Tools
Table of Contents
Lessons — Postpositions
Lesson not finished
A harder lesson
Majority of Indo-European languages uses prepositions together with nouns to describe directions, locations and time intervals. Prepositions are auxiliary words placed before nouns, hence their name. However in Nûrlâm such words are usually placed after nouns, and therefore are called postpositions. Nûrlâm has both pre- and post-positions, and such words are collectively called adpositions.
While Nûrlâm has more postpositions than prepositions overall, in this lesson we'll study only a few of postpositions. However, because they are very important in Nûrlâm's grammar there will be a lot of special lessons about them later. Here only the postpositions that do not require any additional grammatical forms of nouns are listed.
Postpositions in Nûrlâm are used to describe locations or directions, while time and actions towards persons or objects are described with prepositions. Postpositions are always one syllable long.
New words
- as (across; but may also mean: through, by, past [travel through visiting the location])
- kurn (around [place])
- odh (along, by)
- thu (beyond, over [place, horizontally], past [to get past the place])
- fauth (lurk, hide [self])
- hûm (gate)
- mûl (road)
- ramz (wall)
- sîr (river)
Examples
English prepositions like “by” have different meanings, and may be translated with different Nûrlâm's words. These examples will hopefully clarify how to properly use Nûrlâm's postpositions mentioned above.
- across the mountains = za rod as
- along the road = mûlum odh
- around the city = goim kurn
- beyond the gates = za hûm thu
- by the river = sîrum odh
- by the sea = kârshum as
- over the hills = za kaup thu1)
- past the river = sîrum as = sîrum thu
- through the forest = taum as
As you can notice from this and previous lesson, “over” may be translated either with preposition “tala” or postposition “thu” but with different connotations.
Word order
The whole phrases made of prepositions or postpositions with nouns act together similar to adverbs and adjectives, and are always placed after the words they describe.
Examples
- Burn the forests around the mountain ⇒ Ghâsh za tau rodum kurn;
Exercise 1
Translate from English into Nûrlâm:
- an old person is going across the road
- five Nazgûl are flying around the city
- the sword almost stabbed the troll through the eye
- two slaves are quickly escaping by the river
Exercise 2
Translate from Nûrlâm into English:
- ash bolg mauh skâtuzâ hûm as
See also
