Obrenje
Christian Thalmann

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About conventional stars:
The stars are classified arbitrarily.
One type is called walking stars.  They constantly wander the night sky.
Another type are [the] stationary stars.  They are always far away from our sun.
Others are called dying stars.  Another name [for them] is falling stars.  When they fall from the night sky, they turn to stone.
Another type are [the] outsider stars.  Only briefly are they seen on the night sky.  Tsikal has destroyed the suns of those planets violently.

(Click on each line to hear it spoken)

Vin ny lire folinje:
Nychet nye lire lammu kalwe.
Renat ce nuja u lire roldam.  Navize jorona i lirnaja.
Kawre nuja mo lire tamatse.  Navize us moe vin Bolan.
Renat kawre u lire penne.  Kawre rena mo lire icme.  Blize ice pri lirnaja, kimoe u kcare.
Kawre nuja mo lire tasni.  Liznu kelesta ro lirnaja.  Corgu kwos Tsikal i bolna ur tje bej.

Vocabulary:
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|bej| n. "world, planet".
|blize| adv. "'then, when...'".
|bolna| n. "sun"; the definite form |bolan| is used for the sun of the local solar system (in our case, Sol).  ;-)
|ce| singular quantifier "a, one".
|corgu| adv. "violently, brutally".
|folinje| n. "conventional, traditional, usual".
|i| prep. objective case marker.
|ic-| v. "fall".
|jor-| v. "travel, migrate, wander".
|kawre| quantifier "other, another".
|kcare| n. "stone, rock (as a material)".
|kel-| v. "see".
|kimo-| v. "become, come into existence, turn into".  Has an irregular present 3i form |kimoe|.
|kwas-| v. "destroy".
|lammu kalwe| idiom "arbitrarily", lit. "according to will".
|lire| n. "star (in the sky)".
|lirnaja| n. "night sky, starscape".
|liznu| adv. "briefly, for a short time".
|mo-| v. "be".
|navize| adv. "always, at all times".
|nuja| n. "category, class, kind, sort".
|ny| categorical quantifier "... in general"  (example: |Naqze i warve| "I like a dog", but |Naqze i ny warve| "I like dogs in general".  Note that quantifiers behave just like nouns, and can thus be put into the definite form: |nye| "the ... (in general)".  In English, it's usually not even necessary to translate the word: You just say "I like dogs".
|nyche-| v. "sort, classify".
|pend-| v. "die"; becomes |penne| in the present active solid participle. =P
|pri| prep. "from".
|rena| n. "name".
|rena-| v. "name, call".
|ro| prep. locative "in, on, at" .
|rolda-| v. "walk".
|tamatse| n. "immobile, stationary", lit. "unmoved".
|tasni| n. "outsider, non-member, stranger".
|tje| quantifier "that, those".
|tsikal| n. a proper name... or so I've been told.  It's pronounced /tSi"kal/ in Obrenje, in case you want to adapt it to your phonology.
|u| prep. predicative case marker.
|ur| prep. non-possessive (descriptive, attributive) genitive "of".
|us| n. "far, far away, distant".
|vin| prep. "about (a topic), compared with, concerning, with respect to".

Grammar Sketch
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This is a really skeletal compactification of Obrenje grammar...  if you have the time and leisure, check out the grammar webpage at http://catharsis.netpeople.ch/langmaking/obrenje_index.htm

- The most basic word order is VSO(O).  The verb usually comes first, then the subject, then the object(s).

- The subject is unmarked, while the objects are tagged with prepositions.  Even the grammatical object cases of Obrenje (predicative, objective) are marked with prepositions: |i| for objective and |u| for predicative.

- Sometimes an object is placed *before* the verb in the sentence: OVS(O).  In this situation, an unmarked object (no preposition) is taken to be in the predicative case.  In other words, if you place the predicative object before the verb, you can drop the preposition |u|.  Even though unmarked, it cannot be confounded with the subject, since that must always come after
the verb.

- For the roles of the two unconventional cases "predicative" and "objective", please consult http://catharsis.netpeople.ch/langmaking/obrenje_nouns.htm#2.  It's explained in few words and some pictures.  =P

- For verb conjugations, check out the following page (especially the tables): http://catharsis.netpeople.ch/langmaking/obrenje_verbs.htm.  Don't despair, you'll only need a few of all those verb forms.  The abbreviation "part" stands for participles... you'll need a few of those.  ;-)

- In case you wonder why there are always two 3rd person forms for verbs... 3e stands for "3rd person, explicit subject" and 3i for "3rd person, implicit subject".  You use the 3i form when the subject is not explicitly mentioned in this sentence, but appeared in an earlier sentence.  It replaces the 3rd person subject pronouns of English.  Compare: |Rolde torav| "The man walks" versus |Rolda| "He walks".

- Note that there are two conjugation tables, one for vocalic verbs (whose stems end in a vowel, e.g. |rolda-|) and one for consonantic verbs (e.g. |jor-|).  Also, a verb's last vowel will shift in the past and future tenses! |Kel| means "sees", but |kol| is "saw" and |kil| "will see".

- For our purposes, the "solid" and "liquid" verb aspects correspond quite well to the English "simple" and "continuous" aspects.

- Nouns do not inflect for number (singular/plural), but they do inflect for definiteness... for example, |nuja| means "type, types" while |nujae| means "the type, the types".  The inflection rules are quite simple, but you don't need to bother with them... all definite forms used in the text are explicitly mentioned in the vocabulary section.