Laceyiami tėðaminia : lahīlam paijysa: view article

Laceyiam is the most spoken language on Calémere, mother tongue of 1.4 billion people in Laltīmāhia, which would otherwise not understand each other due to the sheer differences in their local speeches, all daughter languages of Laceyiam. It is the classical language of the Chlegdarim people and the sacred language of Yūnialtei believers all over the planet.
No other language on Calémere has such a large amount of native speakers or a similar past, present and future leading role.

It is written in its own script - the Chlegdarimė jīmaṃlīnë - but our course, aiming at Earthlings, will mainly use the standard romanization. Grammar-wise it is extremely inflected and uses lots of verbal conjugations and noun inflections, but despite their large number they have really few exceptions, which makes it much easier to learn.

[edit] [top]Greetings in Laceyiam — Laceyiami drātvitai

So let's start seeing how you'd greet someone in Laceyiam - after all, that's the beginning of all conversations!

The most commonly used greeting is surely śvāṣa when greeting a single person, śvāṣę when greeting many people. They are pronounced ['ɕva:ʂa] and ['ɕva:ʂɛ̤] respectively.
These are mainly seen as formal greetings, but are used in the sheer majority of cases. As a side note, they have a meaning apart from the greeting one: they mean "be blessed!" (they are singular and plural imperatives).
If you get on closely with someone, you may switch to the more colloquial greeting dėmba, pronounced ['de:mba].

Laceyiam also has another type of greeting, used when someone asks for you but you don't actually know him/her - that's the greeting you'd use when someone knocks at your door and you open. In that situation, you'd say iveya jāmi - ['iveja 'ɟ͡ʑa:mʲi].

When you - or someone else - is leaving, you'll have to say goodbye. The Laceyiam word for it is sārtamvilkā : [sa:ˤtamvʲiɴ̆'ka:].

The last set phrase we'll see now is not strictly a greeting, but it is extremely important too: how to say "thank you". What you actually say in Laceyiam is "my thanks", so lālia grėta : ['ɴ̆a:ɴ̆ʲa 'ge:ta].
From this word's spelling, we can already notice an important rule: when at the beginning of a word you find gr, you only pronounce the g and not the r. The same rule applies to word-initial kr. Anyway, if you don't remember that you don't have to pronounce it, don't worry: that is a feature of the Standard pronunciation, which is based on how speakers from Southern and more specifically Southeastern Laltīmāhia speak. Speakers from the Plains - which are a relative majority - do pronounce the r in kr and gr at words' beginnings. A peculiar variation is the one typical of people from the diocese of Kamiathāra, in the northwestern part of the Plains: they pronounce every instance of kr, gr and hr as a lengthened trill [ʀ:], even word-initially - they thank by saying ['ɴ̆a:ɴ̆ʲa 'ʀ:e:ta] ! (if you're wondering, hr is [ʁ] pretty much anywhere else in the Laceyiam-speaking world)

Let's get back to our words - I said lālia grėta means "my thanks". That does mean that, if you're speaking on behalf of more people, you'd logically say "our thanks", so liśā grėta : [ɴ̆ʲi'ɕa: 'ge:ta]. The actual use of this plural form, however, varies, and some speakers always use lālia grėta. Anyway it's more correct to use liśā grėta at least formally when the circumstances call for it.

And if someone thanks you, how would you say "you're welcome"? That's easy: you just say "that's not important", in Laceyiam cami sųjar : ['c͡ɕamʲi sṳ'ɟ͡ʑaɐ̯].

[edit] [top]I am, you are... — Jū, jīð...

Perhaps the most important verb to know is "to be". Like in many other languages, in Laceyiam it is irregular, too. We'll actually see it before looking at regular verbs, but as we'll go on with this course you'll notice 'to be''s irregularities are mostly because it's a somewhat "contracted" verb. Don't worry though - it's not a difficult one!

