Appendices

25.1 Colors

Novegradian has nine basic color terms, compared to the eleven of English. A basic color term is the highest level of color terminology in a language, a term that cannot be encompassed by another larger term. For example, in English “crimson” is not a basic color term because the term “red” includes “crimson” as well as many other shades.

What constitutes each color varies significantly from the Latinate pattern used throughout much of Europe, the result of the many years of relative isolation the language experienced until around the 17th century, although there has been influence as well from the Uralic languages.

Two other colors, розове rózove “pink” and оранжеве oránźeve “orange”, are gaining increasing usage due to Western European influence. However, they are generally not viewed as “basic” terms at present.

25.2 Time and Date

25.2.1 Months and Weekdays

The days of the week for the most part have transparent meanings related to their position within the week. As in the rest of Europe, the week begins on Monday.

• Monday — понедѣлнике ponedě́lnike “the one after the day of rest”
• Tuesday — торнике tórnike “the second one, the other one”
• Wednesday — срѣда srě́da “the middle”
• Thursday — цетуерге cetuérge “the fourth one”
• Friday — петеке péteke “the fifth one”
• Saturday — собота sobóta “the Sabbath”
• Sunday — недѣла nedě́la “day of no working, rest”

In colloquial speech amongst all generations, the pronunciation [ˈspa.tə] is almost universal for собота in the sense of “Saturday”, while “Sabbath” universally retains the older pronunciation [so.ˈbo.tə]. The “спата” pronunciation originated as a hypercorrection, an attempt to remove a supposedly Russified pronunciation from the language (as the native Novegradian cognates of many Russian words with the C₁oC₂oC₃ structure have a C₁C₂aC₃ form, although properly they also require C2 to be either /l/ or /r/). It has been further strengthened by the perceived connection with спати “sleep, rest”, which is actually completely unrelated. The [so.ˈbo.tə] pronunciation remains in use for all meanings in formal registers.

The month names are less transparent, deriving from older Slavic names and describing nature.

• January — ледана lédana, from леде léde “ice”
• February — лутана lútana, from луте lúte “severe, fierce [frost]”
• March — сокана sókana, from соке sóke “tree sap”
• April — травана trávana, from трава travá “grass”
• May — куѣтана kuě́tana, from куѣте kuě́te “flower, color”
• June — цервена cérvena, from цервене cérvene “red”
• July — липена lípena, from липа lípa “lime (linden) tree”
• August — шерпана śérpana, from шерпе śérpe “sickle”
• September — врѣсана vrě́sana, from врѣсе vrě́se “heather”
• October — румѣна rumě́na, from румѣне rumě́ne “dark red”
• November — листопаде lístopade, from листе líste “leaf” and падати pádati “fall”
• December — снѣжена sně́źena, from снѣге sně́ge “snow”

25.2.2 Adverbs and Other Time Terminology

Novegradian has three words that can be translated as “now” in English:

• соѕаса sodzása or шеѕас śedzás — These two terms both mean “now, at this very moment”. They are identical in meaning; the first is native, the second is a Russian calque.
• тобирво tobírvo — This means “now” when something at present is being contrasted to something in the past. It is similar, though not identical to, the expression “and now” in English, in that it contrasts present and past.
• нинѣ níně — This is a much less focused equivalent of соѕаса or тобирво, meaning “nowadays” or “at present”. While соѕаса points to a specific moment in time, нинѣ points to a span of time encompassing the present moment.

Соѕаса is a distortion of Common Slavic *sъ-čаsomь “with the hour”, or possibly sь-čаsъ “this hour”. Similar in origin are шеден śedén “today” and шеғод śeğód “this year”.

Similar adverbs, except derived from the distal demonstrative *onъ, are ономедни onomédni “on that day” and ономеғоди onoméğodi “in that year”, derived from Common Slavic *onomь-dьne and *onomь-godě, respectively. These may be used to refer to specific dates in the past or the future.

The adjective прошле próśle is used to mean “last” or previous”: прошлая яра próślaia iára “last year”. The adjective наступне nastúpne (pronounced [nə.ˈstu.ne]) is used to mean “next” or “following”: наступная яра nastúpnaia iára “next year”. There is one adverb, љони łoní, meaning “last year”, but its usage is somewhat marked.

“Tomorrow” is занок zánok, literally “behind the night”. “The day after tomorrow” is нимзанок nimzánok, literally “past tomorrow”.

“Yesterday” is вецераш véceraś, literally “[of/before] this [last] evening”. “The day before yesterday” is нимецераш niméceraś, literally “past yesterday”.

Although not frequently used, денеш denéś also means “today”, generally in more poetic or archaic contexts. Similar is the adverb ногьеш nogjéś, meaning “tonight”.

