Lessons
Verbs: past tense. More adverbs
It's hard to express thoughts using only present tense of the verbs. You need past tense to talk about things that already happened. To put the verb into the past tense, the suffix -uz- should be inserted between word's root and 3rd person ending. For example:
Verb form | English | Nûrlâm |
---|---|---|
Imperative | Come! | Skât! |
Present | An orc is coming | Ash uruk skatâ |
Past | An orc came | Ash uruk skatuzâ |
New words
- ak (to stab)
- farb (to chase, hunt)
- ghur (to die)
- grush (to hit, strike, punch)
- kramp (to do, make)
- lal (to laugh)
- lûmp (to fall)
- rong (to dig)
- ronk (pit, pool)
Some adverbs may be helpful in describing the past:
- dok (already, before, previously)
- nokhar (again)
- ûn (new) ⇒ ûnarz (just, recently)
Past tense in Nûrlâm also substitutes English Present Perfect tense (actions that already happened but in the still lasting time interval). Example: “The dwarf has just fallen” should be translated as “Gazatum lûmpuzâ ûnarz” (you don't translate “have/has”).
Exercise 1
Translate into Nûrlâm:
- demons made some sorcery again
- filthy dwarves heard this
- four dragons escaped
- orcs hunted the elves
- shit stank
- the bee made a new pile
- the pain stopped
- the slayer stabbed the slave
- the strong warrior stroke the fat troll
- this human already died
Exercise 2
Translate from Nûrlâm:
- agh burzum lûmpuzâ
- golug shoguzû saubumûk
- golugûrz mau skâtuzû lad
- graz nîn ugluzâ krig nazgûl
- lagum grishuzâ za hrau
- ologum laluzâ
- rogum ronguzâ ash ronk
- tug ghor thrakuzâ mik zrî
- uruk ghâshuzû nîr goim
- ûzûl uruk throkhuzâ karn âps ûnarz
See also
Contents
Lessons
Here is the list of lessons for studying the conlang called Nûrlâm, yet another fan dialect of Tolkien's Black Speech.
- Overview of Nûrlâm dialect
- The very basics:
- Deeper knowledge:
- Cases: essive
- Pro-forms: demonstrative
- Existential sentences
- Cases: allative and elative
- Cases: adessive and inessive
- Cases: ablative and elative
- Directions
- Cases: instrumental and comitative
- Participles
- Predicatives
- Compound verbs and infinitives
- Pro-forms: relative. Complex sentences
- Cases: intrative
- Advanced:
- Pro-forms: indefinite
- Pronouns: reflexive and reciprocal.
- Pronouns: declension in cases.
- Compound sentences. Conjunctions.
- Verbs: passive
- Gerundive
- Possession and ownership
- Impersonal sentences
- Abundance and absence
- Verbs: subjunctive mood
- Verbs: grammatical voices beyond passive
- Direct and indirect speech
- Mastering the language:
- Making new words: derivational suffixes
- Verbs: phrasal verbs, prefixes
- Affix order: nouns
- Affix order: verbs