Bresmian

The Bresmian Language is a language based on the Finno-Ugric languages. This language is a minimalistic language, but also a complex language: It relinquishes many obvious aspects of grammar, like the past and the future tense, but it has also e.g. many cases. 

The alphabet and the pronunciation

Vowels

	Front	Near-front	Central	Back
Close	I [i], Y [y]		Ÿ [ɨ], Ü [ʉ]	U [u]
Near-close		İ [ɪ]
Close-mid	Ë [e]			Õ [ɤ]
Open-mid	E [ɛ], Ö [œ]			O [ɔ]
Near-open	Ä [æ]
Open				A [ɑ]

All vowels can be pronounced in normal length, longly and very longly (e.g. ä stands of short/normal, ää for (very) long). In stressed sylabes, vowels can only be pronounced in normal length or very longly. In unstressed syllables, long vowels become very long.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio- dental	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasals	m			n		ŋ
Stops	p		t			k	ʔ
Affricates
Fricatives		f		s			h
Trill				r
Approximant				l	j

Like the vowels, consonants can be long or short. E.g. "t" is a normal long t, while "tt" is a long t. There are only two types of length, not three.

Stress

All words have an initial stress. When a word is at least five syllables long, the fourth syllable is also stressed. And when a word has theoretically at least nine syllables, the eighth syllable is stressed, too.

Alphabet

This is the whole alphabet: A Ä (B) (D) E Ë F (G) H I İ J K L M N O Ö Õ P R S T U Ü (V) (W) Y Ÿ (Z)

Vowel harmony

This means that only some specific vowels can be in a word. Exceptions: Words from other languages or combined words.

First Group	A, Ä, E, Ë, I, İ, Õ, Ÿ
Second Group	O, Ö, U, Ü, Y

The vowels are divided in the first and the second group: The first group are unrounded vowels, the second group are rounded vowels.

Syllables

Those kind of syllables are possible (the diphthongs, vowel and consonant length don't matter here):

VC - Vowel and consonant

CV - Consonant and vowel

CVN - Consonant, vowel and a nasal

CVF - Consonant, vowel and a fricative

CVL - Consonant, vowel and a liquid

Diphthongs

All diphthongs are possible, even between the first and second group (when it's a word combination). The first vowel is always the most stressed vowel in a diphthong.

Grammar

What kind of grammar does this language have?

1. No future) The language have only one tense: Present. There is no past tense and no future tense. Instead of saying "I will go home tomorrow", you say "I go home tomorrow". Instead of "I will go home" you say "I go home later", "I go home, but not now" or you describe that you'll finish it: "I reach my house". It is important to know when you have to use which form: When you plan something, you can say "So, I reach my house, I make a meal, ..." but when you are on a party, you can say: "I go home" when you actually want to leave the party in some minutes.

2. No past) Also, there's no past: "I ate" can be paraphrased as "My stomach is full" or "I am finished with this meal". When you tell a story, you can use the present tense (so you can say: "I eat this and I see this cool car" instead of "I ate this and I saw this cool car"). Another example: "I went home yesterday". You can say: "I usually go home on this route/after the work, so it is yesterday" or "I usually don't go home on this route, but yesterday is an exception". Or "There were some houses here", you can say: "The houses are gone here". What I want you to know is, that it depends on the result and the situation when you are talking. When you know, if this is a story and the result of an action is not important, or when you think that you want them to know that your stomach is full because of this meal, you can paraphrise it.

3. No "to be") "My stomach is full" is "The meal fills my stomach", "I usually go home after this work, so it is yesterday" is "I usually go home after this work, yesterday doesn't differ (from the other days)" and "The houses are gone here" is "As a result of a great fire, the houses doesn't stand here". So, as you can see, it seems to not be that difficult to replace this word.

4. No adverbs) Now is "at the moment", yesterday is "the day before", tomorrow is "the next day", here is "at this place", there is "in this city/...", often is "in a great number of cases", seldom is "in a small number of cases", and so on... To describe "always", you need the abessive case. "Without any exceptions, I go at 10 p.m. to bed" is the same as "I always go at 10 p.m. to bed". To describe "never", you need the double negation: "Without any exceptions, I don't go at 10 p.m. to bed" is the same as "I never go at 10 p.m. to bed". "I go to sleep at 10 p.m. usually" is "I maintain going to sleep at 10 p.m." or "As long as nothing (else) bothers me, I go to sleep at 10 p.m."

5. No adjectives) "great" and "small" are replaced with the plural and the paucal (the so calles "small plural"). The plural describes a large amount, the paucal describes a small amount of something. So you basically say "In many cases, ...". But what about adjectives like "pretty" or "cool"? When something is cool or pretty, it pleases you, right? So, you can say: "This girl pleases me". Or what about "the beautiful home"? "Mr. John lives in this beautiful home", you can say: "Mr. John lives in this home which pleases me". But what about adjectives which describe objective statements/facts like "This car is blue?" You can say: "This car has the sky's color". "Tom is a tall guy", what about tall? '"Tom distinguish himself with his tallness". For "big building", you can use the augmentative, for "small building", the diminutive. But what when something is "very tall" or "very short"? "Tom is very tall", as I've written, you can say "Tom distinguish himself with his tallness". There, the "tallness" has to be in the augmentative. Now, it would have the same sense as "Tom is very tall". But what when "Tom is the tallest guy"? You write: "No one has Tom's size". And what about "light" and "dark" "My car is dark blue". For "My car is blue", you'd say "My car has the sky's color". Now, you have to say: "My car has the sky's color with a dark shade". As you can see, there are many possibilities to paraphrase adjectives.

6. Only three conjunctions) The only three who exist are "and", "but" and "or". "Because (of)" is replaced with the causal case, "for" with the benefactive case, "yet" with the lative case, "since" with the egressive case.

