LESSON 3

An Alien Perspective

In order to speak Selsimicu, even at its most basic, it's important to keep in mind that this is a language by aliens! I bet you know this; you know what you signed up for, but I think it is important to reiterate this.

Selsians are tentacle-clad quadrupeds that are actually quite similar to plants and fungi biologically, despite their sapience. They are the dominant species on their planet Niburu, full of fauna, flora and the stuff in between that may be both familiar and strange to an Earthling. There are many things selsians have that we don't, and many things we have that they don't! Discussing the stuff in either category requires some amount of circumlocution or false equivalences (i.e. "pulwoto" meaning Puffin. it's NOT, but it's a Niburu species that looks kinda like a Puffin, so you might as well call it that). There's a lot of ways to handle translation, and there isn't ever only one definitive way to convey something!

We won't have to deal with that for very long, but it's always good to remember.

THE NOUN CLASSES

Selsimicu has 3 noun classes (these being little boxes that nouns go into that determine something about their function): Animate [A], Inanimate [I], and a special third category named Postanimate or Otherworldly [O], depending on what element you wanna highlight.

In a somewhat self-explanatory way, Animate describes nouns that have some sort of agency to them (selsians, animals, etc.) and Inanimate describes nouns that don't (materials, objects).
Postanimate / Otherworldly describes nouns that are spiritually culturally significant (souls, heaven, doorways) or that are physically out of their world (the sky, the Sun, the stars, their two moons, and humans, because we are aliens to them!).
It might seem weird to lump these two together, but in reality, most nouns in this category can fall in both boxes (the Sun represents their primary goddess, the Stars represent their souls, and so on!)

This system, to be honest, isn't as intuitive as it sounds: a promise is Animate, smoke is Animate, a friend is Inanimate, and so on. However, don't fear! This system doesn't actually do very much. Its only immediate function on grammar is two things: [O] nouns are never pluralized, and these classes change the pronouns, and the basic "to be" verb, which are both coming up in the next lesson! Therefore, let's focus on plurality for this lesson:

PLURALS

Selsimicu nouns (that are [A] or [I]) can be pluralized pretty easily, by reduplicating their first syllable, with some modifications:

For simple nouns, like tazim, it's as simple as that: tazim, tatazim
If the first syllable has a consonant cluster, like prexe (hole), you must duplicate only the first consonant in the pair: prexe, peprexe
For nouns with a double vowel in its first syllable, like leipowe (wheelbarrow), you must duplicate only the second vowel in the pair: leipowe, lileipowe
If the first syllable has a coda, like rewsu (bush), it's not included when duplicated: rewsu, rerewsu
And for nouns that start with an unwritten ', like atmek (bean), you must take the consonant next to the vowel as well: atmek, atatmek
These rules stack! If we were to pluralize twalto (spouse), it'd be tatwalto! (only first consonant & no coda)

MEASURE WORDS

Selsimicu has measure words! They work similarly to German: "Glas Wein" = a glass of wine. These are a couple of words that you can use to denote the amount of something, just by tacking them in next to the base! No -n required! This also skips pluralizing the noun, if it was going to be pluralized otherwise.

nu'an - every X, all of X ) pafrim nu'an = all the berries
kul - many Xs, a lot of X ) pafrim kul = a lot of berries
twen - some X ) pafrim twen = some berries
watken - no X, none of X ) pafrim watken = no berries
icon - only X, just X ) pafrim icon = only berries
tseoka - part of X, section of X ) pafrim tseoka = part of a berry (singular) / papafrim tseoka = part of the berries (as a group)
lerafen - too little of X, too few of X ) pafrim lerafen = too few berries
caujan - too many of X, too much of X ) pafrim caujan = too many berries
jofoñluta - a vaseful of X ) pafrim jofoñluta = a vaseful of berries (from jofoñ + lutā, meaning "vase" and "full" respectively)

READING EXERCISE

Try to read these next sentences! Their meaning will be written below, but in the same color as the background! You'll have to select the text to read it. Now, start!

rewsu toin pafrim kul tzu
The big bush holds lots of berries.
eifa prexe tseoka uzi
The human sees a part of the hole.
pulwoto ñotun atmek caujan piris!
The small bird wants too many beans!
cawa jofoñluta lexso kul ken
This vaseful of water isn't very bad.

END!!!

Congratulations! You are now one step closer to learning Selsimicu for realsies! If you need to review this page a couple times, that's alright! These base concepts with become even more important as time goes on.