Dangin Nira

Welcome to My Brain. Here I will outpour my thoughts in Dangin Nira. I plan for it to be the language of international commerce within the next five years.

=Setting= Dangin Nira is the official language of Danga (a shortening of Danin Nega - the Second Empire). When the Second Imperiate came to power, they decided that there would only be one language throughout the Empire. So they sent scribes to document all the scattered tongues of the many lands under the dominion of the Imperiate, and found the words that were common in the greatest number of languages. Grammar was simplified and standardized, and irregularities of speech were purged. While the Imperiate sought to popularize the greeting "Danga molik glolormin!" (The Second Empire will be eternal!), it is usualy superseded in common speech by the far more succint "syamat" and "usmat."

=Pronunciation= Pronunciation is simple and regular, and follows certain patterns. Do not try to go for a super-foreign accent, but don't just pronounce it like you would English.

Consonants
These consonants are pronounced as in English: B, D, F, K, L, M, N, P, S, T, V, Z. The consonants C, J, Q, X do not occur.

G is always pronounced like in "get," never as in "gemstone." For example, "ginoi" (to come) is NOT pronounced "jee-noy," but "gee-noy."

H is always pronounced, it is never silent. It is also always pronounced separately from other consonants. For example, in Dangin Nira, "sh" would not be like in the English "she." It would be pronounced "suh-huh," but without the separating vowel in between. When H occurs between two consonants, it normally degrades to just a puff of air, like trying to whistle with your mouth wide open. This occurs in such words as "akhmat" (goodbye [response]), pronounced "AHK**-maht," where the asterixes represent the puff of air.

R is always rolled or flapped, like in Spanish, Italian, Russian, and other languages. It is never just glided, as in English, or turned into a guttural sibilant, as in French, German, and, so I've been told, Hebrew.

W and Y are always consonants, never vowels. However, when they occur between a vowel and a consonant, or a consonant and a consonant, they, along with R and L, can turn into pseudo-vowels with pseudo-syllables of their own. But when preceding a vowel, they are always consonants. "Syamat" (hello [initiation]) is pronounced "SYAH-maht," not "SEE-ah-maht." But "wedldu" (somehow) is pronounced "WEHD-uhl-doo," and "slozr" (one says) is pronounced "SLOE-zuhr," and "deydin" (high) is pronounced "DEH-yuh-din."

Vowels
Vowels are pure, and usually long, though in same instances they are short.

A is ALWAYS pronounced as in "father." AH.

E is usually pronounced like the "ay" in "say," but is sometimes pronounced like the "e" in "bed." EY, EH

I is usually pronounced like the "ee" in "feed," but is sometimes, like in the "-in" of adjective endings, like the "i" in "pin." EE, IH

O is almost always pronounced like the "o" in "rope," but every so often, like in the second "o" in the past participle ending "-olon," like the schwa. OE, OH

U is ALWAYS pronounced like the "oo" in "food." OO

There is only one diphthong: "oi." It is pronounced like the "oy" in "boy." In every other vowel combination, each vowel is pronounced separately. For example, "oa" is pronounced "oh-ah."

Stress
In nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and regularly formed adverbs (those ending in -org, see below), stress almost always (there are a few exceptions, see closer below) falls on the last syllable of the root. So to see how a word is pronounced, you take off the grammatical ending of the dictionary form (-oi, -a, -in), and stress the last syllable you find. So "vadanoi" (to be acquainted with) is pronounced "vah-DAH-noy," and "tormana" (glory) is pronounced "tor-MAH-nah," and "umvin" (weak) is pronounced "OOM-veen." Pseudo-vowels (W, Y, R, L before consonants) are never stressed, as they do not count as true syllables.

