Halcánian dialect
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The Halcarnian dialect, also known as: Söemi'Dal'qörian (Finno-Dalcurian) and Gerödn'qonvetarämös (lit: under speech-an unfavourable term and offensive to Halcarnians), has several differences between itself and 'Dal'qöriádn-Standard Dalcurian'. These include:
- Noun cases/markers
- Spelling, pronunciation and word differences
- Pronouns
- Modal expressivness
- Possesive structure
- Word order
Here are brief descriptions of those differences.
Noun Cases and markers
| Finno-dalcurian (Halcarnian) cases | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| case | suffix | English prep. | example | translation |
| Grammatical | ||||
| nominative | - | abudä | house | |
| genitive | -at | of | abudäat | of (a) house |
| accusative | - an | - | abudäan | house (as an object) |
| Locative (internal) | ||||
| Inessive | -(a)sa | in | abudäasa | in (a) house |
| Elative | -(a)sta | from (inside) | abudäasta | from (a) house |
| Illative | -en | into | abudäen | into (a) house |
| Locative (external) | ||||
| Adessive | -la | at, on | abudäla | at (a) house |
| Ablative | -(a)lta | from | abudäalta | from (a) house |
| Allative | -(a)le | to | abudäale | to (a) house |
| Marginal | ||||
| Essive | -(a)na | as | abudäana | as a house |
| Translative | -(a)csi | to (role of) | abudäacsi | to a house |
| Instructive | -in | with (the aid of) | abudäin | with (a) house |
| Abessive | -ata | without | abudäata | without (a) house |
| Comitative | -ane | together (with) | abudäane | with my house(s) |
Although the above cases almost replicate those of the Finnish language, their usage is much more 'definate'. Here are some examples using abudä. Note that, with the prepositional markers, the marked noun still follows the subject as in standard Dalcurian, though this is NOT a strict syntactic rule:
- Danutt abudä. There is a house.
- Mina gavisur abudäan . I saw a house.
Often, Halcarnians will leave off the object marker if the object carries no special importance. However, for emphasis the object is nearly always placed first, in which case, the marker must be used:
- Abudäan gavisur mina! It's a HOUSE I saw!
- Han abudäasa habitr. He lives in a house.
- Sihan abudäasta gakamur. She came out of a house.
- Anke abudäen goria. Anke is going into a house.
Spelling/pronunciation
The main differences are:
ö is written as u
é is written as ee
á is written as aa
ø is written as ok but pronounced hard as in lock
c is replaced with k and pronounced hard
Þ is replaced with tt but pronounced the same
qu is written as ku
kk-the way to voice this is to pronounce the first k hard, the second is voiced like the English Y in yacht or the soft J in the German Javol or Ja. One has to be careful of spelling traps too, for example the Halcarnian word for a thin, summer jacket is hakan, but the same word spelled hakkan means peace or serenity. Here are some examples in Standard and Halcarnian respectively:
- strömi, strumi-hot
- vélø, veelok-cold
- iáda, iaada-today
- alsalöátsi, alsaluaatsi-fanatic
- eÞöa, ettua-some
- hemørämös, hemokrämus-forgiveness
Pronouns
Halcarnian pronouns are as follows:
Nominative, Accusative:
- mina-I
- sina-you
- han-he
- sihan-she
- til-it
- eren-they
- meena-we
Accusative (objective) pronouns are denoted with the noun markers:
- Mina gavisur sinan I saw you.. (If the subject noun or pronoun ends in a only an objective n is added)
- Han gavisur minan. He saw me.
- Meena gavisur gadurajan. We saw a dog. ( This sentence can also be written as: Gadurajan gavisur meena. It still means, We saw a dog because of the objective marker, but gives more importance to the dog as if to say, It was a DOG we saw!)
- Sihan kualteedria hanan. She's asking him a question.
The Halcarnian case system makes it difficult for speakers of of Indo-European languages to grasp-especially if you're used to using prepositions to place a noun. Thankfully, this case system doesn't extend into the articles a and the as in German. In fact, the absence of the definate article the automatically renders a, and di is only used when its really neccessary to identify the noun:
Danutt abudä. There is a house. but:
Danutt di abudä. There is the house.
Not all prepositions in Halcarnian are noun markers; those such as: between, against, and prepositional phrases such as, inspite of, contrary to, in aid of, in respect of, etc are all rendered as standard Dalcurian (with spelling changes).
Word order
Generally, Halcarnian word order is SVO, though for emphasis it can change to OSV:
Mina goria abudäanen. I'm going into a house. but for emphasis:
Abudäanen mina goria! It's a HOUSE I'm going into!
Note: Some might say that in the above example, house is in the dative; Halcarnian still recognises this as an object rather than an indirect object because nothing else is being acted upon by the verb. Therefore abudä must still take the objective marker an as well as its 'illative' marker.
