Tu-gehena

Tu-gehena is a SVO language and an Ergative-Absolute language. Case is declined as prefixes while number is declined in the article. Verbs are also conjugated for person and mood as prefixes, but voice is inflected as article.

Setting
Tu-gehena literally translates "the tongue" (but in the abstract gender). It is the language of the (fictional) Du-Zhenu people; a tribe that lived in Europe before the Indo-European invasion. It had no alphabet but one is listed here based on the Latin alphabet.

Vowels
The diphthongs are oy /oj/, ay /aj/, ey /ej/, ao /aw/ and uy /wi:/.

Phonotactics
Every letter is pronouned phonetically and only represent one sound. Long vowels are indicated by an apostrophe. A word cannot begin in an vowel. Most words are a simple C(C)V(C)(C) system. Stress falls on the penultimate sylable.

Basic Grammar
Nouns:

Tu-gehena has four genders: masculine, feminine, neuter, and abstract, whose nominative endings are u, e, o, and a, respectively. Every noun in Tu-gehena is precieded by an article which determines its number and definativeness. A noun apears as an article, hyphon, then the noun. These are the six articles:

Nouns are also declined by case. The seven cases in Tu-gehena are nominative, vocative, genitive, accusative, dative, instrumental, and locative. A plurality of mixed gendered people defaults to the masculine. Here is how they are declined:

Adjectives:

Adjectives agree with their noun in gender, number, and case. They are declined as such:

Comparatives + Superlatives:

Adverbs:

Adverbs can be formed from adjectives' absract case and "-a".

Example:

New: Fe'zhen

Newly: Fe'zhia

Verbs:

Verbs have two articles which represent the active and passive moods. They are ro- and gno-, respectively. Verbs also inflect for tense (Perfect, Imperfect, present, and future), represented by -i'-, -e'-, -a'-, and -o'-. Verbs can also take a habitual aspect by placing the auxiliary word "ye" before or after the verb. They also inflect for person as shown below:

Perfect:

Imperfect:

Present:

Future:

Conditional:

Infinatives:

Infinatives can be formed by ending a verb in "-oy"

Example of a verb: Ro-maaloy-to love, Ro-maala'g-I love.

Imperative: 

Imperative commands end in -i'k'haa

Participles:

Participles end with the appropriate vowel for the tense followed by: -ba- and the appropriate adjective ending.

Gerunds:

Gerunds can be formed by replacing the verbal article with a noun article and adding an abstract ending. Example: Ro-maaloy becomes Tu-maala.

Supines:

The supine is made by conneting the main verb and the infinative of the supine verb and placing -g'hu-, "for", in between them. Example: I love to be loved: Ro-maala'g-g'hu-gno-maaloy.

Pronouns:

Reflective: Li'

Indefinate: Wi'

Declining Pronouns

Pronouns are declined simply by adding the appropriate ending: -s, -n, -y, -t, and -m for genitive, vocative, dative, instrumental, and locative, respectively. Ergative and Absolute are identical for pronouns so word order is necessary. Pronouns have no article because their number is obvious.

Copula:

The copula ye'toy "to be" has no article. Perfect:

Imperfect:

Present:

Future:

Conditional:

Example text
This is a simple daily Du-Zhenu prayer to one of their gods, He'fnu.