EXCEPTIONS:

kalatulanoi (to thank) = kah-lah-TOO-lah-noy

afanutoi (to regret) = a-FAH-noo-toy

hastitoi (to want) = HAH-stee-toy

eyomin (good) = EY-yoh-min

If a verb's root's penultimate syllable is "e", then the stress falls on that syllable. For example:

helikoi (to speak) = HEH-lee-koy

semaroi (to stand) = SEHM-ah-roy

erioi (to listen) = EHR-ee-oy

A verbs stress stays on the same syllable through out the entire conjugation. For example: valos, valolom, valurnek, valamuzr = VAH-lohs, VAH-loh-lohm, VAH-loor-nehk, VAH-lah-mooz-uhr. The only exception to this is participles. In participles, the stress always falls on the first syllable of the participle ending. So:

valon (loving) = vah-LOHN

uframolon (taught) = oof-rah-MOH-lohn

payamolin (about to help) = pah-yah-MOH-leen

This stress exception overrides any other stress exception. Helikolon = heh-lee-KOH-lohn.

=Basic Conversation =

=Basic Grammar= Plurals are not formed through prefixes or suffixes. Instead, the plural particle "eb" is placed in front of the word that is meant to be plural. For example, "laska" can mean "cookie" or "a cookie" or "an uncertain amount of cookie" or "general cookie-ness," and "eb laska" means "cookies" or "multiple cookies."

Nouns and Adjectives
The nominative case is the dictionary form of the noun or adjective, and is used for subjects, and to follow prepositions. The accusative case is used for objects. The ablative case is used when something is being used by the subject, but is not the object, that is, when something is the instrument. For example, in the sentence "Bobby hit the baseball with the bat," "Bobby" is the subject (nominative), "the baseball" is the object (accusative), and "with the bat" is the instrument (ablative). The vocative case is used when addressing someone. For example, to say "Hey, you!" in Dangin Nira, you would just say "you" in the vocative case.

Adverbs
To change an adjective into an adverb, change the "-in" ending to "-org." So, "mamin" (fast) becomes "mamorg" (quickly). There are also a number of adverbs that are not based on adjectives, and these can end in pretty much any set of letters, much like prepositions and conjunctions (see below). Examples are "misor" (again) and "bent" (also).

There are also a class of intensifiers. These can accentuate or diminish a verb or adjective. They follow this scheme:

Pronouns
There are four personal pronouns. They are never used as subjects (with one exception, see below); the conjugated form of the verb suffices in providing its ending to let the reader or listener know who is performing the action. They are only used in the nominative after prepositions. The first three persons are as in other languages, and the fourth person translates as the general pronoun "one," for instance "When in France, one must speak French." This is considered separate from the third person. To make them plural, as in nouns, place the particle "eb" in front of the pronoun. For example, "sa" means "I," but "eb sa" means "we." The fourth person is never pluralized.

Personal pronouns are used as subjects only when there is a mixed grammatical person performing the action. In this case, you list the pronouns with "ur" (and) in between them, and then conjugate the verb in the person of the lowest number. For example, "you and he jump" would be translated as "ma ur ka alyom," and "you and I walked" would be translated as "sa ur ma letolos." Notice that the pronouns are listed in ascending order according to the number of the person.

Although the vocative case in anything other than the second person makes little sense, it is included in the others as part of the full declension.

There is also a reflexive pronoun - pata - which is used to refer back to the subject. It translates as the words "myself," "thyself," etc. It declines like a noun.

Demonstrative pronouns (this, that, yon) are discussed in the correlatives section.

Verbs
Verbs come in four moods, two voices, four aspects, and three tenses, along with the four persons. Again, plurals are made through use of the particle "eb." The fourth person is never pluralized.

INDICATIVE MOOD
Active Voice

Present Tense

Past Tense

Future Tense

Passive Voice

Present Tense

Past Tense

Future Tense

CONDITIONAL MOOD
Active Voice

Present Tense

Past Tense

Passive Voice

Present Tense

Past Tense

IMPERATIVE MOOD
Active Voice

Passive Voice

Prepositions and Conjunctions
Prepositions describe additional cases for nouns, typically describing a location, though there are other uses. Conjunctions are linking words, that bring multiple words and clauses together into full sentences. There are no specific endings for these words, though they generally do not end in -s, -m, -k, -zr, -a, -oi, or -in, to avoid confusion with other parts of speech.

To indicate motion towards or away from a noun, the prepositions "sit" (to) and "zul" (from) are used. Note that there are two different words for the English word "to": "sit" indicates motion towards something, while "ek" denotes an indirect object. For instance, "beos ek ma ade" means "I give a book to you," while "hirkos sit nen Angla" means "I'm going to England." If you want to express another relationship in addition to motion towards or away from, you put the preposition of the other relationship before "sit" or "zul." For example, "letos oli sit nen humnaka" means "I walk into the house." "Letos oli nen humnaka" would mean "I'm walking in(side of) the house," indicating merely the location of the action.

