Nouns
The classic endings for nouns are -ov, -am, -iz, -en, -ur. Alternatively, typical nouns will end in a vowel. There is a substantial number of "irregular" nouns, however, the endings of which do not correspond to either of the foregoing descriptions.
Nouns denoting agency tend to end in either -nur or -tiz.
Nouns implying action, but not derived directly from verbs, often end in -(a)nta.
Nouns derived directly from verbs, especially gerunds (e.g., "his weakening led to our strengthening"), tend to end in -va.
Many nouns denoting abstract concepts end in -yoti. The nuance of this ending is akin to English endings -tion or -ness.
Writing and Spelling
This applies to the physical process of writing Vayoti in the Vayoti alphabet, which cannot yet be demonstrated on this site. But, for future reference:
The Vayoti alphabet was, apparently, developed on a "syllabic" concept. Nearly every consonant concludes in a "tail" at about the "middle" (what we would consider the top of a lower-case letter), custom-made to flow directly into any one of the five vowels, which of course begin at the same "middle” point. For an analogy, imagine writing a cursive lower-case “t” and from the crossbar of the “t” (not from the bottom!) flowing directly into a cursive lower-case “u”. An even better anaology is the word “be”, cursive, all lower-case.
Vowels, on the contrary, never connect to any following letter.
Thus, a hypothetical Vayoti word "balofiguze" would look to the English-speaker's untrained eye like five letters: ba lo fi gu ze, the "b" connecting with the "a" in what appears to be a single letter, likewise the "l" with the "o" and so on.
The exceptions are the following “tailless" consonants. They cannot be connected in writing to a following vowel or any other letter. Note that, because “s” is a tailless consonant, several other consonants incorporating “s” are likewise tailless:
ks
fs
ps
s
sp
sk
In this vein, note also that in Vayoti, there are many “single” letters representing sounds which we can represent in English only with a pair of letters (like sh, ch, ts). Consider, analogously, that our English “j” sound (joy, general) can only be represented in the alphabets of certain other languages by a combination of two letters, the first representing the d-sound, the next representing the zh-sound: “dzh”.
This is why the Vayoti alphabet contains so many more letters than the English one.. In Vayoti there are, besides the “normal” letters, distinct letters for each of these sounds: bl, br, bw, kl, kr, kw, kn, ks, dl, dr, dw, fl, fr, fw, fn, fs, gl, gr, gw, gn, gd, pl, pr, pw, pn, ps, sl, sr, sw, sm, sn, sp, st, sf, sk, tl, tr, tw, vl, vr, vw, vn, vz, zl, zr, zw, zn, zd, (a light guttural) kh, ch, zh, ts, sh, sht, shw, zhd, and perhaps the strangest to the English-speaker, mnr.
(Note: like English, Vayoti has as well its own “j[oy]” letter—a single letter, not a “dzh” combination.)
This long list of letters should not be intimidating. Frequently it is simply a matter of writing the basic letters, e.g., “f” and “l”, crunched together more closely to produce the single letter (“fl”). This is especially so with all the “combination letters” ending in -l or -w. “ks” and “fs” and “ps” are obvious mergers of k+s, f+s, and p+s.
The combination letters commencing with s- will require some habituation, as well as several other “unique”forms, among them kn, fn, gr, gn, gd, tr, zhd.
While the Vayoti letters kh, ch, zh, ts, sh and mnr may seem to the English-speaker to be “combination letters” because we represent the sounds with two or three letters in English, they are NOT combination letters in Vayoti. A true combination-letter in Vayoti is one based on two sounds for each of which there is a proper letter in its own right. Thus, “zhd” is a combination-letter, because there is a letter “zh” and a letter “d” in Vayoti. Likewise “sm”, because there is a letter “s” and a letter “m” and the letter “sm” is a separate letter combining these sounds. But the Vayoti letters kh, ch, zh, ts, sh and mnr are not considered combination-letters. “ch” is not a combination of two sounds, but a single sound, and letter, in Vayoti. Likewise with the rest—yes, even including, counter-intuitively, “mnr”, which the Vayoti-speaker conceptualizes NOT as a blend m+n+r but as a unique phoneme in its own right. This sound has ancient roots in a Proto-Indo-European semi-vocalic consonant.
