Proto-Vidar: A beginner's conlanguage

[misora]

Proto-Vidar is my first conlanguage, and it is currently on its second revision.

Proto-Vidar is a SOV slightly agglutinating language and slightly isolating language. It has 3 tenses and 4 moods.
Tenses
Present: Used to denote an action happening now, or within the past two minutes.
Past : Used to denote actions that happened in the past.
Future : Used to denote actions you will do, but have not done yet.

Moods
Indicative: Used to tell a listener that an action truly happened.
Progressive: Used to tell a listener that an action is currently happening, or happened over a long period of time.
Subjunctive: Used to tell a listener that an action may have happened, or some you hope will happen. It also deals with wishes.
Imperative: Used to give the listener/listeners a command, or a suggestion based on tone.

The verbs themselves aren't really conjugated, but you add affixes, and prefixes to them in order to create the conjugated form.
When conjugating a verb the order is past tense, verb, mood, present/future, person
Here's a list of verb affixes and prefixes.
-an volitional marker for r verbs
-di he/she/it/they marker for all verbs.
-go first person marker for r verbs
-kan present tense marker for r verbs
-in indicative marker for r verbs
-l indicative marker for l verbs
-kon present tense marker for l verbs
-non volitional marker for l verbs(cut off the l for this one)
-i Subjunctive mood indicator for r verbs
-ia first person indicator for l verbs
-il turns verbs into nouns for r verbs
ira- past tense for l verbs.
-ka Subjunctive mood indicator for l verbs
o- past tense marker for r verbs.
-oni Imperative mood indicator for r verbs
-vor imperative mood indicator for l verbs
-to future tense indicator for all verbs

It has a relatively large number of consonants.
The consonants are
Plosives: p/b/t/d/k/g
Fricatives: f/v/s/z/ʃ
Liquids:ll(ɭ)/ ɹ/l
Nasals: m/n/ŋ
approximate: j
The basic Vowels of the language are /i/a/u/o/e/I/ɛ

I'll be back later with more on grammar and the vocabulary.

[Dezinaa]

Welcom to the CBB, misora! I like your language so far.

It has a relatively large number of consonants.
The consonants are
Plosives: p/b/t/d/k/g
Fricatives: f/v/s/z/ʃ
Liquids:ll(ɭ)/ ɹ/l
Nasals: m/n/ŋ
approximate: j
The basic Vowels of the language are /i/a/u/o/e/I/ɛ

I like your phonology. You've arranged the consonants in a good way.
Usually, phonemes go in /slashes/ and the orthography, which is how the phonemes are written, goes in <angle brackets>.

Also, for the list of verbal affixes, I noticed that you don't have markers for 2nd person singular (you), 2nd person plural (you (all)), and 3rd person plural (they). You show markers for 1st person, but are they 1st person singular or plural?

And if you don't understand what I just said, feel free to ask questions.

[misora]

Ohh, thanks for pointing that out. I will also make the list a little more navigable.

Person
-di he/she/it marker for all verbs.
-da They marker for all verbs
-go first person marker for r verbs
-ia first person marker for l verbs
-goshu First Person plural marker for r verbs(inclusive)
-goshi First Person plural marker for r verbs(exclusive)
-ian First Person plural marker for l verbs(inclusive)
-io First Person plural marker for l verbs(exclusive)
-ni Second Person marker for all verbs(informal)
-nin Second Person plural marker for all verbs(polite)

Tenses
-kan present tense marker for r verbs
-kon present tense marker for l verbs
ira- past tense marker for l verbs.
o- past tense marker for r verbs.
-to future tense marker for all verbs

Moods
-in indicative marker for r verbs
-l indicative marker for l verbs
-oni Imperative mood marker for r verbs
-vor imperative mood marker for l verbs
-i Subjunctive mood indicator for r verbs
-ka Subjunctive mood marker for l verbs
-an progressive marker for r verbs
-non progressive marker for l verbs(cut off the l for this one)

Extra
-il turns verbs into nouns for all verbs

Now for Vocab and Word Order
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jm1z864ok8jdj ... y.rtf?dl=0 (The Dictionary for Proto-Vidar will be updated as often as I can)

