Cemel Riichnao
Cemel riichnao (language of riichnas) is the language of the people of the same name. Native to the continent of Thigain on the planet of Gymalle, they share their world with an assortment of other races and species.
Grammar
The broad strokes of Riichna grammar are analytic, as it maintains a strict SVO word order and uses discrete auxiliary words to denote tense and mood. However, individual terms can become highly fusional by applying a rich assortment of affixes and agglutinating morphemes to create compounds. It is not uncommon for speakers to omit the subject in a sentence if the context and information being conveyed remain clear, though in Riichna there are no required verb inflections for person, number, or gender as in many other null-subject languages.
Articles
Riichna does not have or use articles.
Nouns
The noun is the base morpheme in cemel riichnao. By applying the correct suffixes to any noun, that term can be transformed into a verb, adjective, or adverb; or to express semantic relations among terms in a sentence. Riichna lacks grammatical gender. Riichna nouns are not inflected for plurals except when the speaker wishes to emphasize or speak about a group or class of something. In those cases, the suffix -im is applied.
Example:
Chna ce iber -> [The] person (or persons) eats
Chnaim ce iber -> [The group of] people eat
Riichna does not have a true grammatical case system, but it does use a variety of relational (mostly locative or spatial) morphemes to convey information on how a sentence’s terms relate to each other. In Standard Riichna these are always postpositional suffixes added to the ends of nouns, but some dialects that have had regular exposure to other languages now use some of these terms as prepositional words.
Example:
Rama moch-ad ih-o padyr ajet zuir-ce-ad pel-zu-i torja-do
Cat black-ADJZ 1S-POSS given friend resided-GER-ADJZ red-house-within hill-on
My black cat was given to a friend living in the house on the hill
Some of the most common affixes include:
-ad: Adjectivizer
-im: Nominalizer
-o: Possessive
-a: at, to; also used to mark indirect objects
-ich: Vocative
-i: in, within
-do: on, atop
-rit: with
-en: towards
-ul: from
A very common compound suffix that deserves special mention is -adim. These constructions most closely translate to “thing that does/has the properties of [X].” Nouns of this form are regarded in a less positive and more dehumanized light than -im nominalized constructions because the noun trait is seen as somehow intrinsic and immutable. For example, the term kach “stupidity, foolishness” can be modified to the comparatively mild kachim “fool, joker” or the much more negative and blunt kachadim “idiot.”
Also worth mentioning is the infix -ch- which is applied to give a negative or disapproving flavor to a noun. While some of these words have seen enough usage to become “independent” terms, many of these constructions are created and used on the fly, especially in colloquial or slang speech (e.g. ilem “heat,” ilemch or ilech “bad heat, hot day, scorcher”).
Pronouns
Riichna has first-, second-, and third-person pronouns in both the singular and plural, but only the 1S (ih) and 3S (de) terms are unique roots. The others are built by applying plural and/or vocative suffixes to those words:
Ih -> I
Deich (de + -ich [VOC]) -> You
De -> He/She/It
Ihim (ih + -im) -> We
Deimich (de + -im + -ich) -> You (PL)
Deim (de + -im) -> They
Numerals
Riichna uses a base-6 counting system: mon “0,” rii “1,” dar “2,” nit “3,” vem “4,” and lat “5.” Numbers between 6 and 29 are formed by multiplying and adding to lat, with terms before the first lat used as multipliers and those after applied additively; 7 is latdar “five-two,” 15 is nitlat “three-five,” 24 is vemlatevem “four-five-four.” Starting at 30 (latlatlat), a new term belat “many-five” is used as the root value, multiplied and added to as before: belatrii “thirty-one,” darbelatnitlatvem “two-thirty-three-five-four” (2 * 30 + [3 * 5 + 4], or 79), until 150 or bepom. In most circumstances, larger values are adequately expressed by appending bem “very, many” and/or jach “high, much” to bepom as vague, ever-increasing multipliers (e.g. jachbepom ~300+, bemjachbepom ~1500+, jachbemjachbepom ~20000+).
