Dhrinian (Dh’relėm)

Introduction

Dh’rinian (Native dh’relėm) is a synthetic language (see Morphology). Dh’rinian is somewhat highly inflected with 8 cases (although in practice only 5 are used in everyday speech), 4 moods (simple, subjunctive, conditional, and imperative), and 6 tenses (present, present progressive, preterite, imperfect, future, and anterior future). Dh’rinian makes heavy use of particles and many diacritics are used- however, the diacritics do not necessarily represent different or challenging sounds, but many help to differentiate similar words, as in Spanish. Dh’rinian word order varies, with OVS, SOV and SVO being the only three used but in different contexts. The colloquial language is gradually diverging, replacing tenses and cases with particles. Dh’rinian is sometimes written in helar, a ceremonial script.

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns in Dhrinian do not decline by grammatical gender. However, animacy is considered in some words- examples below:

Orthography

In Dhrinian, there are two styles of representing the Dhrinian /ʡ/, /ʔ/, /χ/, /t͡ʃ/ and /ħ/ with the Latin alphabet. The differences between the styles are minimal. Style I (Known as hrajá rǒ 'style of the foreign monarch'), uses an apostrophe to represent a glottal stop:

kh'aho 'fish'

Example texts

[On a hill,] a sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly.

L-ah’enâr, čaheto’ dér g’e-g’hainh’ sy’ meirno,

ON.HILL.loc SEE.3pp.inanimate.pret. SHEEP NONE-NO-WOOL.acc part. HORSE.pl.dat

t’og dh’-marno hadhyo’ trama mejâ,

ONE (partitive particle) HORSE PULL.3ps.inanimate.pret HEAVY WAGON

t’og hena dh’marno hadhyo’ dham’ŋu pune,

ONE OTHER (partitive particle) HORSE PULL.3ps.inam.pret FULL LOAD

t’og hena dh’marno hadhyo’ rudhâ e'khüske.

ONE OTHER (partitive particle) HORSE PULL QUICKLY.adv(prolat.) MAN.dat

--- Thus speaks Tsinakan, the great king, king of the land of Kasadgad, brother to the sun and moon: Before I sat on the throne of my father, all the foreign countries were hostile against me.

K’-buhrí Tsinakan henhodh dhairâ, dhairâ nedh’i Kasadgad, duç’i kura d-hytirön:

TO(gem)-SPEAK.3ps TSINAKAN GREAT KING, KING LAND.gen KASADGAD, BROTHER SUN.gen AND-MOON.gen:

Yeijh’ä mh’é-medhäno’ l’itakhain ne asin, moçainhe ha tepaidh’ä a’ina pôçehí t’a.

BEFORE THEN-SIT IN-THRONEdat. MY FATHER.gen, ALL compl. part. (FOREIGN NATIONS) ME.dat (BE AGGRESSIVE) 3pp.inf.pret imperf.part