Vidar word order is fairly simple, as is spelling.
Most the sounds in Proto-Vidar are spelled with their IPA designation, except ʃ, I, ɹ, and ɛ
ʃ = sh
I = y
ɹ = r
ɛ is an allophone of e and the difference between them is that ɛ comes in the middle of the word and e comes at the beginning or end of the word.
There are no silent letters in Vidar and there is no distinguishing between tone, or and vowel length.
The Basic word order for Vidar is again SOV, but can be changed to SVO for poems and other literary works.
Nouns don't modify form and there are no cases in Proto-Vidar.
Adjectives attach to the beginning of the word they modify with the order Color;Beauty;Size;Goodness;Number
If an adjective ending in a vowel and a noun beginning in a vowel come together, add an n to the end of the adjective, same with adjectives coming together.
If you use two verbs in a sentence like I went to see my neighbor the verb to see comes after go and is not conjugated
Example : zalvomanovinu(ovinu = neighbor, zalvoma = shy, hard to reach out to, unsocial.)
Example sentence: zalvomanovinu ozeringo dir.(Shy neighbor went(first person, indicative, past) to see)

[misora]

Today we go over nouns, and noun related words/objects.

I've found that in most every European language I have looked at, that they have plurals. I have also looked at a few asian languages and discovered that plurals tend to be more common than I thought they were. Proto-Vidar doesn't usually use plurals, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

In order to form a plural in Proto-Vidar you add i- to the start of the noun if it begins with a consonant and im- if it begins with a vowel.
Note- plurals are typically ignored in colloquial speech, but are always adhered to in formal speech.

Another thing found in European and other languages is a system of classifying nouns, like feminine, masculine, inanimate, animate. Proto-Vidar is like English where there is no obvious system for classifying nouns.

In the word order of Proto-Vidar a noun may never end a sentence outside of poetry and song.

Adjectives

I have just a few notes about adjectives right now

Adjectives do not change form based on number or people.
Adjectives always attach to the front of a word, but do not affect syllables, unless the n is added, in which the n is added to the syllable it is in front of.

(PS: Any questions, comments, or constructive criticism is welcomed with open arms)

[misora]

Adjectives and Verbs and postpositions

In Proto-Vidar there are a number of postpositions, but no prepositions. This is because of grammar changes over the history of the language. Originally the word for then was a preposition, but slowly it changed to become a postposition because the rest of the conjunctions were postpositions.

Koshi is and, but it is only used for connecting clauses.
Konai is and, but it is only used to connect nouns.
Kishi is but, it is only used to contrast never to express impossibility.
Kaoshi is but, it is used to express impossibility.
Kaina is then, it is used exactly like english then.
Kinai is than, it is used to tell when something is better than something else.

Adjectives
An adjective can be turned into a stative verb by taking off the end, if it ends in vowel, and adding or, but if it ends in a consonant you just add or. They can be turned into adverbs by adding e/en to the beginning of the adjective.

Verbs
Verbs have a vestigial form of stress on them from Proto-proto-vidar. They are also the only words that can have more than 4 syllables in Proto-Vidar. The system of stress works like this, the second vowel gets the stress, but only if there are less than two consonants after it, if there are two consonants the final vowel gets the stress.

Nouns in Proto-Vidar are unstressed, as are adjectives, and the verb system is being phased out in colloquial speech.

[misora]

So, I have a question. Do most SOV natlangs have cases for nouns, or do they rely on word order more?

[misora]

So, after trying to write in my conlang, and translate to it. I have decided that it needs some way to distinguish between a direct object, and a indirect object within a phrase. I thought on it some more and based on my scattered notes on how the language evolved I decided that it would work better to have a few Japanese-esque particles that denote the indirect and direct object.

This is just an intermediary form for now, but I decided that ko could denote the indirect object and do the direct object. These would follow the word they are connected to within the sentence. These would've split off from an earlier post-position that would have split off around 100 years before the current year, because of the priests efforts at centralizing Proto-Vidar.

[misora]

I have been thinking on this for a while and have decided the age, latitude/longitude, and area where Proto-Vidar developed as a language.

