recUrtan D’nE

te Domare

CONTENTS

UNIT 1 UNIT 2 UNIT 3Introduction Under development... Under development...Lesson 1: History of D’ni LinguisticsLesson 2: Alphabet and TransliterationLesson 3: PenmanshipLesson 4: GreetingsLesson 5: Plurals and AgreementLesson 6: ArticlesLesson 7: NumbersLesson 8: How Verbs WorkLesson 9: Simple Present TenseLesson 10: Simple Direct ObjectsLesson 11: Subject ComplementsLesson 12: AdverbsLesson 13: Converting Particles ILesson 14: Word OrderLesson 15: Present Progressive TenseLesson 16: Negative StatementsLesson 17: Imperative MoodLesson 18: Converting Particles IILesson 19: Demonstrative Adjective and PronounLesson 20: Coordinating ConjunctionsLesson 21: Introduction to PrepositionsLesson 22: “beh” and Quantifiers

Introduction

We all, during our journeys through the worlds of the D’ni, have come across it. Scrawled on a fragile bit of parchment, inscribed on a monumental building, or even casually spoken in greeting, the words of the D’ni language carry a certain power, a sort of magic. Not just in the sense that they were instrumental for writing the all-important descriptive and linking books, which nourished and supported the D’ni civilization for so many centuries. The language of the D’ni carries its own charm; it is a beautiful language, flowing on the page, pleasing on the tongue, and fascinating in its mechanics. It has provided us some of the most important primary documents about the D’ni, and continues to reveal its mysteries as study pushes ever forward.

Whether this is your first encounter with D’ni or if you are returning to refresh your knowledge, you are about to embark on a rewarding exploration — one of the greatest puzzles the D’ni ever devised.

This series of lessons is designed to walk the beginner through from the basic fundamentals of D’ni to the more advanced aspects of the language in a sequential manner. The initial lessons will help to orient you with respect to the history of D’ni linguistics, as well as some of the basic concepts of the language. As they progress, the lessons will tackle more and more challenging material. Each lesson will have accompanying vocabulary, summary, examples, and exercises in the Workbook (still under construction) to help you understand and learn.

Unit 1 covers all the basics of D’ni; after completing it, you should be able to express yourself in simple conversation with a variety of sentences. Unit 2 continues where Unit 1 leaves off, and will introduce you to more advanced aspects of the language such that, upon completion, you will emerge with a comprehensive knowledge of its known properties. Unit 3 introduces you to those topics currently under discussion among the linguist community, offering different theories and accepted hypotheses. There, you will find the cutting edge of D’ni studies, open for your consideration!

It is not mandatory to complete this entire sequence of lessons to speak D’ni. The basic knowledge you learn in Unit 1 will suffice for simple conversation and expression, and you may wish to stop there. However, the further you persevere, the better you will be able to express yourself clearly and accurately. (For an optimum learning experience, be sure that you have downloaded and installed Quicktime or another plugin to play .mov and .mp3 files, as well as all necessary fonts.)

Of course, the D’ni Linguistic Fellowship is an excellent resource for asking questions and practicing your D’ni with other students and seasoned D’ni linguists alike. Check our website at the beginning of each semester to see what classes are offered - many D’ni classes will incorporate this text into their curriculum, offering a dynamic and collaborative environment in which to learn.

As the D’ni said,

.lena biv Kenen erTbåntE me KElentE

May your first step be simple, and may every step following prove enriching and fun!

— Domare

Lesson 1 History of D’ni Linguistics

The Birth of D’ni Linguistics

The study of the D’ni language began in the mid 90’s, shortly after the release of Myst and the publication of the first novels treating the history of Atrus and his family. Specifically, the reproduction of Aitrus’ map meD’nE bretalEo (From D’ni to the Surface) included in many copies of the Book of Ti’ana was the first D’ni document to be released to the public. Cyan, Inc. (now Cyanworlds) created a website that provided English translations of the various D’ni texts on the map. A handful of groundbreaking linguists, among them Telanis, Erithan, Sne’vir, and Coronus, worked to decipher the D’ni alphabet and make sense of the translations. Primarily assisted by Richard Watson, a full understanding of the texts was soon reached. Contact with Watson, affectionately dubbed RAWA by the small community of linguists, allowed for an early flowering in D’ni linguistics, as RAWA was (and remains to this day) Cyan’s primary D’ni historian and the foremost expert on the D’ni language.

The linguist community, in pursuing their studies, organized themselves into a group known as the Circle of D’ni. The group was small in number and carefully tended its knowledge of D’ni; its philosophy held the language as a worthy subject of learning and education, rather than a collection of trivia. To gain access to the privileged information acquired from RAWA, one needed to demonstrate a genuine interest in D’ni. The language that the Circle had worked so hard to discover, to decipher, to cherish, could be easily degraded if an unknowing public mishandled it.

Just as rumors surrounding Myst’s upcoming sequel, Riven, began to circulate in earnest, one of the members of the Circle of D’ni broke from the organization’s discretion, and the Circle’s wordlist soon appeared on a public website. The repercussions were significant: wordlists took root across the Internet, simple (and often incorrect) D’ni began creeping into the common parlance, and the Circle eventually dissolved. With the memory of an intimate, devoted passion for a common language and a unique relationship with Cyan strong in their minds, most of its members retreated “into the woodwork,” pursuing D’ni more privately.

Populist Renaissance

Riven saw its phenomenal release in 1998, and the interest in D’ni exploded. The language had been incorporated so naturally into the immersive game that fans wanted to understand just what was being said. A new generation of linguists emerged, populist in its philosophy and ambitious in its goals. Simon and Josef Riedl founded the Guild of Linguists, which soon became a center of learning and reference for all D’ni linguists. The Writers of D’ni MOO, an interactive role-playing environment based on the D’ni world of 7500 DE, also became a haven for linguists, with an active guild life under Guildmaster Do’vahth. A few tried their hand at designing a D’ni font, including Coronus, Tekis, and Jehon, and a new standard for transliteration was established with a one-to-one correspondence to eliminate the ambiguities of the original standard, in use since the language’s birth.

A critical eye was also turned to the D’ni alphabet; in short order, an undeniable connection to the D’ni numbering system was discovered. Gordon Currie, founder and maintainer of popular Rivenguild website, revealed details about his recent visit to Cyan headquarters and about the mysterious MUDPIE project in his GRID web series, which employed a number of D’ni language puzzles. The bar for wordlists was raised with Kh’reestrefah’s Dictionary of the D’ni Language, which remains to this day one of the best vocabulary resources available.

For a while, a great deal of attention was devoted to the texts appearing in Riven and the game’s soundtrack, but once these materials were thoroughly digested, few new discoveries were made and linguistic interest began to

diminish. Rivenguild closed its doors, a great loss for the fan community, and Cyan remained tight-lipped about its MUDPIE project. With only a short resurgence upon the release of Exile, D’ni studies stalled.

The Modern Revival

Then, in 2003, invitations from a mysterious figure named Jeff Zandi began appearing in inboxes across the web. Sworn to silence, members of the fan community were slowly invited to test Cyan’s new game, Uru. Beta testers knowledgeable about the D’ni language voraciously tore through new texts - the old linguistic fire was stoked in many a student of D’ni. A number of testers discovered errors and offered corrections to inaccurate in-game texts, which were duly corrected before Uru’s public release. At about the same time, Leenay recognized that no spot on the web had been established for D’ni language discussions, and so founded the languagelyst, where many of the Uru texts were first publicly discussed.

Another result of beta testing was the emergence of common interest neighborhoods and organizations. First among those was the Guild of Greeters under Guildmaster Tijara, which became a model for many others, among them the D’ni Linguistic Fellowship. Co-founded by Jerle and Domahreh, the DLF aspired to create a welcoming community in UruLive for all who took an interest in the D’ni and ahrotahn languages, with the ultimate goal of offering in-cavern classes. When UruLive was cancelled, rather than abandon its already sizeable community, the DLF offered resources and support to its members with various projects, including this set of lessons.

