

In this system (called higaro "high numbers"), things work a little differently. You cannot prefix one of these numbers to each other (gul is counted with them, by the way. Thus, you couldn't represent 15,000 by *bvūgul vyūr "five-thousand-ten.thousand". You would use vyūr bvūgul literally "ten.thousand and five thousand". 15,982, e.g, would be:

vyūr bvūgul-ginbūn-iyersōhyo ("ten.thousand five-thousand-nine-hundred-eight-ten-two")

The only numbers that can be prefixed to higaro are 1-9. They work as expected;

ginvyūr: 90,000 ("nine-ten.thousand")
kelejīn: 7,000,000,000 ("seven-billion)
kelechū: 70,000,000,000 ("seven-ten.billion")
kazhun: 3,000,000,000,000 ("three-trillion")

When expressing a more complex number you just count down the higaro till you finally reach the dohiro.

Due to this the highest possible number in the system is 9,999,999,999,999, as there is no number for ten trillion and you cannot prefix sō to it. This number would be expressed:

ginzhun ginhango ginchū ginjīn ginnatsu ginkoi ginmū ginbeul ginvyūr gingul-ginbūn-ginsōgin

Literally "Nine trillion, nine hundred billion, nine ten billion, nine billion, nine hundred million, nine ten million, nine million, nine hundred thousand, nine ten thousand, nine thousand, nine hundred, nine-ten-nine".

...I'm not sure if this actually works but I'll work on that later.

And now you know how to count in Sunbyaku. Well...assuming you want to count a number below ten trillion.

Sunbyaku names, especially older ones designed to sound incredibly boastful, frequently have numbers in them, either prefixed or suffixed. Some examples are Natsuzhira "(having") One Hundred Million Friends/Comrades" , Jīnsenpo "One Billion Words (i.e the person is so incredible and has so many amazing exploits it would take literally a billion words to write them all down"), Mutsu "Four (Axes)" (traditional Sun philosophy ascribes four axes to humanity--iroī "mind", tor "body", mū "name", hyū "achievements"), Henmaji "Zero Faults", etc.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

Sun Names and Naming Customs:

It's time to take a break from grammar and syntax and get cultural with the language of Sunbyaku.

Names are very important to the Sun. Very important. The word for "name" is mū, and yet this doesn't mean just "name". It means "title" and "reputation" as well. Mū is not merely a word your parents gave you, it is also what others call you. Called someone "a damned troublemaker"? That's a mū. Someone is a leader of an organization and is called "President/CEO/Boss/Leader/etc"? That's also a mū. People have many mū. A person may be known as "Kumishio" to family, "that annoying kid who's always reading in class" by his teachers, and "my best friend" to a special few peers. These are all mū. Striving to make sure you have good mū amongst people is one of the tenets of traditional Sun philosophy, but trying too hard to satisfy everyone is considered bad form. Let's let an ancient proverb, or Myatebyaku, speak:

Iriga kawo nimū ma nadakoro;
Sūmbun ne nimū ma zaissha kawo nasuro zarase.
You will not have a good name in the eyes of everyone;
The lawyer does not have a good name in the eyes of the criminal, after all

(in other words, there will always be people who think badly of you by dint of who you are and what you do. Don't obsess over those people)

The names given to us that we use to distinguish ourselves are merely one form of mū to the Sun. That does not mean they don't treat said names with respect, however. Naming is very important to them, as you'll now see.

/////////

Every Sun has three names. The first two correspond to the western given name, the third to the western family name. It's of course not that simple but it's a good comparison. Let's take two random Sun, a boy and a girl. Our boy is called Utsumyō Shu Uyobi. Our girl is called Ayahashi Iku Shioden.

