Articles
Articles (words like 'the', 'a' and 'an') are not expressed using separate words in Avalèn, as they are in English. Rather, they are an extra vowel added on to the end of a noun as a suffix. All nouns in Avalèn end in a consonant, to which you add the article suffix. For example, dog is mar. To express the idea of one particular dog (as opposed to another, to replace the English word 'the'), we add the suffix -ì. So, we get marì – the dog. Similarly, to describe an undefined dog, that is, any dog, not one or some in particular (to replace the English word a/an), we add the suffix -ò. Hence, marò – a dog. One important thing to know about Avalèn is that a noun may never appear in a grammatically correct sentence without an article suffix (apart from proper nouns). This will be discussed at a later date.
Plural
As previously stated, all nouns in Avalèn end in a consonant, making it easy to add the article suffixes. The beginning of a noun, however, may be either a consonant or a vowel. This makes things slightly more complex when we get into plural nouns (i.e dog → dogs) as plural formation occurs at the start of nouns (as a prefix). There are two possible prefixes to be used to create a plural noun: æ- and æl-. Determining which to use is easy; if the noun starts with a consonant use æ-, if it starts with a vowel use æl-. The 'l' is there to act as a buffer between the two vowels. For example, dog is mar. Because mar starts with a consonant, we place the prefix æ- before the noun and are left with æmar – dogs. If we take a noun that starts with a vowel, say ecùs – name, we use the prefix æl-. Placing this prefix before the noun, we get ælecùs – names.
Of course, we can combine articles and plurals. For example, æmarì would translate as 'the dogs', just as ælecùsì would be 'the names'. Using the plural with the indefinite article suffix -ò yields a similar meaning to 'some'. That is, æmarò could be translated as 'some dogs' (or 'dogs in general') – any group of more than one dog.
Vocabulary
mison – bird, bach – person, vìm – thing, læn – man, reg – king
Exercises
Translate into English:
misonò
regì
æbachì
vìmò
ælænò
æmisonì
regò
ævìmì
bachì
lænò
Vocabulary
friend – amìdh, mountain – dòdh, dream – trìmon, weapon – mìlos, world – mond
Translate into Avalèn:
the dreams
a weapon
some friends
the world
some mountains
a friend
the mountain
a world
the weapons
a dream
