Sakanura Grammar Basics A1

Lesson One | Understanding Grammar

Phonetics

Sakanura features 15 consonants of the Latin Alphabet, and these letters have a relatively similar pronunciation to English, apart from a few changes.

These are: 

B (ball)

D (dog)

G (go)

H (hang)

J (job)

K (cake)

L (lung)

M (man)

N (night)

P (paint)

R (butter)

S (sand)

T (tan)

W (want)

Y (key)

Sh (posh)

Ch (catch)

Sakanura does not feature these consonants, f, q, v, x, or z.

Sakanura vowels are a bit different, as many of them don’t share the same sounds as English vowels. Unlike English, Sakanura vowels and consonants remain consistent and uses the same sound in every spelling and context. Because of this, Sakanura has extra letters for these vowels in its script. For the romanized version, Sakanura uses diphthongs and vowel clusters to express these sounds.

These are:

A (pot)

Ae (wait)

Ai (kite)

Au/Ao (cow)

E (love)

Er (sure)

U (spoon)

O (north)

Ia (yacht)

Iu (music)

Ie (yuck)

Sentence Structure

This is a basic sentence structure in Sakanura:

• [(pro)noun] [noun/adjective/verb] is

In English this would be:

• [(pro)noun] is [a] [noun/adjective/object]

Sakanura: Om Singnya

English: [house white is]/the house is white

Sakanura: Tanda Pikanamnya 

English: [man artist is]/the man is an artist

Sakanura: Enna Lennya

English: [she pretty is]/she is pretty

Sakanura grammar is aligned this way because typical tense marking words like “was”, “is”, “are”, “will”, etc. are expressed through tense marking suffixes, similar to English, but without redundancies like “she is walking”.

As shown, Sakanura is an SVO language, like English. This means that the subject (he) does the action, the verb (runs) is the action, and the object (house) receives the action, in that order. Also shown, Sakanura does not contain articles like “a”, “an”, or “these” before nouns.

Nouns and adjectives function like verbs, making things flexible and easy. A noun and adjective can be expressed the way way as a verb can. For instance, if you were to call someone pretty, you will structure your sentence, “she is prettying”. If you were to say that a house is white, you would say, “(the) house whiting”. Any word that affects another object or word is seen and treated as a verb, and has a tense marker applied to it.

Tenses

Sakanura has ten tenses, seven of which are used for verbs, nouns, and adjectives interchangeably, and three which are only used for nouns and adjectives.

These are:

Simple present/present continuous - [-ya]

Ba kanhapya

[I run/am running]

Present stative verb inflection - [-nya]

Enna lennya

[She is pretty]

Simple past - [-tang]

Aya kanhaptang

[You ran]

Past continuous - [-tan]

En kanhaptan

[He was running]

Past stative verb inflection - [-keng]

Ayam lengkengam

[They were pretty]

Simple future - [-man]

Shuma kanhapman

[We will run]

Future continuous - [-tana]

Am kanhaptana

[They will be running] (singular)

Future stative verb inflection - [-sel]

Kita lensel

[You will be pretty]

Conditional - [-nak]

Enna kanhapnak

[She would run]

Modal - [-le]

Enna kanhaple

[She could run]

The suffixes [-nya], [-keng], and [-sel] are the unique ones at play here. These suffixes are only used to modify tense nouns and adjectives.

Pronouns

Sakanura pronouns function the same way as English pronouns. Sakanura even has its own epicene pronoun, or singular neutral pronoun.

These are:

I/me: ba

You: aya

They (plural): ayam

They (singular): am

He/him: en

She/her: enna

It: ne

This: tia

That: pai

Us/we: shuma

You (plural): kita

As for possessive pronouns, pronouns do not go under any transformation. Instead, a particle “al” translating to “of” is applied before the pronoun, and after the noun. Similarly, there are no reflexive pronouns or object pronouns (myself/yourself, me/them), basic pronouns are used instead of those. “Chao” translating to “dog” is used for this example:

My dog: chao al ba

Your dog: chao al aya

Their dog: chao al am

His dog: chao al en

Her dog: chao al na

Our dog: chao al shuma

Subject-Object-Verb Agreement

Unlike English, Sakanura verbs do not agree in singular and plural. This means that even if there are multiple subjects preforming the action, the verb and noun does not change in pluralization.

For example:

Sakanura: en noke pita

English: he wants cake

Sakanura: aya noke pita

English: they want cake

This would only change if perhaps each of the different subjects wanted different cakes, in which the sentence would pluralize cakes.

Pluralization

To pluralize words, there are three forms of one suffix: [-m], [-am], or [-gam].

If the word ends in an “a”, either [-m] or [-gam] is used. If the word ends in a consonant apart from “n”, [-am] is used. If the word ends specifically with “n”, [-gam] is used.

Suffixes

 Sakanura features a plethora of suffixes similar to English, like “normal” becoming “normally”, or “anticipate” becoming “anticipation”. Sakkari suffixes function the same way.

