Salthan Language made easy

 

Introduction

 The salthan language is also known as  kadarad (literaly "knowledge talk") or Ihathenyelsany (words of the people), and has many dialects. The version of the language on this site is the most common dialect.

 

Pronouncing the Sounds

 

Written Salthan language is made up of 13 consonants and 7 vowels. Written Salthan is a flowing script where each letter attatches with a line to the next letter in a single word. In the writting system six of the seven vowels have two forms. One is the regular from which is much like the consonents, and is used when it is at the begining of a word or directly after another vowel, and the other is when it is following the consonant.  the second form is writien so it is "attached" to the consonent it is following.  

 

An alternite way of writing Salthan is using roman alphabet, called "romanized Salthan" which will be used throughout this guide. Salthan language does not possess upper and lower case character as in English, however the upper case vowel is used in Romanized Salthan to show where a vowel is either in it's normal or attatched form as uppercase or lowercase respectively.

 

Salthan in either form is read from left to right, top to bottom.

 

The vowels are pronounced as follows:

Salthan	Romanized	Pronounced	Salthan	Romanized	Pronounced
	a	'ah' as in ma		o	oh as in mow
	ɘ	'eh' as  in pet.		u	'oo' as in pool
	i	'ee' as  in keep.		ai / y	like english word 'eye'
	ą	A glutteral "ah" sound made in the throat. (Sound)

 

The constants sounds are d, f, g (as in gorilla), h, k, l, n, r, s, th (IPA ð), ch and sh (IPA ʃ )

There are also two "click" consonants which are transcribed as ! and |. 

 

| is made by putting the tongue at the roof of the mouth and bringing it back sharply. The ! sound is made by putting the tongue behind the bottom of the mouth and bringing it up sharply. These click sounds can be tricky, but is not too difficult to learn.

 

The symbols

The following chart are the symbols for written Salthan, including both the "normal" form of verbs (The top row) and the combined form with each consonant.

 

[Chart is currently unavaliable]

 

The agglutinative language

 

Salthan is a higly agglutinative language, meaning the words are mostly made up of a base affixes to modify the word. Here is a list of common  affixes:

 

Affix	Meaning	Affix	Meaning
Kol-	Past Tense	Gil-	Over
Ne-	Future Tense	U-	Lesser/Smaller
I-	Present Tense	-El- / -Le-	Belonging to
Chi-	Noun that is being done to (object)	Da-	Noun doing something (subject)
Fol-	Transitive (Item being passed between subject and object)	Natha-	Transitional (Changing an object to)
!-	Complete.	-s	verb
Gi-	Greater/Bigger	-a	masculine
Gir-	Over	-i	feminine
U-	Lesser/Smaller	Ul-	Under
Ul-	Under	Thi-	Intentional
Ky-	Name prefix, Son or Daughter of	ñathi-	Unintentional, accidental
|a-	opposite, not	Ki-	Questionative

 

In most if not all cases an adjetive is used like an affix, attatched to the word it modifies. An affix always modifys the thing it is connected to at its right.

 

This can make even simple phrases a little complicated. In this guide the * is used to denote the place for the gender marker depending on the gender the word is refering to. For men, or unspecified it is a. for women 'i' should be used.

 

Grammer

 

Word order is marked in a way that no matter which way the words arranged it means the same, by use of marking affixes. However, generally the order of verb subject object is considered the "more correct" form.

The phrase "kololanys dauesilq chisana", which means I (male) saw the man is the same as "kololanys chisana dauEsila", chisana kololanys dauesilq" or dauEsilq kololanys chisana" etc.

 

In cases when an object is handled between two people, the transitive form "fol-" is used.  For example, "The man gave the stick to his dog" would be in Salthan "Kalɘtɘs Dasana tʃiukasan foluelkakat" 

 

Gender

Gender is shown through the ending affix of -a for male or -i for female. Objects do not have gender, and only nouns convey gender or quantity (thus you do not need to have to match agreement between verbs and nouns like in some languages).

 

Possesives

Possessive affixes come in two types, depending on the emphasis of the word in the sentence. The thing that is the emphisis will always be on the right side of the marker. 

 

 "-le-" is used when the word in the sentence is about the thing that is being possessed, which is on the right of the marker, so for example "sanaleseka" - "the man's food" would be used in a sentence like "sekas daesila chisanaleseka", "I ate the man's food" since the subject of the sentence is about the food. Conversely "-el-" is for when the thing possessing something is the emphasis, so the word in the previous example would be changed to "sekalesana", and alone would have the same meaning but inserted into the previous example sentence "sekas daesila chisekalesana" would mean instead "I ate the man who had food" a much different meaning! 

 

Questions

Questions always start with the prefix "ki-". Some example questions:

kiteha           What (thing)?

kalkis           What did you do?

ikis               What are you doing?

nekis           What will you do?

kikaine         When?

kigak            Why?

kirathe          Where?

kisana           Who?

kidosa          How much (money)?

kiny               How many?

 

Pronouns

Pronouns are often omitted when not necessary. The following is a chart showing the construction of pronouns:

 

"Include listener" and "listener gender" is only used for 1st person plural (we)

 

Adjetives

 

Adjetives are simply affixes added just before the noun they are modifying.