When describing a relationship between two nouns that is not tangible, like "betting on a horse race" or "being there at that time," you cannot use a literal preposition of place, because you are not literally doing something on top of a horse race or at the physical location of a time period. Instead, the word "meb" is used. It is a preposition that describes metaphorical relationships between nouns. For example, "helikos meb nen Doitsin Nira" means "I speak in German."

The most basic conjunctions in Dangin Nira are "ur" (and), "him" (or), and "zof" (but). Additional conjunctions can be found in the word list.

Numbers
Eb Dangakra count in hexadecimal, because they are smarter and more attuned to technology then we are. The stressing of numbers is irregular, so a pronunciation key is provided, along with the decimal and hexadecimal representations of each number word, and the ordinal or adjectivial numbers (first, second, etc), which follow regular stress. Note that the ordinal of "am" is "amzin" - this is to avoid confusion with "anin." "Hika" is the word in Dangin Nira for "number."

For multiple digit numbers other than powers of sixteen, you merely list the numbers of each digit. 256 would be "dan akikor les akor ho," and 4096 would be ufuld anitok vir akor ho." 11 would be "akor ani."  Powers of sixteen following "itartok" would be in the same vein: ufuldtok, lestok, hotok, etc.  The stress would continue to be on "-tok."

When describing multiples of something, the number acts as an adjective, but does not decline unless it is ordinal. For example, "two rocks" would be "dan gungola," and "five swords" would be "les vindra." Notice that "eb" is not required when describing an exact number of something.

If describing a number of items that are part of a whole, you use the partitive preposition "sot." For example, "give me two of the five flowers" would be "beamum ek sa dan siria sot nen les." Note how the number can be used as a pronoun for the noun representing the whole. Keep in mind that this cannot be done with the noun representing the part, because that noun has to be declined, whereas the noun representing the whole will always be in the nominative.

=Advanced Grammar and Syntax= General word order is subject-verb-indirect object-direct object-instrument-prepositional phrase. Although each of these is denoted specifically by a word ending or preposition, and a sentence could be understood with totally different syntax, most sentences follow this order, and anything different will sound odd to a Dangakra's ear.

Participles and Compound Tenses
There are three participles, one for each tense: past, present, future. They are used in compound tenses, and also as adjectives. As discussed in the stress section (see above), participles are accented on the first syllable of their ending.

There are three series of compound tenses: perfect, progressive, and the near future. The first two are actually aspects, which describe how complete an action is. The perfect aspect describes a completed action (he has killed), and the progressive aspect describes an action that is being performed at the time described (he was killing). The near future is merely an alternate way to express the future tense, usually indicating that the action will be performed soon, hence why it is called the near future. The simple future tense merely expresses that an action has not occurred yet, but will at some point.

To use the perfect tense, the auxiliary verb "totoi" is used, followed by the past participle of your verb of choice. This verb has no other use, and does not translate into English, but performs the duties that "to have" does in English when forming the perfect aspect. "Totoi" can be conjugated in any of the simple tenses described above, passive, active, indicative, conditional, whatever. Each will produce a distinct perfect phrase. For example, "totos semarolon" means "I have stood," and "toturnem valolon" means "you would have loved."

To use the progressive tense, the copula "moi" (to be) is used, followed by the present participle. The progessive tense in Dangin Nira is only used when the speaker is trying to emphasize the fact that an action is underway, unlike English, where the progressive aspect is used rampantly. For example, where in English we say "I am singing," in Dangin Nira, you would just say "syarvos" (I sing), not "mos syarvon." You would only say "mos syarvon" if you were making a point of the fact that you were in the middle of a song right now.

To use the near future, use the verb "hirkoi" (to go), followed by the future participle. English does not have a future participle, so in our equivalent near future, we use the gerund (he's going running) or the infinitive of the verb (he's going to kill). But in Dangin Nira, the future participle must be used, though if translated into English, it would be translated as the infinitive. For example, "hirkok takrolin" means "he's going to cause pain," though if literally translated it would mean something like "he goes about to cause pain."