These are:

One Who (e.g. painter, chemist, countess)

[-nam]

State or Act of (e.g. minimal, agency, occurrence, unity)

[-nga]

Doctrine or Belief (e.g. Buddhism, Nihilism)

[-aida]

To Become (e.g. satisfy, humanize, sanitize)

[-buden]

Capable of Being (e.g. edible, fixable)

[-anat]

With or Notable for (e.g. awful, hopeful)

[-atu]

Without (e.g. lawless)

[-han]

Pertaining To, Holding Qualities Of (e.g. mythic, creative)

[-ata]

Condition of Class [e.g. apprenticeship, motherhood]

[-mun]

The Study of (e.g. biology, astronomy)

[-samat]

While Sakkari suffixes can seem daunting or confusing at first, reading and immersing yourself in them and becoming familiarized with which context uses which suffix is an easy way to become acquainted with them.

Interrogative Words

 There are multiple words or particles which go at the beginning of the sentence, similar to English’s “who, when, what, where, why, how” structure. But unlike English, Sakanura does not change sentence structure for questions.

Example:

English: he is sad.

Sakanura: en mungya

English: is he sad?

Sakanura: huang en mungya?

“Huang” is used to mark that a sentence is a general question, resulting in a yes or no answer, such as “is she home?” or “did it happen yet?”

“Nuoc” is used to mark that a sentence is asking for an explanation, such as “what is it”

“Kapong” is used to ask why something happened, such as “why is she/he/it?”

“Anga” is sued to ask when something happened, as this word also translates to “happen”, such as “when did she/he/it?”

“Wei” is used to ask how something happened in the past, such as “how did she do it?”

“Tara” is used to ask the status of something, or how something or someone currently is, such as “how is she?” or “how is the food?”

Negation

To express negation or something negative, the particle “da” is used at the beginning of the sentence, and can also be placed at the end of the sentence for further clarification, or if the sentence is long. The sentence structure does not change from positive inflection to negative inflection and instead stays consistent, the same method as interrogative sentences.

Example: 

English: i ran

Sakanura: ba kanhaptang

English: i did not run

Sakanura: da ba kanhaptang

These consistences with sentence structure make learning and speaking Sakanura simple and familiar. 

Superlatives

Superlatives in Sakanura, words like “taller”, “shorter”, or “biggest”, are different from how they are structured in English, but are still simple to learn.

An example of a superlative sentence would be, “John is taller than Sam.”

Sakanura: John manhonya hang Sam mida

Recalling how Sakanura sentences are structured, John is our subject, and “manho” translating to “big” is our adjective.

The term “hang” is a comparative word. When used after an adjective, it expresses that it is comparing the previously stated subject to the following object, which in this case is Sam.

The term “mida” at the end of our sentence translates to “more”, but this word does not always mean “bigger”. “Mida” after a word means that this word is the inferior.

The subject will always be the superior, no matter the subjects power or size, the subject’s superiority in the conversation denotes where they will be in the sentence.

Example:

English: John is taller

Sakanura: John manhonya mida

English: Sam is shorter

Sakanura: Sam tanhomida

As for words such as “tallest”, or “shortest”, we use the word “sepat”, which translates to “most”. This word is also interchangeable for all terms.

Example:

English: John is tallest

Sakanura: John manhonya sepat

Conjunctions

Conjunctions, also known as F.A.N.B.O.Y.S, are words that connect two clauses or ideas, and these words exist in Sakanura quite similar to English.

These are:

Cause and Effect:

“I dropped my phone, so it broke” - [nama]

Connecting Basic Ideas:

“Bread, milk, and eggs” - [e]

Connect and Contrast:

“I might be late, but I will still come” - [saya]

Opposition:

“Milk or cream” - [salah]

Negation:

“I don’t drink, nor do I smoke” - [de]

Because:

“I like winter because of the snow” - [chisa]

Nevertheless:

“It was late, yet it arrived” - [galah]

Next/after/then:

“She was here, then she wasn’t” - [natam]

Conjunctions

Prepositions include simple words like in, at, on, to, from, etc. Prepositions also function similarly to English, and are placed before nouns. Unlike in English, Sakanura differentiates between figurative and literal forms of prepositions. For instance, English uses the word “on” to express both metaphorical ideas like “on a poster” or “on a roll”, as well as for literal ideas like “on a plane”, while Sakanura uses different words for each concept, making learning more consistent and simple. 

These are:

In (literal): ano

On (literal): kyo

At: ye

To (direction/location/recipient): ro

From: noki

For: para

Of/to: no

Of (possessive): al

On (figurative): akanya

In (figurative): itu no

Thank you for reading this installment of Sakanura Grammar Basics A1, the ultimate beginners guide to learning the conlang of Sakanura. Comments, suggestions, and feedback is appreciated and welcomed! This guide and conlang was written and created by @sakkariinternational on TikTok (@Sakkariprincess on Instagram). All Rights Reserved.