Hånaqxåmi language

Hånaqxåmi /ħanəǃ͡qʕami/ language

A a	/ə/	G g	/g/	N n	/n/	U u	/ʊ/
Å å	/a/	H h	/ħ/	O o	/o/	Ů ů	/u/
B b	/b/	I i	/i/	P p	/p/	V v	/v/
C c	/h/	J j	/ɦ/	Q q	/ ǃ͡q/	W w	/w/
D d	/d/	K k	/k/	R r	/tɬ/	X x	/ʕ/
E e	/ɛ/	L l	/ɬ/	S s	/s/	Y y	/j/
F f	/θ/	M m	/m/	T t	/t/	Z z	/z/

Declension

Nouns are declined for plurality and for how positively the speaker perceives each noun – this is almost always positive, but if the speaker wants to emphasise the danger or negativity surrounding a person, object or theme.

There are seven declension patterns: uvular-velar, dental, sibilant, glottal-pharyngeal, bilabial, lateral and vowel. Here is an example for dental–ending declension:

	Positive/Neutral	Negative	Positive/Neutral	Negative
Singular	Ed	Ad	Ed	Ad
Plural	Edu	Adu	Edu	Adu

The singular and plural forms can have different meanings in other ways – for example, “pina”, meaning “thought”, refers also to the physical brain, but “pino”, meaning “thought”, refers to the metaphysical “mind” or “consciousness”. This physical-metaphysical distinction appears in many nouns.

For theme nouns (discussed later on), the positive-negative distinction is ignored.

Core verbs

There are five core verbs, which also serve the function of prepositions:

-          “Yů”, meaning “from”, “to give from” or “to go from”

-          “Nů” meaning “through” or “over”

-          “Bi”, meaning “in”

-          “Ri”, meaning “for” or “to”

-          “Li”, appearing with the other core verbs to reverse their meaning, for example, “in” becomes “out”

Sentence structure

Sentence structure is very loose, since all nouns take articles following them to show position in the sentence. For example, take the following phrase:

-          I think about apples.

-          Edu, yů pina q pino qi.

-          Apple-PLU, from brain ORI thought OBJ

“Apple” is the theme, the most important noun in the sentence. A positive theme always comes at the start of the sentence with no articles, but if negative, it comes at the end.

“Brain” is the agent, the noun from which the action originates. This is marked with the article “q” or “t”, depending on the declension type used for the noun.

“Thought” is the patient, the noun changed by the agent and the core verb. It is marked with the articles “qi”, “qe” or “si”.

Specific use of the agent

The agent, unlike in many languages, usually shows both the subject and object, in either order. For example, in the sentence “the cat sees the bird”, the cat and bird are viewed as both being able to see each other, so they can be both the subject and object. However, to express the idea that the cat can see the bird, but the bird cannot see the cat, the noun “cat” becomes negative.

Pronouns

Pronouns are shown the same way as other nouns – however, it is usually assumed the events are experienced by the speaker, or in prose, the 3rd person. Nouns exist for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd pronouns.