Otomodaino

This article will serve as a complete grammar of Otomodaino.

Pronunciation and spelling
All letters are pronounced as in English with the following exceptions:


 * c is pronounced ch as in church
 * x is pronounced sh as in sheep
 * j is pronounced y as in yacht at the end of a word, or like pleasure elsewhere.
 * a is pronounced as in cat
 * á is pronounced as in China
 * e is always as in elephant
 * é is pronounced like the letter name A
 * i is as in sheep, unless in the final syllable of the word, in which case it is pronounced as in ship
 * o is always as in objective
 * u is always as in stool
 * ei together is pronounced like day
 * ai together is pronounced like tie
 * ng together is pronounced like playing
 * tz together is pronounced like a harder version of the letter z ( /d͡z/ )
 * ll together (two Ls) is pronounced like yacht
 * When two vowels that are the same are on opposite sides of a consonant, the second vowel is lengthened.

Names
Names in Otomodaino are given in the family name first order, as in many Asian languages such as Japanese or Korean. Spelling differs from English to fit Otomodaino phonological rules. If a name ends in a consonant, for instance, an 'o' is usually added between the name and the suffix.

Names are suffixed by one of three endings:

For instance, Barack Obama's name in Otomodaino would be rendered as Obamá Barakotzén. Some more name examples are given below.

When introducing yourself to somebody else, or giving your name, it is imperative that you give your name with your preferred suffix. You must always refer to someone with their suffix; to not do so would be very rude. Similarly, using the wrong suffix for a person is considered very rude.

To self-introduce, one of the following two phrases are used.

Question: Yiné ditzo'g alatre? What is your name? Response (informal): Niné ditzo Potá Haritzén ej. My name is Harry Potter. Response (formal): Niné ditzo'g Potá Haritzén. My name is Harry Potter.

Pronouns I - basics
Pronouns in Otomodaino are very simple. They conjugate for person and number in a regular way:

Pronouns do not conjugate for case -- that is to say, for instance, that 'I', 'me', etc are all translated as 'nin' regardless of position in the sentence. It is word order which determines the grammatical role of each pronoun.

Sentence structure I - basics
Otomodaino has a loose SVO word order, similar to English. It is usually head-final, with adjectives and other descriptors appearing before a noun that they modify.

The most casual form of Otomodaino speech, using ej as a verb 'to be'/'is', is an exception to this: compare below.

There exist various other exceptions to the basic SVO order; these will be dealt with at length later when other relevant grammar is being discussed.

Nouns I - plurals and definiteness
All nouns in Otomodaino end in a vowel; most commonly 'o', but never 'á' or 'é'. They can adopt different roles in a sentence by the addition of numerous suffixes that may be added to a word.

The first and most important suffix in Otomodaino is '-á', the plural marker. We have already seen this at work in the discussion of pronouns earlier. Adding this suffix tells us that there are at least two of the noun in question, similar to '-s' in English.

To make a noun definite, we add the particle 'cu'.

We can then combine this with the '-á' suffix such that cu ranoá translates to the dogs.

Please note that rano can be translated both as dog and a dog; similarly, ranoá can be translated as both dogs and some dogs.

Verbs I - Present, Past and Future tense
Verbs in Otomodaino conjugate for tense, but not for person. We conjugate a verb by adding the appropriate prefix to a verb.

Here are some example common verbs.

The tense of a verb is simply given by the prefix on a verb as below:

For verbs which begin with a vowel (a, i, u, e, o, á, or é), we omit the vowel in the prefix, and replace it with an apostrophe ('). However, if the vowel that begins the word is the same as the vowel at the end of the prefix, we simply insert a 'y' between the two.

This apostrophe does not represent a sound; it is silent.

Example sentences I


Here we can see the basic subject-verb-object structure of Otomodaino sentences. First we have the subject, which is red in our examples; this is the person who is doing the action. Then, in black, we have a verb - the word which describes the action taking place. Finally, in blue, we have the object: this is the person to whom the action is done.

Please familiarise yourself with this color-coding system - more will be added to it later, and it will hopefully help you to understand how sentences function and which part corresponds to which part in the English.

Conjunctions I - and, but, also
Conjunctions in Otomodaino can be used to link both sentences and nouns. The most common conjunction is u, meaning and.

Ulem and uzaj have slightly different meanings depending on whether they are used to link nouns or if they are used to link clauses.

As demonstrated above, these words are versatile. The other word we can discuss here is ukexia. This word cannot be used to link two nouns. However, it can be used to link two sentences, and implies that the second part of the sentence occurred because of the first part.

To sum up, therefore, here is a table of when we can use these conjunctions.

Verbs II - negatives
A negative verb is a verb which expresses that something is not true; for example, 'Tom does not find a cat', or 'Naomi does not pet a dog'.

In Otomodaino, forming a negative verb is very easy. We simply insert the negative particle 'né' before the verb.

For verbs which begin with a vowel, we omit the 'é' from the end of 'né' and add an apostrophe instead.

Demonstratives
Demonstratives are words which help us to point to a specific item or object: in English, we use the words 'this' and 'that' to direct us. 'This' refers to objects which are close to the speaker, and 'that' refers to ones which are far away.

In Otomodaino, we use similar words to point to near and far objects and things.

The copula
The copula is a word which loosely corresponds to 'is', or 'am', or 'are'. In Otomodaino, this is the word 'og'.

It can be used with nouns or pronouns in the following way.

The word og is irregular in several ways. It can combine with pronouns and nouns, contracting to  'g. Its pronunciation is highly variable based on four rules.


 * 1) When 'og' stands on its own, with no prefixes or suffixes, and is not contracted with other words, it is pronounced /uj/.

 When it contracts with a word, it is pronounced /g/.

 If it contracts with a word ending in 'n', it is pronounced /ŋ/.

 The future and past tenses of 'og' always feature a 'y' between the tense prefix and 'og'. In these cases, 'og' is pronounced just as 'o'.

In these cases, 'og' and the pronoun or noun that comes before cannot be contracted.

However, it's not all doom and gloom - the word 'og' is not entirely irregular. It accepts the negative particle like a normal verb does.

Adjectives I - the basics
Adjectives in Otomodaino function as in English for the most part. You can use an adjective to describe a noun in the form 'a black cat', or in the form 'the cat is black'. These are simple to express in Otomodaino.

Adjectives can be connected with connectives just as nouns can.

Adjectives come before the noun always; it is ungrammatical to say, for instance, 'rano loran' for 'big dog'.

Pronouns II - possessives
Possessive pronouns are pronouns that show ownership or belonging. In English, we have words such as 'my' or 'her' or 'your' which show to whom something belongs.

In Otomodaino, forming these pronouns is regular:



To use these possessives, we put them in front of the noun we want to describe.

Particles I - possessives with ono
Particles are short words that go between nouns, or between verbs, or even between sentences to connect them, change the meaning, highlight different parts, and many more functions. We've already met some particles in the section above about connectives. However, for the purposes of this grammar, we're going to consider particles that connect sentences to be connectives, and all other particles to be 'true' particles.

When we want to say that the dog has something, or that the cat has something, in English, we can use a construction like 'the cat's paw' or 'the dog's bone'. In Otomodaino, we can do something very similar with our first true particle, ono.

We can use these in sentences like so: