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This course will teach you about the Bheνowń yotavuș language created by reijnders, a heritage language found west of Lake Hānring. There are no prerequisites for this course, save perhaps a bit of knowledge in linguistics, which can easily be rectified via glossing and grammar links found throughout the course. While written as an introduction to the language, this course is not meant to be simple or watered down, and should be considered equivalent to learning a "natlang"—that is, a real-world language—which can take months to learn to any degree of fluency. I myself, as the language and world's creator, am not fluent in Bheνowń, or any of my other conlangs- at least not at the time of writing this course introduction.
I will also cover the more meta aspects of scholarship regarding Bheνowń and how it interacts with other languages and cultures within the world of Starflight to the Edge!! within my own writing. At this time of the creation of the course, the language remains incomplete in terms of dialectology, slang, and some deeper aspects of grammr. It can still be used reliably to translate a large number of texts, but the dictionary is ever-expanding. Should anyone require a word to be coined for a translation project, please feel free to contact me on my Tumblr @reijnders.
Creation of Bheνowń began in the summer of 2023, as a vessel to explore both the in-world colonialist movements of the Jěyotuy-speaking Amuyěrșa groups, and to experiment with the voiced and voiceless nasals found in the phonologies of natural languages such as Welsh, Hmong, and Burmese. The phonology and Latin orthography of Bheνowń is itself based mainly in Welsh, with digraphs such as ❬ph❭ and ❬bh❭ representing the sounds /f/ and /v/ respectively.
The grammar of Bheνowń mainly draws inspiration from that of Yemba (thanks Artifexian!) when it comes to verbs, having no definitive present tense. It features an ergative-absolutive alignment, with verbs taking on polypersonal suffixes to agree with both the subject and the direct object in a fusional manner, an additional optional suffixes to agree with an indirect object. The writing system of Bheνowń is based on that of Arabic and Hebrew in terms of function, being an impure abjad with little use for its vowel characters. From an outside-the-setting perspective, I wanted to stray from the alphabets made previously for Twac̊in̊ and Jěyotuy to create a bit of distance in terms of culture and history for these people of the marshland.
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This section of Chapter 1 gives a glimpse into the primary aspects of Bheνowń, so that you can construct grammatically correct sentences, if only at a very basic level. Exercises are also included, utilizing vocabulary and terminology discussed throughout the chapter. Please keep in mind that each section of this chapter is only overview, and they are all discussed in further depth in later chapters of the course.
Nouns are words describing a person, place, thing, or idea. In Bheνowń, nouns are the freest word category, and only rely on the basic syllable restrictions: CV, CCV, CCVC, CVCC, CCCVC, and CCCV. Beyond this, nouns can be grouped by whether they end in a single consonant (consonantal), a consonant cluster (vowel-insertion), or a vowel (vocalic). Here is a sample of Bheνowń nouns with their meanings:
There are two types of plurality in Bheνowń: the plural and the trial. Most often words will use the plural, as the trial is an archaic form originally used for religious emphasis. Basic noun plurals can be formed by adding -gon to the end of a word, before the case is added. Similar to this, the trial adds -gis. Nouns ending in a coda cluster insert u into the cluster, and pronouns do not take plural markers, but may take the trial in archaic texts.
The various kinds of noun plurals are covered in more detail starting in Chapter X, Section X.Y.Z.
Where Jěyotuy employs a nominative-accusative alignment, marking the object of a sentence, Bheνowń has an ergative-absolutive alignment. For any sentence, even the most basic, the subject noun should be marked with the suffix -elu. This marking comes after any plural markers. Thus, any unmarked noun associated with a transitive verb is assumed to be the object. There are no articles in Bheνowń, so a noun could be translated as "a thing" or "the thing".
Verbs are used for the action of a sentence in Bheνowń, but that is where the similarities with Jěyotuy end. In dicitionaries, Bheνowń verbs are listed by their infinitive "to verb" form, and the entry will include the division of consonants, as the difference between a valid cluster and two separate consonants can be ambiguous when written in the Latin alphabet. Consonants separated by a vowel will have a dash - between them, consonants that touch but are not a digraph or consonant cluster have a dot · between them, and consonants that are a part of a cluster or digraph have no separation. This is important because Bheνowń verbs conjugate primarily through vowel insertion between touching consonants. In standard verbs this can be made easily obvious by the precense of consonant clusters that are not valid, or coda consonants that are not valid. With the verb jaƣwun, the consonants are separated as such: j-ƣ·w-n. Keep in mind as well that Bheνowń is natively written with an impure abjad, so vowels are rarely written.
When it comes to tense conjugation, all of the above words are a part of a class of Bheνowń verbs called "basic verbs". The major verb tenses of Bheνowń are the past and future, with variations on these dictating distance from the current moment of the speaker. Bheνowń tenses are formed by inserting a thematic vowel between a primary consonant cluster. This becomes one of the exceptions to the abjad writing system; the vowel indicating verb tense is always written. Suffixes for agreement with the subject and object(s) of the verb are then added to this form.
Outside of verb tense, Bheνowń verbs take on a form of polypersonal agreement, with the primary suffixes indicating in single morphemes the person of both the subject and direct object. Though there are instances that will be discussed later in this course where it is not the case, for the most part these suffixes can simply be attached to the end of a verb with no further steps. In addition to these subject/direct object suffixes, an additional indirect object suffix can be applied. For intransitive verbs that only require a subject, the suffix in which the subject and object have an identical person is used, with the addition of the suffix -la. Additionally, Bheνowń recognizes five persons, where English recognizes three. First and second person are easily recognized, while third person refers only to those more important in a sentence. The obviate, or fourth person, can refer to a secondary or less important third person. In the sentence "She saw him", the verb "saw" would take on a suffix that means the subject is third person, and the object is obviate. In simple sentences where it can be made obvious that the third persons are separate things, the verb will take on the third person subject and object suffix. In standard speech, the obviate is saved for more complex or ambiguous sentences. Finally, the zero person can be most easily translated like the English use of the general pronominal "one".
| Subject Person | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zero | First | Second | Third | Obviate | ||
| Object Person | Zero | -ilńa | -id | -ēwń | -in | -ero |
| First | -oślī | -ośl | -eke | -ōde | -ōki | |
| Second | -īka | -ībh | -oile | -aśhi | -eiwń | |
| Third | -aph | -ite | -ota | -eph | ||
| Obviate | -ude | -eν́ | -eidm | -iodm | -ta | |
While the indirect object suffixes are not always necessary in standard speech, as the reader or listener can infer from context that the noun or pronoun left unaccounted for in the verb agreement is indeed the indirect object, it is still helpful to know these suffixes for later texts. These suffixes attach after the subject/direct object suffix.
| Zero | -lu |
|---|---|
| First | -leƣ |
| Second | -moi |
| Third | -dā |
| Obviate | -we |
Of these suffixes, the most commonly used (and thus the ones to remember first for later aspects of the course) are -ośl, -oile, -ota, -oabh, and -ite.
The Bheνowń past is split into three sections: near, distant, and regular. It is used for events that have already occurred, and in its base form is roughly equivalent to English "-ed" words. The regular past, understood to be past events that happened within the same day as the current moment, infixes the thematic vowel -i-. The regular past inserts the thematic vowel -u-, and can be narrowly understood as an even happening within the past few days to weeks, or more broadly as a general past event. The distant past infixes the thematic vowel -ei-, and is understood to have happened a very long time ago. With this, a few sentences can be created:
Notice that English articles are not translated, and that the verbs only agree with the nouns in person, not number. In the case of pronouns, this means that a verb with no clarifying pronouns would be assumed to be singular.
