Conlang Relay 17/Tariatta

Text

Litu no Kolli

Keliu yoka alife shena no kolli. Hakisasu yala kollith fe yirisu. Eliasu o sa enne no pettasi taka kóllitte fe moyasu kollith.

Smooth English

To Ride a Horse

I once tried to ride a horse. The horse struggled a lot and made a lot of noise. This gave the horse the strength of a hundred horses and the horse died.

Lexicon

• alife – once, at some time (adv.)
• e - he
• elia – to give (v.)
• fe – and (conj.)
• hakisa – to struggle (v.)
• ka – to do, make (v.)
• keliu - I did
• kolli – horse (n.)
• litu – to tame (v.)
• moya – to die (v.)
• no - it (accusative)
• o - it (nominative)
• pettasi – strength (n.)
• sa – this, that (follows noun or pronoun)
• shena – to ride (v.)
• taka – hundred (num.)
• yala – much, greatly (adv.)
• yiri – noise, to make noise (n. and v.)
• yoka – to attempt, try (v.)

Grammar

• Tariatta is a semi-inflected language with a normal sentence structure of VSO. Adjectives follow the noun they describe and are not inflected. Numbers precede the noun, and nouns take no plural indicator unless there is nothing else to indicate plurality.

• Noun and pronoun cases other than the accusative are suffixes added directly to the nominative form. The only ones that appear here are -tte for the genitive/possessive and -nne for the dative.

• The accusative is shown differently. The accusative form of the 3rd person pronouns prefixes an "n" to the pronoun. If the direct object is a noun, it is in the nominative and follows the accusative-form pronoun, producing a form like "I read it book".

• The definite article is shown by a suffixed -th, after the nominative form, or the case ending if there is one.

• Adverbs mostly follow the verb or adjective they describe.

• Verb infinitives are the same as the root form of the verb. Tariatta uses a narrative present format where the first verb in a story or narration may be past to reflect the past tense of the story, but all other verbs are present tense to give a more living feel to the naration. The past tense is formed with the archaic past tense of the verb ka (to do), of which the one you'll need here is keliu (I did).

• The present tense of first conjugation verbs (the only ones used here) is formed with personal endings, the only one of which is used here being -su (3rd singular).