Lesson 2 Alphabet and Transliteration

The D’ni Alphabet

The D’ni alphabet consists of twenty-four characters: v t s j y k a f i e r m T d h o c w u x l å z n

eleven of which can be accented: b S g K I p E A D O U

to give a total of thirty-five individual sounds. D’ni is a phonetic language, meaning that spelling doesn’t affect pronunciation; every D’ni character will always be pronounced the same way. Most of the sounds in D’ni also occur in English, save the r and k sounds. The D’ni characters, though, do not resemble Roman letters. Some have compared them to Hebrew or Arabic writing systems. Because a number of characters look alike and can be easily mistaken, it is an important first skill to be able to easily identify and differentiate the various D’ni characters.

Transliteration Systems

One useful tool for helping us understand D’ni characters is transliteration. In order to more easily discuss D’ni sounds in English, we can approximate them with roman letters that produce the same sounds. There are two commonly used systems of transliteration in use today: the Old Transliteration System (OTS) and the New Transliteration System (NTS).

OTS uses both single and double letters to approximate D’ni sounds in a manner that can easily be read but sometimes results in ambiguities. The phrase meaning you’re welcome, meUr, is transliterated in OTS as mehoor. It is unclear by simply looking at the transliteration whether to pronounce this as me-hoor (incorrect) or meh-oor (correct).

NTS resolves this problem by establishing a one-to-one correspondence between each D’ni character and its transliteration. Since the English alphabet has only twenty-six letters and D’ni thirty-four sounds, NTS uses diacritical marks and non-standard characters to create enough characters. meUr would be written meúr in NTS, a more rigorous but, for some, less legible way to transliterate the word.

Table of D’ni Characters

Now, read the description of each D’ni character below and study the characters themselves. Pay special attention to the distinguishing features of each, and look at how each character resembles those characters it is commonly mistaken for. You will also find transliterations in both OTS and NTS, followed by a rendering using the International Phonetic Alphabet, a character set used in linguistics to specify phonics. (More info on the IPA can be found here.) The sound of each character is then described with example words in English, and you can click on the link to hear a recording of each sound followed by a D’ni word that features that sound.

Be sure that you take enough time to thoroughly learn the D’ni alphabet and its sounds; these truly are the building blocks of the language, and their importance cannot be overstated. Flashcards may be useful. You will also find transliterations of D’ni words in both OTS and NTS for the next couple lessons, to help familiarize you with D’ni characters in context as you continue to learn.

D’ni Distinguishing Features Commonly mistaken for... OTS NTS IPA Sounds like Recording

v two sharp angles at top and bottom t w a v v voice, five Dova

dovah | dova

b accented v I b b bad, lab bAk baikh | béx

t angled curve at top, sharp angle at bottom v w t t tea, get tagam

tahgahm | tagam

s full curve at top halts midway down, full curve at bottom m T w s s sun, miss sel

sehl | sel

S accented s m T w sh š she, crash SEga sheegah | šíga

j flat at top, curved upswing at bottom i j j just, large v’ja

v’jah | v’ja

g accented j E g g give, flag gor gor | gor

y simple, short downstroke at left, flat base with angled upswing h x y y yes, yellow yavo

yahvo | yavo

k y base with straight flag o l kh x Bach, German doch Korvak korvahkh | korvax

K accented k O k k cat, truck Kera kehrah | kera

a angled curve at top, flat base with angled upswing t v ah a arm, father ano

ahno | ano

I accented a b I á five, eye vIlE vIlee | válí

f full curve at top halts midway down, flat base with angled upswing

z f f find, if fa fah | fa

p accented f p p pet, map pax pahts | pac

i flat at top, flat base with angled upswing j i(h) i hit, kitten gilo

gihlo | gilo

E accented i g ee í see, heat rEs rees | rís

e short downstroke at left, two sharp angles bookending upwards curve

m h e(h) e met, bed sev sehv | sev

A accented e ai/ay é say, eight Atrus aitruhs | étrus

r e base with straight flag r r

No English equivalent; between madder and matter;

a “flipped” r

rov hEbor

rov heebor | rov híbor

m angled curve at top, two sharp angles bookending upwards curve

t T m m man, lemon ram rahm | ram

T full curve at top, upwards curve with sharp angle at left, full curve at right

m th þ think, both ziT zihth | ziþ

d flat at top, base bookended by two sharp angles dh ð this, mother Dormad

dormahdh | dormað

D accented d d d dog, ladyDevoKan

dehvokahn | devokan

h full curve without any angles y x h h how, hello har hahr | har

o h base with straight flag k u l o o go, home Kor kor | kor

O accented o U oy ó boy, join DOha doyhah | dóha

c h base, flag curves to left o å ch ç check, church cir chihr | çir

w two full curves at top and bottom v t a w w wet, weather tiwa tihwah | tiwa

u h base, flag curves to right o n u(h) u cup, luck toKitu tokihtuh | tokitu

U accented u O oo ú blue, food tUl tool | túl

x small hook at left, flat base with angled upswing y a ts c acts, bets xav

tsahv | cav

l x base with straight flag k o n l l leg, little lena lehnah | lena

å x base, flag curves to left c l n a æ bat, black irvån ihrvan | irvæn

z full curve at top, base is flanked by sharp angle at left and full curve at right, flat stroke at bottom with angled upswing

f m T z z zoo, lazy zu zuh | zu

n x base, flag curves to right u n n no, ten nE nee | ní

Two punctuation marks are also known to us that are frequently used in D’ni. D’ni Function OTS NTS IPA Sounds like Recording

’ accents characters; separates otherwise unpronounceable consonant or vowel clusters

‘ ‘ cinema, awaym’la vAxU’on

m’lah vaitsoo’on | m’la vécú’on

. marks the beginning of a sentence . . n/a n/a n/a

While there is strong suspicion that other punctuation marks exist (namely, an interrogative marker, like the question mark), they have not yet been discovered. In its absence, the . mark will always indicate the beginning of a new sentence.

The Pitfalls of D’ninglish

By far, the most widespread mistakes that get made with new D’ni writers are mistakes of transliteration, especially with proper names. The temptation is to take an English word and simply change the font to D’ni characters, to take each letter of the English word and swap it out for a D’ni character. For example, the name Dianne might be incorrectly transliterated as dianne. Since D’ni is a phonetic language, however, the proper method of transliteration is to first sound out the English word, then find the appropriate characters for those sounds, not for the English letters themselves. Dianne would thus be broken down into the sounds d I a n | d á æ n, and properly transliterated DIån.

Lesson 3 Penmanship

The D’ni Script

One of the best ways to learn the D’ni characters is to practice writing them yourself. Though it may look daunting, D’ni is actually a relatively easy script to pick up, as long as you go slowly and concentrate. Similar to cursive penmanship in English, it is written from left to right, slanting slightly to the right, in a long, continuous motion. It is also a beautiful script to write, flowing smoothly from the pen in strong, dark strokes.

Writing Technique

Proper writing technique is essential to learn from the beginning; it is much easier to learn to write correctly to begin with, rather than re-teach yourself after years of bad habit. Formal D’ni is written with a square-tip calligraphy pen, but informally it can be written with a simple point-tip pen. When writing with a calligraphy pen, remember that it should be held at around 45º from the horizontal, as shown in the diagram below. Be sure to maintain the angle of the pen at a constant position, so all of your characters are consistently shaded.

Left-handed writers often face additional challenges when learning to write D’ni. Some resources are available in print and online to assist with left-handed calligraphy; a variety of techniques, such as over- or underwriting, turning the paper at an angle, using left-handed pen nibs, and angling the writing surface, may prove useful.

When writing more than one letter, we first complete all of the characters’ bases, then go back and add in all the flags and accents. This is how D’ni writing gains its fluid, unbroken look. Flags are always drawn from the base upwards.

Stroke Order of the Alphabet

Study the stroke order of each character as diagrammed below; click on the link to see a demonstration of how each character is drawn. Green indicates where each stroke begins, yellow where the stroke turns back on itself at an angle, and red where the stroke ends. Once you are comfortable with individual characters, we will write some simple words so you get a feel for how D’ni is written in practice.

D’ni Transliteration Stroke order Demonstration

v v | v v

b b | b b

t t | t t

s s | s s

S sh | š S

j j | j j

g g | g g

y y | y y

k kh | x k

K k | k K

a ah | a a

I I | á I

f f | f f

p p | p p

i ih | i i

E ee | í E

e eh | e e

A ay | é A

r r | r r

m m | m m

T th | þ T

d dh | ð d

D d | d D

h h | h h

o o | o o

O oy | ó O

c ch | ç c

w w | w w

u uh | u u

U oo | ú U

x ts | c x

l l | l l

å a | æ å

z z | z z

n n | n n

Stroke Order of Whole Words

Here are some simple words to practice writing. Remember, the bases of all characters in the word are written in one long stroke, then the flags and accents are added in. As you are writing each character, try to think ahead to the character that comes next, and how it looks and connects to the character you are about to complete. Write slowly and deliberately, concentrating on the distinguishing features of each character, until you reach the end of the word. Then, go back to the beginning of the word and spell to yourself as you review the characters you’ve just written, adding flags and accents as you go along.

D’ni Transliteration Stroke order Demonstration Sora shorah | šora Sora

zu zuh | zu zu

cir chihr | çir cir

SEga sheegah | šíga SEga

b’Ken b’kehn | b’ken b’Ken

Lesson 4 Greetings

Before we jump into the real nuts and bolts of D’ni, let’s learn some easy phrases you can use in greeting your friends and fellow explorers. All of the phrases here should be properly addressed to one person; in a few chapters, we will learn how these greetings can be modified so they are appropriate for addressing a group of people.

Sora shorah | šora Hello, goodbye. Literally, “Peace.”

Sora b’Sem shorah b’shehm | šora b’šem Hello, goodbye. (formal) Literally, “Peace to you.”

yar ram yahr rahm | yar ram Good day.

Kenen ram b’yim

Sem

kehnehn rahm b’yihm shehm | kenen ram b’yim šem

It’s good to see you.

gorven boyim Semgorvehn boyihm shehm | gorven boyim šem I’ll see you soon.

Toe Kenem thoeh kehnehm | þoe kenem How are you? Ken ago kehn ahgo | ken ago I am well. Ken ziT kehn zihth | ken ziþ I am bad. Literally, “I am low.”

Toe Kenem tagamijthoeh kehnehm tahgahmihj | þoe kenem tagamij

What’s you’re name? Literally, “How are you known?”

Ken tagamij te N. kehn tahgahmihj teh N. | ken tagamij te N.

My name is N. Literally, “I am known as N.”

cev Sem chehv shehm | çev šem Thank you. meUr mehoor | meúr You’re welcome.

Lesson 5 Plurals and Agreement

Nouns in D’ni are very similar to nouns in English: they name a person, place, thing, or idea; they can be singular and plural; and they do not have a gender or case, as they do in other foreign languages. A singular noun names just one of a thing, while a plural noun names more than one. In D’ni, as in English, the singular noun is the root word; to make it plural, we add the suffix –tE (-tee | -tí), the same way that in English we add -(e)s.

Examples: ter (tehr | ter), tree, becomes tertE (tehrtee | tertí), trees

Kor (kor | kor), book becomes KortE (kortee | kortí), books

Some D’ni nouns only have plural forms. The same sorts of nouns exist in English, words like pants or scissors, which never occur in the singular and always end in -e(s). In D’ni, these kinds of nouns will always have the –tE suffix — the word DantE (dahntee | dantí), for example, will always end in –tE, whether referring to just one pair or more than one pair of tweezers.

D’ni adjectives are also very similar to adjectives in English: they describe nouns and have only one form. That is, in order to agree with the noun they modify, they do not need to change to reflect singular and plural. The same adjective can modify both forms of the noun. The one significant departure from noun-adjective agreement in English is that adjectives always follow the noun they describe in D’ni; in English they can come before or after the noun.

Examples: ter para (tehr pahrah | ter para), great tree

tertE para (tehrtee pahrah | tertí para), great trees

DantE prin (dahntee prihn | dantí prin), small tweezers

D’ni adjectives can do many things in addition to modifying nouns, things that we will learn more about in future lessons. For now, it is important to remember that adjectives do not need to change to agree with singular and plural nouns, and that they always come after the noun they modify.

Lesson 6 Articles

Articles are the small words that let us indicate or “point to” a specific noun. In many ways, D’ni articles are like the adjectives we discussed in the last chapter: they describe nouns, and they do not need to change in order to agree in number.

Definite and Indefinite

English has three articles: a, an, and the. The first two, a and an, are called indefinite articles because, even while they “point to” a noun and distinguish it from the abstract, they do not identify a definite instance of that noun. A rock could be this rock on the ground, or that rock on the mountain, or that rock in the cave. Since we’re just talking about a rock in general, it could be any of these rocks in front of us, it is indefinite which rock we mean. The rock, however, doesn’t leave the question “Which rock?” unanswered — I am referring to a single rock, one that can be identified, since it is “the” rock. For this reason, the is called a definite article; it refers to a definite thing, while an indefinite article could refer to any number of things.

Articles in D’ni

D’ni has only two articles, one definite — re (reh | re) — and one indefinite — erT (ehrth | erþ). What’s unique about D’ni articles is that, like adjectives, they can be used for both singular and plural nouns without changing to agree. For example, we can say repråD (rehprad | repræd) or repråDtE (rehpradtee | reprædtí), the same way we can say the rock or the rocks in English. Similarly, we can say erTpråD (erthprad | erþpræd) or erTpråDtE (erthpradtee | erþprædtí) in D’ni; however, we can’t use the same indefinite article a for both in English. We certainly can say a rock in the singular, but we cannot say a rocks. This is because there is no indefinite article in English for plural nouns; the closest equivalent expression in English would be some rocks.

Notice as well that an article is attached to the front of the noun it describes. Whether singular or plural, modified with an adjective or standing by itself, the article will always be a prefix.

Examples: erTcirtE (ehrthchihrtee | erþçirtí), some organisms

renavatE ram (rehnahvahtee rahm | renavatí ram), the good masters

erTzu ziT (ehrthzuh zihth | erþzu ziþ), a low end

Rarely, re is contracted into a shorter form, r’ (r’ | r’), most often when the first letter of the noun it modifies is a vowel, especially e. The ’ lets us know that letters are missing and also helps clarify ambiguity. When we see r’erem (r’ehrehm | r’erem), we know that re has been contracted, and, especially since the first letter following the ’ is e, that the noun is erem (ehrehm | erem). If the ’ were absent — rerem — it would seem that re modifies the word rem, which is incorrect. This said, it pays to be cautious when reading D’ni texts, as sometimes the ’ is left out of the contracted r’, too, at which time we must rely on vocabulary and context to see us through.

Lesson 7 Numbers

The Arabic Number System: Base-10

The D’ni number system is very different from the one we’re used to. In our Arabic system, we can count up from zero to nine with single digits. To count higher than nine, we need two digits. The digit in the tens place tells us how many times we’ve cycled zero through nine, that is how many times ten is in the number, while the digit in the units place tells us where we are in the current cycle of zero through nine. Once we’ve hit ninety-nine, to count higher, we need a third digit for hundreds; then a fourth for thousands; and so on. This number system that we’re used to is called base-10 — that is, each place in a number is ten times larger than the previous one. The tens place is ten times bigger than the units (10 = 10 x 1), the hundreds place ten times bigger than the tens (100 = 10 x 10), the thousands place ten times bigger than the hundreds (1000 = 100 x 10), and so on. For a practical example, let’s look at the number 9017.

We see that each place is ten times larger than the previous one. The digit that is in each place tells us how many times that place occurs in the number: there are 9 thousands, 0 hundreds, 1 ten, and 7 units. When we multiply out (as in the diagram) and then add together, we get the number itself: 9000 + 000 + 10 + 7 = 9017.

The D’ni Number System: Base-25

Unlike our Arabic system, D’ni uses a base-25 numbering system. This means that each place in a number is not ten but twenty-five times bigger than the previous one. To illustrate like we did with Arabic numbers, we start with 1 , 1. If we increase the number so that it requires two digits, 10 (0 is the D’ni number for zero), this new number is not equal to 10, as we would think within the Arabic system; the newly introduced place is twenty-five times bigger than the previous one, 25 x 1 = 25. Thus, the D’ni number 10 is equal to 25 in Arabic terms. Introduce a third place, 100 , and it’s twenty-five times bigger than the second, twenty-fives place: 25 x 25 = 625. Introduce a fourth, 1000 , and it’s twenty-five times bigger yet again: 625 x 25 = 15,625. And so on.

Since D’ni is base-25, that must also mean that there are twenty-five basic digits to work with, the same way there are ten basic digits (0 through 9) in base-10. These D’ni digits are:

0 = 0 1 = 1 2 = 2 3 = 3 4 = 4 5 = 5 6 = 6 7 = 7 8 = 8 9 = 9 ) = 10 ! = 11 @ = 12 # = 13 $ = 14 % = 15 ^ = 16 & = 17 * = 18 ( = 19 [ = 20 ] = 21 \ = 22 { = 23 } = 24

Let’s look at a practical example, like the one above:

We now see that in D’ni, each place is not ten but twenty-five times larger than the previous one. As with Arabic numbers, the digit in each place tells us how many times that place occurs in the number: there are 9 fifteen-six-twenty-fives, 0 six-twenty-fives, 1 twenty-five, and 7 units. If we multiply out and add together as we did before, we get the value (in Arabic terms) of this D’ni number: 140,625 + 0000 + 25 + 7 = 140,657.

In transliteration, we usually represent these D’ni numbers between square brackets, with each digit separated by a vertical bar: [9 | 0 | 1 | 7].

D’ni Number Words

In English, every number can be written out with words; so too in D’ni, in a pattern that closely mirrors the logic that undergirds the number system. The numbers 0 through 4 are all simple words:

0 1 2 3 4rUn

(roon | rún)fa

(fah | fa)brE

(bree | brí)sen

(sehn | sen)tor

(tor | tor)

Multiples of five are also simple words:

5 ) % [vat

(vaht | vat)nAvU

(naivoo | névú)hEbor

(heebor | híbor)riS

(rihsh | riš}

To fill in the numbers in between, we abbreviate the word for the closest but not exceeding multiple and combine it with the word for one through four. Thus, the number six ( 6 ) breaks down into the closest multiple five plus one, vat plus fa: vagafa (vahgahfah | vagafa). (The ga means and, thus the word literally means five-and-one.) Similarly, the number fourteen ( $ ) breaks down into the closest multiple ten plus four, nAvU plus tor: nAgator (naigahtor | négator); and twenty-two ( \ ) is twenty plus two, riS plus brE: rigabrE (rihgahbree | rigabrí).

Find below a table of the D’ni numbers from 1 through | for quick reference (| is an alternative way of writing 10 , 25, when the number carries a special significance):

D’ni digit Arabic digit D’ni word Transliteration English word

0 0 rUn roon | rún zero

1 1 fa fah | fa one

2 2 brE bree | brí two

3 3 sen sehn | sen three

4 4 tor tor | tor four

5 5 vat vaht | vat five

6 6 vagafa vahgahfah | vagafa six

7 7 vagabrE vahgahbree | vagabrí seven

8 8 vagasen vahgahsehn | vagasen eight

9 9 vagator vahgahtor | vagator nine

) 10 nAvU naivoo | névú ten

! 11 nAgafa naigahfah | négafa eleven

@ 12 nAgabrE naigahbree | négabrí twelve

# 13 nAgasen naigahsehn | négasen thirteen

$ 14 nAgator naigahtor | négator fourteen

% 15 hEbor heebor | híbor fifteen

^ 16 hEgafa heegahfah | hígafa sixteen

& 17 hEgabree heegahbree | hígabrí seventeen

* 18 hEgasen heegahsehn | hígasen eighteen

( 19 hEgator heegahtor | hígator nineteen

[ 20 riS rihsh | riš twenty

] 21 rigafa rihgahfah | rigafa twenty-one

\ 22 rigabrE rihgahbree | rigabrí twenty-two

{ 23 rigasen rihgahsehn | rigasen twenty-three

} 24 rigator rihgahtor | rigator twenty-four

| 25 fasE fahsee | fasí twenty-five

D’ni Numbers Larger Than 24

When we write numbers larger than nine in English, we indicate the place of each digit in words: four thousand eight hundred and ninety three. In similar fashion, D’ni uses suffixes to indicate a digit’s place. These suffixes are:

–sE 10 25’s place– ra 100 625’s place

– len 1000 15,625’s place–mel 10000 390,625’s place– blo 100000 9,765,625’s place

Thus, the D’ni number for twenty-five ( 10 ) is a fa in the twenty-fives place: fasE. (Note that we never write out the 0 .) Three hundred twenty-five ( #0 ) is a nAgasen in the twenty-fives place: nAgasensE. We can also write out numbers with digits in both places — one hundred twenty-one ( 4] ) is a tor in the twenty-fives place and a rigafa in the units place: torsE rigafa.

Lesson 8

How Verbs Work

By now, you should be comfortable with D’ni letters and sounds, know a few simple phrases, and have some familiarity with nouns, adjectives, and numbers. The next big topic to tackle is verbs, one of the more complex aspects of D’ni, simply by virtue of its differences from what we’re used to in English. Because of these differences, it is useful to spend a little time reviewing how verbs are put together in general, before delving into D’ni verbs in earnest.

Infinitive

An infinitive verb is a verb in its most pure form. It doesn’t say anything about who or when or how, it simply gives the action or state of being that the verb describes. In English, we recognize an infinitive when the verb is preceded by the preposition to.

Examples: to move to see to write to be

In D’ni, much the same pattern is observed; if the verb is preceded by b’ (b’ | b’), a contraction of the preposition be (beh | be) which means to, it is in its infinitive form.

Examples: b’Kro (b’kro | b’kro) b’yim (b’yihm | b’yim)b’sel (b’sehl | b’sel) b’Ken (b’kehn | b’ken)

From the infinitive, we can find the root of the verb as we do in English, by dropping the b’, to. This root is the kernel of every conjugated verb, it is always the central part to which prefixes and suffixes are attached to indicate the who, when, and how.

Person and Number

When we conjugate a verb, we change it with prefixes and suffixes to take it out of the abstract infinitive and apply it to a particular subject at a particular time. Let’s first look at how to specify the “who” of the verb, the subject. Traditionally, the subject of a verb is classified by its person (1st, 2nd, or 3rd) and by its number (singular or plural)

singular plural1st I we2nd you (singular) you (plural)3rd he, she, it, Atrus they, Atrus and Catherine,

the Rivenese

The first person always indicates the person speaking the verb, whether it’s just that sole person (I) or a group including that person (we). The second person always indicates the person spoken to, whether that is just one person (you sing.) or a group of people (you pl.). In English, we don’t distinguish between the singular and plural you, except in slang where “y’all” could be said to be a second person plural. You’ll soon see that D’ni does make this distinction (as do many other modern foreign languages). Finally, the third person indicates the person spoken about, whether just one person (he, she, it) or a group of people (they).For each of these persons and numbers, there is a corresponding D’ni suffix that is attached to the end of the root verb. This is very different from verbs in English, which remain virtually unchanged regardless of person and number: I write, you write, she writes, we write, you pl. write, they write (the 3rd singular is the one exception).

In D’ni, we should conjugate the same verb, sel (sehl | sel), as sel, selem, selen, selet, seltE, selEt. Notice that the root, sel, doesn’t change from one form to the next, and that different suffixes correspond to each person and number. We will study these suffixes in depth in the next chapter.

Tense

Now let’s look at how to specify the “when” of the verb. Since verbs describe actions or states of being, they necessarily take place in time, in the past, present or future.

Examples: I wrote I write I will write

Within the past, present, and future tenses, verbs can also describe the quality of an action — Is the action of writing completed? Is it in progress? — and thereby indicate the location of that action in time more specifically. All of these combinations of tenses are expressed in D’ni with prefixes that are attached to the root verb. For example, the simple past tense, I wrote, is written Kosel (kosehl | kosel) in D’ni; the present perfect, I have written, lesel (lehsehl | lesel); the future progressive, I will be writing, boDosel (bodosehl | bodosel). Note how different prefixes are attached to the same root verb to indicate different tenses.

A general guideline to remember, then, is that prefixes indicate tense and suffixes indicate number and person.

Mood

The mood of a verb doesn’t have anything to do with feeling happy or sad when you speak or write it. Mood, in the grammatical sense we mean here, is a way of categorizing the intent behind the verb, the force that motivates it. Most of the verbs we come across in English are in the indicative mood; they are simple statements of fact: I am hungry, she will write a letter, they went home. The same is true in D’ni — an overwhelmeing majority of the verbs you see are indicative.

Sometimes, we’ll come across commands, like Say thank you! or Don’t go! These commands are said to be in the imperative mood, and since they usually address someone or a group of people directly, they most often are 2nd person verbs. D’ni imperative verbs work the same way as in English, only instead of relying on an exclamation point, D’ni uses an additional suffix attached after the 2nd person ending. (We’ll study imperative mood in a few chapters.)

We unfortunately know much less about the two other traditional moods, interrogative and subjunctive. Interrogative mood is used for asking questions. While we do know that questions can be asked in D’ni, we don’t have enough evidence to say exactly how. The accepted theory is that, like in English, there is a punctuation mark that indicates a question. The subjunctive mood is all but dead in English, but still commonly used in many other languages; it expresses wishes, desires, doubts — things that are not factual but rather hypothetical, potential, relative. Certainly, D’ni can express wishes, desires, and doubts, but evidence seems to indicate that, like English, it does not have a separate verb form for the purpose.

Other Verb Elements

There are other important aspects of verbs to consider — things such as active and passive voice, modal auxiliaries, and verbals — but these are advanced topics that can be difficult to master and that we won’t encounter for a while. For now, it is important to thoroughly understand person, number, tense, and mood before we start working with verbs in earnest.

Lesson 9

Simple Present Tense

Now that you know how verbs work in general, let’s look at how to conjugate a D’ni verb in the simple present tense. As you learned in the last chapter, tense is indicated with prefixes, person and number with suffixes. The simple present tense is perhaps the simplest to learn, as it has no tense-indicating prefix and uses the suffixes, also known as personal endings, that you were briefly introduced to in the last chapter. To review, those personal endings are:

singular plural1st — – et (-eht | -et)2nd – em (-ehm | -em) –tE (-tee | -tí)3rd – en (-ehn | -en) – Et (-eet | -ít)

Remember that these suffixes are attached to the root verb, which we obtain by removing b’ from the infinitive. Also, note that the first person singular does not have a suffix to attach to the root — that is to say, the first person singular conjugation of the verb is the same as the root verb. For all tenses, the first person singular is identified by the absence of a suffix. It is therefore easy to confuse this unsuffixed verb with the infinitive, which also never has a suffix; remember that infinitives always have a b’ attached to the front of the root verb.

Here’s an example of how a conjugated verb looks:

b’mEs (b’mees | b’mís) – to speak singular plural

1st mEs (I speak) mEset (we speak)2nd mEsem (you speak) mEstE (you pl speak)3rd mEsen (s/he speaks) mEsEt (they speak)

Because English doesn’t have personal endings to identify each form of the conjugated verb, it needs to specify the verb’s subject if we are to know who the verb refers to. Speak tells us nothing of who speaks; only when we specify I speak or you speak or the men speak do we have an idea. In D’ni, because each personal ending designates a specific person and number, we can figure out who the subject of the verb is even if that subject is not mentioned. Simply by looking at the suffix, we know that the subject of the verb mEsen is s/he.

In fact, many D’ni verbs are written this way, without any mention of a subject. The rule is that when the verb’s subject is a pronoun, it is implied by the personal ending and omitted. Pronouns — I, you, he, she, it, we, you plural, they — are “placeholder” nouns that stand in for other nouns, often names of people.

Examples: Atrus speaks. .Atrus mEsen (aitruhs meesehn | étrus mísen)The student speaks. .recUrtan mEsen (rechoortahn meesehn | reçúrtan

mísen) He speaks. .mEsen (meesehn | mísen)

(Remember that the . mark indicates the beginning of a sentence.) In the first two sentences, the subject of the third person singular verb speaks is not a pronoun — Atrus is a person’s name, a proper noun, and student is a standard noun, like pen or mountain. The third sentence, however, has a pronoun, he, for its subject. He could be standing in for either Atrus or the student; because it’s a pronoun, a placeholder, we don’t know for sure which

one.

Looking at the D’ni, the subjects in the first and second sentences are specified, and so they are written out. Since the subject of the third sentence is a pronoun, however, it is implied by the personal ending and thus isn’t written out. The same way that we don’t don’t know whether he refers to Atrus or the student, we can’t be sure what the subject of mEsen is. To be precise, all we do know for sure about mEsen is that its subject is third person singular; thus, it could be translated as he speaks, she speaks, or even it speaks, since the subject of all three is a third person singular pronoun.

Lesson 10

Simple Direct Objects

Verbs generally fall into one of two categories. Some of them are intransitive. This means that the action the verb describes applies to just one person — the actor. That is, the action is incapable of transferring to another person or thing. This may sound a little complicated, but it should make intuitive sense after a few examples of sentences with intransitive verbs.

Examples: The plant grows. .regilo tUlenThe ancient Ages live. .reDovatE oglan xavEtThe guildsman works. .retelrov tEgen

In each of these sentences, the verb is intransitive because the action applies only to the actor of the verb. When we read regilo tUlen, we recognize that the action of growing applies to the plant alone; the plant isn’t growing leaves or flowers, it itself grows. Similarly, retelrov tEgen tells us that the guildsman himself is working, and not that he is working a machine or a crowd; the action of the verb works refers solely to him.

Alternatively, verbs can be transitive; this means that the action of the verb extends or transfers to another person or object in addition to the actor. The person or object that receives the action of the verb is called its direct object (because it is a direct recipient of that action). Since the actors of transitive verbs act on a person or a thing, direct objects will always be nouns. Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs, and direct objects, include:

Examples: .renava SokUen erTcUrtantE The master instructs some students..miStaet erTpax nE We construct a new city..retelrovtE tUlEt gilotE The guildsmen grow plants.

Here, we see that the action of the verb is not only performed by its actor, but also extends to another person or thing that is affected by that action. In renava SokUen erTcUrtantE, the action instructs is performed by the master but extends also to his students, who receive the benefit of that action. Some students, then, is the direct object of the verb instructs. In the same way, the verb miStaet is enacted by an implied we while extending its action to erTpax nE. In the third example, we see that the same verb can be both transitive and intransitive, depending on the way it’s used. Where before, the verb tUl, grow, was intransitive and didn’t take an object, here in a new context, it becomes transitive and does take an object, plants.

Lesson 11

Subject Complements

If we look back at some of the simple phrases we’ve learned up until now, we find a handful that may look like sentences with direct objects, but are actually a very different kind of sentence. Take Ken ziT, which we learned in Lesson 4, for example. We know that Ken means I am, and ziT, low, looks like it might be a direct object. Remember how direct objects need to be nouns, though? ziT is an adjective — which means it can’t be a direct object.

In fact, ziT is what we call a subject complement. Subject complements add to or complete (i.e., complement) a sentence’s subject, unlike direct objects which relate not to the subject but to the verb of a sentence. Also unlike direct objects, subject complements can be both nouns and adjectives. Sentences with subject complements always occur in a set pattern:

subject + copula + complement

The copula, also known as the linking verb, is the verb that connects subject to complement, most of the time a form of Ken, be, but also at times other verbs of existence, appearance, or becoming, like tUl, grow.

This kind of construction works like a mathematical equation, where the copula is an equal sign telling us that the subject and complement correspond to one another, are equal to one another. In our example sentence, .Ken ziT, the implied subject I is equated with the complement low: I am low. When the subject complement is an adjective like low, it is called a predicate adjective. When the complement is a noun, Atrus Kenen erTseltan, Atrus is a writer, for example, it is called a predicate noun.

I + am + low Atrus + is + a writer(implied) + Ken + ziT Atrus + Kenen + erTseltansubject + copula + complement subject + copula + complementsubject = predicate adj. subject = predicate noun

Subject complements, like subjects themselves, can be simple — consisting of a single word as in .Ken ziT — or complex — consisting of multiple word elements and modifiers as in .Ken erTseltan para. Complex subjects and complements can become very elaborate, but all such sentences will always boil down to the subject + copula + complement construction.

Examples: .retelrovtE vagasen KenEt cUrtantE The eight guildsmen are students..renava tUlen oglan The master grows ancient..Kenet garo ga Kera We are mighty and brave.

Lesson 12 Adverbs

Just as adjectives can describe and modify nouns, adverbs cab modify verbs, adjectives, and many other sentence elements. Like adjectives, adverbs usually follow the word they modify and have only one form.

Examples: .xaven yartE nAvU blo It lives approximately ten days..Kenen Kera b’riS She is very brave..recUrtantE nE selEt ago The new students write well.

Adverbs answer the questions “how,” “when,” “where,” and “to what extent.” Asking these questions is often one of the best ways to figure out what word the adverb modifies, if it’s unclear. If we turn the sentence Kenen Kera b’riS, she is very brave, into an appropriate question, “How brave is she?”, the answer, very brave, gives us both the adverb and the word it modifies. Thus we know that the adverb is b’riS, very, and that it modifies the adjective Kera, brave. We can ask similar questions for the adverbs in the other two examples as well — How do the students write? They write (selEt) well (ago). How are the ten days that it lives, in other words, to what extent are the days that it lives ten? Those days amount to ten (nAvU) only approximately (blo).

One important class of adverb is an exception to the placement rule: temporal adverbs, those that express an aspect of time or frequency. Unlike most, these adverbs are generally placed before the word they modify rather than after.

Examples: .renava preniv mEsen The master speaks again..gaT Ken erTtelrov I am still a guildsman..Atrus xan selen sevtE Atrus always writes Ages.

Lesson 13

Converting Particles I

Suffixes hold a special place in the D’ni language. We’ve seen how important they are for verbs, where they function as personal endings. Suffixes are important for other parts of speech as well, where they most often function as what are called converting particles. We call them this because they are pieces of words, what grammarians call particles, that convert between parts of speech. In this lesson, we’ll look at three converting particles that allow us to switch between nouns, adjectives, and adverbs.

Adjective to Noun: –(e)T

Say we have an adjective in English, good, which we want to transform into a noun, a word that means the quality of being good: goodness. By adding -ness to the English adjective, we end up with a noun form of that adjective. -ness is thus what we might call a converting particle, for English. Similarly, if we begin with the D’ni word ram, and add the converting particle –(e)T, it turns into the corresponding noun, rameT.

Note that there are parentheses around the e of –(e)T. This means that the e will only be used when it is required for pronunciation. When we turned ram into a noun, we needed to use the optional e because without it, the word would be difficult to say. (D’ni generally frowns on two consonants in a row.) For other adjectives, many of which already end in a vowel, there is no need for the e and it is left out.

Examples: para (great) becomes paraT (greatness) garo (mighty) becomes garoT (might)Kera (brave) becomes KeraT (bravery)

Some English “converting particles” in addition to -ness that often transform adjectives to nouns, and might be helpful to associate with –(e)T, are: -ity (secure vs. security) and -ry (brave vs. bravery).

You may have also noticed that KeraT is the name of the last King of D’ni. This is no coincidence; sometimes these adjectives-become-nouns serve as epithets, names of honor and respect. It certainly took a great deal of bravery for Kerath to step down from his throne and institute a whole new form of government for his people. Other kings of D’ni history — Solath, Demath — have similar epithets for names, though we don’t yet know what they might mean.

Noun to Adjective: – ex

Where –(e)T turns adjectives into nouns, the converting particle – ex goes the other way around, turning nouns into adjectives. Note that for – ex, the e is not in parentheses; it will always be included, regardless of whether the noun ends in a vowel or consonant.

Examples: vog (nature) becomes vogex (natural)bonU (acid) becomes bonUex (acidic)ter (tree) becomes terex (arboreal)nava (master) becomes navaex (masterful)pråD (rock) becomes pråDex (rocky)

Some common English suffixes that serve the same noun-to-adjective function are: -ic (acid vs. acidic), -ous (cavern vs. cavernous), -al (nature vs. natural), -ful (bounty vs. bountiful), and -y (rock vs. rocky).The – ex converting particle plays a special role when applied to number words. Numbers can be both nouns — yim sen, I see three, where three works like a pronoun standing in for three rocks or three people — and adjectives — cUrtantE sen, three students. But what if, instead of saying three students, we wanted to say the third student? This is where we would use a number word with the – ex suffix: recUrtan senex. We call sen, which tells us a quantity, a cardinal number, while senex, which tells us the order in a sequence, is called an ordinal number. This use of – ex applies to any number, no matter how big or small.

Adjective to Adverb: –(e)S

With a firm grasp of how –(e)T works, this last converting particle should be easy to use. Like –(e)T, –(e)S is always suffixed onto adjectives; instead of changing them into nouns, though, –(e)S changes them to adverbs. These adverbs are never temporal, and so always come after the word(s) they modify.

Examples: ten (simple) becomes teneS (simply)garo (mighty) becomes garoS (mightily)Kera (brave) becomes KeraS (bravely)

There is really only one English suffix, -ly, that plays a similar adjective-to-adverb function.

Lesson 14 Word Order

D’ni is an SVO language

A number of the D’ni constructions we have met so far rely on a strict ordering of words. We learned, for example, that the sentence with subject complement always occurs in the set pattern subject + coupla + complement. The rigor of this pattern is essential for us to identify the various parts of the sentence and the way they fit into a meaning.

This kind of rigorous word order is an important and far-reaching feature of D’ni. In fact, the sentence with subject complement technically comes from a more general construction that governs all D’ni sentences: subject + verb + object. Linguists use patterns like this one to classify languages; D’ni is thus an SVO (subject-verb-object) language just like English. If we pull apart a simple sentence, we’ll see what this classification means.

Example: The machine makes tweezers.

We should be able to easily identify the subject, verb, and object of this sentence: the machine, makes, and tweezers respectively. If we write this sentence in D’ni, we see that the same word order is maintained:

Example: .reDOha barelen DantE

The subject, reDOha, comes first, followed by the verb, barelen, and after that the object, DantE. This standard subject-verb-object word order applies to all D’ni sentences. When the subject is a personal pronoun and implied by the verb, it obviously doesn’t appear, but SVO word order is still upheld: the verb then comes first and is followed by any objects. Similarly, when the verb has no object, the subject (as long as it is not implied) comes first followed by the verb.

Modifiers and word order

But if we could only make D’ni sentences out of subjects, verbs, and objects, they would be very boring, simple sentences indeed. Modifiers — adjectives, adverbs, and phrases serving the function of adjectives or adverbs — help make sentences interesting and complex by qualifying, characterizing, or describing the main words making up the sentence’s framework. As we’ve learned already, adjectives and adverbs follow the word(s) they modify, except for temporal adverbs, which come before. Phrases function like adjectives or adverbs and also follow the word(s) they modify. We’ll learn more about them later on.