Gerunds and Actor/Actee/Tool Words
The gerund is a noun-verb. In many languages (like English), it is identical to either the present participle or the infinitive of the verb. In Dangin Nira, there is a separate ending, -oina. So if "ozoi" means "to create," then "ozoina" means "creating" or "creation." For this reason, Ozoina is the title of the first book of the Bible in Dangin Nira. That would be Genesis, for those of you who aren't Judeo-Christian. The gerund is used to describe the action as a noun.

Dangin Nira also has specific ways to create words that refer to the various players pertaining to a verb. English does this sporadically, and with no hard and fast rule. In Dangin Nira, there is only one way to express each player. There are words for the actor (the subject of the noun), the actee (the direct object), and the tool (the instrument). The actor can be male, female, or neuter. They follow this paradigm:

Not all verbs will use all players.

Correlatives
These are words that substitute for other words, and indicate a certain relationship of the speaker towards the substituted word. The word or phrase that is replaced indicates the suffix of the correlative, and the mood, or relationship towards the speaker, is indicated by the prefix. They follow this table (translations are listed under each word for ease of use):

Not all of these make sense, and most of them will not see much use, except in certain, specific instances.

Comparatives and Superlatives
When comparing nouns, adjectives, adverbs, or verbs, there are four words required: "dadu" (more), "ofedu" (less), "oski" (than), and "fwi" (as).

To compare adjectives and adverbs, this form is followed: [V] dadu/ofedu [A] oski [clause]. For example, "I am bigger than a tree" would be "Mos dadu tupin oski fisra," and "I run less fast than you do" would be "Kelos ofedu mamorg oski kelom." For equalities, this form is followed: [V] fwi [A] fwi [clause]. For example, "That star is as bright as our star" would be "Tamin parna mok fwi peltin fwi eb sin parna." Note that when adverbs are used, the verb in the first clause is repeated.

To compare amounts of nouns, this form is followed: [V] dadu/ofedu sot [N] oski [clause]. For example, "You have more cookies than that dog" would be "Meglom dadu sot laske oski tamin bava meglok." Note that "laske" is in the accusative, even though it is preceded by a preposition. For equalites, this form is followed: [V] fwi [kend/rand] sot [N] fwi [clause]. For example, "I want as many rocks as he has" would be "Hastitos fwi kend sot gungole fwi meglok."

To compare actions, this form is follwed: [V] dadu/ofedu oski [clause]. For example, "He is blessed less than you are" would be "Nedwanoak ofedu oski nedwanoam." For equalities, this form is followed: [V] fwi kend/rand fwi [clause]. For example, "I walk as little as this woman does" would be "Letos fwi rand fwi yetamin suma letok."

Superlatives are conveyed by the words "studadu" (most) and "stulofedu" (least). For example, "He got the smallest kingdom" would be "Asikolok nen studadu vesinu robalele."

The Subjunctive Conditional
=Dictionary= I'm guessing I'll have several pages here leading to word lists. Probably one for each letter. Should be fun. I could also have an English to Dangin Nira dictionary, to make it easier to cross-reference or whatever. We'll see.

=Example text= Nahad eb Sin (Our Father)

Nahad eb sin, esta mom oli nen yaranya, nedwin mamuk min fivya. Min robalela ginamuk, min zagda niskoabuk ati nen telkora tonet niskoak oli nen yaranya. Beamum ek eb sa eb sinu glofolminu alane, ur habramum eb se ispi eb sin eb muzra, tonet eb habros eb taste, esta eb muzrok inkap eb sa. Zof noryamamum eb se zul zegezra. Arteg mina mok nen robalela, nen hedela, ur nen tormana. Arara.

Kasaros Me, Mariad (Hail Mary)

Kasaros me, Mariad, krolin falhev, nen Alarsa mok stog ma. Nedwanoam dadu oski glomin eb suma, ur Yeza nedwanoak, nen gelra ulu nen lonana. Nedwin Mariad, Nasmad ulu nen Barsa, sradamum ispi eb sa, eb muzrorsa, sfen ur meb nen teka ulu eb sin sonda. Arara.