The Vidarese originally lived at a latitude/longitude that would equate to modern day Austria. The area where they live is in the middle of a much larger continent, but it is not desert, or steppe, but temperate plains. There are 5 major rivers that run through the plains where the Vidarese live. Two of the rivers run to the ocean and the other three empty into a large inland sea approximately 600 miles south of the Vidar plains. There are mountains that surround the greater portion of the plains, but there are two gaps that open up in the south to the steppes where the nomads live. The plains cover approximately 380 Sq miles of land in total.

The Vidarese were originally hunter-gatherers that were forced to build protective settlements around their huts in order to protect themselves from encroaching nomads towards the end of this world's stone age/beginning bronze age. Eventually this lead to them settling down and creating fortified permanent settlements along the river banks of the Vidar plains. Because they settled on the banks of the rivers they soon found themselves in contact with the Bucreta, who were a relatively large trading empire. The Vidarese originally had no organized religion, but once they met the Bucreta they quickly developed their own organized religion with lots of elements of the Bucreta's Monotheistic religion. The Bucreta also taught them how to organize and maintain a standing army of well trained soldiers. They also learned how to mine and smelt tin and copper in order to make bronze weapons and tools from the Bucretas.

The Vidarese worship a single god, who has no official name. They believe that life is sacred and that their creator created them to admire his great creations on a level greater than the other species. Their religion is highly organized and controls some aspects of daily life, such as praying before a meal, and giving a small amount of grain, which they use as a currency, to the church every month. The Vidarese are not ruled by their religion, but instead are ruled by a group made of up elected officials in the style of the Bucreta.

[Micamo]

So, I have a question. Do most SOV natlangs have cases for nouns, or do they rely on word order more?

Apparently, yes. As we can see here, VO languages with case systems exist, but are vastly outnumbered by OV case languages.

[misora]

So, I have a question. Do most SOV natlangs have cases for nouns, or do they rely on word order more?

Apparently, yes. As we can see here, VO languages with case systems exist, but are vastly outnumbered by OV case languages.

Ohh, thank you very much for answering my question. Now that I look at the statistics and how hard it can be to form sentences in Proto-Vidar, I do believe a few noun cases are in order, once I research them of course.

[misora]

After doing a few hours of research and looking over some sample sentences in a few other SOV languages, I believe that I have narrowed down the giant list of cases you find on Wikipedia with little to no explanation for them.

Proto-Vidar has three different categories of nouns, not quite genders in Proto-Vidar, but they might become them in its daughter languages. The first category is a nouns, which end in a, i, or e, the second is u nouns that end in u, or o, and third are the consonental nouns, which of course cover all the nouns that end in a consonant.

The cases of Proto-Vidar are as follows:

Nominative: This is used to denote the subject of the sentence, and it also is used to create the dictionary form of a word. This cases almost always comes before the verb.

Accusative: This is used to denote the direct object of a sentence, or a phrase. This case can occur before or after a verb, but normally before.

Indirective: This is used to denote the indirect object of a sentence, although it is not normally required it does exist. This case is slowly being phased out of the language in favor of not using a case to denote the indirect object.

Locative: This is used to denote the location of an object in space. Such as whether it is in or on an object.

I will add the declension tables later on today, or tomorrow.

[misora]

Time for declension tables and one more case that I decided we need in the language for grammar purposes.

Genitive: It is used to show that someone/something is possessed by another, the typical order is the possessor then the thing that is possessed. Both the possessor and the possessed are declined to this case. This case also takes precedence over all other cases.
Vocab:
Anvau = Anvil
Epi = Pen
Ko = I(not used for conjugating, but is used to determine object status, and possessor status.)
Ri = she
Ki = he
Yut(Iut) = Buckwheat
Now for the declensions for cases:
U nouns:
Anvau = The anvil
Anvat = I took the anvil
Anval = by the anvil, with the anvil, for the anvil
Anvai = on the anvil, at the anvil, in the anvil
Kok Anvan = My anvil
A nouns:
Epi = the pen
Epir = I took a pen
Epira = By the pen, For the pen, With the pen
Epis = On the pen, at the pen, in the pen
Kok epik = my pen
--------
Ko = I
Kor = Me
Kora = by me, for me, with me
Kos = On me, at me, in me
Kok = my

Consonantal nouns:
Yut = The buckwheat
Yuti = I cut buckwheat
Yutes = By the buckwheat, For the buckwheat, With the buckwheat
Yuta = On the buckwheat, in the buckwheat, at the buckwheat
Kok yutik = My buckwheat

Rir gellkonia.
She.GEN Love(sexually).PRSNT.FRST
I love her.