The adjectives “today’s”, “tomorrow’s”, and “yesterday’s” are денеуне denéune, еутрене iéutrene, and вецерне vécerne respectively. These words are also the adjectival forms of “day”, “morning”, and “evening” respectively; that is, денеуне means both “today’s” as well as “diurnal”.

Novegradian has two words for “day”. Дене déne refers to the period of daylight, or to a day on the calendar. Сутоки sútoki (which is always plural) refers to an astronomical day, including both day and night, or to a 24-hour period in general (e.g., 18.00-18.00 is considered one period of сутоки).

There are also distinct words for “the day before/eve of” and “the day after”: вигла vígla and заутра záutra respectively. The phrases “on the day before/eve of” and “on the day after” are written as a single word: вовиглу vovíglu, возаутру vozáutru. Unlike English “eve”, these are fully productive and are not limited to certain holidays: яс пришле думове возаутру сурвѣ iás priślé domóve vozáutru survě́ “I arrived home the day after the blizzard”. These prepositions may also be used alone as adverbs, where they can serve the useful function of distinguishing the narrative and absolute senses of “yesterday” and tomorrow”. As adverbs, both are stressed on the first syllable: vóviglu and vózautru.

• Оне рѣѕиле то-це оне приѣздиле вецераш.
  Óne rědzíle tó-ce óne prijě́zdile véceraś.
  “He said that he arrived yesterday.” (that is, he arrived the day before the present moment)
• Оне рѣѕиле то-це оне приѣздиле вовиглу.
  Óne rědzíle tó-ce óne prijě́zdile vóviglu.
  “He said that he arrived yesterday.” (that is, he literally said “I arrived yesterday”, meaning he arrived the day before he originally made this statement; this could perhaps more accurately be translated as “He said that he arrived the day before” as well)

25.2.3 Telling Time and Giving the Date

Whole hours are expressed using feminine ordinals in their definite form (due to the dropped word пора porá “hour”). One o’clock, however, is expressed as just пора rather than an ordinal. They will generally appear in the accusative case when describing when something happens, although the nominative case is used when just reading off time.

Minutes are shown after the preposition со so “with” in the dative/instrumental case: 6.20 шестая со дўудешитех śéstaia so dwudéśiteh, literally “the sixth with twenty”. The minutes show feminine agreement, if needed, because of минута minúta.

Two special words for fractions of hours also exist—пољ pół “half” and цетуерте cetuérte “quarter”. The latter may be placed after an hour much like the other minutes: тритей со цетуертем trítei so cetuértem “3.15”. When either form is placed before the hour, the hour is put in the genitive case and the time is subtractive: пољ тритѣе pół trítěie “2.30”, lit. “half of the third [hour]”. Пољ is always used subtractively like this. When a specific amount of minutes are used subtractively, the preposition со (this time meaning “from”) is required, the hour again being in the genitive: дуадешити со шенмѣе duadéśiti so śénměie “6.40”, lit. “twenty [minutes] from the seventh [hour]”. In general, the additive method is used for minutes between 01 and 29, and the subtractive method for minutes between 30 and 59.

This system is the most commonly used nowadays. It replaces an older system (still seen amongst the older generations or in rural areas) where times were based entirely on the following hour: тритѣе дешити trítěie déśiti “2.10” (lit. “of the third [hour] ten [minutes]”, that is, ten minutes into the third hour of the day). This has become increasingly uncommon since the advent of digital clocks since the modern system allows for an almost literal and linear reading of the numbers off the display, rather than requiring mentally adding one to the hour number displayed. However, a few remnants remain in the common lexicon, particularly the expression of “half” as just discussed.

There are no real equivalents for “am” and “pm” as used in English. Instead, an adverb of time may be employed. Еутром iéutrom “in the morning” is used roughly from 5am to noon, денем dénem “in the daytime” from noon to 5pm, вецерем vécerem “in the evening” from 5pm until 11pm, and ногьюм nogjiúm “at night” from 11pm until 5am. Equivalent adverbs (e.g., using the locative case instead) are also allowed. Alternatively, and perhaps more commonly, speakers may also give time according to a 24-hour clock.

The terms for “noon” and “midnight” are пољудна połudná “noon” and пољункьи półunkji, respectively. Both of these, however, are somewhat quirky in their declension. “Noon” is first declension in the singular and fourth declension in the plural. “Midnight” is always plural.

Dates are given using the genitive singular masculine definite form of an ordinal number (for ден dén “days”) followed by the genitive singular of the month: дуадеши пирваево румѣнѣ duadéśi pirváievo rumě́ně “October 21st” (lit. “of the twenty-first [day] of October”).

