Aasti

Âsti
Pronounced:	/'ɒsti/
Timeline and Universe:	Aarð
Species:	Human
Spoken:	Âstâl (The Eastland)
Total speakers:	30,000 (approx.)
Writing system:	Ðanmarc
Genealogy:	Âsti Group Âsti
Typology
Morphological type:	Inflecting
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Fluid-S
Basic word order:	SOV
Credits
Creator:	Navidel
Created:	June 6, 2007

Note on transliteration in this article: This article makes use of two distinct transliteration schemes for the Âsti language. While older sections of the article employ the double vowel ("aa") scheme, newer areas are transliterated by the circumflex ("â") scheme. By the time the edit is finished, this discrepancy should be resolved.

Âsti is the language of the peoples of Âstâl, often referred to as the Aasti tribes. It is a fluid-S language, and uses SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) word order, meaning that the normal form of the sentence He saw her would be rendered as *He her saw.

Script

For our purposes, Âsti will be written using the Latin alphabet. (Note: Because the (mostly illeterate) speakers of the language live in a world where the Latin alphabet does not exist, in the rare cases that Âsti is written down by a native speaker, an adaptation of the common Ðanmarc Alphabet is used.) The general rules of pronunciation follow:

• a, e , i, o, u -- Pronounced as in Spanish or IPA, respectively like taco, play (Canadian), beet, row (GA), and beet.
• â -- Pronounced as in RP* bother (/ɒ/). In some dialects this vowel has unrounded to (/ɑ/), a sound similar to that (/ɑ/) found in RP* father .
• b -- Pronounced as in English boat, except before the vowels i or e, where it is pronounced like the v in very unless doubled (see h).
• c -- As in cat or car, except for before i or e (where most "soft" c's are found in English), where it is said like the sh in shout. However a cce or cci retains the k-like pronunciation. For the pronunciation of ch, see h.
• d -- As in dock or day, except before i or e, where it is pronounced like the th in that (not that in thin) unless doubled (See h).
• g -- As in game or goal, except when singly before i or e (where most "soft" English g's are found), where its pronunciation changes to a sound like French j or the s in vision.
• h -- Never on its own, Âsti h is found only in consonant clusters (i.e., following b, c, d, g, p, or t). In those cases, the cluster is pronounced like the soft form of the initial consonant (/v/ for b, /ʃ/ for c, /ð/ for d, /ʒ/ for g, /f/ for p, or /θ/ for t).
• l, m, n, r, s, z -- Same as English
• p -- As in part or play except singly when followed by an i, e, or h, when it is said like the ph in phonetics or telephone (see h).
• t -- As in tired or try except singly when followed by an i, e, or h, when it is pronounced like the th in thrift or thin (but not that in that or the).
• x -- Pronounced as English single h or Spanish j (Sometimes an x, like that in México, is pronounced this way).
• f, j, k, q, v, w, and y are not used.

Note to speakers of American English: RP stands for Received Pronunciation, sometimes called "High British" or "Queen's English". I don't think I can explain about the Father-bother and Caught-cot mergers here, so if you can't find some other resource to explain this to you, try pronouncing a /æ/ as in cat and â /ɑ/ as in bother. Since /æ/ and /ɑ/ are not phonemic in Âsti and close to the actual pronunciations, the (fictitious) native speakers would probably perceive only a foreign accent.

Grammar

Nouns

• Plural nouns are usually formed by adding i to the end of a noun ending in a consonant or replacing the final vowel with i (change word-final diphthongs with i as the first letter to í). The major exception to this is that many vowels ending in o form their plurals in -or (For example uoreddio, meaning horse or stallion, becomes uoreddior).
• The feminine forms of nouns are usually formed in -a, except for those ending in o, which are formed by changing the o to an i (uoreddí mare).
• Despite the distinction mentioned above between masculine and femenine forms of some nouns, Âsti has five grammatical "genders", none of which have anything to do with physical gender. Gender I is a highly respectful form of address. The only nouns always in gender I are gods. Gender II includes all humans, male and female, whereas gender III includes animals and "semianimate" objects, such as fire and running water. Gender IV includes all inanimate objects except those in gender III. Gender V, however, includes all plural nouns, no matter what gender the singular form is in. Nouns do not conjugate for gender, but verbs, articles and adjectives do.

Verbs

• Verb conjugations in Âsti may be the language's most complex feature. The table below gives a simplified form of the conjugations. The initial vowel of the conjugation is extremely variable, due to the fact that most Âsti verbs already end in vowels, and the resulting diphthongs may or may not be allowable. In addition, if the original verb is monosyllabic, conjugations for imperfective tenses change. Instead of adding an accent to the final vowel of the perfective form, an r is added to the end of the word.
• To fully understand why we have the conjugation tables below, you should read the rest of the bulleted text. However, this knowledge is not entirely necessary to conjugate an Âsti verb.
• The first portion of the conjugation is necessary for subject gender agreement. Gender I is typically conjugated with an e, Gender II with an a, Gender III with an o, and Gender IV with a u. Verbs with plural subjects conjugate with i's. However, this is true only because most Âsti verbs end in an a in the infinitive, which changes to these vowels when conjugated, whereas verbs that end in e in the infinitive change to i, o, e, and ur respectively for genders I, II, III, & IV and a for plurals. You can see other possible endings for verbs and how they are treated in the second table below.
• The second portion of the conjugation, consisting of a consonant and a vowel (or sometimes a vowel-r cluster), agrees with the subject in person and gives the verb's tense. Notice that in the second- and third-person plural forms, the spelling of the consonant modifies to have the same pronunciation in the past tense forms, which end with a final a. Perfective tenses usually shift the emphasis to the final or ultimate syllable from its usual place on the penultimate. This is indicated by the acute accent.

	Past Perfect	Past Imperfect	Present Perfect	Present Imperfect	Future Perfect	Future Imperfect
1s	-ama	-amá	-ami	-amí	-ame	-amé
1p	-ita	-itá	-iti	-ití	-ite	-ité
2s.I	-era	-erá	-eri	-erí	-ere	-eré
2s.II	-ara	-ará	-ari	-arí	-are	-aré
2p	-idha	-idhá	idi	-idí	-ide	-idé
3s.I	-esa	-esá	-esi	-esí	-ese	-esé
3s.II	-asa	-asá	-asi	-así	-ase	-asé
3s.III	-osa	-osá	-osi	-osí	-ose	-osé
3s.IV	-usa	-usá	-usi	-usí	-use	-usé
3p	-igha	-ighá	-igi	-igí	-ige	-igé

Infinitive Ending	Gender I	Gender II	Gender III	Gender IV	Plural	-a	-e	-a	-o	-u	-i
-a*	-e*	-a*	-o*	-u*	-i*
-â
-â*
-e	-i	-o	-e	-ur	-a
-e*
-i
-i*
-o
-o*
-u
-u*

Basic Pronouns

• Va: I
• Ti: We (exclusive)
• Zi: We (inclusive)
• Da: You (singular)
• Ri: You (plural)
• Pa: He
• Sa: She
• Ca: [E]*
• Ta: It
• Ci: They

• Note: English has no exact equivalent to Aasti Ca, which is a third person singular pronoun of indefinite gender (sometimes a singular they is used to informally fill this gap).
• The forms shown here are subject forms. Objects are formed by changing the final a to an o, or i to ē. Possessive pronouns are formed by adding a final -r.

See Also

Aasti at Langmaker