In Laceyiam you rarely use pronouns (I, you, he, she...), because the verb itself is enough to differentiate them. Just look at this:

English	Laceyiam	Pronunciation
I am	jū	['ɟ͡ʑu:]
You (singular) are	jīð	['ɟ͡ʑi:ð]
He/she/it is	jar	['ɟ͡ʑaɐ̯]
We are	jńām	['ɟ͡ʑɲa:m]
You (plural) are	jńāð	['ɟ͡ʑɲa:ð]
They are	jhis	['ɟ͡ʑʰis]

This is it! As you can see, all six forms are different from one another, so you don't have to explicitely add a pronoun. Are in English is not enough to tell who is the one doing the action - you, we, you all, or they - but in Laceyiam, for example, jhis can only mean "they are".

This does not mean that Laceyiam does not have pronouns; actually, it has much more of them than English! We'll see all of them as we progress with our course, though: let's keep it simple for now!

The most simple forms of the pronouns are these:

English	Laceyiam	Pronunciation
I	lāli	['ɴ̆a:ɴ̆ʲi]
You (singular)	teham	['teɦam]
He/she/it	tami	['tamʲi]
We	lika	['ɴ̆ʲika]
You (plural)	yuvah	['juvaɦ]
They	lahen	['ɴ̆aɦei̯ŋ]

[edit] [top]Sentences — Iyamunūtai

Now that we have the verb "to be" and the basic pronouns, let's try to do some sentences!

Let's start with how you'd introduce yourself: to say "my name is..." in Laceyiam there are two possibilities.:

Saying I am Martayinām (Martayinām has been found to be, statistically, the most common female name (and the most common overall) in Laltīmāhia): (lāli) Martayinām jū. As you can see, the pronoun is optional, and the verb comes as last in the sentence. This is an extremely important thing: apart from a few specific cases, the verb will always be the last element!
Saying My name is Martayinām: we've already seen in the phrase for "thank you" - which translates as "my thanks" - that "my" is lālia; as "name" in Laceyiam is hjyða ['ɕiða], the sentence will be lālia hjyða Martayinām jar - note again the verb as last: it's like saying "my name Martayinām is"!

This sentence might be followed by a comment like "That's a beautiful name!" - for "that's", a Laceyiam speaker would say "it's"; in this sentence the adjective "beautiful" will be translated as keiyālęe [kei̯'ja:ɴ̆eɦe], but we'll see how to form words like this in a later lesson. The sentence would then be: (tami) keiyālęe hjyða jar. Note that there's no word in this sentence that translates English "a".
Very important: do not try to translate the sentence "(the/that) name is beautiful" - as Laceyiam does not have a word for "the" you might be tempted to say a sentence like *hjyða keiyālęe jar, but that's not how it is said and it's a really bad mistake to make! Be patient: we'll see how to say it in a few lessons' time!

Some more easy sentences:

You are a (female) nurse ——> (teham) yalirahėlyńchia jīð.
It's a tiger ——> (tami) emīla jar.
We are heroes ——> (lika) kvyātai jńām (kvyātai ['kvja:tai̯] is the plural form of kvyāta, "hero").
You are (male) painters ——> (yuvah) hjūnøtumai jńāð (again, hjūnøtumai ['ɕu:nøtumai̯] is the plural of hjūnøtum, "(male) painter").
They are elephants ——> (lahen) chlāgei jhis.

To finish our first lesson, let's just see how we can translate another extremely important and easy English word: and.
To translate it in Laceyiam, we first have to distinguish between "and" between two nouns and "and" between two sentences - the first one is translated ta and comes after the second noun; the second one is translated sama and, like in English, is put between the sentences.

Let's take these three separate Laceyiam sentences:

(lāli) pūnëchia jū (I am a (female) worker).
(lāli) paṃlaura jū (I am a devout person).
(teham) ńältadvørmur jīð (You are a (male) monk).

Can we combine them in a single one? Of course we can! By using those two "and"-s, we can combine them as "I am a (female) worker and a devout person, and you are a male monk". The first "and" will be translated as ta; the second one as sama. Our complete Laceyiam sentence will then be:
(lāli) pūnëchia paṃlaura ta jū sama (teham) ńältadvørmur jīð.

Note that in Laceyiam there never is a comma before "sama".

That's much more than enough for now! That's surely been a long lesson but we've already covered the most basic parts of Laceyiam grammar and we've found some important set phrases for conversation. Next time out we'll focus more on grammar - Laceyiam is very different from English right from its roots, so that's going to be very important.

Sārtamvilkā!
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