When a word has a bunch of modifiers, the closer a modifier is to that word, the greater its significance. Single-word modifiers always come before modifying phrases. This is different from the ordering of modifiers in English, where they can be distributed on either side of the word. Here’s a phrase that demonstrates these differences, adapted from Aitrus’ map From D’ni to the Surface:

DOhatE pråDtEgal tor garo b’riS tregan D’nEnoun adjective number adjective adverb phrase

four very mighty rock-working machines in the D’ni empirenumber adverb adjective adjective noun phrase

You can see how different the D’ni and English ordering of modifiers is. While English has them scattered on both sides of the noun, D’ni arranges them all afterwards in descending order of significance, single-word adjectives

first, then adjectival phrases.

The bond between verb and object is very strong and can never be broken. Thus, when adverbs are introduced into a sentence that has both verb and object, they don’t come directly after the verb as would be expected but rather are placed after the object. A slightly modified excerpt from From D’ni to the Surface provides us with an example of this as well:

rEsloen erTmarg gixaS mrepråDverb direct object adverb phrase

(it) safely dissolves a layer from the rockimpl. subj. adverb verb direct object phrase

We might expect the two adverbial elements of this sentence, gixaS and mrepråD, to come directly after the verb rEsloen, but because a direct object, erTmarg, is present, it takes precedence and comes first. Note too that, as with adjectives, single-word adverbs always come before adverbial phrases.

Lesson 15 Present Progressive Tense

Similar to how suffixes indicate number and person for D’ni verbs, prefixes indicate different tenses. So far, we’ve been working with verbs in the simple present tense. This is the most basic tense in D’ni and we recognize it by the absence of prefixes. When we place Do– in front of a conjugated simple present tense verb, the tense changes to present progressive. Do– may appear as a prefix on any verb, as long as that verb is conjugated; it will never appear in the infinitive.

The simple present tense is a plain statement of action or being: lonEt, they discover; reano remen, the water flows. When the present tense verb becomes progressive, it describes an action that is currently in progress, that is happening right now in the present: DoselEt, they are writing (at this moment); Atrus DoeDeren, Atrus is sleeping (right now as we speak). These present progressive verbs, when translated into English, will always take the form of subject + to be + verb-ing — the -ing ending in English is often a clue that you have a progressive tense.

One common mistake that is made when translating from English to D’ni is to see a present progressive verb — you are dying — and try to translate it as a form of Ken, to be, plus another verb, resulting in something like Kenem DomanSU. This is an incorrect translation — you are dying cannot be separated out into two verbs, you are + dying. Where English needs to use helping verbs, forms of to be and to have to express complex verb forms, D’ni is capable of doing so with a single word.

When translating complex verb forms like our present progressive example, You are dying, it is best to step back, figure out the verbal idea (second person singular, present progressive tense) and then translate into D’ni: DomanSUem. This is the proper translation; the root of the verb is manSU, die, the personal ending – em tells us the verb is second person singular, and the tense prefix Do– tells us that the tense is present progressive.

Lesson 16 Negative Statements

All of the sentences we’ve worked with so far are affirmative statements. That is, they all express something that is, or something that happens. What if, however, we wanted to say that something is not, or doesn’t happen? We would then be constructing negative statements, which in English is accomplished by using the words no or not.

Examples: Gehn is a great writer. (affirmative) Gehn is not a great writer. (negative) The master instructs. (affirmative) The master does not instruct. (negative) There is peace. (affirmative) There is no peace. (negative)

D’ni has a similar, powerful little word that turns affirmative statements into negative ones: ril. ril always comes immediately before the verb it negates; it is always adjacent to the verb and no other word will ever intervene between the two. Where English differentiates between constructions that use no and not, the D’ni ril covers all forms of negation.

English also often uses the helping verb do in negative statements formed with not, the second pair of statements above, for example. D’ni has no need for this helping verb and it should never appear in English-to-D’ni translations. It may be helpful to think about these kinds of sentences — The master does not instruct — in an archaic English form that eliminates the do/does — The master instructs not. Such rewriting may also help keep the negating word and complicated verb tenses clear and distinct.

Examples: .gen ril Kenen erTseltan para

.renava ril SokUen

.ril Kenen Sora

Because ril is modifying the verb, we know that it’s an adverb, and this means that it can be applied to other elements of a sentence, too: adjectives, other adverbs, phrases, etc. We’ll soon learn about these other uses, but before we do so, it is important to have a firm grasp on how verbs are negated and the changes in meaning that result

Lesson 17 Imperative Mood

Most of the sentences we write in D’ni are in the indicative mood: they state facts and make observations. Sometimes, though, when we make a direct address, we don’t want to tell facts, we want to instruct what to do, to give a command. In these cases, we use the imperative mood, which in D’ni is expressed with an –a suffix after the verb’s personal ending.

Traditionally, the imperative mood is limited to the second person — you, go! or you all, go! — since commands usually need to be directed at others who are intended to enact them. However, we can make similar statements with reference to a first person subject — we go! meant not as a statement of fact, but as an injunction to action that includes the speaker — or even a third person subject — they go! meant similarly as a command. D’ni considers all of these verb forms to be imperative in mood; indeed, there is strong evidence to suggest that –a can be suffixed onto verbs of any person or number. However, since commands are also a demand for an event that has not yet occurred, imperative mood can only apply to verbs in the present tense. Since commands tend to be direct and straightforward requests for action, most sentences using the imperative mood will be relatively short and simple, focusing on the verb.

Examples: .rEsema Eat!.eDertEa Sleep! (Go to sleep!).eDereta We sleep! (Let us now sleep!).ril glasema reano Don’t drink the water!.xan Dolonema Always be discovering!

Lesson 18 Converting Particles II

We’ve already learned about three converting particles that switch between nouns, adjectives, and adverbs: –(e)T, –(e)S, and – ex. There are two left to learn which resemble each other in both form and function: –tav and –tan.

Both of these particles convert verbs into nouns. –tav produces common nouns which express a completed realization or result of the action of the verb. These nouns can be abstract or concrete; some are easier to translate than others. marntav, the completion of the act of creating, is a creation, the same way that manSUtav, the result of dying, is death. But what is bareltav, the completed act or result of making? This would best be rendered as a made thing in English, which has no word of its own to designate this concept. Common English suffixes which may be associated with –tav are: -ance, -ment, -tion, and -sion.

Examples: Krotav movement seltav writingmEstav speechbAktav link

–tan, on the other hand, produces what we call solidary nouns. Solidary nouns denote a class or group of people (think solidarity). In other words, –tan changes the verb into the person who does that verb, who performs its action. You may notice that we’ve been using some of these words for a while now: cUrtan (student), seltan (writer), tEgtan (worker), etc. Corresponding English suffixes include: -er/-or and -ant/-ent.

Examples: mEstan speaker, oratorSokUtan instructorbareltan Maker (another name for Yahvo, the D’ni deity)lontan discoverer

Lesson 19 Demonstrative Adjective and Pronoun

Similar to articles, demonstrative adjectives — this and these, that and those — “point to” specific nouns. We know for sure of one demonstrative adjective in D’ni: the word met which is the equivalent of the English this and these. Like re or erT, met doesn’t distinguish between singular and plural; the same word is used for both forms. Placement, though, is a more difficult matter — source texts show met in a variety of positions, before and after the noun, attached to and separate from it.

Some general guidelines for placement have emerged, though. When the noun is not modified by any adjectives, met usually comes immediately after the noun as a separate word. When the noun is modified, met usually comes immediately before the noun as a separate word. There is one special case where met is attached to the beginning of the noun as a prefix (when it is a material direct object) but this is an advanced grammar point we won’t learn about for a while.

