Basic Rules: Pronouns and Lexical Catagories

Samples for this section can be downloaded at this site.

Word Order

Rishlao is a SOV language.  In other words, the subject of the sentence is first, followed by the object of the sentence or what the verb acts on, and last is always the verb.  A sentence can consist of just a verb, but generally the verb cannot be omitted.  Certain words must come at the beginning of the sentence or phrase (last week, long ago, etc.) and particles come after the word they modify.

Thus, a simple sentence is thus:

Kaco li meku. (Literally, There exists a cat. Or Is a cat.)

The sentence consists of a noun (kaco) followed by a subject indicating particle (li), and ending with the verb.

Lexical categories

Generally, words in certain categories will end with the same ending, at least when in dictionary form.  Verbs will end in -u, nouns in -o, adjectives in -e, and adverbs in -i.  However, this is not a hard and fast rule: many determiners, particles, and other function words have varied endings.  However, any noun can be turned into a verb or adjective by changing the ending.

Gender

There is only gender when it comes to personal pronouns and possibly adjectives.

Adjectives become gendered when describing animate object when the gender is known (if unknown, you use a neutral adjective).  When gendering an adjective, then the gender vowel is added before the -e.  Masculine is -a and feminine is -i.  Therefore, a beautiful (ridre) cat is ridrae kaco, when it is a male cat and ridrie kaco when it is a female cat.

Generally, male names end in -a, and female names end in -i.  Neutral names might be used for hermaphrodites and transsexuals, or when naming an inanimate object such as a country or natural phenomenon (Hurricane Irene).

Pronouns

Personal Pronouns

There are several personal pronouns which conjugate for gender when referring to animate objects (it does not conjugate for gender when referring to inanimate objects).  In formal situations, ki- may be added to the beginning of the pronoun to make it formal.  This formality is situational and does not correspond to social status.  The following chart illustrates these pronouns.

	Male	Female	Neuter
I	pea	pei	Pe
You	Mea	mei	Me
That person (he, she)	shea	shei	She
That (non-human animate object)	lea	lei	le
Inanimate object			he
Us	fea	fei	fe
they	pra	pri	pre

A special note should be made to the pronoun he, which references an inanimate object and corresponds to the English it.  Though it corresponds to it, it only refers to an actual thing.  In English, it is often used and doesn’t always mean anything: in Rishlao this usage is not permitted.

Other Pronouns

The following are further pronouns.  A chart is provided for checking the corresponding English meaning.  Query pronouns are generally at the front of a sentence or statement.

Type	Query	This	That	Some	None	Every
Adjective	which	This	That	Some	No	Every
Person	Who	This (one)	That (one)	Someone	No one	Everyone
Thing	what	This (one)	That (one)	Something	Nothing	Everything
Place	Where	Here	There	Somewhere	Nowhere	Everywhere
Time	when	Now	Then	Sometime	Never	Always
Way	how	This way	Thus	somehow	No way	everyway
Reason	why

Type	Query	This	That	Some	None	Every
Adjective ci	doci	deci	heci	Reci	neci	lici
Person desho	dodesho	dedesho	she	redesho	nedesho	life
Thing he	dohe	dehe	he	rehe	nehe	lihe
Place peshi	dopeshi	depeshi	hepeshi	repeshi	nepeshi	lipeshi
Time toki	dotoki	detoki	hetoki	retoki	netoki	litoki
Way saka	dosaka	desaka	hesaka	resaka	nesaka	lisaka
Reason na	dona