25.3 Dual Nouns

A small set of nouns in Novegradian retain a distinct and functional dual form. As described in Section 12.8 and Section 13.8, outside of frozen expressions the dual forms are only used after the numeral “two” or the modifier “both”. Such nouns mostly describe paired body parts and clothing related to them. These twenty duals are shown in the table below, alongside with their nominative plural and genitive singular form for comparison. The three forms listed under “Dual Forms” are the nom/acc/lat, gen/loc, and datins, respectively.

25.4 Kinship

Following are the standard Novegradian kinship terms. It maintains a very complicated system of kinship by European standards, although certain terms are much more common than others. In the formal language possessive pronouns are required to follow these nouns, and in the spoken language they all take possessive suffixes.

25.4.1 Nuclear Family

25.4.2 Older Extended Family

25.4.3 Younger Extended Family

25.4.4 Step-Family

25.4.5 Family-in-Law

All of these terms are in use, though some are relatively infrequent in unrestricted speech. The terms for parents-in-law show no signs of loss, and the terms for siblings-in-law are still quite frequent, although they may be replaced with phrases. However, the terms for the siblings-in-law of spouses are often replaced by phrases colloquially, though this is frowned upon in formal usage: суатмо suátmo → маже суѣстя омне máźe suě́stia omné.

25.4.6 Other Terms

In addition, the following terms, though not representing familial relations, also take possessive suffixes:

25.5 Punctuation

Novegradian uses mostly the same punctuation as English, although the rules governing their use differ slightly.

1. Full stop (.) — The full stop is used:
   1. To mark the end of a sentence making a statement.
   2. To mark the end of a sentence containing an indirect question.
   3. To mark abbreviations that are not serving as units of measurement (e.g., г. for граде “city”, or ст. for страница “page”).
   4. To separate units when giving time: 12.30.
   5. To group non-decimal numbers: 2.000.000 “two million”.
2. Comma (,) — The comma is used:
   1. To represent a short pause in speech.
   2. To separate items in a list including more than two (and must be before the и ‘and’), or to separate clauses in a sentence consisting of more than two coordinated together.
   3. In parenthetical expressions, although very short ones often do not need the comma.
   4. To separate phrases in apposition, unless they are very short.
   5. To separate subordinate clauses from the primary clause (unless joined using то-це).
   6. To separate non-restrictive relative clauses.
   7. Before contrasting conjunctions such as но and а.
   8. To separate decimal numbers from non-decimal numbers: 1,5 “one and a half”.
3. Exclamation Mark (!) — The exclamation mark is used:
   1. At the end of a command, interjection, or emphatic statement.
   2. At the end of questions with extreme emotion. “?!”, which is used in English, may not be used in Novegradian, so “What?!” would be rendered “Цой!”.
4. Question Mark (?) — The question mark is used:
   1. At the end of a sentence expressing a question (other than indirect questions).
   2. At the end of a sentence containing a tag question (e.g., ..., нет прауда ли?” “isn’t that true?”).
5. Colon (:) — The colon is used:
   1. Before a list introduced by an independent clause.
   2. Before a quotation introduced by an independent clause.
   3. Between two closely-related but non-coordinated independent clauses (much like the semicolon in English).
6. Semicolon (;) — Although uncommon, the semicolon may be used:
   1. To separate items in a large list, or a long series of coordinated phrases or clauses.
7. Hyphen (-) — The hyphen is used:
   1. To separate two elements of a compound that is not entirely viewed as a single word (e.g., новеградеско-английске слоунике “Novegradian-English dictionary”).
   2. To join two adjectives together into a single word (e.g., соцяљно-економицеске “socio-economic”).
   3. To separate a prefix or inflection from a numeral or a word it may not be recognized on, especially foreign names (e.g., 123-ом “123rd [dative/instrumental case]”).
   4. To separate the topicalization marker то from the word it modifies.
8. En-Dash (–) — The en-dash is used:
   1. To substitute for a zero-form copula, although it may be dropped if there is no ambiguity.
   2. To substitute for another verb lost by ellipsis, although this too is optional (e.g., Едене покренале подар деля друж, а еноке – нецево “One bought gifts for his friends, the other – nothing”).
9. Em-Dash (—) — The em-dash is used:
   1. To separate long appositives from the rest of the sentence, in which case it must be used on both sides of the clause.
   2. To introduce quotations and separate quotations from prose in dialogue. Unlike in English, in Novegradian quotation marks cannot be used to start a new paragraph.
10. Parentheses () — The parentheses are used:
    1. In parenthetical expressions.
    Any punctuation appearing within the parentheses must be part of the parenthetical expression, not part of the main sentence, and vice versa.
11. Quotation Marks („‟) — The quotation marks are used:
    1. To mark quotations.
    2. To single out certain words or expressions.
    3. To name a noun (e.g., гажета „Совѣшкьи‟ “The newspaper ‘Sově́śkji’”). This is not used for people or places, however.
    Novegradian uses „ (left-facing, on bottom) to begin a quote and ‟ (right-facing, on top) to end it. If there are not available, the guillements « » may be used. Using “ ”, as in English, is considered improper. Punctuation rules within quotations are the same as with parentheses—any punctuation within the quote must be part of the quote. Single quotation marks are never used.
12. Number Sign (№) — The number sign is used:
    1. Before a number qualifying something, but not counting it (e.g., дум № 846 “House number 846”). This corresponds to the use of animate numerals when not counting animate nouns.

