Rashazhani

**Sornaensis** · 05-11-2008 06:58 PM

Dropping Syyck for now-- Here's a language I have put more actual language work into!

Alphabet (Sounds):

a.....As in “Act”
b.....As in “Ball”
c.....As in “Cat”
d......As in “Door”
e......As in “Eat” / “Egg”
f......As in “Food”
g......As in “Gone” (Always this way-- Never pronounced “dzh” (J))
h......As in “Hat”
i......As in “Either”/ “In”
j......As in “Juice”
l......As in “Line”
m......As in “Meat”
n......As in “Nail”
o......As in “All” / “Over”
p......As in “Poor”
r......As in “Raise”
s......As in “Soup”
t......As in “Tulip”
u......As in “Yoo”
v......As in “Veil”
w......As in “Ewe”
z......As in “Zebra”

Tenses (Suffixes):

Nafah -- Wait

ere – Past tense suffix / Nafahere -- Waited
ira – Present tense suffix / Nafahira -- Waiting
ire – Future tense suffix / Nafahire – Will/Shall Wait

Other Standard suffixes:

Atan -- House/Home

ada – Pluralizes a noun / Atanada -- Houses/Homes
uda – Denotes singularity of a noun / Atanuda – [The/A] House/Home (Recognized as singular)
e' – Possessive form for a noun-- Also equates a pronoun with its possessive form (I.e. He/Him -> His) / Atanudae' – [The/A] House's/Home's / Atanadae' – [Those/The] Houses'/Homes'

Basic Sentence Structure:

The sentence structure used is Subject-Object-Verb.

ex.: Ae'Catoluda tura. |[Literal Translation] “Brown Book(Recognized as singular) is.”

Since “the” is absent from Rashazhani, it is instead found through recognizing that a noun is singular. So the singular-specific form of Catole [Book] is Catoluda.
You should also notice that the last vowel “e” is cut off of the root word. This happens often.
Now Ae, or Brown, is a prefixed adjective appended with an apostrophe for readability. So with the adjective prefixed and the singularity-recognizing suffixed, we end up with a nearly completely different root; Ae'Catoluda.

Tura means “is”-- it's the verb of the sentence.

ex. Hazan rudon sornal nafahere aleiro.

Literal translation: “We food outside waited for.”

“We” being the subject; “food” being the object; and “Waited” being the verb. “Outside”, being the adverb and coming before the verb. “For” being the preposition.

**Sornaensis** · 05-12-2008 09:46 PM

Pronouns:

Word – Subject Equivalent/Object Equivalent
O'[Word] – Reflexive/Plural Reflexive

Cor – I/Me
O'Cor – Myself
Zor – You
O'Zor – Yourself/Yourselves
Mah – He/Him
O'Mah -- Himself
Fah – She/Her
O'Fah -- Herself
Zah – It
O'Zah – Itself
Zoroc – We/Us
O'Zoroc – Ourself/Ourselves
Zacor – They/Them
O'Zacor – Themselves

Some special rules for pronouns: They are never recognized as singular are plural the normal way with “ada”/“uda”. Instead the pluralizations of them are separate words. Possesive forms, however, are still denoted with "e'"

However, to make a pronoun reflexive (I.e. Him --> Himself) you would add “O'” to the front of the word. This also automatically includes the plural form (You --> Yourself/Yourselves).

**•Neko•** · 05-15-2008 09:38 PM

Looks good so far, but there's somethings that I'd like to ask.

Is there a real reason for the apostrophe in the possessive and reflexive affixes? I'm just asking this because, sometimes, conlangers tend to put apostrophes in their conlangs just to make them look more "foreign". There may be a good reason for them though.

As good as your alphabet sounds, there's "sh" and "zh" in the name of your language, and these might not be pronounced how one would expect them to be. I take it that they're the voiceless and voiced postalveolar fricatives? Or are the letters pronounced separately?

Also, you may want to consider learning the IPA or X-SAMPA to accurately describe your phonology.

Sorry for the jargon overload.

**Sornaensis** · 05-15-2008 09:42 PM

Yeh, I am learing X-SAMPA. Kinda confusing though.

And the Apostraphe is just because I want an easy way to identify Adjectives.

And Rashazhani is pronounced (Something like) R ah - Sh a z - ha n - ee

I need to read more on X-SAMPA so I can get the sounds right.

**•Neko•** · 05-15-2008 09:48 PM

Originally Posted by Seismosaur

Yeh, I am learing X-SAMPA. Kinda confusing though.

And the Apostraphe is just because I want an easy way to identify Adjectives.

And Rashazhani is pronounced (Something like) R ah - Sh a z - ha n - ee

I need to read more on X-SAMPA so I can get the sounds right.

Great! Please keep us updated.