Similar to the past, the Bheνowń future is split into two major parts, with the near future being the opposite of the near past, and the regular future encompassing the yet-to-occur equivalent of both the regular past and the distant past. It is used for events that are yet to happen as compared to the present moment in the phrase, and is roughly equivalen to English "will ___" phrases. The thematic vowel for the near future is -o-, and -a- is the infix for the regular future. Some examples of future tense usage:
The present tense proves a bit difficult to identify in Bheνowń, as, unlike the simple English "I run home", or Jěyotuy's "du mòerahmi cmaecacoyǐ", the same sentence could be lāνibheoabh or lāνobheoabh. Put more simply, the thematic vowel could be either the near past or the near future. This is because, technically, there is no present tense in Bheνowń, just as there technically is not a future tense in English. Rather, native speakers of Bheνowń will use the near past for present events that happen as a result of a past action, and the near future for events that have future implications. This can be further narrowed down into a definite "present tense" with the use of helping words. Thus, some of our examples from earlier could also be translated in the present tense.
The various other tenses in Bheνowń are not covered in detail in this chapter, but can be loosely assumed as the following:
The pluperfect "had slept" only uses the near present tense, whilte the future-in-the-future "will be about to sleep" uses either future tense, and the past-in-the-future "would have been sleeping" uses regular and distant past tenses.
Verbal mood in Bheνowń uses prepositional particles, which come in between the verb and the relativity markers. An unmarked verb in indicative, with the following other moods being recognized:
This summary covers both this and the previous section.
There is an All Exercises chapter at the end of this course; it will be easier to use these execises printed and written by hand. There is also a vocabular section at the end of this chapter, which you can use for this and later exercises.
Translate the following into English. Keep in mind that near past and future can also be the present tense:
Translate the following into Bheνowń:
Answers are in Answer Key 1.1 at the end of this chapter.
Pronouns are words that can be a substitute for a noun. Where most English pronouns change depending on whether they are the subject or the object of the sentence, in Bheνowń only the third person has this distinction within the morphemes themselves, due to the separate third person and obviate.
Bheνowń pronouns have regular, possessive, and reflexive forms that are wholly unrelated to one another, in opposition to English pronouns such as "I", "me", "my", and "you", "your". They can take on cases like regular nouns, but do not require the plural marker -gon. Otherwise, these pronouns are treated exactly like regular nouns.
The personal pronouns in Bheνowń are not often required in simple sentences, with the plurals being used more than the singular due to the nature of verb agreement. Since a verb is assumed to be agreeing with singular nouns by default, the plural is specified with plural markers for regular nouns, and plural pronouns. In older prose and many poetic forms, redundant singular pronouns are used for dramatic emphasis. Common personal pronouns are:
For example:
Bheνowń possessive pronouns come directly before the word being possessed, and can become adjectives with the prefixed vowel i-. Unlike personal pronouns, both the singular and plural pronouns are in regular use. Here are some of the most common possessive pronouns:
The reflexive in Bheνowń is similar to English "-self" pronouns. These are most commonly used to circumvent the intransitive -la construction, or to make a noun be both the subject and the object of a verb. Common reflexive pronouns are as follows:
Like many languages, Bheνowń uses cases to determine the functions of a noun. It also makes use of prepositions, primarily in the catch-all directional case, to indicate the relationship of a noun to the rest of a sentence. Here are some additional nouns to help us along:
And here are some prepositions to use them with:
For example:
Aside from the ergative and absolutive touched on earlier in this chapter, Bheνowń has seven additional cases.
