Súiⱥcúili nouns and noun phrases

Noun forms

Nouns have 3 grammatical genders: blue eyes, green eyes, and brown eyes (if multiple objects of different eye color are included, brown eyes is used). Most nouns describing people and other mammals can be of any grammatical gender, with their gender being based on the actual eye color of the person (with those who wear eye-color-changing contacts with unusual eye colors using the green-eyes version). For other nouns, eye color is assigned somewhat arbitrarily, though there are some tendencies: white and blue objects tend to be blue-eyes; green objects tend to be green-eyes; black, red, yellow, or brown objects tend to be brown-eyes; and brown-eyes is also sort of the default.

Nouns have 3 cases, which are indicated by changing vowels in the word, as described in the morphology section. Nouns used as the subject of a sentence are in the first form, nouns used as the object of a sentence use the second form, and nouns used after a preposition use the third form.

There are 4 types of suffixes a noun can have, as shown below:

The general form is the one used when talking about all things of a particular type (e.g., chocolate in the sentence "I like chocolate.") and in dictionaries. The indefinite forms are equivalent to English a/an. The definite forms are equivalent to English the.

Nouns may be first, second, or third person (unlike English, where only pronouns can be first or second person). To make a noun first-person, add ca or cal to the beginning (ca for words starting with consonants; cal for words starting with vowels). To make a noun second-person, add ti or til to the beginning (the i changes to ė when the noun is used as an object). No prefixes are used for third-person. Note that it's fairly common in Súiⱥcúil to say one's own name as a first-person noun the first time they mention themselves.

Proper names

Given names of people usually don't have any meaning (though they can). Children choose their own names when they're about five years old; before that they are numbered with an ordinal indicating birth order followed by the parent's name. Certain names are fairly common, although I don't have a list of such names. If a name ends in an e, i, or u, it generally agrees with the person's eye color. In Onceuponatimia, most common names are specific either to males or to females; if a name contains a ú it is generally female, if it contains a í it is generally male, and if it contains neither there is no pattern. In Súiⱥcúil, the gender (male or female) doesn't influence the name at all.

A person's birth date and city of birth are often listed after the given name for disambiguation purposes; these are not generally used outside of official paperwork or when disambiguation is actually needed.

Pronouns

There are one first person pronoun, one second person pronoun, and 27 third-person pronouns. The first person pronoun carā and the second person pronoun tirā (remember, ā is silent) work like English I and you. The third-person pronouns are each associated with a letter of the alphabet, and are often used to refer to words starting with or containing that letter: arā aúⱥrā bibrhā ecarā dedrhā erā forā gagrhā aharā ırā írhā jorā lerā emrhā enrhā eŋrhā orā ørā pirā rerā ṛrā sorā ʃorā terā urā úrhā vorā.

Before a pronoun is used, there is generally a sentence of the form <noun phrase> <pronoun> <optional proper noun> (where both the noun phrase and the pronoun are in their first form). This says that that pronoun is associated with that noun phrase, and introduces the noun and can act as "there is". (Note that this is either a separate sentence, or separated from a different sentence with a semicolon.) This can also be used with the second-person pronoun as a greeting in a letter or to get someone's attention or indicating who one is talking to (the noun would also be second-person).

Pronouns change for case the same way nouns do. Note that this means that the silent ā at the end turns into a pronounced ō.

Adjectives

Adjectives are normally placed before the noun they modify.

Adjectives change case the same way as nouns. They also have endings to agree with the noun they modify; these endings depend on which of two types of adjective it is.

For Type 1 adjectives (ending in -un in dictionaries)

For Type 2 adjectives (ending in -ⱥ in dictionaries)

The comparative may be formed by putting the word so after the adjective and putting the adjective after the noun. The superlative may be formed by adding the prefix tu or by putting the word ʃuno in front of it; this form is generally used either with a definite noun or with a one-of-definite noun.

All forms except type 1 definite have a corresponding r' form, made by putting r' after the vowel in the ending. This is short for the adjective followed by (or preceded by, for comparatives) the corresponding form of rihun and is primarily used as the object of lilun or selilun (since these take a noun as an object). In formal or older works, this form should not be used; rather, the correct form of rihun should be written out. In most dialects of Súiⱥcúil, the r changes to l when followed by a consonant.

Conjunctions

Conjunctions are used before the items that they're connecting. For clarity, the word lo may be used directly after the conjunction and the word ol at the end of the list.

In some circumstances, a list of nouns is introduced with rihub/rihig/riheb ⱥ rather than a conjunction.