Prepositions

Lesson 4

The prepositions are a part of speech that indicates how the next noun is related to the rest of the sentence. Examples in English include "of", "in", "by", "to", and others. These being some of the most common words in the language, you can tell how prepositions (or their equivalents) are a very important part of language that comes up very often. Lacking a case system, Numo has a small number of prepositions that appear frequently in a variety of situations. These are the prepositions and their English equivalents:

• in - "in", "at", "on"

• de - "of", "about"

• al - "to", "for"

• ek - "(away) from", "out of"

• met - "with", "by", "alongside", "using"

• jo - "than", "instead of"

These six core prepositions work similarly to prepositions in English, appearing just before a noun phrase to turn it into a prepositional phrase. In Numo, prepositional phrases behave like adverbs and can appear at the beginning of a sentence, at the end of a sentence, or after the verb. 

Numo employs compound prepositions for situations not covered by the six here. Think of how in English we say "in front of" instead of a single preposition like "behind" has. Some compound prepositions you might encounter include:

• in for de - "before", "in front of"

• in pos de - "after", "behind"

• in ken de - "inside", "within"

• al ken de - "into"

• in super de - "above"

• in infer de - "under"

• in karib de - "near", "close to"

• in sam de - "like", "similar to"

• in ansam de - "unlike"

• met ila de - "except"

• met nam de - "called"

and more. As you can tell, the most important part is the noun in the middle. Some of those words, like for, pos, and ila, can also be used as conjunctions, if what follows is not a noun phrase but a whole clause. You may also have noticed that you can switch the in for an al on any of these that represent a position relative to something, and it will add a "-to" meaning like English "in/into" or "on/onto", indicating motion to that position. If the next word would be a pronoun, you can omit the de part and use a possessive pronoun instead.

Practice 4

Fill in the blanks with the correct prepositions given the translations:

Pir stes __ sitad. - "A man stands in a city."

Wolpe kores __ kanin gros. - "The fox runs away from a big dog."

Poje ci ames kitab __ astro. - "The small boy likes books about space."

Moje intel sribes __ kalam. - "The smart girl writes with a pen."

Mir ami ges __ felin milke. - "The friendly woman gives a cat milk" (gives milk to a cat)

Vocabulary 4

For - Before

Pos - After

Ken - Middle, Inside

Super - Above, Over

Infer - Under, Beneath

Sam - Similar, Similarity

Ila - Exception

Nam - Name

Sitad - City

Astro - Space

Moje - Girl

Intel - Smart

Kalam - Pen

Ami - Friend, Friendly

Gros - Big

Ci - Small

Stes - Stand, Stop

Ames - Like

Sribes - Write

Ges - Give