The dative case is relatively simple on the surface, adding the suffix -āju to make a noun be the direct object. Due to word order, some simple sentence in casual speech will not even mark the dative at all, allowing the reader or listener to rely on context to glean an understanding. However, as with several other suffix-based noun cases, nouns that end in vowels may undergo a bit of morphin in order to flow better with the rest of the word. The most important transformations of the dative for us here are as follows: nouns ending in a delete that final vowel before suffixing; nouns ending in ā turn the first long a into a short one, and insert the consonant j before the suffix; nouns ending in o change the suffix to -aju; nouns ending in u insert the consonant w before the suffix; nouns that end in au become similar to the ā ending, but with a w instead of a j. Here are some prepositions that take the dative:
The local genitive -i su is similar to the English preposition "of", but closer to the locative case in Jěyotuy, with the added step of possession. Essentially, the local genitive can only apply to locations, and is not interchangeable with the possessive genitive in the way that English's apostrophe-s is with the "of" preposition. The possessive genitive -i pam is used for general possession, sometimes working alongside possessive pronouns to form more complex chains of ownership. In both cases, the suffixed -i may undergo transformations when attached to nouns ending in vowels. While a vowel in hiatus due to conjugation or declension is not illegal, it is not preferred in common speech. This can be seen in phrases like: pherela "mountain" → pherelaji su "of the mountain".
For nouns ending in ā, no changes are made. Nouns ending in a, ē, ī, ō, u insert a j, l, or w to separate the vowels. In the Latin alphabet, it seems as if e and o also have no changes made, but these two actually morph into the diphthongs written the same way, ei and oi. Nouns ending in diphthongs becomes even more complex, but that will be covered later in the course. Plural nouns add the plural or trial marker before the case ending, so plural nouns will never have this morphing applied.
The comitative, benefactive, and causal cases will be covered more in depth later in this course, but for now it is good to know that these can each take the suffixed marker -jo to act as their own clause, rather than a subsect of a larger clause.
The directional case is also known as the prepositional case, as most of Bheνowń's prepositions require this case. This case applies the suffix -ebh. Like other noun suffixes, the ending morphs slightly for nouns ending in vowels, depending on the vowel itself.
Prepositions, whether they apply to the dative or the directional, come before the nouns they modify. More examples:
Advanced Topic: While wholly separate letters in the modern day language, Old Bheνowń had only j, which represented the retroflex approximant /ɭ/. Because of this, many texts from native speakers alternate use of modern j and l in these irregular noun endings. So, while it is important to know the standardized spellings, keep an eye out for these swapping between each other in contemporary texts.
We now have enough information to translate a bit of text from existing Bheνowń literature. Śhephēl was a famous, if not tragic character from a late 2200s novel series, whose prose story was often interrupted by poems and letters written from his own first person view. First, we will introduce some new vocabulary to help us along:
Śhephēl's most popular quote was:
phītuν́eikota ƣoμālu wepherin miśeν bērnāju; toamigābh bharagī kwauńul.
Starting first with a verb, phītν́eik "to have", and our subject, ƣoμā "night", we see that we are working in the past tense. This is indicated by the -u- infix. The suffix -ota then tells us that, while "night" is clearly our subject, the object of the sentence is also in the third person. Thus, it can be surmised that wepherin is our object. Then we are greeted by a brief prepositional phrase, one that takes the rare dative rather than the directional case: miśeν bērnāju "until me". The second sentence can be treated as completely separate, or appended onto the first as a clause holding the same weight and relevance. Again, we start with a verb, similarly in the past, but a much nearer past to the present of the speaker than before. Fully, toamigābh gives us "to see" in the near past, with a subject in the first person and an object in the third. Because no further pronoun is specified, the first person must be the singular "I". Our object, bharagī kwauńul, is a noun modified by an adjective, roughly meaning cold or chilled fate.
Thus the entire phrase can be read as:
phīt<u>ν́eik-ota ƣoμā-lu wepherin miśeν bērn-āju; toam<i>g-ābh bharagī kw-auńul.
(it had it) night joy until me; (i see it) fate-cold
Note that the lack of articles in Bheνowń makes this sentence seem a bit clunky when rendered literally in English. Presented in a more natural English word order, the sentence is rendered thusly:
Night had joy until me; I see cold fate.