Verbs
Riichna verbs default to the simple past tense and must be modified with auxiliary words or affixes to express other tenses or moods, create infinitives or gerunds, and so on. The only irregular verb in Riichna is cen, “it is” or “there is/are,” which also has the unique, stand-alone present tense construction of “cen” and can assume no other tense. There is no term equivalent to intransitive “was” or “will be” auxiliaries; a speaker of Riichna would use another verb (usually having the reflexive -ir or passive -yr suffix).
Some of the most common auxiliaries, which are always placed directly before the verb they modify, include:
ce: Present auxiliary
ger: Future auxiliary
kul: Past perfect auxiliary
rab: Subjunctive and conditional auxiliary (would)
cin: Probilative auxiliary (should)
cal: Potentive auxiliary (could)
Auxiliaries can be compounded, for example, Chna calger iber “[The] person could eat (at a point in the future).”
While many of the most common verbs have set derivations and definitions, verbs can be created on the fly by applying one of six verbalizer suffixes to any noun. These suffixes define the “role-relation” of the subject and verb. Often this is an obvious or literal relationship, but the relationship can also occur in an abstract or metaphorical sense.
-ar: Active verbalizer. Used when the subject actively, physically, or consciously verbs
-er: Neutral verbalizer. Used when the subject verbs, but not in as strong or intentional a sense as when using -ar
-ir: Reflexive verbalizer. Used when the subject verbs to themselves or there is some internal focus or connotation to the verbing
-or: Malefactive verbalizer. Used when the subject verbs in a way that is negative, destructive, or harmful to themselves, others, or the world around them
-ur: Instrumentive verbalizer. Used when the subject verbs in a way that uses or applies the root noun towards some other end
-yr: Passive verbalizer: Used when the subject is verbed at or upon, is reluctant to verb, or otherwise has no control over what is being verbed
Infinitives and gerunds are created by adding -ce as a suffix to any verb, e.g. iberce “to eat” or “eating.”
Mood Particles
Riichna sentences that wish to convey moods other than the declaratory include particles at the very end of sentences. There is generally little change in tone (for example, no rising interrogative, as in English) or volume over a sentence’s flow unless the speaker is truly agitated or emotional, leading to neutral, plain, and almost mechanical speech. This conversational affectation often carries over to other spoken languages, giving native Riichna speakers a stereotype of being distant, callous, or bored with their speaking partners or the topics being discussed.
Some of the most common mood particles include:
nal: Interrogative particle
tal: Imperative particle
yuo: Desiderative particle (immaterial requests, musing, or wishes)
ye: Exclamatory or emphatic particle
gan: Precative particle (material requests)
fyc: Evidential particle (“I heard that,” “it appears that,” etc.)
thy: Presumptive particle (“it might be,” “I suppose,” etc.)
One of the most common Riichna phrases, Kez nal, directly translates to “What?” but is used as a general, informal greeting (speakers actually wanting to ask “What?” would instead say kez cen nal).
Phonology
In Riichna nearly all syllables take one of four forms: V, CV, VC, or CVC. Riichna has two digraphs: ch/ɦ/ and th /ð/. They may appear before or after consonants in certain archaic words (chna “person”) and, for ch, when it is used as an infix. Otherwise, they are treated as a single consonant for syllable construction. Consonants do not blend or cross over syllable boundaries with the exception of these two digraphs.
Riichna has 5 vowels: a /a/, e /e/, i /i/, o /o/, and u /u/; as well as one diphthong y /ai/ that is treated as a single vowel sound.
For a complete phonology of Riichna, head here.
Stress is usually placed on the first syllable of multi-syllable nouns and, in cases when the noun has been compounded or modified, on the first syllable of the noun term at the word’s root.
F H Stevens 