The Qolst

The Qolst are people from the North end of what they call "Ṇaš," which was a continent located in their world. They speak Qolst, and are a very poetic people.

Phonology

This is a table showing all of the sounds in this language. As you can see, it has quite a few sounds that English speakers might have a hard time pronouncing. Do note, however, the a lot of time there is a romanization of certain symbols at the far right of the box, and those are not sounds in themselves. The rest of the sounds spelled oddly are to be spelled like that

I will also be putting some sound rules here. The basic rule for syllables is CV(l)(f)(C), the l for liquids and f for fricatives. Another important rule is that everything in the uvular column changes to a velar in between vowels, including at the start and end of a word. This does mean that in some cases the name of the language is pronounced "Kolst" (though you won't find this distinction in the writing system)

Another cool thing is that z only exists in the "dz" combination. This is just because of a "ds" combination, which got changed to a "dz."

Grammar

Now that we have that out of the way, I would like to start of with the basic grammar. The first thing I would like to note is that there are no adjectives in Qolst. Kinda. See, verbs can be "adjectivized," as in a "blue-ing ocean." Instead of "the wall is green," you say "the wall greens."

The cases in Qolst are nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative. Since Qolst is in most cases a fusional languages, these suffixes combine with how many of the object there are.

The tenses are far past, near past, present, near future, future, and narrative.

And, the language is USUALLY SOV.

Here is a table of the pronouns they use:

As we learned before, the subject comes at the beginning of a sentence. How about we try to make a sentence?

Now how would we say "I am a person?"

ʣɛ kolst.

1s person

I am a person.

Remember how the vowel makes the q become a k!

You might notice how there is no copula here. That's because Qolst doesn't use a copula! They do use a negative one, though.

ʣɛ elqolst.

1s NEG-person

I am not a person.

This negates the qolst! There are two weird things going on though. The first is that el isn't really a negative copula. It just negates things. Easy. The SECOND thing is, kolst became qolst again! That's 'cause the vowel isn't next to qolst anymore! So you always have to mind if there is a vowel around the q.

The language also has a definitive article, or a "the."

ʣɛ elpɯkolst.

1s NEG-DEF-person

I am not the person.

Another interesting thing is that "qolst" is related to the word for "the Qolst people." It is actually "pʊkolst," which is descended from "pɯkolst, which can make some interesting constructions.

ʣɛ pɯpʊkolst.

1s DEF-qolst

I am a Qolst.

All the symbols are too close together :(. Oh well.

Anyway, moving on. Remember how I said this was a fusional language? And how there was nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive case? *DEEP BREATH IN*

Oh my god that took a while. Why did I decide to code this entire thing in html? Just look at this:

For that one table! Moving on...

As you can see, there are some oddities. For example, 3rd person being the only one with a plural (the old plural marker, -e) and the 2nd person grouping the accusative and dative together. (Side note- Why did the guy who's bad at creating words make a fusional language?!?!)

So what this table is about is basically what any noun gets marked with. I would give you an example but there is one more thing we need.

Okay, so... verbs. Right when I was complaining about a fusional language. So, verbs change for two things. Tense and aspect. Time to make another table.

Okay, we're finished. So, example. Here is an example. Say we're talking to Nolst, our friend, and we are saying we ate. In Qolst culture, they're not very direct. So you can just use the pronouns without a noun, but that would be a tiny bit rude. So, they add it on! So for our purposes, let's name "us" as... Alex or ʔales.(Remember, SOV!)

ʔaledžɛž ʔojvao.

ʔales-1.NOM eat-PERF.IMM.PST

I ate (recently).

Yeesh, that's a lot of random characters. If you want to understand this better, go to ipa-reader.com to hear it.

The next thing I want to talk about are the dative and genitive. But I also want to give some examples, so I'll just go through quickly.

So the dative and genitive always come after the nominative and accusative, so that clears up the second person accusative and dative thing.

That's all I can think of right now. Oh yeah, when it's not a nominative, instead of a pronoun you use the suffix from the table above except it doesn't attach to anything.

Nolstjəlʃ folžjəɢy ḍašvao ʣɛa .

Nolst-3.NOM food-3.ACC give-PERF.IMM.PAST 1.DAT

Nolst gave me the food.

ʣɛ ɟɪʔjəɢy ʣɛʔ ɟolbo.

1.ACC ruler-3.ACC 1.GEN know-PERF.PRESENT

I know our ruler.

ʣɛ ɟɪʔjəɢy ɟolbo.

1.ACC ruler-3.ACC know-PERF.PRESENT

I know a ruler.

Nolstpwʌž pæweʔ ʣɛʔ.

Nolst-2.NOM friend 1.GEN

Nolst, you are my friend.

Nolstpwʌž pæweʔñɛ ʣɛʔ.

Nolst-2.NOM friend-PST 1.GEN

Nolst, you were my friend.

Here, we see something interesting: "-ñɛ" meaning "was!" In the same fashion, "will be" is "-so."