7. No prepositions) All are replaced with cases.

8. No "yes" and "no") You simply say: "I do it" or "I don't do it", "That's right" or "That's wrong"/"That's not right".

9. No "please" and "thanks") You say (for please): "It would please me/I would appreciate it if...", for thanks: "It pleases me, I appreciate it!".

10. The quinary system) There aren't names for numbers, you just say "one piece (of sth)", "two pieces (of sth)", ... This term, "pieces" is usually used as an equivalent to numbers. In this language, you have these types of number: Transnumeral, Singular, Dual, Trial, Quadral, Paral, Paucal and Plural. You use the singular for describing 1, dual for 2, trial for 3 and quadral for 4. "0" has to be paraphrised: When you want to say, that the result of an equation is 0, you say "The result is: No piece/amount" or "It doesn't come an amount/a piece as a result". 5 is described as "one pieceol", while "-ol" is just an invented suffix for the augmentative. It just says that this amount is higher than the regular pieces. And because you'd have to use the paucal to describe an amount which is larger than four, and because the paucal is not defined (but it needs to be), you simply use the augmentative to create a "new piece" which naturally stands above one piece. And this piece is defined as 5 pieces, because of this: You can simply use the word "piece" and the quadral to describe "four pieces", but when you use the paucal, you describe "a small amount of pieces". But what about "five pieces"? You say "one super-piece", and this super-piece includes five pieces. You can imagine it this way: You eat a pizza and you take a super-piece which normally would be divided into five pieces. You don't want 4 pieces, either you don't want "some pieces". The same with the diminutive for so-called "partial pieces", numbers lower than 1 (and higher than -1) (I'll use "-on" for the diminutive). For example, 9 is "one pieceol and four pieces". 43 is "one pieceolol, three pieceols and three pieces". 0.728 is "three pieceons, three pieceonons, one pieceononon". 

11. A large amount of...) Cases, persons, moods, modalities and evidentialities. 

Basic grammar rules

Pronouns

	Singular	Dual	Trial	Quadral	Paral	Transnumeral	Paucal	Plural
0. Person	ni	nih	nil	nim	-	-	niõ	nia
1. Person (inclusive)	kä	käh	käl	käm	(käp)	-	käj	käja
1. Person (exclusive)	-	-	käll	kämm	-	-	käji	käjai
2. Person	lÿ	lÿh	lÿl	lÿm	(lÿp)	-	lÿj	lÿja
3. Person (proximate)	so	soh	sol	som	sop	sor	soj	sojo
3. Person fem. (proximate)	lu	luh	lul	lum	lup	lur	luj	lujo
3. Person (obviative)	më	mëh	mël	mëm	(mëp)	mër	mëj	mëja
3. Person fem. (obviative)	jë	jëh	jël	jëm	(jëp)	jër	jëõ	jëja

Possessive pronouns: You add an "a-" or "o-" to the personal pronoun

Demonstrative pronouns: You add an "ä-" or "ö-" to the personal pronoun.

Relative pronouns: You add an "e-" or "u-" to the personal pronoun.

The 0. Person is this person when you say "Now, y'all take three eggs and some milk, ...". It's exactly the same as the German "man". The non-feminine version is used like in French: It stands for a whole group of man or a mixed group. Unlike French, this person is also used to describe non-living things in the singular.

Number

	Singular	Dual	Trial	Quadral	Paral	Transnumeral	Paucal	Plural
Ending	Ø	-ssa/oh	-ssa/ol	-ssa/om	-ssa/op	-ssa/or	-ssa/oj	-ssa/oja/o

The -ll, -mm, -ji and -jai used in the first exclusive person are exceptions. In general, the -(ssa/o) is also used in the case-endings, etc.

Cases

Ergative	-d
Absolutive	Ø
Pegative	-s
Instructive	-k
Genitive	-mÿ/-my
Partitive	-n
Vocative	-a/o
Dative	-re/-ru
Instrumental	-rÿ/-ry

As you can see, Bresmian is an ergative language. You can find out, when you have to use which case, by regarding the transitivity.

• When you have a "zero-transitivity" sentence, you transform it into an intransitive sentence
• When you have an intransitive sentence, you only use the absolutive
• When you have a transitive sentence, you use the ergative for the agens and the absolutive for the patens; when you can find the patens out by asking "How?", you use the instructive case; when you only have the patens in amounts (tea e.g.), you use the partitive; when you can find the patens out by asking "using which thing?", you use the instrumental
• When you have a ditransitive sentence, you use the pegative for the agens, the absolutive/instructive/partitive/instrumental for the patens and the dative for the other object
• If you call someone, you use the vocative
• The genetive is for describing the possession

Adessive	-fa/-fo	near/at/by
Inessive	-fe/-fu	inside
Intrative	-te/-tu	between
Subessive	-fi/-fü	under/below
Superessive	-fÿ/-fy	on (top of)
Ablative	-ka/-ko	away from
Egressive	-fä/-fö	beginning from
Elative	-ke/-ku	out of
Allative	-ka/-ko	onto
Illative	-ke/-ku	into
Lative	-kÿ/-ky	to
Terminative	-ta/-to	as far as
Prolative	-sa/-so	by way of
Essive	-la/-lo	as
Temporal	-ra/-ro	at
Benefactive	-na/-no	for
Causal	-pa/-po	because of
Comitative	-ma/-mo	with
Distributive	-la/-lo	per
Distributive-temporal	-le/-lu	daily, Mondays
Comparative	-le/-lu	similar to
Abessive	-me/-mu	without
Equative	-lÿ/-ly	like
Derivative	-ki/-kü	from
Antessive	-se/-su	before
Postessive (1)	-sÿ/-sy	behind
Postessive (2)	-sä/-sö	after