Grammar Time
How to ask a question in Sanodian
It is certainly hard to deal with a language for very long without being to ask a question or two, so I am going to show you how the format of a question goes in this section. There are four classifications of questions each with its own word.
Inatian/Ina
This word ends a question when you know the person you are talking to and are familiar with the subject matter. Examples would be if you were asking your brother about your sister or your mom.
Ninatian/Nina
This is the word to use if you are unfamiliar with the topic of discussion, but know the speaker. For example, if I am talking about my brother about a trip he took to a place I haven't been, I would use this word.
Tanatian/Tana
This is the word you use when you neither know who you are talking to nor what they are talking about.
Nûtanatian/Nûta
This is the word to use if you are familiar with the topic of discussion, but are unfamiliar with the speaker. If I ran into some random person and both of us were very much into computers, I would use this word to ask questions because I know about computers, but I don't know the speaker.
As an aside, although there are the full names, the shorter ones tend to be seen more often.
I would like you to also note that there are no contractions in Sanodian. There is shorthand (like writing ina instead of inatian), but no contractions at all.
Now I know my ABCs: Intro to Sanodian Alphabet
This is the sanodian alphabet
| A "ah" | F "fah" | K "kah" | P "pahn" | U "oo" | Z "zahn" |
| B "bah" | G "jay" | L "lahn" | Q "ki" | V "vah" |
| C "sah" | H "hah" | M "mah" | R "rah" | W "wah" |
| D "dah" | I "ee" | N "nahn" | S "say" | X "eex" |
| E "uh" | J "jee" | O "oh" | T "tah" | Y "ee" |
This should be the what you need to know for spelling sanodian words aloud. There are some other characters that we use in Sanodian for representing certain vowels ounds as well. Here are a few:
- Û is used for "oo" sounds. "O" sounds like those found in "hoot" or "moo" or "shoe" in english use this character.
- Í is used for long "e" sounds. It is also used for long "i" sounds. That may sound confusing at the moment, but let us not forget that in sanodian, that long "i" sounds are translated as long "e" sounds in Sanodian.
Switch-a-roos: What's up with these letters?!
I couldn't very well let you get through all this without mentioning this topic. In Sanodian, the letters you use in English are sometimes switched around. Let's give you a list of those (as I know them).
- m and n.
- s (of soft "c") and hard c. This is important and will make your reading of many words very hard if you don't remember this.
- p and b.
- r and l (hats off to the japanese language even though that's not where we got it. :)
- g and j.
- f and v.
- t and d. Again, you need this one. This will make the language even harder to read than if you miss s and c.
Also note that there are absolutely no double consonants in Sanodian. For example, the word "class" would be transl(iter)ated as if it were "clas" and written as "srac."
Sanodian Vowels
How to deal with a diphthongs: "Whoa, Trigger..." what is a dipthong?
No need to fear. Although it looks like a weird word, diphthong is a real word. It is the sounds that a blended set of vowels and consonants make that sound like two different vowels slurred together (as best I can define it). If you would like to find another definition for it, feel free to visit dictionary.com and do a search for this word.
It would be a little bit easier to understand if I gave you some examples.
- How. This has a diphthong. The "ow" in how sounds like a blend of the english short "o" and long "u". In sanodian, this sound is written as ä.
- Few. This has a blending of long "e" and "u". You have to be careful.
- Christ. My favorite Person. If you don't know who this is and what that means for you email me. I would be more than happy to tell you. Going on. This has a blending of the sound "ah" and the long "e".
In Sanodian, there are some diphthong we break up and others we don't. The ones that we do break up are the ones where there is a distinct break in sound from one vowel to the next. "Few" is more distinct than "how" for instance. So where we would write Hä for "how", we might write viû for "few".
Vowel Summary
Here is a summary of the vowels rules as we have them in the language now.
- long "e" and long "i" sounds are written as í.
- long "a" sounds are written as ai.
- "Y" is what I am going to call a chameleon vowel. It is transl(iter)ated as whatever vowel it sounds like. Because of this, "y" will probably NEVER be seen as a Sanodian letter. :)
Sanodian Consonants
Other things (okay, so I am running out of section titles).
There are some words that end in consonant clusters. These consonants clusters tend to be ignored especially at the end of some words. Let's give you some examples where this may occur.
- Night. The "ght" here is not translated, so the word is Mí.
- Thought. The "th" here is transl(iter)ated as a "d", so the word would be Da.
- Doubt. The "bt" is written as a "t" sound, so Täd would be the word.
- Doing. The "ng" here is translated as an "n" sound, so Tûim would be word here.
**Please note: There are some "ng" sounds that are trans__literated__ as "mj" and sounds like "eemzh" ("zh" like in treasure). Long would be romj (rahmzh) for example.
Hope this helps.
Note: The editor would like to note that the possibility of transl(iter)ating ght as and "t" sound is being considered pending the possible confusion (without context) between words like "light" (lí) and "lie" (lí). If that were so, you would be looking at líd for light instead of lí.
A few odds n ends.
Translation is a combination of sound for sound and letter for letter as opposed to purely one or the other.
Note than the language as a whole is fairly structured at this point, but development continues; we are a work in progress. Stay tuned and check back for updates.
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