Tengarsa: Personal Pronouns

[nyxelestia]

Gender

There are three genders in pronouns. In both language modes, there are “masculine” and “feminine”. In Spellcraft mode, the third one is “other” (as in, genderqueer, or as is the case in certain rituals and ceremonies, crossdressing, acting the part of another gender, ect). In Conversation mode the third one is “neuter” – neither gender, or more specifically, objects.

While historically the "other" meant the same thing in Conversational mode as in Spellcraft mode, influence from other cultures and what was needed in daily communication shifted the meaning from "other" to "neuter", but due to its historical meaning it can be used for people without offense (as opposed to English in which calling someone "it" is considered a severe and dehumanizing insult, despite the fact it is essentially a "neuter" pronoun). As such, it is regularly applied with different connotations, i.e. used for genderqueer people as it is in Spellcraft mode.

In plural forms for both modal languages, the gender of the pronoun does still have to match the group. In Spellcraft mode, you use masculine and genderqueer if the group in reference is all-male or all-genderqueer – if it’s a mixed group, or all female, the default is plural female. It’s similar for Conversation mode: if the group is mixed, you use neuter-plural, but if the group is not mixed (or ‘barely mixed’), you use the appropriate plural-gender pronoun.

This is a relic from when sorcerers were a matriarchal society (and today, sorcerers still tend to be somewhat matriarchal, with inheritance among sorcerers being matrilineal).

Number

Remember those “magic plurals” mentioned earlier? Their numbers get individual forms in pronouns. So while some of them mix together, ultimately you can identify 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, and plural. That said, magic plurals are rarely used in Conversational mode.

The Pronouns

Person	Gender	Singular (1)	Dual (2)	Trial (3)	Pental (5)	Septemal (7)	Tredecal (13)	Plural
1st		thi	thua	thui	thue	thia	thie	thao
2nd		sha	shai		sheh	shih	shi	sho
3rd	Fem.	mei	mu	mui	mue		mua	mea
	Masc.	nei	nu	nui	nue		nua	nea
	Other	jei	ju	jui	jue		jua	jea

Pronoun Cases

The pronouns above are all in the nominative case. To make different cases, you add the following sounds to the beginning of the pronoun, with the exceptions of the Temporal/Locative, Vocative, and Terminative cases, which are added to the end:

Case	Affix
Nominative	-
Accusative	e-
Prepostional	a-
Instrumental	ila-
Genitive	i-
Ergative	aie-
Temporal/Locative	-sil
Vocative	-ta
Equative	ea-
Abessive	o-
Terminative	-lu

Comments

[jissai1988.livejournal.com]

*stares at the language starry-eyed*

this is so much fun!

[nyxelestia.livejournal.com]

"Fun" is one word for it. :P