Jedidjah de Vries (J-dV.org)

Qa Primer

Introduction

The primer is meant to walk you through the basics of the language. I'm still working on adding more examples so check back soon.

Alphabet

The alphabet of Qa consists of 7 consonants and 5 vowels. It is written from left to right with all vowels connected in a sort of cursive and the consonants written above or below the vowel they precede. You end up with consonant-vowel syllables. This will (hopefully) make more sense in a minute with some examples.

Consonants

(written with the 'A') hear the consonants

Q	T	R	L	W	Z	N

Vowels

hear the vowels

A [ah]	E [eh]	I [ee]	O [oh]	U [oo]

Words

As I said vowels are written in a sort of cursive so for example the word ae (east) comes out looking like:

Remember: consonants are written above or bellow the vowels they precede. Here are some words: hear the words

Laru [cat]
Qiana [friend]
Atual [life]

NB: it is impossible to have a double consonant, though double vowels are common - when this occurs each vowel is pronounced separately.

NB: only at the end of a word can a consonant stand alone.

The stress always falls on the second to last syllable.

Examples & Exercises

Try transliterating the following phrases to Qa:

/i will get to this/

And render these into latin srcipt:

/i will get to this/

Verbs

Wikipedia's article on conjugation should be able to help if you are unsure what conjugation is. In general I suggest Wikipedia for any grammatical terms you are unfamiliar with. In Qa verbs are conjugated by adding a whole bunch of suffixes to the root. The conjugation tells us the mood, tense (time) and person of the verb.

Mood

There are three moods in Qa:

Indicative - this is what we are used to. Tells us (indicates) that something is occurring
Subjunctive - fairly rare in English, more common in Qa. Used when something may or may not be the case, we don't know.
Imperative - the way you give orders

Tense

The tenses are formed in two parts: first whether it is simple or continuous; then past, present or future. This gives 6 tenses:

simple past - it happened in the past and finished happening
continuous past - it started in the past and went on for some time
simple present - it occured now and is over
continuous present - it is going on now
simple future - it will happen and finish
continuous future it will happen and continue

Person

Qa distinguishes between all permutations of 1^st 2^nd 3^rd person - both singular and plural. It also has male, female and neuter, the neuter is used unless the gender is relevant information. The combinations are obvious so I will not list them.

the Conjugation

The infinitive and gerund are the same: ROOT + /no/

For conjugation take the ROOT (i.e. drop the /no/ from the infinitive) and add the suffixes couresponding to the 'mood' + 'person' + 'tense' you want.

				Sin	Plu
'A' Indicative	'U' Simple	'T' Past	'A' Male	'Qo'	'To'	I
'Q' Subjunctive		'L' Present	'E' Neuter	'Ro'	'Lo'	II
'N' Imperative	'I' Continuous	'Z' Future	'I' Female	'Wo'	'Zo'	III

Examples & Exercises

/i will get to this/

Nouns, Articles & Modifiers

Nouns

Do not decline my nouns - ever. But you can modify them, sort of. This will all come together once you get to sentence structure. Modifiers come after their noun. I say modifiers and not adjectives and adverbs because Qa makes no distinction. Think of modifiers as adding concepts to the noun. So instead of a happy foo you have a foo with the concept happy associated with it. It doesn't make much difference most of the time. It allows for more flexibility which (when used well) gives rise to some elegant phrases. Just watch out for it and don't fret when translating modifiers seems weird.

Articles

Articles are somewhat important. They are only used when they add information. Oh and they come before the noun:

I - Singular Definite
E - Singular Indefinite
U - Plural Definite
O - Plural Indefinite

The male and female 'a' & 'i' (of verb conjugation) can be appended to these articles as needed. [i.e. /ea/ to signify a male something]. As I said nouns are not declined - use these articles for plural. If there is no article the noun is assumed to be singular, and used when you don't care especially or don't want to emphasize that it is 'a foo' as opposed to 'the foo'.

Punctuation & Simple Sentences

Punctuation

This is it. This is the big one. The section starts with punctuation. Why? Because punctuation is an integral part of the grammar. I'm serious. First you must realize that all marks are pronounced. Second, they are used to separate the various parts of the sentence. hear the marks

Name	Sound	Use
Hard Stop	mhh	Like a period - separates sentences
Parser	adth	Separates sentece parts
Soft Stops	Click (tounge on fron teeth/roof)	Used with sentence level conjunctions
Meta Parser	Goh	Used for sentence level modifiers/pronouns

Sentence Structure

the sentence structure is strictly: /verb | subject | direct object | indirect object/. Though the last two may not be present; of course complex sentences are, well more complex - but that's later.

Here are some simple examples. I have first restructured them - and then fully translated them.

the Magical /nan/

There are times when some part of the sentences exists but is either not specified or is obvious. For example if the subject is I, You, We etc. this information is already in the verb conjugation. Or if the sentence is in the passive voice (extremely rare in Qa) there is no subject. In such cases the local pronoun /nan/ is used. It is called local because it only refers to things within the sentence. Later we will see the global pronouns. Here are two examples:

I eat a yam.	(I) eat \| nan \| yam.	{image}
The food was eaten.	was eaten \| nan \| the food.	{image}

Again. The passive voice is very rare. Do not use it.

Now for some more complex examples:

The cat eats a hot yam.	Eats\| the cat \| yam hot.	{image}
The cat eats a yam and the souffl�	Eats \| the cat \| yam and the souffl�.	{image}

Conjunctions, the Meta Parser & Complex Sentences

You're almost there. This last part is the hardest. G'luck!

I'll put up a clearer version of this - but I wanted to have it more or less complete

Conjunctions

The soft stop is used with sentence level logical operators. For example:

I ate a yam or I drank tea	(I) ate \| nan \| yam ] or [(I) drank \| nan \| tea.	{image}
If the cat ate then it will sleep	ate \| cate ] (if) then [ will sleep \| nan.	{image}

The hard stop is regarded as closing or opening a soft stop, that is why you don't see the opening [ at the beginning of the sentence.

the Global Pronoun

Complex sentences are the really hard part. Qa does not have sub-clauses like in English. They take them all out and make them into full sentences - then use global pronouns to refer back. There are an infinite number of global pronouns. Each begins with a number and ends with /nen/. So the first one you use would be /qanen/ then /tanen/ then /ranen/ etc. This allows for excessively complex structures. In spoken Qa few go beyond /tanen/, and I have yet to hear a spoken /lanen/. Written texts have been known to go further. Cases where they are needed are rare - so although this seems like a crazy scheme in practice it is quite elegant.

The man, whom I met yesterday, is eating a yam	(I) met yesterday \| nan \| man qanen. Is eating \| qanen \| a yam.	{image}
The man, who spoke to me, is eating a yam	spoke yesterday \| man qanen \| the speaker*. Is eating \| qanen \| a yam.	{image}
The man who spoke to me is eating the yam I bought	spoke \| man qanen \| the speaker. (I) bought \| nan \| yam tanen. Eating \| qanen \| tanen.	{image}

* There is no 'me' instead Qa uses the idion, 'the speaker'.

an Example

On the off chance that you are not yet confused I will move on to the meta-parser. It can come either at the end or at the beginning of a sentence and is used in conjunction with global pronouns when they refer not to one part of the sentence but to the sentence as a whole. This is to avoid double soft-stops. Again, some examples will help, this is a sentence I chose at random from The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. If you can follow this you have it made.

"We had ropes about our necks, and on our heads prices which showed that the enemy intended torture for us if we were caught." Becomes