Akhaz

Overview

Akhaz is an agglutinative - inflecting language based on trilitteral roots, as in Semitic languages. There are 5 grammatical cases used in Akhaz: nominative, genitive, accusative, intrumental and vocative; 4 grammatical moods: indicative, imperative, conditional and energetic; 6 tenses: future, present, past simple, past continous, past perfect, past perfect contionous; 2 voices: active and passive; 2 genders: masculine and femine; 2 numbers: singular and plural (although archaic dual number is sometimes used). Akhaz is VSO language, which means that in sentences first comes verb, then subject and object at last position (the same as in questions in English). However, as inflecting language, Akhaz allows word order to be completly free.

= Setting = Akhaz is spoken by Dwarves (uli Khzurim) from world of Soil, a world where steampunk technology of Dwarves mixes with grim Human magick and Orcish tribal ancestry. Akhaz has around 50 million speakers around the globe, and 5 main dialects: Lebnaghid, spoken on the Blood Plains and in the main area of Industrial Mountains; Jorkhavid, spoken in the northern Industrial Mtns. and on Khuldun Plateau; Knushmiy, spoken by Dwarves that long ago settled in the Humanish Kingdoms; Haghistanid, which is spoken by small population in the Sand Mtns. and is the most similar to Old Akhaz; and Hlughid ("Gibberish"), spoken by savage and primitive tribes of Dark Dwarves living in jungles all over the Soil. This article generally focuses on Lebnaghid dialect, as it has the biggest pool of speakers and is used in the biggest dwarven city of Bazenkrak, where cultures from all over the Soil mixes.

= Basic Grammar =

Pronounciation
Sounds /c/, /f/, /x/ and /w/ do not exist in Akhaz.

a - as in Asperger, usually tends towards ä

b - bit

d - death

e - met; "e" is always pronounced, even at the ends of the words

g - ago

h - head; when h is standing alone, it's articulated in throat, but when it's standing between two vowels, it's not spoken at all

i - bee

j - York

k - count

l - laser

m - many

n - nurse

o - ortography, usually tends towards ö

p - pin

r - razor

s - snore

t - store

u - food, usually tends towards ü

v - velocity

z - zebra

Additionally, aspirated forms for most consonants exist, and for purpose of this article they will be written as consonant+h, so "th" doesn't mean the same sound as in thorn, but the aspirated "t" as in tore.

Nouns
Nouns have 2 genders (maculine and femine), 2 numbers (singular and plural) and 5 cases (nominative, genitive, accusative, intrumental and vocative), which are marked with case endings and changes in the definite article. Nouns have different case endings depending on gender and last letter.

Masculine
Masculine nouns are those that use ul as definite article and ends in all consonants except "t". There are 5 declensions types for masculine nouns.

1. Nouns that ends in k, kh, g, gh, so karak - citadel, building; azmag - head.

Last "k" in karak in genitive changes to "kh" because of general rule that consonant + consonant = aspirated consonant.

2. Nouns that ends in n, nh, m, mh, so nalom - security (this noun has irregular plural form, as it uses buil-in-root "m" rather than adds additional -im); akzen - shoulder.

3. Nouns that ends in d, dh, p, ph, b, bh, th, so azard - fire.

4. Nouns that ends in s, z, zh, so halez - water.

5. Nouns that ends in l, r, rh, so zrul - dirt, dzal - ear.

Femine
Femine nouns are those that use ult as definite article and end in vowel or "t". There are 3 types of declension femine nouns follows.

1. Nouns ending in "a" or "o", so kopa - leg.

2. Nouns ending with "u", "i" or "e", so zamgu - forehead, tikuti - small hammer.

3. Nouns ending with "t", so tazut - day.

Definite articles
Akhaz has 3 definite articles: "ul" for singular masculine, "ult" for singular femine and "uli" for plural of both. All those articles undergo declension to correspond noun's case.

Definite articles can also serve as polite pronouns; that is, "ul" for male second and third person singular, "ult" for female second and third person singular, and "uli" for second and third person plural.

Personal pronouns
Akhaz has wide range of personal pronouns, which special feature is that they don't undergo declension for Vocative case.

Here are all forms of singular personal pronouns:

And here are all forms of plural personal pronouns:

Verb
Verbs in Akhaz are conjugated by person (first, second, third male and third female), number (singular and plural), tense (future, present, past simple, past continous, past perfect, past perfect continous) and mood (indicative, imperative, conditional and energetic). Tenses only roughly correspond to those in English. Indicative and conditional moods serve almost the same purpose as in English. Imperative represents direct commands and requests. Energetic expresses something which is strongly believed to be happening or which speaker wants to emphasize.

Present tense
Indicative 

Here is general table for conjugation of verbs in present tense and indicative mood:

C = consonant, h = aspiration or h

This looks like this when root Kh-Z, connected with talking, is added (root consonants are written in big form to separate them from additional consonants):

So KhaZi means "I talk" or "I'm talking", KheZ - You talk / You're talking etc.

Imperative 

Imperative mood, which is present - only, puts great emphasize on shortening the word to make it easier to shout. There's no form of imperative for first person, and forms for second and third person have merged long ago. Imperative still differs number and gender.

One can distinguish receiver of the command by adding personal prounoun as postfix, eg. KhoZHe! (write + you), which can be roughly translated as "I command you to write!". Also note that "h" here is written in big letter, because it's not aspiration marker, but a separate letter.

Energetic

This mood is made by adding prefix jv-, where v is corresponding vowel ("a" in 1st and 3rd female person, "e" in 2nd person and "u" in 3rd male person.) Also, in this mood verb loses its last vowel, if it had any.

So juKhuZ means "He certainly talks", jeKheZh - You (plural) certainly talk, etc.

Conditional 

Conditional in Akhaz, unlike in English, have different forms based on different tenses, and can appear in present and all past tenses. Table shown here refers only to present.

Conditional mood is made by adding prefix kzv- (v = corresponding vowel) and placing -o- infix after second root consonant. If root consists of only 2 consonants, "o" ("oh" in plural) becomes postfix and thus replaces last vowel.

Past simple and past perfect
As in English, there are 2 main types of verbs: weak and strong. Weak verbs add -u/-vzu postfix, wheter strong verbs denote past tense by doubling root's last consonant together with corresponding vowel. However, unlike as in English, verb that is strong in past simple / perfect can be weak in past (perfect) continous.

Past perfect tense is made by simply putting tense marker "azk"/"azki" before verb. "Azk" is used in singular, while "azki" in plural.

Weak verb

For instance kidik - to make.

Indicative mood:

Energetic mood:

Note that in this mood "azk" changes to "azp" and "azki" changes to "azpi".

Conditional mood:

In this mood, postfix -ozu is added to all verbs.

Azk and azki remains the same in this mood.

= Dictionary =

Numbers
0 - nekad ("nothing")

1 - ahi

2 - di

3 - te

4 - kvir

5 - nakh

6 - rakh

7 - zri

8 - pakh

9 - ghe

10 - keh

Teen numbers are created by putting "keh" before 1-9 number, so "kehahi" is 11, "kehdi" - 12 etc.

Numbers larger than 19 and lower than 100 are created by putting "keh" after the 1-9 number, so "dikeh" is 20, "tekeh" - 30 etc. Numbers like 44, 56 are made by simply putting 1-9 after decimal number, so "kvirkeh kvir" is 44, and "rakh-keh ghe" is 69.

Bigger numbers include:

100 - kar

1000 - zahk

1000000 (million) - milur

1000000000 (billion) - malarhu

= Example text = ...