[misora]

This time I come with more info on the people who speak Proto-Vidar.

I realized I had just barely gone over their religion, which just doesn't do it the justice it deserves.
Their religion revolves around a single god, whose influence can be seen in every living thing, and stuff such as the weather or the outcome of a battle. A coming saying for soldiers is "May the god favor us.".
Their god is known for being kind of a trickster, preferring to keep his preferences unknown even to the church. He is known to the vidarese as the bringer of the times of plenty, being spring and fall, because the climate where they live is best for agriculture during those seasons.

Now their military:

The vidarese are incredibly proud of their martial abilities, with the average vidar male being around 5'11 in height and stronger than average. The vidarese prefer to fight with heavy infantry and archers, rather than the pikes that the bucreta prefer. Their main enemies are the nomadic tribes to their south which use lightly armored infantry and horsemen during their raids. Recently the vidarese had a very successful military campaign versus the nomads which pushed them back from the openings into the plains and gave the vidarese a lot more fertile land to farm wheat and apples on.

The diet of the vidarese:
The vidarese raise a number of different farm animals namely horses, cows, and pigs which are cooked and eaten in large numbers during the summer and winter. During the spring and fall they eat a number of different vegetables ranging from cucumbers to cabbage. Bread is also an incredibly import stable pf their diet, because during their holy week they can only eat bread, beef, and fish.

[misora]

Over the past few days, I have been working on reworking the dictionary of Proto-Vidar, removing some of the English influence and making it more navigable by adding noun, verb, adjective, and adv markers to the entries for words. There are about 50 words in the dictionary so far, and I don't know if I should make an index of cases and verb affixes at the bottom of it.

The new dictionary is also in doc format and not rtf, which should be easier to open and store.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nurkjgljztslw ... 0.doc?dl=0

[misora]

Sorry about another post so soon, but I have a lot of free time today, and I thought I would bring you guys an organized translation/gloss of a quick letter to a young soldier's girlfriend.
Also, I discovered while doing this that I am missing a case that denotes movement, which is rather short-sighted of me.
The last case will be the Momentive case(based on momentum)
U nouns
Anvauk
A nouns
Epito
Consonantal nouns
Yutol

Brito, jor akellkongo jir govor. Furunda joto ki bir otorintogo. Linukivom jotorintogo. Jora, Lium.
Hello, you-ACC 1stp-ask-PRE-IND wait-INF patiently. Long time you-Momentive not be 1stp-return-FUT-IND. Large amount money-ACC 1stp-bring-FUT-IND. You-Indirective, Lium.

[misora]

Another lesson for Proto-Vidar, forming the negative form of a verb, or adjective.
In Proto-Vidar there is a word ki that roughly equates to not/without in English. It is placed before the word it modifies for a verb, or it is added to the end of adjective. From my sentence Furunda joto ki bir otorintogo, the ki bir means to not be, referring to the adjective furunda which means a long time. Ki ozeringo means I didn't go, whereas ki zerintogo would roughly mean I won't go. Pusaki would be not morbid. On a noun it means without, like the Proto-Vidar saying "Ganararki irapillgo." meaning literally I ate without bread, but in usage it means your host was a bad host, because bread is a staple in vidar society.

[misora]

Numbers in Proto-Vidar, are perhaps a little hard to get used to, having been the least affected by sound changes out of anything in the language. Proto-Vidar has a mixed base-5 base-10 number system, where you have a unique numbers for 1-5, 100, 1,000, and 1,000,000. In order to form 6-10 you take five and add the number above five it is, minus the ai ending, as all basic numbers end in ai, but 9 is irregular, because ai+o is considered hard to pronounce you simply drop the o. To form numbers like 20, you would take the number, remove the ai ending and attach it to the number ten. Same with forming numbers like 200, 300, 400, 2,000, 3,000,000.
1 = Kistai
2 = Luvai
3 = Juai
4 = Orunai
5 = Sunai
6 = Sunaikist
7 = Sunailuv
8 = Sunaiju
9 = Sunairun
10 = Sunaisun
11 = Sunaisun kistai
12 = Sunaisun luvai
20 = Luvsunaisun
40 = Orunsunaisun
100 = Kivai
105 = Kivai Sunai
110 = Kivsunaisun
112 = Kivsunsaisun luvai
1,000 = Rolai
1,105 = Rolkivai sunai
1,000,000 = Shinai

