The Digitoids group inside the non-operator group consists of symbols that are used as pronouns, colors and genders. Letters just have normal meanings. Btw, the meanings were assigned to them not randomly, but with mnemonics in mind.
In a normal lang, you have to learn several hundreds or thousands of words, every of them is made from several letters. And here there are only several dozens of words, and all words has only 1 letter. Now you understand, how easy the Nilaej language is.
Time to learn some actual symbols!
/ I, me, my
\ you
= yes, be, true
o see, look at [mnemonics: the eye is round and small, like letter o]
a animal, wild, strong
k good, to like, ok
y eat, drink, food [mnemonics: yummy]
B big
q start, begin, hi [mnemonics: the letter q begins the keyboard list of letters]
z sleep [mnemonics: 😴💤]
! anti (makes meaning of the next letter opposite) [mnemonics: like in programming languages]
~ not (negates the next word*) [mnemonics: like in programming languages]
+ future tense (placed after a verb)
- past tense (placed after a verb)
% imperative (placed before a verb)
, between sentences
*Up to this point, we've said that in Nilaej 1 word = 1 symbol. Now we are changing the definition of a 'word': a word in Nilaej is a sequence of symbols, which is separated from other sequences of symbols by space (' ').
To make up sentences, lets learn some grammar!
As you can see in the definitions of the given symbols, non-operators in Nilaej can be any part of speech. This is defined by the word order.
Sentence word order: SUBJECT VERB (OBJECT).
/ o a I see animal (There are no articles in Nilaej.)
/ o y, \ ~o a I see food. You don't see animal.
\ B You are big. ('be' can be dropped, but \ = B is acceptable too)
But how to say "good food"? Easy: put modifier 'good' right after 'food':
And how would I say 'meat'? Animal food! ('food for animals' is translated differently, we'll learn 'for' in the next lesson)
Note 1: if time when the event happens isn't important, you can drop tense operator.
Note 2: space after / and \ can be dropped: /o \ (I see you), /!k (I am bad ("antigood")). You can't do that when the subject is not a pronoun: ao \ a o \ (Animal sees you)
Now lets see the difference between ! and ~:
At first you might think that the difference between ~ and ! is just the strength of negation. And you'll be wrong.
Pretty clear. ! makes antonyms.
Let's learn how to say hi: q. This phrase doesn't follow any grammar and honestly, doesn't need to.
Congrats! The first lesson is finished!
Q: BUT WAIT, where is the pronunciation???? how am i supposed to pronounce all this??
A: Nilaej is a language for typin' / conversations online, so you don't need to pronounce it. Nevertheless, there is still a pronunciation system, which you can read about in Lesson 5.
EXAM TIME: Send your translation of these sentences to @sprspcnim in Discord and get a role that confirms your level of the language in our Discord server (click):
Hello again! Symbols for today:
w water, liquid
b building, room, house, safe
S feel, strange, weird
h person, human, someone, they
d do, make, work, act
u hand, touch, try
L love, passionate
c can, able, possible
C want, need, wish, important
v have, center, keep, continue
J use [mnemonics: 'J' is the right half of the letter 'U' - use]
K know, information
n think, language
$ ... because ...
? if ... then ...
< ... for ... ('towards', destination, purpose)
() grouping for correct interpretation
' separator for complex modifiers
GROUPERS
How would you translate 'bathroom'? Something like bw ("water room")
How would you translate 'strange bathroom'? Of course, bwS
How would you translate 'alcohol'? Something like wS ("weird liquid")
How would you translate 'bar' ('alcohol building')? To make it not look same as 'strange bathroom', we need the ' operator: b'ws. (this operator is a complete analogue of pi in tokipona, and this explanation example is also stolen from tokipona lessons)
So, ' is an operator, that regroups modifiers:
There is also a higher level regroup operator: ().
a'bc'de means a that has: 1) properties of b that has properties of c, 2) properties of d that has properties of e.
ab(c'de) means a that has: 1) properties of b, 2) properties of c that has properties of d and properties of e.
This all looks complicated, but it's actually easy if you understand.
PREVERBS
Preverbs, or modal verbs, or auxillary verbs, are verbs that can be put before full-meaning verbs. L (love), !L (hate), k (like), !k (dislike), u (try to), c (can), C (want to, need to), v (continue) and maybe some others. Examples:
You can drop spaces between preverbs and verbs, just like between pronouns and verbs: /Cz, %vd b are correct.
CAUSALS
In Nilaej there are 3 constructions for expressing different types of casuality.
1) a ? b if a then b /v bB ? /Sk If i have a big house, I'll feel good.
2) a $ b a, because b /CL h $ /h I want to love someone, because I am a human.
3) The most interesting type -- purpose and destination operator:
a < b a for b /d < /~z I work for not to fall asleep.
Can we translate the name of the language (n<J)? Yeah, "language for using"!
Using < you can also express "using" ("with", also known as instrumentalis):
I built a house with my own hands. = I used my hands for making house = /J- u < d b
EXAM TIME: Send your translation of these sentences to @sprspcnim in Discord and get a role that confirms your level of the language in our Discord server (click):
I love drinking water.
If a human doesn't know my language, they are weird.
I didn't try working, because I couldn't.
I want to use a weirdly big house for sleeping.