Examples: .baxanatE met toKituEt rerUA These maps determine the route..met Dova pråDex Kenen oglan This rocky world is ancient.

In addition to being a demonstrative adjective, met is also a demonstrative pronoun. Remember that pronouns are “placeholder” nouns that stand in for other nouns. The pronouns we’ve encountered already — subject pronouns like I, you, we, and they — are all implied in the personal endings of verbs. met as a demonstrative pronoun is always third person, singular or plural, and stands in for an explicit noun subject. Take for example the two full sentences above. The subjects of these sentences are baxanatE met and met Dova pråDex respectively. If we replace these subjects with met, we end up with:

Examples: .met toKituEt rerUA These determine the route..met Kenen oglan This is ancient.

Note how met is used in both sentences, even though the subject of the first is third person plural, and that of the second third person singular. We can tell whether met is meant to be singular or plural by looking at the personal ending of the verb. Note too that when it is a pronoun, met follows SVO word order and comes before the verb as a separate word.

Lesson 20 Coordinating Conjunctions

Simple statements like we’ve been studying are excellent for expressing clear, concise, and straightforward ideas. Their adherence to a consistent SVO word order always provides us with enough information to determine the sentence’s actor, his or her action, and the recipient (if any) of that action.

Sometimes, though, we want to express not simply straightforward ideas, but the relationship between multiple ideas. One way of forming such complex sentences is connecting together simple statements with what are called coordinating conjunctions (so called because they conjoin two independent sentences of relatively equivalent, or coordinate, value). Let’s look at an example in English.

Example: Bravery is good, but he is not brave.

Here, we have two simple statements, bravery is good and he is not brave, that are linked together with the coordinating conjunction but. Taken individually, each statenebt us a complete and functional sentence on its own. When they are connected together by but, a logical relation is established between them: as a general condition, being brave is a good thing — he is an exception, though, he stands in contradiction to the general condition and is not brave. But tells us that the relation between the two connected sentences, technically called independent clauses, is one of opposition or contradiction.In D’ni, we would write the same sentence this way:

Example: .KeraT Kenen ram rUb ril Kenen Kera

As in English, the two independent clauses — KeraT Kenen ram and ril Kenen Kera — are connected with a coordinating conjunction, rUb, meaning but. Notice that there is no punctuation, such as the comma we use in English, to separate the two clauses; D’ni has no such punctuation.

Another D’ni conjunction is pam, or, which connects two clauses that are mutually exclusive alternatives. For example, it might be said of Riven that Atrus is always writing the Descriptive Book or the Age dies.

Example: .Atrus xan Doselen reKorman pam resev manSUen

The sentence offers two distinct possibilities. Whichever alternative comes to be true, the other one must necessarily not be true — either Atrus keeps writing and the Age lives, or the Age dies because Atrus has stopped writing.

ga, and, is the most frequently used coordinating conjunction. It indicates that the two clauses are connected together because of their similarity, association, or consequence. In Aitrus’ From D’ni to the Surface, we read about a curious lizard:

Example: .met m’la tornen poant bonUex ga

rEsloen repråDtE

These two independent clauses are connected together with ga because the second is a consequence of the closely associated first: This lizard spits acidic saliva, and as a result it (the saliva) dissolves the rocks.

Of course, coordinating conjunctions be used to string together more than two independent clauses:

Example: .met m’la tornen poant bonUex ga

rEsloen repråDtE rUb rem’la ril Doglasen

D’ni coordinating conjunctions thus work very similarly to how they work in English, by connecting together simple statements and telling us something about the relationship between those statements, with the one significant difference that there is no punctuation to set the statements apart.

Lesson 21 Introduction to Prepositions

At this point in our studies of D’ni, we’ve learned about and worked with many parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, and conjunctions. There is one remaining part of speech left to introduce — prepositions. These little words enrich the D’ni language with phrases that, like adjectives and adverbs, modify other parts of a sentence. In fact, these phrases can be classified according to whether they play an adjectival or adverbial role in the sentence.

Like adjectives and adverbs, prepositions have only one form and do not change to agree with the word(s) they modify. However, unlike most D’ni words, English prepositions and D’ni prepositions do not translate one-to-one; a single D’ni preposition may cover a number of English ones, while a single English preposition may translate into any number of D’ni words, depending on the inflection in meaning.

Phrases formed with prepositions, called prepositional phrases, always follow a common pattern: first comes the preposition, then a noun, then any modifiers. A verb will never appear in a prepositional phrase.

Examples: in the housewith a powerful machineamong friends

A number of D’ni prepositions take the form of a consonant plus e: te, be, me, ke. When this kind of preposition opens a prepositional phrase, it often is turned into a prefix and contracted, such that the preposition is attached to the noun and a ’ replaces the e. The one exception to this is when the preposition occurs in front of the article re, where the ’ and/or e are dropped altogether.

Examples: me erTKElen from a stept’yar fa (te yar fa) in one day krehevtE ( ke rehevtE) for the words

Other prepositions not of this form, like ben and xo, are never contracted and predominantly stand as full, independent words in the sentence. Regardless of how the preposition is written, the phrase it forms should always be considered a closed unit — the phrase in its entirety will obey modifier word order and, while adjustable internally, should never be split up with words external to the phrase itself.

Lesson 22 “beh” and Quantifiers

As a standard preposition, be means to, generally in the sense of motion or impulse towards.

Examples: .marentema relena bretalEo Follow the journey to the surface!.rebaro KenEt ram be yESa The bahro are good to Yeesha..DoKazEet b’erTpax We are detouring to a city.

The sense of motion towards is clear in the first and third examples; in the second, the bahro direct their goodness towards Yeesha. We can also recognize that the prepositional phrase in the first sentence is adjectival (it modifies lena) while in the others it is adverbial (be yESa answers the question, “how are the bahro good?”, and b’repax answers the question, “where are we detouring?”).

b’ should look familiar to us, since we met it very early on — as how we identify infinitive verbs. This follows English practice, where the infinitive — to write — is also identified by the presence of the preposition to.

be has one final use that is idiomatic to D’ni, and a very important feature of the language. Rather than using adverbs like very or minimally to express intensity, D’ni uses the construction b’ + number word to precisely express that degree of intensity on a scale of one to twenty-five; as the number increases, so does the intensity of the modified word. Called quantifiers (or sometimes adverbs of degree), these phrases always play an adverbial function and are most commonly applied to other modifiers and to verbs.

Examples: poant bonUex b’rigasen very (to-twenty-three) acidic saliva.sel D’nE b’hEbor I write D’ni passably well. (to-fifteen).rem’la DoKroen b’vat The lizard is moving just a little. (to-five)

Translating quantifiers requires a bit of creativity which often depends on context, since there are no set English words for each degree of intensity. Note how the quantifier in the first example modifies the adjective bonUex, while in the other two it modifies the verb. Notice, too, how the rules for word order are still observed: the quantifier comes after the single-word adjective or after the verb’s direct object as we would expect.

Sometimes, if we wish to exaggerate the degree of intensity, we can use number words greater than twenty-five.

Example: .Kenen Kera b’fasEvat She is extremely brave.

When a quantifier sits at either extreme of the number scale, either b’fa (meaning least) or b’fasE (meaning most), care must be taken to translate correctly. When a word is modified with b’fa, this indicates

that that word’s intensity is very low, present to only the smallest degree — not that it is not present, or that it is an opposite word. That is, erTtelrov ram b’fa does not mean an evil or bad guildsman, but simply a guildsman who is good to the least degree, just a little good; he might be very pragmatic and withdrawn, only exhibiting his good side very rarely, but this does not make him evil or bad, just remote.

A different kind of difficulty may be encountered with b’fasE. To consider a slightly modified recording of Keta’s speech:

Example: .xan tAgan gen b’fasE

This sentence could be translated as I always love Gehn the most, which suggest a comparison not in the original D’ni. A better way to translate might be I always most dearly love Gehn; again, some contextual liberty in translation is often required to accurately render these D’ni quantifiers in English.