Epajan

Epajan is an isolating conlang used in Narawan.

Phonology

The Epajan "alphabet" is actually an abugida, similar to Devanāgarī script (used to write Sanskrit and Hindi). Each character represents a consonant, and a diacritcal mark indicates a vowel following it. A solitary vowel may only occur at the start of a word (e.g. the 'e' in Epajan), and two vowels cannot occur together. In addition, 'm' and 'n' may appear at the end of a word instead of a vowel (e.g. 'n' in Epajan).

Consonants in Epajan are fairly simple and are only pronounced in one way. Apart from 'j', which is pronounced like the s in "treasure", they are all pronounced as in English.

Consonants: b, d, f, g, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, z

By contrast vowels are variable, not always pronounced in the same way.

Vowels: a, e, i, o, u, ū

• a: as in "attic" or "father"
• e: as in "met"
• i: as in "tin"
• o: as in "on", or like the 'a' in "about"
• u: as in "bun", or like the 'a' in "about"
• ū: as in "zoom" or "book"

Note: a word cannot end with 'i'.

Grammar

Like Chinese, Epajan is an isolating language which has no case system, instead relying on word order to determine the subject, object or verb in a sentence.

Number

There are no plurals in Epejan, so the words for a single and a plural of something are the same.

Mood

There are a number of grammatical particles used to express the "mood" of a sentence (i.e. if it is a command, a question, if the speaker is unsure of something, etc.), occuring after the word it refers to. Questions are asked like a normal statement, with one of these particles after the word being questioned. Below is a list of the particles which describe the grammatical mood:

Particle	Meaning
sū	statement of fact
gu	expresses opinion
te	expresses a plea or a wish
je	expresses uncertaintity
ke	used in a question to determine what the speaker is questioning
ra	expresses a command
pa	negates a word
zu	expresses a generalisation
kū	expresses sarcasm
le	indicates the speaker likes something
ne	indicates the speaker dislikes something

Pronouns

Epajan is a null-subject language, so unless needed pronouns in the subject are usually dropped. Note that like nouns, pronouns in Epajan have no case declensions and no plurals, so the word for "I" is also the word for "we".

• First person (I, we): ba
• Second person (You): bu
• Third person (He, she, they): bū

Word order

Epajan uses Subject Object Verb word order. Because it is an isolating language, it relies heavily on this to distinguish subjects from objects.

Time

There are no tenses in Epajan. Instead the time an event took place can either be stated explicitly as an adverb or just not mentioned. Notably, the Epajan language has many different words for expressing time, something considered important in Narawan culture.