Hello! Symbols for today (lookin' really digital):
e gas, air, breath
j entertainment [mnemonics: joke]
p plant (flora)
P parent
V respect, up, high (!V = down, ~V = low)
X land
Z money, valuable
0 this, it
1 color
2 red
3 yellow
4 white
5 blue
6 male [mnemonics: 69]
7 abstract they/you
8 gender; genderless pronoun
9 female [mnemonics: 69]
^ what
` yes/no question operator (placed after a word or at the beginning of the sentence)
# xth (placed before a number)
* many (placed before a word) / of count (placed between a number and a word)
All digit symbols in Nilaej can be used in 2 different interpretations:
normal number interpretation:
# forms ordinals: b#2 'second house', yw#38 'the thirty eighth drink'. #1 is used to form superlative.
* forms cardinals: 2*b 'two houses', 38*yw 'thirty eight drinks'. It can be used without number too, meaning 'many': *h 'many humans' ('people'). It can be placed before verbs too, indicating iterativity. * is applied to all symbols before the next space: X*hZ 'land of many rich people' is a shorter version of X'*hZ
special interpretation:
0 means this/that (also it when not used as a modifier): X0 'this land'
1 means color: 10 'this color'. 2,3,4,5 mean red, yellow, white and blue respectfully. You can combine colors to get more complex colors: e'35 'green gas' (= 'gas of blueish yellow'). !4 means 'black'.
6,8,9 mean genders: ♂️,⚧,♀️ respectively. When not used as a modifier, they can be used as 3rd person pronouns (8 - gender neutral pronoun).
Note: When making the language, I could add only 6 (while 9 being !6) or vice versa, but to prevent sexism allegations i ended up adding both.
Today we've learned so much things you can question about, so let's learn how to make question sentences! But before that, let's talk about symbol 7. It is used as an abstract pronoun, for example in the place of highlighted word "you" in the first sentence of this paragraph. Also it is used as an abstract "they", which is useful to express sentences with no subject: (7 is like oni in Esperanto)
A high house will be built = They will build a high house = 7 d+ bV
Let's finally learn how to make questions.
` forms simple yes/no questions: `\y !Pp Do you eat fruit (= child of plant = antiparent of plant)?
But also you can put it after the word you wanna ask about: \y !Pp` Do you eat fruit (or smth else)?
^ forms "wh-questions":
\y ^ What are you eating?
p0 1^ What color is this plant?
\v ^*Z How many money do you have?
Aaand, let's end our lesson with this random fact: symbol V ('respect') can be used to say 'please', 'thanks', and symbol j ('fun') can be used to say 'lol'. These cases don't follow any grammar. Btw, join our discord server, if you haven't done it yet, there are nice colorful emojis of these symbols there ;)
EXAM TIME: Send your translation of these sentences to @sprspcnim in Discord and get a role that confirms your level of the language in our Discord server (click):
This land has a lot of orange fruits.
Respect towards parents is important.
How tall (=high) is this woman?
Lol. Why (=because what) is the air valuable?
Hello again! Symbols for today:
i part, thing, item
t time, wait
m move, go, way
g give, send, gift
x open, hole (!x = bump)
s short
A all, every, universe
W front, wall, face
R side, near, resemble
Y thick, wide, space (!Y = thin, line)
O round, cycle, repeat [mnemonics: shape of the letter]
F flat, surface
G right (not left)
@ in, at (in space and time)
& and
| or
; but
TALKING ABOUT PLACE AND TIME
Operator @ is used when talking about location of something in space or time:
To translate prepositions like on, above, inside use @ with F,V,v,R, etc.
a!s m@!Pp A worm (=long animal) is moving inside the fruit (plant child).
We've already learned + and - symbols. But if you want to talk about the future and the past as nouns, you can use tG and t!G (literally 'time to the right' and 'time to the left').
TALKING ABOUT MOVEMENT
When something moves, its way (m) usually has a start-point/source (q) and an end-point/destination (!q). As it has been said earlier, the < operator is used in Nilaej for expressing both purpose and destination:
In Nilaej there is no nice official operator for expressing source ("from" preposition), because it is less common. However, you can use $ ("because") or rephrasing (by the way, rephrasing is an extremely important technique when translating to Nilaej!)
TALKING ABOUT SIZE AND FORM
There are several symbols for talking about size and form in Nilaej: B,V,s,Y,O,F and their negated variants. When not used as modifiers, they are translated as 'thing with property'. For example: b~V 'low house', ~V 'low thing'. As you can see, symbol i 'thing' is not needed here.
When applied to verbs, s means "quick": %gs 0 </ Give it to me quickly!
CONNECTIVES
Operators & 'and', | 'or', ; 'but' are used to connect parts of sentences. When connecting entire sentences, always use , (you can add the discussed operators in the beginning of a sentence).
EXAM TIME: Send your translation of these sentences to @sprspcnim in Discord and get a role that confirms your level of the language in our Discord server (click):
Quickly move that part of the house towards the wall.
I see a wide hole in the surface.
The past repeats [itself]. Or not?
All people near him were waiting, but he didn't want to give the money.
..WORK IN PROGRESS...
LESSON 5
Time for the last and the most interesting Nilaej lesson! (Hope you are not just reading all these lessons thru, but doing the exercises and sending them to the discord. If not, I really recommend to do so :) ) Symbols for today:
