lesson 2: nouns
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now that you know how ablaut works, let’s apply it to some nouns! Ablaut marks noun case, or the role that the noun/pronoun has in the sentence. Fynotek marks 4 cases:
- nominative case (subject; e.g. “she gave her pencil to me.”) is unmarked/implied.
- accusative case (direct object; e.g. “she gave her pencil to me.”) is marked with O ablaut.
- genitive case (possessive; e.g. "she gave her pencil to me.”) is marked with I ablaut.
- dative case (indirect object; e.g. “she gave her pencil to me.”) is marked with A ablaut.
because the ablaut marks what the noun is doing in the sentence, the noun can go almost anywhere in the sentence without the meaning changing.
in addition to ablaut, nouns can receive some suffixes, in the following order:
- plural number is marked with the suffix -ak.
- negation is marked with the suffix -ñy.
- modifiers can be suffixed onto the noun; more on this in lesson 5.
- possessive pronouns can be suffixed onto the noun; more on this in lesson 4.
finally, since some words have definitions in multiple parts of speech (for example, “hyr” means both “language” and “to speak”), you can attach the optional prefix “a-” to mark that a word is a noun. This can clear up ambiguity.
congratulations! now you can conjugate nouns in Fynotek!
homework (google doc)
vocab:
- ratas: to know, knowledge
- yla: small, a little
- ula: big, a lot
- hepwik: to want, wish
- masno: but, only