Ẹńgaliś Anụ

Classification and Dialects
This is directly related to Modern English. It is through a quote, however, by John McWhorter in his book What Language Is that gave me this idea:


 * It’s a pain for English speakers to have to learn the gender of every noun in French or German along with the noun itself. But in Navajo, for every single verb in the language, you have to learn [the] five variations. You just have to know. The nearest equivalent for an English speaker would be if every verb were like be, where we have to know that it’s I am but I was and I’ve been and, subjunctively, if I were—just imagine if English had it in addition that today I speak, yesterday I spoke, tomorrow I spock, repetitively I spack, and hypothetically I just might spoo.

With this quote, I will create a Navajo-inspired English Conlang.

This language could quite possibly be a dialect of English, if spoken by a group of nomads from northern North America.

Writing System
` is a phonetic marker, replacing the silent "-e" at the end of some words in english, but not all; for instance, with the words "plane" and "plan," they would be spelled plàn and plan, but "hop" and "hope" would be spelled hap and hop, just so there is no mispronunciation or confusion.

' is sometimes used as a glottal stop, only when a suffix is added to a word that already ends in a vowel. Either way, it is very uncommon for this to happen.

Yy is sometimes used to help create a diphthong, usually with the eɪ, aɪ, and ɔɪ sounds. Again, it is unusual for this to happen often.

To mark stress on a word that could be strangely stressed, such as "anew," there is a marker to help clarify. The dot diacritic (.) can be used under any vowel (ạ ẹ ị ọ ụ and sometimes ỵ) to tell the reader "hey this don't put the stress on the first syllable, but this one instead!" "Anew," for instance, would be spelled ánụ and pronounced /ə'nuː/.

Whenever there is a double consonant, the vowel before it automatically becomes "short". For example, the present tense-second person form {bite} of the verb to bite {bitiń} is pronounced ['baɪtɜ]; however, its past tense-second person form {bitte} is pronounced ['bɪtɜ], very similar to the pronunciation of German's "bitte" (please) - [ˈbɪtə].

Because of these few spelling rules, the writing system of Eńgaliś Ánụ is highly phonetic.

Pronouns
There are three grammatical numbers: singular, dual, and plural. Singular corresponds to only one subject, dual to two, and plural to three or more.

Clusivity
Because there is a dual number, there is no need for a distinction between an inclusive or an exclusive first person plural pronoun. So, if you wanted to say, "We won the lottery!" in this conlang, you would instead (literally) say, "We [both] won lottery!" (Since there is not definiteness in this conlang I excluded the "the" from that sentence - ha more clusivity.)

Nouns
There are 6 cases for nouns and pronouns to follow, and, unlike verb tense, there is a pattern for them.

The cases are as follows:
 * 1) Nominative
 * 2) Accusative
 * 3) Genitive
 * 4) Dative
 * 5) Insturmental
 * 6) Prepositional

Verbs
There are five tenses, as the quote above implies. However, since there are three different persons, there are fifteen evariations of one verb. Although very ridiculous, the verbs conjugate according to tense, and person, and, although verbs do not follow a pattern when it comes to tense, they do follow a pattern when verbs conjugate according to person. Even though this may sound very complicated and hard to memorize, most of the variations of a certain verb either remain the same, or unchanged entirely.

Person
To conjugate a regular verb according to person, you would add a certain suffix according to the person that the subject (which noun/pronoun is in the nominative case) of the sentence is in, using the suffixes in the table below.

Tense
As stated above, there are five tenses, of which are: Since there are different forms of these to each verb, there will be another page on this language showing them for individual verbs; however, this will not be for a while.
 * Present
 * Past
 * Imperfect
 * Future
 * Subjunctive

For clarification (and a "space-waster"):


 * the present tense is what is happening now
 * the past tense is what happened before
 * the imperfect tense is what is repetitively happening over and over
 * the future tense is what will happen later
 * the subjunctive tense is what theoretically might happen

Modality
Within this conlang, mood and modality can be used interchangeably, even though they are not quite marked throughout it. The only moods in this language are as follows (within categories):
 * Realis
 * Indicative
 * Irrealis
 * Deontic
 * Imperative
 * Epistemic
 * Assumptive
 * Interrogative

Infinitives
To make a regular verb an infinitive, you would add either the "-am", "-iń", "-en" or "-yen" suffix. There is a rule for which one to add, however: If the verb ends in a nasal or a fricative, it gets the "-am" suffix; if it ends in a plosive or an affricate, it gets the "-iń" suffix; if it ends in a vowel or an approximant, it gets the "-en" or "-yen" suffix.

Lexicon
Swadesh