The first of the three names is called the Yugaumū. This translates to "family name", but does NOT mean it's a last name like here in the Terran west. It's called this because it's used only amongst the family and close friends (the word yugau can usually translate as "family", but it includes close associates and friends as well as your biological family; for the latter only use the word kurta) as a first name. The yugaumū is also used on official documents and stuff and is what you would refer to higher-up people such as leaders, kings, lords, CEO's, and the like. Yugaumū tend to sound boastful and impressive. Just take a look at our two examples:

Utsumyō is made of two roots: utsu- meaning "blue" and myō which means "hand". Thus, "Blue Hands", except the "blue" part means "calming", thus "Calming Hands", as in "someone who can calm even the most raging person with their hands". As for our girl, Ayahashi is also two roots: aya "star" and hashi- "to collect", thus "Collected Stars" or "Star Collection"--in other words, "Galaxy, Constellation", as in "someone whose greatness can only be compared to the innumerable stars in a galaxy or constellation".

And thus you come across a huge part of Sun naming: context. Sun names are never to be viewed on their surface. They always have some kind of context to them. Another Myatebyaku:

Mū ne yazaī deyo sakissai;
Rudōyakero deyo, īvaken ma shirassai
Names are great because due to their impossibilities;
Because that they are incorporeal, they are more than their parts

To the Sun, at least traditionally, because names are not actual things but incorporeal concepts, they can hold far more than their parts, which is part of why they're incredibly important. Yet another Myatebyaku:

Nōdai zō zentai bonsassai, waga Hyūgizo zō mū bonsassai;
itochi zalnabu, waga mū ne yuzero bunsha cha ko ma zalissai
Fools fear weapons, but great people fear names;
Pain goes away, but names will never leave books or mouths

As the proverb says, pain will subside--but books shall call a tyrant as such for thousands of years beyond. I'll go into more detail on the inner workings of names and how they are to be interpreted later on in the post.

Anyway, the Yugaumū is the "official" name to be used amongst family and close friends as said before. If someone lets you use this and you're not family, then they consider you VERY close friends and trust you a lot. But what if you're not? Then...


...You use the second name, the Umū, literally "outside name". This is to be used by people who you don't have a large connection with, such as strangers on the street, or classmates you only know passingly. Traditionally, the Sun believe that a specific kind of demon called a Mūgayo (lit. "Name-Thief") endeavored to get in the realm of people and mess things up--but it needed a name to do so. They worked, as their name implied, by stealing the name (specifically, the yugaumū) of a person and invading them that way. Thus, the umū, which obscured someone's "real" name. If someone let you know their yugaumū, that meant that they truly and 100% trusted and believed in you to not be a demon trying to steal their name, and that you could be trusted with that knowledge. Nowadays the superstitious elements are mostly ignored, but the two names and their usage are still kept distinct.

The umū tends to be more "plain" than the yugaumū, usually being just a single root/noun, the idea being that a Mūgayo would be confused--if someone was named "cloud", then how would it know if people were talking about them or literal clouds? This can be seen with our two examples: Shu means "lake", and Iku is the root for ikuku "to play" and means "game". And now we come to the final name....

...Which is the Iemū, literally "finding name", but more correctly "identifying" name. This corresponds to the western family name and is mainly used to distinguish families. It's really nothing more than that. Unlike in the Asian societies which the Sun are heavily based off of (such as the Japanese), the iemū is rarely used to refer to someone. It mainly shows up when signing your name or stating your name out in full. As for our examples, Uyobi is "to be green" and Shioden is two roots; shio- "storm" and den, "appearance" (thus "storm-appearance", or "like a storm").

And there we have the three names which make up all Sun names.

When signing one's name, you sign it in the order given above. The yugaumū, however, is written larger (I'll use capitals to represent this in Roman letters) and shortened to only the initial morae of each of its roots. Cy and Cv clusters are represented as Ci and Cu, and long vowels are ignored unless they begin the root alone, The other two names are given out in full. Thus, our boy and girl would sign their names thus:

U-MI Shu Uyobi
A-HA Iku Shioden

If for whatever reason one cannot split their yugaumū into distinct roots (such as if it's foreign) then one gives the first and last morae unless it's two morae, at which point you just give the first mora.

