A Very Brief Overview of the Grammar

Standard word order for sentences is Subject – Verb – Object.

Negation comes after the word it modifies (usually the verb). Adjectives are placed before the noun they describe, while adverbs come after. Many adjectives and adverbs are only distinguished by their position in a sentence. And yes, this can introduce confusion in longer sentences over which role a given word is playing; meaning is reliant on context. Adjectives can be nominalised by suffixing the appropriate case (ie. treating them as if they were a noun).

Lasat also has a variety of adpositions to specify location in space and time. These usually come after the word they modify. 

The copula is dropped whenever possible. When it does appear, it inflects irregularly – see below. It is mostly used to indicate tense, aspect, and mood if no other verbs are present.

There are a host of question words (“what, when, where”, etc), which I cover further down. A polar (yes/no) question is indicated by a rising tone at the end of the sentence. The word order does not change, so “Will you go to the house?” is structured as “You will go to the house?”

(This is a simplified example ignoring tense marking and case to get the point across.)

Lasat has a base-8 counting system, as they have four fingers on each hand. Numbers act like adjectives, in that they precede the noun they modify. Like adjectives, they can take on their own case marking or plurality to be used as nouns where they would not otherwise. (Think of the English “dozens” or “hundreds”).

Plurals can be created by suffixing -ru to any noun. Cases can also be suffixed to any noun. The chart for how plurals and cases interact is below. There is some irregularity in how these case suffixes are applied depending on the word ending, as well a fair amount of nuance in how these cases are used, however I won’t go too much into detail about that.

Cases	Suffix	PL
NOM		ru
ACC	kad	rukad
GEN	ahn	rahn
DAT	tum	rutum
LOC	rab	ruab
ABL	dash	rudash

Pronouns also can have cases applied, although the forms for these are simplified. There is also a reflexive pronoun nau, “self”, which does not inflect for plurality or case (except in one very specific situation which will come up in the translation section).

	1	1PL	2	2PL	3	3PL
Ø	ve	veru	zi	zir	shu	shur
ACC	vek	veruk	zik	ziruk	shuk	shuruk
GEN	vahn	verahn	zhahn	zhirahn	shun	shurahn
DAT	vet	verut	zit	zirut	shut	shurut
LOC	vera	verua	zira	zirua	shura	shurua
ABL	vesh	verush	zish	zirush	shush	shurush

Tenses, and the Imperfect and Imperative moods, may be suffixed to any verb. The below is the standard conjugation table. The Present Imperfect can nominalise verbs.

	Ø	IPF	IMP
Ø		li	fadh
PAST	dem	lidem	fadhem
FUT	mai	mali	fadhi

The copula resa, “to be”, inflects irregularly.

	Ø	IPF	IMP
Ø		reli	refa
PAST	redem	redli	redhem
FUT	rema	remli	redhi

I think that’s all the basics! If I’ve forgotten anything I’ll be adding more to this section when I think of it. I hope that all makes sense.

Question and Answer Words

Polar (yes/no) questions rely solely on intonation and do not change word order.To answer them, you can either use lira and orra (see below) or rely on echo answers depending on context.

There are also a set of question words for open questions. These can restructure word order as they are shifted to the beginning of the sentence. These words (and the answer words below) are probably the most artificial-looking part of the language, as they're designed to appeal to a monolingual English-speaking audience who expect w-words to all start with the same letter. They are also ONLY question words and cannot be used as, eg. pronouns.

Question Words

The words beginning with k in the table below, where the translation has a question mark at the end. These are in the vein of your standard "who, where, what" and they are specifically intended to ONLY be question words. If you use one of these, you are asking a question and nothing else.

How do you answer these? With...

Answer Words

The w-questions each have their counterparts which are much more fluid in their uses. They can be pronouns, conjunctions (eg. "because"), interjections, and if they feel like it even (slightly funky) nouns. For example, the word enkeer is sometimes translated as the noun "place". Some of them are also considered to be in a particular case by default, for example the ones ending in -ab are both automatically locative.

These are the words beginning with en- and they are much more fluid in their uses. They can be pronouns, conjunctions (eg. "because"), interjections, and if they feel like it even (slightly funky) nouns. For example, the word enkeer is sometimes translated as the noun "place". These words will always be assumed to be in their particular case without any additional case marker - so enkeer is automatically locative, enkash is automatically ablative, etc.

The table below shows the full chart of question and answer words, including which case they will act as in any given sentence. Bear in mind, there are probably fancy linguistic terms for the categories of question and answer I've put here - it's just to try and sort things into a somewhat logical system.

	Case
Category	NOM/ACC	GEN	LOC	ABL
Person question	koor (who?)	krahn (whose?)	-----	-----
Person answer	enkoor (someone, who, anyone)	enkrahn (whose, someone's)	-----	-----
Thing question	kawdh (what?)	-----	keer (where?/what place)	kosh (how?)
Thing answer	enkawdh (something, what)		enkeer (where, somewhere, place)	ekash (by which means, thus, therefore, so)
Selection question	kanem (which?)		-----	kleht (why?/from what?)
Selection answer	ekanem (any, which, that)		ekanab (anywhere)	enkleht (because, reason, from what, for which purpose)
Quantity question	kidu (how many/much?)		kirab (when?)
Quantity answer	enkidu (some quantity/ amount, such)		ekeerab (when, at any/which time, while)