Van Narvadæsi Primer v2
Over the past few days, I've returned to working on my overhaul and the updating of my working document for Van Narvadæsi. I've rewritten and added to my "primer" that I posted previously. I hope I've clarified some of the vocabulary (both real and invented) used, and I've done my best to include examples of each thing mentioned. It's still not 100% "layman's English," but then this is supposed to be an overview of the language and not strictly speaking a "lesson." This is probably most apparent when I talk about nouns and the absolutive and ergative cases. From an English-speaker's perspective, the ergativity and word order are probably the most difficult things to learn about this language, both are very different from standard conversational English (though there are stylistic versions of English that are similar i.e. "Yoda speak"). I'm doing a straight paste in from my Google doc, so some of the formatting may be a little wonky.
Well.. apparently the text was too much for LJ as I got a "post too large" error. Don't recall that ever happening before. I'm just posting the link to the Google Doc here; and listing changes here for posterity.
- ž pronunciation defined
- "tapped R" clarified
- dr phoneme acknowledged
- Possessive particle e removed
- na particle formally acknowledged as GENITIVE case
- adjective lists now favored over compounds
- -li now affixed only to last listed adjective
- habitual aspect removed (for now)
- adverbs now behave exactly like adjectives