Allowing for a bit of purple prose, and ignoring some aspects of grammar in favor of a more heartfelt meaning, many translators give this sentence as:
Night was joyful until I appeared, and now I see a cold fate.
Here we can see some of the redundancy in Bheνowń verb construction that doesn't appear in English. Agreement endings, here found partially merged with the root nouns due to vowel-final syllables, can give us insight into which words are acting on one another, and can also provide subjects without them being written out. You will also notice that, while clearly a part of the verb phrase introduced by phītuν́eikota, there is no additional suffix agreeing with bērnāju, which in a normal sentence would be indicated by -leƣ. This is an example of removed redundacy, in favor of a more succint sentence; because the first person singular pronoun must be included anyways to work with the preposition miśeν, it is simpler to not include the agreement on the verb, and to only mark the pronoun itself as dative. Different senses of the past are also introduced here. Where English may only specify points in time via additional words and phrases such as "yesterday" or "a week ago", Bheνowń indicates this through tense alone.
Translate the following into English:
Translate the following into Bheνowń:
Answers are in Answer Key 1.2 at the end of this chapter.
Outside of things such as slang or regional dialect, there exist many special construction that have meanigns outside of what might be infered from just the base grammar involved, or are unique enough in their formation that it is easiest to just memorize their forms. Only a few such cases will be discussed here, with later chapters in the course going in depth on both these, and the many variations that occur across varying dialects of Bheνowń.
The negation of verbs is a relatively simple thing: transitive verbs will take the suffix -ōw or -wo, and intransitive verbs use the suffix -jow.
As a language and culture with an extensive history of trade and resitance against colonial forces, both pre and post-first contact, Bheνowń has many official standardized methods of writing. Of these, the most commonly seen in order of frequency are: Pośeruń, the native abjad; Teŧi, the alphabet spread around most of the planet by speakers of the lingua franca, Jěyotuy; Latin, an alphabet of human origin; Daaiphru, an alphabet used by a large amount of southern countries that traded with pre-colonial Amak, Maddǐ, and Bokōn. Several other modes exist, but tend to be found in very small minority groups, or are not fully standardized and thus have much variation. These alternative methods will be discussed deeper in Chapter X, section Y.
Bheνowń's official documentation, both in-setting and within the real world, is done in a form of the Latin alphabet, with added characters from other Earth languages. Most notable is the usage of Latin and Greek characters to differentiate between the phonemic nasals, and the use of the macron to denote long vowels.
The Latin alphabet is used almost exclusively in transliteration of alien phonemes into an orthography meant for human consumption. Creation of the Bheνowń Latin orthography was done with a deliberate sense of aesthetics, taken from the Welsh minority language spoken on Earth.
Recall that the basic consonants of Bheνowń, when represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet, are:
Most of these are represented by a single Latin character, though a few make use of digraphs to represent singular sounds—ph, bh, śh. Ambiguities created by these will be discussed further in Chapter X, Section Y. These consonants appear in the chart below, along with the corresponding IPA sound, and organized by manner of articulation.
| Nasals | μ | m | ν | n | ν́ | ń |
| m̥ | m | n̥ | n | ŋ̊ | ŋ | |
| Stops | p | b | t | d | g | |
| p | b | t | d | k | ||
| Fricatives | ph | bh | s | śh | k | ƣ |
| f | v | s | ɬ | x | ɣ | |
| Liquids | r | l | j | w | ||
| r | l | j | w |
Nouns:
Verbs:
Pronouns:
Adjectives and Adverbs:
Prepositions:
Here are the answers to questions 7-12 in Bheνowń letters, called daμe. These letters, collectively called pośeruń, aren't covered until Chapter X, Secont X.Y of this course. This means the pośeruń writing is optional for now.
Answers that can be either past or future will be shown as past here by default, and nearest to the current time as possible. Keep in mind that swapping the near past for the near future is applicable in most present tense verbs, and unless specified, any past tense may apply to the past, and vice versa for the future.
Pośeruń answers: