Mišhilli

Phonology
Mišhilli uses an alphabet of 22 letters: A [ɑ, a], B [b], Č [tʃ], D [d], E [e, ɛ], F [f], G [g], H [h] I [i, ɪ], K [k], L [l], M [m], N [n], O [ɔ, o], P [p], R [r] S [s], Š [ʃ], T [t] U [u, ʊ], X [x], Y [j].

Phonotactics
Mišhilli syllables can end either by repetition of the first consonant in the syllable, or in one of the following consonants: f, l, m, n, r, s, š, x and y.

Word Forms
Mišhilli words assume different grammatical forms by changing their first syllable. For example: telefon (a telephone); tellefon (of a telephone), etelefon (calls someone over the telephone), etlefon (called someone over the telephone) and so forth.

There are 12 basic grammatical forms in Mišhilli. In Mišhilli textbooks, they are usaully illistrated using the word bar (food):

Noun forms: Verb and Adjective forms: Gerund Adverb

Adjectives
Similarly to many natural languages (e.g. Hebrew), the grammatical form for adjectives in Mišhilli coincides with verbs in present tense.

Adjectives, like verbs, always follow the noun directly. For example:

Kurunux imis - The boy goes

Kurunux eder - The boy is small

Mišhilli makes a heavy use of subordinate clauses and relative pronouns. (In that respect it is somewhat similar to French). For example, if several adjectives have to be placed after the noun, or both an adjective and a verb need to be used, we will often see relative pronouns kur (who - animate, male), mel (who - animate, female) or ter (which - inanimate) used before the adjective:

Kurunux abar kur eder - The small boy eats (lit: The boy, which is small, eats).

Other relative pronouns that you will see rather frequently are tor (which time) and nar (which place).

Objects
Mišhilli is an SVO language. The object always follows the verb directly. For example:

Kurunux isir huru - The boy sees a house.

Verbs in the 1st and 2nd person are usually written together with the coresponding pronons:

Muxisir huru - I see the house.

Adverbs
Adverbs also follow the verb. When you need to place both an adverb (as well as adverbial modifier or adverbial clause) and an object after the verb, another relative pronoun, par (which - action), is used:

Muxatla kuru par roxox - I have hit him hard (lit: I have hit him, acting forcefully).

It is important to use the relative pronouns consistently; oftentimes dropping them may change the meaning of what you say. For example,

Muxulur kurunux isillox roxox - I love a very beautiful boy (the word roxox "strongly" is modifying isillox "beautiful")

Muxulur kurunux isillox par roxox - I love the beautiful boy very much (because of par being introduced, the word roxox now modifies the action).

Infinitives
Mišhilli has two infinities. The first one roughly corresponds to English infinitive with "to" (or German with "zu", or Hebrew with "l-", and so forth). For example,

Muxirix babar - I want to eat

Muxirix sisir tere - I want to see that

However, with the help of relative pronouns and subordinate clauses the use of infinitive in Mišhilli stretches beyound such simple phrases. For example,

Muxirix babar tere, kurunux apar - I want the boy to eat that (lit: I want to eat that, so that the boy do it). Note that the pronoun par in this case takes the appropriate verb form apar.