"Truly! — I didn't know to what extent they could jump!"
LESSON ONE — Basic Sentences
The basic Tceqli sentence is SVO, that is, subject-verb-object.
Generally, predicates (all words apart from grammar particles and names) in Tceqli may be nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, or prepositions, depending on their use in a sentence. For example, the word "dan" means in, inside (from French dans):
dandjin da kom banana. The inside guy is eating a banana.
dan - in, used as a preposition.
dan dom, fawl da kom banana. In the house, the bird is eating a banana.
go dan - I am inside (something).
"da" introduces a verb phrase. It is just the Ceqli word for the 3d person pronoun, and it is usually used, much as the same pronoun is used in French, even after the subject of the sentence has already appeared:
djino da dan. - the man is-inside. (Note, in English we have to use "is", but in Ceqli, "dan" carries that meaning.)
Think of Hercule Poirot talking: "The man, he is inside."
However, you don't have to use da if a tense marker is there instead, because it suffices to show the beginning of a verb phrase. The tense markers are pa do fu.
djino pa dan. - The man was inside.
djino do dan. - The man is (now) inside.
djino fu dan. - The man will be inside.
These markers can behave like adjectives, meaning "past, present, future;"
to pa kay fu kiqo. The once and future king.
dasa pasa zbano. or dasa pazbano. Her ex-husband.
padey, dodey, fudey. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
In fact, you can leave da out in any case, provided that there is no risk of ambiguity.
djino dan - The man is inside.
Some basic vocabulary:
dan - in, inside from French "dans"
dom - house from Russian/Latin — also English "domestic"
go - I or me (note that it's a GW, as are the following pronouns)
zi - you from German "Sie"
da - he, she, or it (above I stated that "da" introduces a verb phrase. All pronouns do.) from Logan "da"
gozi - we (inclusive) this is an example of compounded GW's.
goda - we (exclusive)
fawl - bird English "fowl"
tcawal - rice Hindi "cawal"
kom - to eat Spanish "comer"
djan - to know Hindi "janna"
sa - a separator GW. It indicates that two morphemes do not form a compound, but that the first modifies the second. Also separates phrases.
do, pa, fu - modifier GW's, meaning, respectively, "now, before, after"
srem - to live, be alive Russian "smer'", meaning "dead", the falozim reversed in spelling to signify "alive."
dwel - to live in the sense of "inhabit" English "dwell"
djin - person Japanese "jin"
ten - to have, possess Spanish "tener"d
dja - to go from Hindi
fa - to cause, make (used like Esperanto "igi") from Romance far- root
ho - to begin or become. from Hindi
spun - spoon English "spoon" (hereafter, when a Ceqli word is obviously an English borrowing, I won't bother to point it out)
zu - to use English "use" reworked
to - the
te - a
These last two words are "articles," and may be used or left out in Ceqli.
And now, some sentences:
janzo zu te spun sa kom te tcawal. - John uses spoon (separator particle) eats rice.
This isn't how it's done in English. The basic sentence, janzo kom te cawal. is fairly straightforward. The te like to signifies that what follows it is a noun phrase.
But how does he eat the rice? We need to show how by modifying the verb phrase. We do so with another verb phrase, zu te spun, "using a spoon." And to prevent the spun from combining with kom, we must use sa.
Now, if we don't use sa, we have:
janzo zu te spun kom te cawal.
Which is all right, too. The sa isn't there to prevent the compounding of spun and kom, but in normal speech, there's little likelihood of any misunderstanding. And the sentence can be translated:
John uses spoon, eats rice.
John uses a spoon to eat rice.
John eats rice using a spoon.
Also, it's possible to form a compound word, spunzu, meaning "spoon-use" or "spoon-using," and is effectively an instrumental case.
janzo spunzu kom te tcawal
Go on to Lesson 2
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