Verbs
Verbs are marked for tense, mood, voice, and affirmation/negation. Since Rennukat is primarily an agglutinative language, this happens in the form STEM-TENSE-MOOD-VOICE.
All verb stems end in –a, –o, –ai, or –oi. I considered removing those endings when adding on the tense/mood/voice suffixes, but then decided against it for a reason I genuinely can’t remember.
Verb Tenses
Verbs have three tenses: past, present, and future. The past tense ending is –ru, which comes from the noun runo meaning “(the) past”. The present tense ending is –sa, from the noun sain meaning “(the) present (day)”, and the future tense ending is –yt, from the noun yhtor meaning “(the) future”.
I’m not 100% certain on this, but I don’t think most languages take their verb tenses from temporal nouns – those things seem to be separate. The way I constructed things here would seem to insinuate that those things were deliberately created at some time in the past.
Since Tsurennupaiva‘s culture was deliberately crafted in the past, it wouldn’t be too difficult to imagine that this also happened with some aspects of the Rennukat.
Verb Moods
There are five moods: indicative, subjunctive, conditional, optative, and imperative.
The indicative is used to express factual statements. It’s the “default” mood, and so has no suffix.
The subjunctive is used to express theoretical and unconfirmed statements, as well as ask questions. The suffix is –(t)ur. It was originally just –ur, but that created some words that looked too weird for my liking.
The conditional is used to express than an action is dependent on some kind of condition. The suffix is –mel.
The optative is used to express hopes, wishes, and prayers. The suffix is-ty, from tyle “wish”.
The imperative is used to express orders. The suffix is –ko.
Verb Voices
Rennukat‘s verbs have two voices: active and passive. The active voice is the default, and is unmarked. The passive ending is –(e)s. I originally thought this resembled English verbs a little too much, but in practice, they don’t look English at all:
- nirai “to build” vs. nirais “to be built”
- rahkasa “falling” vs rahkasus “to be falling”
Affirmation & Negation
As mentioned in the previous section about sentence structure, Rennukat has no words for “yes” or “no”. There are, instead, particles for negation (nas) or affirmation (tou) that follow the verb. Nas is used to answer a question or form a statement in the negative. Tou is used more rarely, since the existence or occurrence of things is assumed by default.
Henosa.
- rain.IND.PRS
- It is raining.
Henosa tou.
- rain.IND.PRS AFFIRMATION
- Yes, it’s raining.
Henosa nas.
- rain.IND.PRS NEGATION
- No, it’s not raining.
Numbers
Rennukat has a rather boring decimal number system. There are unique numbers for 0, 1-10, 100, and 1000.
Numeral |
Word |
0 |
il |
1 |
yhdi |
2 |
tsu |
3 |
lare |
4 |
ehta |
5 |
keir |
6 |
omet |
7 |
mortu |
8 |
sahtai |
9 |
shin |
10 |
nyt |
100 |
rassein |
1000 |
yrtenys |
Multiples of ten are formed by a numeral from 2-9 followed by nyt. Multiples of 100 and 1000 are formed in a similar way:
Numeral |
Word | Numeral | Word | Numeral | Word |
20 |
tsu nyt | 200 | tsu rassein | 2000 | tsu yrtenys |
30 |
lare nyt | 300 | lare rassein | 3000 | lare yrtenys |
40 |
ehta nyt | 400 | ehta rassein | 4000 | ehta yrtenys |
50 |
keir nyt | 500 | keir rassein | 5000 |
keir yrtenys |
60 | omet nyt | 600 | omet rassein | 6000 |
omet yrtenys |
70 | mortu nyt | 700 | mortu rassein | 7000 |
mortu yrtenys |
80 | sahtai nyt | 800 | sahtai rassein | 8000 |
sahtai yrtenys |
90 | shin nyt | 900 | shin rassein | 9000 |
shin yrtenys |
Here are some random numbers:
- 27: tsu nyt mortu
- twenty-seven
- 108: rassein sahtai
- (one) hundred eight
- 499: ehta rassein shin nyt shin
- four hundred ninety-nine
- 1034: yrtenys lare nyt ehta
- (one) thousand thirty-four
- 54,321: keir nyt ehta yrtenys lare rassein tsu nyt yhdi
- fifty-four thousand, three hundred, twenty-one