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Grammar documentation
Cenyani is the biggest of my constructed languages, and by far the most well-developed and well-documented. The Cenyani grammar is very different from English grammar, and is arguably a lot more complicated in places. Below is a list of all the topics of Cenyani grammar.
Please note: this grammar documentation is not intended to function as a beginner’s guide to Cenyani or a primer of any kind. It is intended to be a complete grammar reference for those who are interested or curious. A Cenyani primer is still to be written.
In the pages below, the notation C will be used to refer to any non-syllabic consonant, S to any syllabic consonant, and V to any vowel. If parenthesised, the consonant or vowel in question is optional.
Also, be aware that many of the pages are rather long in terms of text content and may require a lot of vertical scrolling.
There is also a separate Cenyani dictionary. Green links in Cenyani grammar docs lead to the dictionary. If you’re not on a phone and if you have scripting enabled, you can display a definition in-page by hovering the link. Try it out: รค.
For your convenience, I’ve written a short summary/overview of Cenyani, or at least its phonology and grammar, in case you don’t feel like reading through the entire grammar documentation.
Appendices
- Sample texts
- Consonant clusters – a collection of gigantic tables which list all the permitted Cenyani consonant clusters.
- Interjections – lists a number of common Cenyani interjections.
- Possession – how to make possessive expressions (mostly “have” in English).
- Numbers – details the construction of numbers in Cenyani, which are in base 8.
(As a side note, I use Cenyani to refer to the language only, while cenyi is used both as a noun and as an adjective referring to Cenyani’s speakers. The plural of cenyi is cenya, and I only use the indefinite form; hence, “the cenya”, never “the cenyoni”, even though the latter is technically more semantically and grammatically correct.)
Culture of the cenya
The native speakers of the Cenyani language, within the context of my fictional world, are called the cenya (sg. cenyi). As their culture has some presence in their language – and vice versa –, and for the sake of completeness, I decided to write a little bit rather a lot almost nothing (for now; there’ll be more!) about their culture, about some of the things they do and think and feel in general.
There is now a picture of a cenyi, too! She can be seen on the Physiology/anatomy page. She’s very green.
History of Cenyani
This section is about the history of Cenyani outside of its fictional world.
Started in early 2002 mostly as something to do inbetween homework and during boring classes, Cenyani is without doubt the oldest of my languages. It is also the one that has gone through the most design iterations, being changed over and over until just a year and a half ago (mid-2008).
Virtually none of the original vocabulary – which was only around 30 words – has been kept, and many of the grammatical features have been changed completely. If anything, it would be far more accurate to claim that Cenyani in its current form has only existed since 2005.
Nevertheless, Cenyani is a language of which I am very proud, and it’s one I’m not ashamed to say I speak almost fluently. Those damn adpositions still do my head in, though...