[misora]

Another lesson!
When talking about other people, using the 2nd person plural form with them is considered rude, not polite.
Using I in it's nominative form is also considered condescending in Proto-Vidar

Also, I thought it would be nice to give you guys a concrete reference for the declensions and conjugations for the verbs, instead of boring old lists that might be hard to memorize, this will be in the form of part of a conversation(to be completed at a later date, when I have more grammar completed.) example conversation in Proto-Vidar with a linguistic and cultural gloss! The ni in the sentences below is basically a list particle, it is used when listing things that go together, or make an incomplete list.

Merchant greeting a customer, "Brito, arolkakanni béso?"
Hello, live.SUB.PRE.S healthy?
Hello, are you living healthily, this is the standard casual greeting that the Vidarese use with each other, it is polite for most situations.
Customer, "Lu arollkango béso. Kau menollkanni?"
Yes live.IND.PRE.FRST Healthily. What sell.IND.PRE.S?
Basically, Yes, I live healthily. What do you sell here?
Merchant, "Krietar ni koruner ni kart ni menollkango.
Bread.ACC , Pear.ACC , Meat.ACC sell.IND.PRE.FRST
This represents, a list mainly. In Proto-Vidar you use the particle ni to list things that go together, or make up an incomplete list.
That's all for now, I will add to it as I come up with more words and more time.

[misora]

So, I have spent the last week or two detailing some of the history of the Vidar.
The dating system starts with the creation of the city-states of the bukreta.
Another thing is horses don't exist in this world, there are some familiar animals, but many are different and I will give a brief explaination of what they look like.

Decades 0 - 15: language forms from proto-plains, Vidarese hunter-gatherers forced out of the forests by the plains because of increasingly hostile nomadic people who settled near them.

Decades 16 - 18 The Vidar settle down and transition to a more agricultural lifestyle, eventually building cities around the rivers. First inter-vidar wars fought between city-states. Bronze is discovered by accident, although it is not the first time it was discovered on this planet. Vidarese domesticate the Eleri[a red skinned bovine-esque animal that is relatively docile, it weighs around 500 lbs on average and is around 5 Feet tall and 8.56 ft long. It also doesn't have horns.]

Decades 19 - 22 First contact with other civilized people, first trade routes to Vidar start. First large scale mining of gold/silver/tin/copper/zinc begin in order to better trade with the other civilizations. Buckwheat, and Barley domesticated. First major outside war against people outside the Vidarese plain, leads to a large scale slaughter of the nomads. First settlements outside the plains begin. First metal coin minted.

Decades 23-26 Vidar city-states unite in a light union of their domains, they remain largely independent, but are required to provide troops and money to the state. Settlements outside the valley become large enough to be considered towns/cities.

Decades 27-30 Second major war with outside people over a territory dispute. The Vidarese lose lose several outside cities in resulting peace.

[misora]

I was looking back through my posts and I realized that I did an absolutely horrible job of defining the declension types of Proto-Vidar.
Also, I have noticed a lot of inconsistencies with words, that's because I forgot to note some of them down and subsequently forgot they exist, same thing with the ending of the original momentive case.

The U nouns end in the vowels u, y, or o, the A nouns end in a, i, or e, and of course the consonantal nouns end in consonants.
The full declension list for U nouns is:
Nominative: This is the basic form of the word ending in u, y, or o.
Accusative: For nouns that have a vowel before the u, o, or y you discard the u, y, or o and replace it with t, if it just ends in one of those vowels you add the t to the end without replacing the vowel.
Indirective: Same thing as above, but this time with l
Locative : you add the vowel i to the end of the word.
Genetive: You add k to the end of the word.
Momentive: you add s to the end of the word

(I will be back to edit this as school is officially starting 1 minute)