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The Language | The Alphabet | English to D'ni | Translations
D'ni verbs are almost always accompanied by both a prefix and a suffix. The prefix gives the verb it's tense, while they suffix indicates who was performing the action. (If there is no prefix, it means it's being done at the moment, while if there is no suffix, it means that the person talking performed the action.) For instance, "Rees ga eder" would be translated as "I eat and I sleep". "Lerees ga leeder" would mean "I have eaten and I have slept". "Lereesen ga leederen" would be "He has eaten and he has slept".
Context of a word can make a difference, as well. A prime example of this is the word "Kenen", which can mean both "it has" and "has it". (Amongst other things.) It is very important to anaylze the whole sentence, so you know what it means.
Adjectives follow the nouns they modify. For instance, "great beast" would be "bah garo". If you want to use more than one adjective, use the word "and" between each modifier. "Bah garo ga kera"
More often than not, the D'ni would place their word for "and" between multiple adjectives. The same rule applys to verbs. So, while we say, "They eat, drink, and sleep.", they would say, "Reeseet ga glaseet ga edereet", which is to say, "They eat and they drink and they sleep".
The D'ni used numbers in place of quantifiers. Instead of saying, "He is a little sick", they would say, "He is sick to 5". The greater the number, the higher the emphasis. To exagerate something, they would use a number greater than 25. ("I am hungry to 50!")
The D'ni had three words for "of". The first, the suffix "okh", was used to indicate possesion. For instance, in order to say "Atrus' Ink" in D'ni, you would have to say "lehmokh Atrus". The second, the prefix "t", is used to indicate a groups possesion. "The ages of the D'ni" would be "resevtee t'D'nee". Finally, "tso" in used in the context of description, i.e. the construction of the tunnel. (Tso is neither a prefix nor a suffix, it simply goes between the two words.)
To form a D'ni sentence, you must first get a rough idea of what you wish to say. For this example, we'll use the phrase "The great age of Ederat was written by Veovis." The first thing to do is to gather together your collection of words and to translate each element into D'ni. After this, we'll arrive at this phrase:
regaro sev okh Ederat kokenen t'Veovis
This sentence is fine except for one little problem. Adjectives follow the nouns. We'll swap garo and sev. While we're at it, we'll tweak the sentence so it reads the very great age.
resev garo b'fasee okh Ederat kokenen t'Veovis.