On rare occasion, if the tail of a consonant interferes with the following letter, the tail can be left out.
If the tail of a consonant can comfortably flow into a following consonant, it is permissible. For instance, "n" is frequently found flowing directly into "t". The consonant "s", which itself does not flow into any other letter (it has no tail), is so formed that many other consonants naturally "want" to flow into it.
When three consonants are clustered together, these conventions are traditionally observed, though they are not rigid rules:
a. At the beginning of a word, the first sound (frequently s) is a single letter and the next two are a mixed letter; for example: s-pr; s-kl, s-tr.
b. Inside a word, it is the other way around: sp-r; sk-l, st-r.
c. There are exceptions to this rule, especially in connection with endings and suffixes. They do not, as a rule, present an "opportunity" to reconfigure single and mixed consonant letters, though such a reconfiguring may indeed already be evident in the word's established form.
In short, the lexical form of every word (as in any other language) has already been determined and fixed; it is not up to the writer to "decide" on this. Where there are irregular forms and "exceptions to the rule," they are fixed and "correct" in their own right.
Spelling Note: when the "gerunding" suffix –va is added to words already ending in –v, then the two v's are written out, i.e., vv, but they are pronounced as if there were a "doubling" accent over a single v, i.e., as a sustained but single consonant. They do not become separate syllables (v'v). For example: spenavva, which means "dependent."
Spelling Note: when the "gerunding" suffix –va is added to words already ending in –v, then the two v's are written out, i.e., vv, but they are pronounced as if there were a "doubling" accent over a single v, i.e., as a sustained but single consonant. They do not become separate syllables (v'v). For example: spenavva, which means "dependent."
Syntax
When modifiers are used as adverbs, they can be placed before the subject or after the entire ‘subject-verb phrase’ (which includes the subject, the time-determinant [in past and future] and of course the verb-with-suffix); you cannot break up the subject-verb phrase with a modifier.
Question words (who, what, why, etc.) can break the rule about subject-verb syntax! Before a verb they carry their simple meaning (e.g., Who is he? Why did you leave early?) But when they are placed between the negative particle ea and the verb, they take on a negative meaning, along the lines of “no one, nobody, nothing, never, no how”, etc.
An alternative method of expressing this is to use the word later in the sentence prefixed with op-. So, adding op- to fat (what) you get opfat, which means “nothing, nothing at all”. opk’fen means “never”, but k’fen also means “never” if it stands between ea and the verb. kan means “who?” but it means “no one” after ea, and opkan means “no one” if it’s used after the verb. Also, question words can have the “any-, -ever” sense if they are used without ea.
So, “he never speaks” can be:
di-n ea k’fen vazhi or di-n ea vazhi opk’fen
“Whenever he speaks” is opk’fen di vazhi
“Whoever speaks” – opkan vazhi
“Whatever he takes” – opfat di hapishzho
“What does he take?” - fat di hapishzho?
“He takes nothing” - di-n ea fat hapishzho or di-n ea hapishzho opfat
The word ngar has two meanings: it is an emphatic form of “because” (gar) and as such stands in the same place as it would if it were in the non-emphatic form, i.e., at the beginning of the phrase. But when ngar means “because of”, it stands after the word or phrase it refers to. So, “because of the rain” would go like this “the rain ngar…”. “Because of him” is dri ngar (note the use of the “accusative”, i.e., object-form of the pronoun – it is dri, not di).
In English we have these three ways of formulating an idea like the following:
1. Because he always finishes late… (e.g., my part of the job is always delayed.)
2. Because of his always finishing late…, etc.
3. Because of him always finishing late…, etc. (This is a colloquial and traditionally not very “correct” way of saying it.)
In Vayoti, numbers 1 and 3 exist, but number 2 doesn’t. And in general, formulation number 1 is far easier and to be preferred.
Version number 1 is formulated in Vayoti exactly the same way: “gar dri (always finishes late…)”. Or “ngar dri….”
Version number 3 (which we’ll call “version 2” in Vayoti, since there are only two!) goes like this, literally: “dri ngar ste always finishes late…, etc.” dri ngar expresses “because of him”; ste points to the following phrase as descriptive of “him”. This version is a bit more complicated, but it is also powerfully expressive.
