Geewish

Native name: Lhen Gê

Consonants
Geewish (Lhen gê) has some unusual consonant sounds.

Unusual:

-Voiceless dental fricative /θ/ as in English or Greek

Very unusual:

-Voiceless liquids (m̥ n̥ l̥ r̥), like in Welsh or Icelandic

-/p͡f/ like in German and /q͡χ/ like in many swiss german dialects.

Vowels
There are long vowels: iː, eː, øː, æː, uː, yː, aː, oː

and short vowels: ɪ, ɛ, œ, ʏ, ʊ, æ, ɑ/a, ɔ

and diphtongs: aʊ̯, oɪ̯, eʊ̯, œɪ̯, aɪ̯

The long vowels /eː/ and /oː/ are often pronounced [eɪ̯] and [oʊ̯].

Because long and short vowels also have a distinction in vowel quality (expeption: ä/ää), vowel length is not as important as you may think.

Phonotactics
Native words are monosyllabic and built this way:

(A consonant) (a liquid) a vowel as nucleus → at the end: either (a nasal and a plosive) or (an obstruent) or (a nasal)

Final obstruents are always voiceless and final nasals always voiced.

Writing System
This is its romanisation:

Grammar
Most words can be used as verb, noun or adjective depending on the context and the sourounding elements.

Nouns are marked in number and case. Exept nouns in the nominative singular, every noun is preceeded by a prepositional marker. The accusative marker is used when there's t´no other preposition and the phrase isn't nominative. It is in fact a preposition like the others.

- The accusative is only marked on living objects ! -

Verbs
Verbs don't decline but are almost always preceeded by a tense or mood marker. Modal verbs and the verb "to be" behave differently. Pronouns can normally not be dropped.

Tenseless: Sho dziit (You see)

Present: Sho mi dziit. (You're seeing)

Past: Sho ha dziit. (You saw)

Future: Sho dza dziit. (You'll see)

The verbal noun is formed with the marker "ma".

-The passive acts like the active, the word "tsuut" is before the verb, the actual actor is the object of the passive phrase.

-Verbs have no special moods, conjunction show it

Adjectives
Adjectives are preceeded by "u", so they can be placed before or after the noun, but not before the determiner.

Syntax
Geewish's syntax is basicely SVO, but SOV and OVS can be used also..

→ The newest information accures first.

In colloquial speach SVO is by far the most dominant word order. The rules to use the preposition are also less strict in colloquial Geewish.

Lexicon
Because native geewish words are always monosyllabic, the lexicon is very small. The language has a lot of possibility to create new semantic units out of words which take the place of compound words and multisyllabic vocabulary in indoeuropean languages. Lots of words are homophones, but they are far not so many as in chinese for example. One semantic unit "example: 'mhing'" has a connotationnal meaning which differs depending on the surrounding grammatical situation.

As a noun "mhing" means "care", and secondary "love".

As verb "ma mhing" means "to like", "to take care of", or "to love", the last would better be translated with "ma jo mhing"

In general the word building rules of Geewish are very flexible, geewish native speakers often create new vocabulary much more often then speakers of most european languages.

Example text
Au fe mi naak ljep ê gliik ku da wäx ê a düüf.

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

Lhen gê njä tsuut saak che in fe.

Geewish isn't spoken by many people.