Letters in Láadan

Notes

A. Words cannot end with the letters "h", "w", or "y".

B. Split up double-consonants with the letter "e".

Example: hesh = grass, hoth = place, hesh+e+hoth = heshehoth = park.

C. Split up double-vowels with the same accents with the letter "h".

Example: ra = not, en = understand, ra+h+en = rahen = misunderstand

D. Two vowels next to each other are only allowed if one of them is accented.

Example: Láadan, Aáláan

Accented Vowels

A letter with an accent mark gets pronounced with a slightly higher pitch, and slightly more emphasis.

• Low tone – Example, /lō/ or /lò/
• High tone – Example, /ló/

With two vowels side-by-side, there can be an accent on the first vowel or the second vowel. These have different sounds:

• Loó – /lǒː/
• Lóo – /lôː/

Pronouns

Pronouns can be neutral, though if a gender is assumed it is generally feminine.

Speech Act Morpheme

At the beginning of a phrase, a sentence marker is added to indicate what kind of sentence it is.

Evidence Morpheme

An evidence marker is added to the end of a sentence. If there are several sentences strung together and context is clear, these can be omitted from additional sentences.

Content Words and Function Words

Láadan does not have traditional verbs, nouns, and adjectives, as in English. There are two types of words: Content words, and Function words.

Most content words can be used as both verbs and nouns. (“Dance”, “Dancing”, would both be “Amedara”).

Verbs and adjectives are the same class of words. (“Red”, “To be red”, would both be “Laya”).

Identifier Case

Láadan does not have a verb for “to be”, as in English. If you want to state [noun A] is [noun B], any verb will be left off and the subject and identifier will be used:

Object Case

Use the “-th” suffix to mark the object in a sentence.

An object is an item being acted on. In the sentence “I ate rice.” – Rice is the object. In Esperanto, this would be “Mi manĝas rizon”, where rice (rizo) has an object marker -n.

Notes:

• If an act can only go one way (I can learn Láadan, but Láadan cannot learn me), the object marker is not necessary.
• Remember that double-consonants get split up by an "e". (Láadan+e+th)

Degree markers

Duration markers

A Duration marker can be added to the beginning of a verb.

Repetition marker

A Repetition Morpheme can also be used to specify a pattern in which something is done.

Pluralization

The prefix “me-” is used to indicate plural. However, it is used on the verb – not the noun.

Adjective with noun

If you want to modify a noun by combining it with an adjective, you add the “wo-” prefix on both the adjective and the noun.

Negation

To make a sentence negative, put “ra” immediately after the verb.

You can also negate other words by prefixing it with "ra". For instance:

And/Or

"i" is used for "and".

"e" is used for "or".

Yes/No Questions

When asking yes/no questions, the word order will be the same, but “Báa” (question type-of-sentence marker) will be used instead of “Bíi”, and you leave off the evidence marker.

"Yes" is "Em".

"No" is "Ra".

Interrogative Questions

In English, we have words like who, what, when, where, why…

In Láadan, who/what/when/where questions still begin with “Báa”. The third person pronoun “be” is used in place for what is being asked about (or a plural form), and the suffix “–báa” to mark it as what we’re asking about.

Tenses

In a sentence, you can add tenses like "ril" (now), "eril" (past), to clarify the time which the action happened. Here is a list of tenses:

Embedding sentences

Once you're comfortable with basic sentence structures, you may want to include one sentence in another. For example, "Did you know that [grandma died]?", where "Grandma died" is its own sentence, but is included in a larger sentence.

Passive Voice Marker -shub

Maybe you want to describe what is happening in a more passive voice; for example, changing "Jane coveted the treasure" (active), "The treasure was coveted by Jane".

The first version, we would order it something like:

Speech-act-morpheme verb subject object evidence-morpheme

Where the subject is Jane and the object is the treasure.

Preposition-like Markers

In Láadan, there are no prepositions. Instead, there are suffixes added to the end of words.

Noun Declensions

Additional detail can be added to words, such as emotions (happiness, anger, etc.). By adding on to these words, using the first and second declensions, you can encode more information in a single word, instead of having to formulate lengthy sentences to describe your current state.