Tensakutan

Tensakutan is the basic language of Tensakutans, the ancient magic-using people of Tensakuto. Tensakutans have something of a cultural affinity for self-expression and "putting one's own spin on things," and that tendency shows up in their language, which leaves itself open for personalization in a variety of ways.

Dialects
With the passage of time, dialects of Tensakutan have begun to die out, leaving the Central Tensakuto dialect as the most prominent one and the one this page focuses on. Recently, a special sort of quasi-programming language called Tekunan has surfaced that takes Tensakutan and alters its focus to feeding commands into technological systems. In many ways, it is a sort of restructured version of the Tensakutan language; it contains grammatical constructs needed for the systems it is used to operate, but also contains room for personalization.

Phonology
Tensakutan is pronounced somewhat similarly to Japanese and has a similar structure to its words. However, it does have distinct Ls and Rs.

Pronunciation Key - Vowels

Pronunciation Key - Consonants

Grammar
Tensakutan follows an SVO structure. One of the language's complexities is that it relies on hyphenated suffixes to carry across certain parts of meaning, such as verb tense. Also very important are the Personalization Suffixes, which allow the speaker to express how they feel about a topic or something being done. Currently the Personalization Suffixes focus on feelings and expressing tone (which is helpful when one is being sarcastic or being whimsical about something that would look dark at first glance); more may be added as the language develops and more ways to personalize languages come up.

Verb Suffixes
First, the verb-specific suffixes: Some sample words with the word yan, to run:

yan-a: It runs

yan-e: It will run

yan-i: It was running

The noun form turns verbs into nouns- gerunds, basically. To turn a verb into a noun, you add the suffix -n to it. So, to say "Running is a sport" in Tensakutan, you would say "yan-n se shun." Notice the lack of articles; Tensakutan does not use a, an, or the as English does.

Personalization Suffixes
Here is where Tensakutan gains some of its unique flavor. Tensakutan has a variety of suffixes used to express one's feelings on a topic or action. These suffixes are attached after the noun or verb they are about, but before the conjugations and before certain grammatical suffixes. If these are absent, a neutral feeling is implied; however, Tensakutans always include at least one suffix somewhere, because a completely emotionless sentence implies distant narration or something like textbook writing. These suffixes can also be called emotional suffixes. These suffixes can be stacked twice to establish the degree of a feeling. The degree after the first is not hyphenated. For example, -ya added once implies an everyday sort of contentment, while -yaya implies that the happiness is stronger than usual. Multiple suffixes can be added to express multiple feelings (the hyphens pick up again when feelings change), but generally people will express no more than three different emotions about a topic to avoid excessive wordiness. The emotion that is said first is the most prominent one.

It should be noted that placement of emotion suffixes is flexible; you can possibly place one suffix on different words and get the same meaning across, which adds to the personalization.

Personalization Prefixes
Certain expressions of feelings go before the word being referred to, specifically those regarding levels of respect. A lack of these prefixes indicates that there is no strong respect or disrespect for the object being referred to. An example phrase that uses both the suffixes and these prefixes would be "ka-mata-ya-fe-o." Literally translated, it would say "My mother, who I view with great respect and who gives me happiness and some fear." Of course, in a real translation, one would just say "my mother" and leave the connotations to be parsed out by the reader. At this point, one may wonder what that -o at the end signifies; that will come up shortly.

Ownership Suffixes
Suffixes denoting ownership come after the emotion suffixes. Your and their can be singular or plural; in the case of a singular their, it acts like "his or her" and can be used when gender is uncertain. When a noun is taking ownership of something in a sentence, the owned object must be right after the owner and have the appropriate suffix attached to it. For example, "Eiran's daughter" becomes "Eiran kon-ho."

Pronouns
Unlike the ownership suffixes, pronouns are different based on whether they are singular or plural. However, they do not vary based on whether they are subjects or objects. I and me are not pronouns per se, but are included in this table for reference.

Some example sentences featuring pronouns include:

Yun chan ryun-a me kya shala-ya-fu.

[You should bring me some water. (Ya and fu imply that there is both happiness and frustration concerning the topic of water.)]

Sha-ya ryun-i tan tanon-ya.

[They brought us paper. (As a side note about this sentence, you could possibly also write it "Sha ryun-ya-i tan tanon-ya" and get the same meaning; the focus of the happiness is simply changed from the people bringing the paper to the act of being brought paper. Also, that -ya after tanon is optional.)]

[Coming soon: passive, neJgation, adjectives/prepositions. Making plural nouns: -fei?]