Tallefkul grammar notes

For your convenience, I've used Latin letters rather than the normal Greek. You can see that, unless I've gotten something wrong, |h| is a vowel. It's /e_j/, I think. But that doesn't matter.

Basics of Tallefkul

Have you heard of the Treklang called Darmok? It's a language that refers to legends to get most ideas across. That's quite impractical. It's also how the High Speech of Tallefkul works, though to a slightly smaller extent.

All "legidioms" are stative (if I've gotten that word correct; bugger my vocab). Therefore, when a person uses one, he's equating something now to a legend.

Other than that, Tallefkul is a normal mixture of ergative Welsh and Latin.

Morphosyntax

I prefer that term to "grammar". Anywho, I mentioned Welsh. That's because of the verb system. There is only one verb that truly inflects; that is the copula, "renf". Here are its conjugations:

Past    rest
Near past    reyes
Present    rhn
Future    rush / rus
Negative    rafzin
Atemporal (habitual or eternal)    renf

The copula also gets mood infixes that appear near the end. A convenient -e- is put in to make some words pronounceable. I don't know all the proper names for these, and only two matter for this translation.

Indicative    (uninflected)
Commissive    -arl-
Negative    -sxur-
-svei- denotes a request.

The copula changes also for person and number. I haven't added one change that would really annoy you. It would effectively make the copula inflect for the patient's person and number, with the agent's person and number indicated by tone (which may as well not be marked, and isn't, here). There are three forms used in this story, the first singular, second singular, and third singular.

1s    (uninflected)
2s    change initial "r" to "l"
3s    add t- to the normal form

One more thing: aspects. I'm certain that I only had one that inflects. They attach to the beginning of the copula.

Inchoative    gur-

For nouns, it's rather easier. There are five cases, and I think I used them all, even the vocative case, which is rather archaic. (I am using the High Speech, after all.)

Agent    -ex, plural -ei
Patient    -oki, plural -oun
Genetive    -is, plural -if
Dative / possessive    -ul, plural -ut
Vocative    -ey, plural -os

Something that I forgot to mention. "Raf" is irregular and attaches "-af" to the end of the copula stem (before the person/number suffix if applicable). With a copula + "-af" combination, the "raf" verb does not appear in the rest of the sentence.

The "legidioms"

Dietour after the trials: pregnant
German before the challenger: surprised, affronted
Gyreis before his wife: death, the event, imminent
Kin of Gyreis: wanderer
Llaintes from Bvalishek: leavetaking, homecoming
Llaintes with Xiesun: aid, help
Onianf's heart: faithful, kind, simpático
Raonits's crown: broken
Raonits's rule: not to be trusted
Rupfal's work: injured, injury
The time of German: once upon a time
With Raonits's brother: in trouble