Shusygadache - The red ball

usergkesh - The small house.

 

Adverbs

Salthan does not have adverbs, or rather, they work as the same as adjectives. For example, Instead of saying "He sings beautifully" it would be rather rendered as 

salchys daesani, literally good-sing her.

 

(More in future installments, including sample sentences)

 

Telling Time

Amount of something is the same as quanity, by adding the number before the -ny plural affix. 

 

Minutes

ukaline - One minute

ukalinehasany - five Minutes

 

Hours

kaline - Hour, One Hour

kalineshiny - Two Hours

kalinethany - Three Hours

 

Days

shikalrya - Day before yesterday

kalrya - Yesterday

irya - Today

nerya - Tomarrow

seknerya - Day after tomarrow

 

Weeks

(Note: These are weeks in the Salthan calander, which are made up of 5 days.) 

shikalhasrya - The week before last

kalhasrya - last week

ihasrya - this week

shinehasrya - next week

seknehasrya - The week after next

 

Months

Kalgihasrya - Last month

igihasrya - This month

negihasrya - Next month

 

Years

kaltya - Last year

itya - This year

netya - Next year

 

Give, Take and Trading

It is a little confusing, but the verbs for give, take and trade are all the same verb! The way to distinguish it is in the use of the affixes. The affix of the object is the same as the prefix used to indenify the person it came from. If you wanting to denote taking something by force you use the similar verb ketes. 

 

I gave him the ball	Kaletes daesila chisana foldadachi
He gave me the ball / I took (him, volinteering it) the ball from him	Kaletes daesila chisana folchidachi
I gave him the book for the ball	Kaletes daesila chisana foldahathnai foldchidachi
He took the ball from me (by force)	Kalketes dasana chiesila folchidachi

 

Common Phrases

 

  Portions inside parenthisis () in salthan side are optional and may be omitted.

 

Small Talk
Hello Friend (to male)	Bika esha
Hello Friend (to female)	Bika eshi
Good Morning	salukalgirel
Good Afternoon	salkalkaline
How are you?	kisal tosa
I am good, thank you	salas (daesil) Tas datosa
And you?	yl tosa
not bad, thank you	ñaekta (daesil),  Tas datosa
Long time no see	gikalolanys daesila chitosa
Goodbye	salakanas
Where are you from?	kikalrathe tos
I am from Braydon	Kalrathes (daesil) chidraydon
I am from Ten Terak	Kalrathes (daesil) chitenterak
My name is Mr. Smith	daesilelnesak chisnith
What time is it?	kiikaline
Please	netas
Sorry/Excuse Me	gitas
How much is this?	kidokany
That is too expensive	dokagiany
Thank you very much	tasany tosa
Where is the toilet?	kirathe thede
Who is it? / Who are you?	Kisana / Kisana Tosa
What is that?	Kitaha
When was that?	kikalkaline
When will that happen?	kinekailine
Please, Come in [?]	nenaudes netas datos
Weather
It is Sunny	Irirelgiserel ("The sun is hot") or Rels dagiserel ("The sun is heating")
it is Rainning	Iushersshas
It is cloudy	Isudshas
Language Difficulties
Do you speak HTL (human trade language)	kidaradas datos chihunanhatheny
Yes, I speak a little Kahathany (Salthan)	seth, darades daesil chiukahathany
No, I don't understand Kahatheny	ña, ñakas (daesil) chikahatheny
I don’t speak Salthan	nadarad (daesil) chikahatheny
Please speak slower	unenodarads datosa
Emergancy
Fire!	girel
Help!	tutas
Stop!	|anena
Police!
Look out!	olanyschu (Lit, basicly "Hey! look!")
Signs
Men (toilets/changing rooms)	sanany
Woman (toilets/changing rooms)	saniny
Toilet / restroom	Thede / Thedekesh
Entrance	udesnenksy
Exit	gidesnensky
Open	ilita
Closed	ithata
Caution / Slow (Mostly traffic signs)	Unenos! (lit. "go slowly")
Danger!	Eknechos! (Lit. "You may die!")
Employees must wash hands before returning to work	kalsilas nekeshs dadashssanalehasanai (lit. "before wash, later work employees' hands")
Ear Protection required beyond this point	Kakels railanai kalnenas ihathe (lit. "protect ears before going past here")
Head protection required beyond this point	kakels Gildar kalenenas ihathe
Wear Eye protection	rokes chikakelolanaie
No parking	|adarking / |agikal|anenas
Do not enter	|aksy
Stop	|anenas
Yeild	Ulksai
Slow	uneneo
No thru road	|aunegides ksy
No left turn	|adela
No right turn	|akela
Will return	neinenasi
Holidays
Merry Christmas	salkrisnas
Happy New Year	salukaltya
'Useful Phrases'
My hovercraft is full of eels	esilalegitedhofercraft shasdeknai
I'm a looser, so why don't you kill me?	ne|aihases ki|aichos datos chies?
I think, therefore I am	Ies gak kas daes
At the Restaurant
Menu	dashinaie / dashinaisekanaie
Drink Menu	dashinaishasesenaie
Soft Drinks	rutshasesenai
Appetizers	ukalsekanai
Entrees	Gisekanai