Ochchuna

Generic Information
Ochchuna is an artlang spoken by the fictional "Ochchunans." Inhabitants of the land of Ochchuna which is located in a subspace bubble somewhere on earth. Ochchuna makes use of seven different cases to convey meaning. The word order is VSO (Eat I cheese), and the syllabe structure follows a generic (C)(C)V(C)(C). Verbs only have 1 form and are conjugated by adding information seperated by the Glottal Stop /ʔ/.

There are five different times. Past had been split up in to "Far Past," and "Recent Past." Future has been split up into two as well. Present remains the same.

The vocative case makes use of five levels of formality, and one "cheat code" for those unfamiliar with the lanuage. These levels of formality are based on a mixture of age and respect but more on that later.

Consonants

 * The glottal stop is only for use between two vowels. The only exception to that rule, is when when conjugating a verb, you use a noun as the subject. If that noun starts with a consonant, the glottal stop will remain anywho.
 * Some consonants are not allowed to start or end a word. Some are also not allowed to follow each other in a certain order. Specifics TBA.

Vowels
Diphthongs do not exist in Ochchuna. Two vowels "next to each other" will always be separated by the glottal stop.

Phonotactics
Ochchuna follows a simple (C)(C)V(C)(C) syllable structure.

Stress patterns

 * 1) Words on their own only have 1 main stress. For verb conjugations, there exist secondary stresses but those are of course less noticeable, and not well defined as of now.
 * 2) For bisyllabic words, the following rules are standard:
 * 3) Nouns and adjectives have stress on the final syllable
 * 4) Verbs have stress on their first syllable
 * 5) For 3+ syllabic words, the following rules are standard:
 * 6) Words have stress on the ante-penultimate syllable
 * 7) An exception to this rule are the names of places, languages, and people. These have stress on the penultimate syllable.
 * 8) The following rules are for compound words
 * 9) Compound nouns have stress on the last part
 * 10) Compound verbs and adjectives have their stress on the first part

Writing System & Romanisation
Romanisation looks very ugly at the moment. Most phonemes are the same as their graphemes except the following ones:

Vowels are divided into their long and short counterparts.

In romanisation, vowels are written as their long counterpart, regardless of whether they are short or not. Pronounciation is decided by the consonant directly after the vowel. If there is one consonant after the vowel, that vowel will be long. If there are two of the same consonants directly after a vowel, that vowel will be pronounced as its short counterpart.

Examples:

Pronouns
These are the only pronouns you'll have to memorise for learning Ochchuna. All the other ones follow the same declensions according to case as nouns. (So do names btw).

What they mean
The people of Ochchuna make use of 5 different suffixes to show respect to the people and objects around them. There is an additional suffix that is reserved for use by outsider. The people of Ochchuna do not use this themselves. It provides an easy way for those unfamiliar with the language to still communicate politely but it does show a lack of understanding of the language, and some Ochchunans look down upon those who use it. Rather than simply just referring to someones age. This is a combination of both age and respect. The Ochchunan culture is one that shows a lot of respect for elders and parents. Therefore, their "title" and respect rises with age. There are rare exceptions when people perfom extraordinary deeds of courage (or malice), and they are spoken to with a title higher (or lower) than their true one. Though it could be considered flattery to use a higher suffix to address people with, the native population is usually uncomfortable with.

Ochchunans won't mind if you accidentally get the suffixes wrong, and will politely remind you what it should be. (Though it is usually easy to tell). Beware though, addressing someone lower than their true age is considered a major insult, and you will NOT make friends by doing that.

How to use them
Using these suffixes is fairly simple. It is always required to put these at the end of a name or a pronoun. So when addressing someone, you simply add the suffix to their name to use the proper formality. Similarly when using pronouns to refer to someone, the suffix is added to the pronoun. This holds true for ALL pronouns, so even the possessive and object pronouns.

Formality is also required when using the vocative case. This means that objects may be given a formality. Objects are not directly associated with a level of formality, but usually "Patt" (for adults) is fine. You are free to change the formality if you feel it fits better with an object though. A tree might be very old (Chinnsha), or it might still be a sapling (Da). Variation like this is most often used for creative writing, and "Pat" is used 90% of the time in general speech.

Verbs

 * To make a sentence reflexive, add the prefix "ash-" to the verb. E.g (Mana would be wash) Ashmana'i'onnekk - I wash myself

Declaring tenses for verbs
Ochchuna doesn't conjugate its verbs. Rather, there is a table with suffixes that are used for declaring tense. See table below. Since all Ochchunan verbs end with a vowel, the suffixes are added on with a glottal stop. For any examples (now and future). The example verb is "Mana," and an example noun is "Djemmeshsh." For the purpose of demonstrating grammar, these can have any meaning.

As you can see, there is a difference between "recent" and "far" past. It is mostly up for interpretation, and it can vary depending on what you are talking about. For example, a month may count as recent when you're talking about buying a house. But a month may count as far if you are talking about eating an apple. It's up to interpretation, and there is no clear line. A good rule of thumb is basically that anything that happened longer than a month ago, or will happen longer than a month into the future is counted as far.

Below some examples of how to use these tenses.

Cases
Ochchunan grammar contains 7 cases. The nominative case is kind of like the baseline for all nouns. Every case uses the nominative form as the root. For the declension of nouns the suffix is simply added on the end. If the word ends on a consonant, the last vowel is added to the end of the word (before the suffix).

Nominative
This case is like the infinitive for nouns. Every other case stems from this one.

Accusative
Determines the object of the sentences. Suffix is -tt.

Dative
Declares the indirect object. Suffix is -kk.

Vocative
As names and pronouns are always in the vocative form anyway, this is mainly for addressing objects. Most objects are usually transformed with "Patt." See the formality table for other levels of formality to apply.

Genitive
Declares possession, and a few other matters such as "Children's songs" which is not necessarily possession. Suffix is -chit.

Locative
Used when something is inside of something. E.g: The apple is in the tree. Tree would be locative. Suffix is -nin.

Instrumentalis
When using an object, instrumentalis is used. E.g: "I am writing the book with a pencil." Pencil would be INS here.