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swan LOW [rhymes with "how"] on LOY-too-chee?

on LOY-too-coo swan...

on HOO-swus heen LWIGHT tuh CHEE loo YAT-pwel

"I hope the sun will shine for you"

When leaving for longer periods of time.

The motto of Lwait.

Alternate word order allowed: Swan kílu an helíyel ("is blue this sky"). *An helíyel kílu swa-n ("this sky blue is") and *Kílu swa-n an helíyel ("blue is the sky") are not allowed, because the predicate adjective must directly follow swa. *Helíyel swa-n kílu is also not allowed, because the lack of an makes the sky not proximate; Helíyel swaim kílu is allowed, though.

Also note that the sky is kílu (cyan, what we would consider light blue) during the day, rather than húsu (dark blue). Both of these are basic color terms.

An helíyel swa-n híleng úni ("this sky is purple not") is also allowed; adverbs can go before or after the predicate adjective.

Alternate word orders allowed: Lú an helíyel swin kílu; An helíyel lú swin kílu. The sky may or may not actually be blue.

This statement expresses roughly the same amount of certainty as An helíyel swa-n kílu ("the sky is blue"), but also says that the speaker got the information from direct perception (especially sight). Contrast with the version without hwel, where there's more uncertainty about whether the sky actually is blue.

One possible word order (and the most likely).

The other possible word order.

This is not allowed because swan swatel ("is black") is considered one phrase, and can't be split apart by a noun. (It can, however, be split apart by an adverb.)

This isn't allowed, because an myau is a noun phrase, and therefore can't be split up. (Well, in this case, it has a different but similar meaning: "This is a black cat".)

An explicit separate clause as an argument to maus "say".

The clause is an argument like any other, and therefore can go in different positions in the sentence.

For the verbs lú "see", maus "say", tap "use", and tyus "make", having an explicit marker for the clause is optional (but can be included to prevent ambiguity).

For the verbs mentioned previously, the verb and (in the case of maus and tyus) its subject can be mixed freely with the words in the dependent clause.

...although rules about splitting apart phrases still apply.

Mu is basically a verbal quotation mark, and replaces the particle hem.

Haupi lun is a noun meaning "the place where I saw it". (Lun is "I saw it".)

"Pe piki" is "at the time when..."

"Piki lun" is a noun phrase, not an adverbial phrase. It could be the subject or object of a sentence, but to get the meaning desired for this sentence, it needs to be the object of a preposition.

This might make sense, but since it's talking specifically about time, pe piki would probably be used instead.

Straightforward conditional clause.

Different word orders are allowed.

The clause can go anywhere in the sentence that's not inside another phrase.

Ulsi umpikwa introduces a counterfactual conditional. Both clauses of counterfactual conditionals use the subjunctive mood.

The condition, swa-n pikuni hupep, is actually the question "Is this a dog?".

This works for non-polar questions as well.

Alternate word order: An myau lun. Not allowed: *Lúku an myau; the verb lú agrees with the thing experienced, not the experiencer.

Lú by itself often implies sight, but if you want to be clear that you saw the cat (with your eyes), rather than hearing or feeling zem, then you can say this.

Can be used for contrastive focus. Also allowed: Hu kú lun an myau. Not allowed: *Kú lun an myau; because the speaker is experiencing rather than doing, kú must be marked with hu (preposition indicating an experiencer).

Or Lul al myau mausen if you've been talking mainly about him, rather than the cat. The implied experiencer changes when you're talking about what someone else said.

Basic example sentence that I'll use to construct more complex examples.

Some alternate word orders allowed: Lú an myau swin swatel, An myau lú swin swatel. Not allowed: *An myau lú(n) swatel: when used in this sense, lú modifies a complete sentence, so the regular verb must be there. Definitely not allowed: *An myau lan saki (swa) swatel: lam saki does translate to "look", but it doesn't mean "look" in this sense, but rather that the cat is looking at something.

This expresses some uncertainty as to whether the cat really is black, or if it just looks that way for some reason. Because of this, the verb changes to the subjunctive (swin instead of swan).

This statement expresses roughly the same amount of certainty as An myau swa-n swatel ("the cat looks black"), but also says that the speaker got the information from direct perception (especially sight). The verb also changes back to the indicative mood.

An myau swa-n swatel lú (with neither the subjunctive nor hwel) is ambiguous between this meaning and the previous meaning, but is allowed in informal speech.

While in English, hear can imply that you were told the information by someone else, in Lwaitel using lú ustelw here would imply that you directly perceived the cat using hearing.

With a verb of emotion, the main sentence is a normal indicative sentence and lú niuspe expresses how the person feels about it. This implies that the fact that the cat is black is known, and the focus is only on the speaker's happiness about it.

Defocusing lú implies that the cat being black is new, important information, and the fact that I'm happy about it is not the main point of the sentence.

...not sure how much sense this makes... need a better noun here. TODO

Not *An myau swin swatel lú pwili: that would only be used to contrast with what someone else thinks, or what one thinks at a later time. Also not *An myau swan swatel maus pemim; that means something else (see next example).

This means that the person said, in their head, the sentence "the cat is black", or some paraphrase of it.

Not *An kip lun kiusteng, that's for knowing facts. (I think Spanish is similar in making this distinction.)

An can be used as a pronoun. Again, you could also just say naun.

An can also be followed by a noun phrase.

One could also say Myau naumi, if the cat isn't something one plans on talking about much in this conversation (but not *Myau naun or *An myau naumi, because the determiner has to agree with the verb).

An is used with proper nouns as well as common nouns.

If it's clear from context that one is talking about multiple cats, íhe can be omitted.

If there's a number, then it's possible to tell that it's plural already, so one would not add íhe.

Literally "the cats are five". Numbers can be used as predicate adjectives.

If indefiniteness can't be marked on the verb, the determiner swasye is used.

Saki takes inalienable possession, and is required to be possessed; one couldn't just say *An saki swa-n húkyes. Because ku is being used as a pronoun, a noun phrase is not required.

Or ...lwe húkyes saki.... Not *An myau lwe húkyes sakipen naun; when used with lwe, the noun doesn't take possessive marking.

"Next to" (or "beside") is just a simple preposition, lenk. The equivalent noun phrase ("the cat next to the box") would just be an myau lenk al piuleng.

When used with an object (rather than a location), pe means "in".

If you want to clarify or focus that the cat is inside the box, and not any other relation to it, you can add the word "tius".

A direction word can come directly after the preposition. With lenk "by", it means that the thing is close to the other thing and on the specified side.

A prepositional phrase starting with hu can come directly after a phrase talking about a direction (left or right, also up and down when talking about outer space) to indicate whose perspective this is from.

Hu hyangu specifies that the perspective being used is that of a map, oriented the way maps are usually oriented in this world (west = up).

Hu hyangu is a set phrase, so demonstratives, determiners, and other adjectives are not used with hyangu.

With the preposition pe "in, at", a direction specifies that the item is in that direction, but not necessarily close by.

This is similar; it uses sapchem as an adjective with its comparative form. Unlike the pe form, this only talks about one axis; that is, for example, the cat may also be far above the box or far in front of it.

...this also specifies that it's far away. (TODO is this right?)

This uses the adjective kalkel; using this adjective, the object being compared to is specified using the preposition hu.

Multiple direction-type words can be used together.

The word for "between" acts sort of like a conjunction, going between the two nouns.

Ípwenk usually refers to time, but it also has a metaphorical extension into space meaning "beyond"/"past".

"Hope you're happy hearing Conlangery". Perhaps I should record this and send it in to Conlangery.