#gitaxian braindump 3

[fierceawakening]

Lesson 3: So How Do I Verbs (And Sometimes Nouns), Then?

Hello students!

Today I'm going to (finally) explain to you how to conjugate verbs (and how to make nouns possessive; they work the same way) in Phyrexian.

Along the way I'll teach you useful stuff like how to make nouns plural.

Once again, this is an example of how Phyrexian works very differently than English does.

Look at this Phyrexian word, solm. It means smack or hit:

solm

Or, in some dictionaries, you'll see the same word, but with a blank spot between the last two consonants, like

sol_m

Don't worry about the blank just yet. Just know that eventually Some Stuff Goes In There, and that solm and sol_m are the same word, for now.

You change words in Phyrexian by doing things to their vowels. Think of it this way:

Phyrexians don't like vowels. They sound all fleshy. The consonants are clicky and sharp and sometimes straight up metallic, so they can stay. But the vowels? We do weird things to those because EW VOWELS BLEH.

(Yes, this is canon. Phyrexia, please get some therapy. You're both metallic and organic and that's perfectly fine. Stop hating yourselves please.)

Most words in Phyrexian can be nouns or verbs, depending on where you put them in your sentence. (Remember: if it's at the end of a sentence, it's almost certainly a verb.)

So this is also a word I could use for the noun, a hit or a blow or a slap or the like. But suppose I want to say "hits/blows" rather than specifically one hit or blow.

I make nouns plural by doubling the first vowel. This gives me:

soolm

Punches!

If you see a word in Phyrexian that's in the subject or object position and it has a doubled vowel like this, oo or aa or ɒɒ or what have you, you're almost certainly dealing with a plural noun.

But that's less fun than throwing the punches, right? So how do we say "I punch you" or "She punches them" or the like?

That's what our magic underscore is for! We add in a vowel between the last two consonants to tell us who is hitting who.

This is technically called a relational infix. (Relational because it expresses the Relationship between subject and object and Infix like Prefix or Suffix but it goes In the word.)

I think they're called this because a "conjugation" implies verbs only, and these are used for other things too. But if you want to call them conjugations I promise I won't tell.

Here are all the relational infixes, from the chart I posted last night:

What the heck is all this?

Well, I'll tell you.

The horizontal axis tells you who you start from (who's the subject of the sentence, generally), and the vertical tells you who you're pointing toward.

So if I'm trying to say "I hit you," I look at the horizontal axis and find 1st person (I or we), and then search vertically for 2nd person. That square reads "a" (with something funny in parentheses. That doesn't apply here which is why I picked this verb. I will get to that, but for now you can just think about which vowel goes where.)

Therefore I-hit-you is

solam

If I'm doing this right now, I need my mood marker to make it a full sentence. So I grab my xe from lesson 2 and my beginning and ending punctuation and of course my cool looking spacebar because Phyrexians are extra and it's great and

^xe-solam.

Declaration: I-hit-you.

I hit you.

This is a weird system if you're used to English (or, like, literally any other language I know.) But the cool thing about it is that you can ALSO use this schema for sentences that you have to get a little weirder with in English:

^xe-solom.

Declaration: I-hit-me.

I hit myself.

What the heck is a "myself?" How do you decide when you say myself or me or I? Phyrexia don't care. If I verb toward me that means I-verb-to-I and there you go.

This is also useful because you can also use I-toward-I, you-toward-you, them-toward-them to indicate possession. My compleation. My minions. My vegemite sandwich. Whatever. It's gonna have an o in it, and that o is going to be stuck between the last two consonants. I am told this is cozy.

But there are a couple of weird things, of course, before you go forth and speak or type Weird Cyborg at people.

One is first person. In English we have two ways to talk about this. "I," meaning the speaker as a particular individual, and "we," meaning the speaker AND a group the speaker is part of.

Phyrexians are a Borg expy. There is no difference in Phyrexian between I and we (or you and y'all, or him and them.) The reader/listener gathers it from context.

I believe that when it's important to indicate that you mean yourself, for example if you're trying to express "I'm going to leave the group and go after our enemy, while you stay here" you would name yourself. Like:

Declarative: I/we Fierceawakening I-go-[to-]them.

This is headcanon at the moment but it's educated guess headcanon.

Another confusing one is "fourth person." As English speakers, we are used to first person (I/we), second person (you), and third person (he/she/it/they). Phyrexia, what is this?

Most honest answer is I don't know for sure. This one trips me up something AWFUL.

What it's described as being used for is the generic, like "One must do such and such." Hence "one" in the chart above.

In practice, it seems like it's often used not just in that way but also for phrases like

"son of Yawgmoth"

In English, this would be 3rd>3rd, because both the son and Yawgmoth are neither me nor you and so would be "him." But in Phyrexian, 3>3 would sound like you mean "he is his own son," so... no, can't do that. You need another person, so that "he" the son and "he" the Father of Machines (and of This Guy) are differentiated.

But is it 3rd to 4th or 4th to 3rd? And why?

Again: I honestly don't know. This is not how any other language I speak works.

But most examples of this we have in sources are 4>3, or y.

So I'm going to cautiously advise 4>3 until I see more examples of 3>4 and can reason out the difference and give you an actual explanation of what the hell is going on.

So now: those weird parentheses.

These mean that in certain situations you change something else about the word along with adding your infix.

The two ways of changing words are:

Clanking: If you see a ' in parentheses after or before your infix, it means that (if the consonant isn't already clanked) you look up whether the consonant indicated has a clanked version, and if it does, you use that.

so a(') (3>1, they verb me/us) means that you add an a, and then if the ending consonant isn't clanked, you look up whether it has a clanked version and clank it if it does. Since there is no clanked m, solam could be they-hit-me OR I-hit-you.

Similarly, (')a (1>3, I/we verb them) means you find where you put your a, then look at the consonant before it and clank it, if it isn't already and there's a clanked version of that consonant. Since there is no clanked l, solam can ALSO be I/we-hit-them.

I imagine that for verbs like this that don't have clankable consonants, surrounding context is important.

Vowel Harmony: For words with some vowels (a, e, and i, but not others), when you add certain infixes, you also change the initial vowel.

This is shown by an ɒ (the first letter on the chart above) in parentheses before the infix vowel. So say I had this verb:

'at_n, "greet/acknowledge"

and I want to say "I greet you," as I did in "Hello, students!" above.

I look at my chart for 1>2, and I see that my infix is "a." Easy enough!

But I can't just say "atan," as I see my ɒ indicating that I have to harmonize my vowels. So I look at my chart and see "a becomes ɒ," the first one, and therefore I

'ɒtan, "I-greet-you."

...change the initial vowel and add my infix.

From what we're told this by itself can be said like we say hello, without a mood marker. But to formally make it a sentence since we're in class:

^xe-'ɒtan.

Declaration: I greet you.