25.6 Common Slavic Morphology

The following tables outline Common Slavic inflectional morphology as it is currently understood. These charts reflect the Common Slavic dialect from which Novegradian evolved.

25.6.1 Nominal Morphology

The example nouns used in the chart to the right are *noga “foot, leg” (Ā-Stem), *zemja “land” (JĀ-Stem), *gorde “city, fortress” (Masculine Ŏ-Stem), *město “place” (Neuter Ŏ-Stem), *more “sea” (JŎ-Stem), *synъ “son” (Ŭ-Stem), *kьrky “church” (Ū-Stem), *pǫtь “path” (Ĭ-Stem), *slovo “word” (S-Stem), *mati “mother” (R-Stem), *kamy “stone” (N-Stem), and *agnę “lamb” (NT-Stem).

25.6.2 Adjectival Morphology

The following tables demonstate the adjectival morphology of Common Slavic. Below are the indefinite forms (left) and definite (right). On the following page are the short form comparative (left) and long form comparative (right). The example used here is *dobrъ “good, kind”, except for the short comparative, where *vysъ “high” is used.

The superlative was formed with a prefixed *naj- added to the comparative forms.

25.6.3 Verbal Morphology

Common Slavic verbs may be grouped in five primary classes. The first conjugation includes verbs that take -e- in the present tense, and is demonstrated with *nesti “carry” below. The second conjugation consists of verbs that gain the suffix -n-, demonstrated with *dvignǫti “move”. The third conjugation includes verbs that gain the suffix -je- in the present tense, demonstrated with *znati “know” (with a vocalic stem) and *pьsati “write” (with a consonantal stem). The fourth conjugation features -i-, demonstrated with *ljubiti “love”. The fifth conjugation includes the five athematic verbs, demonstrated with *dati “give” below.

The above represents the forms used among the North and East Slavs, that is, the forms that Novegradian originated from. There existed considerable dialectical variation, however. In the present tense 2sg, the ending could also be *-ši in addition to *-šь. The final yer in the 3sg and 3pl of the present could be front or back. The 1dl ending in all tenses could be *-vě in addition to *-va. The 3dl could be identical to the 2pl instead of the 2dl. The vowels seen in the imperfect and aorist tenses also tended to be somewhat variable.

It should also be noted that a number of forms have been greatly simplified for this particular table. In particular, only the Slavic neo-aorist is shown; older forms of Common Slavic clearly showed three distinct aorist paradigms.

The verb *byti “be” has two tenses no other verb has, a future and a conditional. The conditional, however, was frequently contaminated by aorist forms (shown in the third column for comparison).

25.7 Vocabulary Comparison

The following list compares 100 Novegradian words (the Swadesh List) against seven other Slavic languages: Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Upper Sorbian, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian. Forms that are not cognate with the Novegradian word are in gray. A grayed-out word does not necessarily mean that language does not have any cognate for the Novegradian word in question or vice versa; it simply means that the language does not use a cognate word with the same meaning. The final column gives the etymology of the Novegradian form.

Of these, Russian and Ukrainian have the most similar vocabulary. Many centuries of close contact between Novegradian and the East Slavic languages have resulted in significant lexical influence; however, this is ultimately far more apparent in higher registers than in the very core vocabulary of the Swadesh List. Ukrainian tends to have more conservative vocabulary than Russian, which has loaned heavily from Church Slavonic.

Polish, Upper Sorbian, and Czech are all West Slavic languages, the next closest group. Old Novegradian and Old Polish in particular seem to have had a particular strong lexical affinity, enough that some very early historical linguistic analyses of the Slavic languages classified Old Novegradian as a relexified divergent dialect of Old East Slavic. These languages have a much stronger German influence and less of a Church Slavonic influence.

Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian are both South Slavic languages, the furthest removed from Novegradian. They have a significant layer of Turkish vocabulary. The Serbo-Croatian forms shown below are ekavian (standard Serbian). The Bulgarian verbs are given in the first person singular, since Bulgarian has lost the infinitive.