People high up in the social strata (aristocrats, generals, rulers, etc.) usually give their names out in full, however, traditionally because they were thought to be so powerful that they had little to fear from demon invasions, but now, with superstitions fading, it's common for people of all classes to freely tell their whole names, though the usage remains similar. The boundaries between the umū and the yugaumū are slowly fading, but they still ring true throughout much of the country.

Learning of someone's yugaumū through unscrupulous means in order to spread it around is considered extremely verboten and the idiom X ī yugaumū ma naku "to have someone's yugaumū" is used to mean "to have it in for someone" or "to have a bone to pick with someone":

Iku: Salu ne Jun wo hyabuta? (Why are you always fighting with Jun?)
Shu: Na, iuyuze zō usu koto. Yugaumū ma nasu za yo... (Eh, he's just a troublemaker. He's got a bone to pick with me, it seems...)

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This is so long I'm going to split it into two. The next post will be rather short and is just over how names are made and to be interpreted.

I really like this system, but the only problem I see is that all the awesome yugaumū aren't used as often...well, that is their purpose, after all.

_________________
Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

This language is absolutely beautiful! Do you have a lexicon for it, or any more material not on the ZBB/CBB? Also, do you mind if I use it for some role play I'm doing?

I'm specifically interested in "to have", "to need", "to use", and how to form different moods (potential, hortative, etc.)

_________________
The Conlanger Formerly Known As Aiďos

The only lexicon I have of it is in my notes in my notebook, since I mostly work on languages are school (I'm too ADHD-driven to playing games or shitposting on the internet to do much conlanging work at home), which are so unreadable that I'd have to painstakingly reproduce all these dense pages of work on the computer.

Possession is done through one of two ways. First, one can use the word naku "to hold", which is used like the English verb "to have". This is done for anytime the thing you have is an actual thing . If the thing is a trait or incorporeal (like wealth, for instance), then you use the word yuku "to be amongst", saying "Y is amongst X" to mean "X has Y".

Needing something is done two ways as well. Normally you simply use "X ne/zō (Y kawo) hoshi (uri)", literally "X is necessary (in regards to Y)". The copula uri is if you need to use as a clause:

to te nyūta zō hoshi uri ware kaōyajiro
store=LAT run-GER=AGT necessary be-GER=PROVISO come-POT-1S-NEG
"[With running to the store being necessary I cannot come] I can't come over given that I need to run to the store"

(There's some overlap with "must" and "should" for verbs)

Another more archaic method is suffixing a verb with hvūri, as can be seen earlier on in this thread:

hoben ushirero kaīten ne iehvūmaran
lie be-exceed-NEG.GER sibling TOP fine-need-1P
"We need to find a less mendacious comrade"


Moods are almost always done through suffixing verbs onto the main verb, for the two you mentioned, potential suffixes yaku (shimaji "I am eating" shimōyaji "I can eat") and hortative suffixes miku (shimōmiran "We should eat/Let's eat")

Verbs can just be stacked and stacked on: take shimōhayōrumiyaran, which is formed from shimarī "to eat", hayarī "to become" (being used to make verbs passive), ruku "to direct towards/at" (here being used for causative), miku and finally yaku, to mean "We should be able to made to be eaten (?)"

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Nūdhrēmnāva naraśva, dṛk śraṣrāsit nūdhrēmanīṣṣ iźdatīyyīm woḥīm madhēyyaṣṣi.
satisfaction-DEF.SG-LOC live.PERFECTIVE-1P.INCL but work-DEF.SG-PRIV satisfaction-DEF.PL.NOM weakeness-DEF.PL-DAT only lead-FUT-3P

Wait, does shirabi mean "to be happy" or "to love platonically"? Does it depend on the particle the subject takes, or are they homophones, or something else?

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The Conlanger Formerly Known As Aiďos