Tzenejri

Tzenejri is an agglutinative conlang.

History

Tzenejri belongs to small group of languages known to Jen linguists as the Chem languages. Currently, Tzenejri is the only remaining language of this group (Chendash was a fairly common language spojen as recently as 150 years ago in the west of Tzenej, but it was displaced and died out).

Tzenej has in the past spent many years under the rule of foreign powers, and the language reflects this. For example, the "g" sound was not in the language until the country was conquered by the Anik Empire (as such, most common words do contain a "g" sound). Tzenejri has also borrowed certain words from Qazal, the language of neighbouring Qazan.

Phonology

Alphabet

The Tzenejri alphabet, translated to Latin characters, is:

a â ch d e f g h i j k l m n o ô p r s sh t tz u û v w y z '

Consonants

Letter	IPA symbol(s)
ch	tʃ
d	d, ɾ
f	f
g	ɡ
h	X
j	dʒ, ʒ
k	k, x
l	l
m	m
n	n, ɲ
p	p
r	ɹ, ɻ
s	s
sh	ʃ
t	t
tz	ts
v	v
w	w, ʍ
y	j
z	z
'	ʔ

ch: as in "chip".
h: more pronounced than in English, used in Hebrew and Arabic.
j: usually pronounced like 'j', as in "jump", but sometimes pronounced like the 's' in "treasure".
k: usually pronounced like a normal 'k', but rarely pronounced like the 'ch' in "loch".
n: rarely pronounced like the ñ in "piñata".
sh: as in "shop".
tz: like the 'ts' in "tsunami".
': glottal stop, found in the middle of the term "uh-oh".

All other consonants are pronounced the same as in English.

Vowels

Letter	IPA symbols (s)
a	æ
â	eɪ
e	ɛ
i	iɪ, i
o	ɒ
ô	əʊ
u	ə, ʌ
û	uɪ

a: as in "attic"
â: as in "maze"
e: as in "met"
i: as in "mania"
o: as is "top"
ô: as is "zone"
u: as in "bun"
û: like the oo in "boot" or "room"

Grammar

Tzenejri is an agglutinative language, which expresses changes to a word (such as tense, plural, etc.) as affixes to that word rather than changing it internally (e.g. in English, the past tense of "I do" is "I did"). It is close to an isolating langauge though, since all of the affixes are words in their own right. There is no case system, no grammatical genders and no definite or indefinite articles. To negate a word, the prefix 'di-' is used (e.g. 'ditzili', meaning 'no people'), while indefiniteness of a word is expressed by the prefix 'zi-' (e.g. 'zitzili, meaning 'some people'). As with English, syllable stress in Tzenejri words are unpredicatble, although it rarely matters much.

Verbs

All verbs are derived a noun by adding the suffix '-ti' (meaning "to do"). For example, the Tzenejri word for movement is 'nef', and it is altered to the verb 'nefti', meaning 'to move'.

Tenses

Tzenejri has four tenses: present, past, future and (present) continuous. The latter three are added as suffixes to a verb as follows:

• Past tense: '-che'
• Future tense: '-lan'
• Continuous tense: '-le'

Perfect tenses are not used.

Personal pronouns

Strictly speaking, there are no personal pronouns in Tzenejri. The terms listed below translate to phrases such as "this person", "that group", etc.

• First-person singular: retzi
• Second-person singular: yatzi
• Third-person singular: sôtzi
• First-person plural: remûp
• Second-person plural: yamûp
• Third-person plural: sômûp

Questions

The basic word order is Verb Subject Object, however this changes to Verb Object Subject in a question. Questions take the form of a statement with an emphasis on the word being questioned (two analogous examples in English would be "you said what?" or "they went shopping?"). In writing, this can be expressed by adding the symbol ¬ after the questioned word (it is unpronounced).

Grammatical numbers

There are three grammatical numbers in Tzenejri: singular, specific plural (for a specific number of things) and unspecific plural (for an unspecific number of things). They are indicating as suffixes to a noun as follows:

• Specific plural: '-vi'
• Unspecific plural: '-li'

Note: even if the number of things is not mentioned, a specific plural is still used if the number is known by the speaker, e.g. "katô'âzvi" ("the cat's legs")- I know a cat has 4 legs, so I would use the '-vi' suffix.

Sample text

Article 1 of the universal declaration of human rights:

enti tech tzili unajkrez vâ zônti sôtzi kûzfe'ezra vâ kûzunshli. chektile sôtzi nuwul achi vâ kû vâ gaga ti sôtzi chô techko'elli nuwul hûztzili ked.

Tzenejri lexicon