Nem (Faren language)

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Nem, a word simply meaning 'speech' or 'language', is the majority language of the Southern Continent , and is the main language spoken by the Farens of places such as the Republic of Free West Island and Silford. Nem is distantly related to Aradal spoken further east on the Serme Mountains.

Sosiolinguistics

Nem is the most widely spoken language on Salan. The dialects of Nem were originally spoken on the coast of the Continent west of the Serme Mountains. After the invention of writing, Nem became the prestige language on all of the populous mountain valleys. Even today Nem is usually the lingua franca used in the area. Bilinguality in Nem is very common among the Zeribians (under the influence of the Republic of Free West Island), Caač people (who often trade in Nem dialect speaking Tasalwíri), as well as the Ara people.

Phonology

Vowels: i ɛ a u ɔ
Long vowels: í, é á ú ó

	bilabial	alveolar	palatal	velar
nasal	m	n	ń
stop	p b	t d		k g
fricative	f	s	ç	h
approximant	w		y
other	affricate: c (t͡s)	trill: r

Morphology

The language has a rich agglutinating morphology. The nouns have 7 cases, singular and plural numbers.

cases

	singular	plural	meaning
nominative	çelta	çeltan	rope
accusative	çeltá	çeltan	rope (obj)
genitive	çeltam	çeltanim	rope's
dative	çeltek	çeltanek	to rope
locative	çeltes	çeltanes	in rope
ablative	çeltei	çeltanei	from rope
comitative	çeltalit	çeltanlit	with rope / related to rope

Adjectives

Adjectives of Nem have both verbal and noun-like properties. The adjectives agree with the nouns in number, but not in case:
kein çara 'a small child'
keińin çaran 'the small children'
keińek çara 'to a small child'
keińinek çaran 'to the small children'

The adjectives don't require copula (be-verb) like nouns:
kein ken ren 'the child is a man (male)'
kein çara 'a small child / the child is small'
kein tálad 'the child is dead / the child died / the dead child'

Verbal adjectives refering to plural nouns do NOT agree in number:
keińin çara 'the children are small'
vs. keińin çaran 'the small children'

Adjectives ending in consonants have verbal forms ending in a vowel (ul->ulu):
Des faidu felek ul 'I don't like a dark house'
Feleses ulu 'my house is dark'

Verbs

The verbs have 3 tenses: preterite, present and future, and 3 persons. The verb does not agree in number, but the plural is indicated by the use of plural nouns.

	present	preterite	future
1	mauńas	mauńaca	mauńkas
2	mauńan	mauńdi	mauńkani
3	mauńan	mauńad	mauńkan
imperative:	muińu

In addition to the indicative stem, the verbs also have a so-called long stem, which is identical to the imperative form. The long stem is used to conjugate the verb in some subordinate clauses. Due to the sound changes that have happened in Nem, the difference is usually no longer in the lenght of the vowels but in quality, as we see with mauńa -> muińu

Syntax

The basic word order of Nem is SOV, but it is quite flexible.
More on word orders:
N GEN toitu astim 'my rabbit'
N AP toitu sasse 'white rabbit'
N DEM toitu ente 'this rabbit'
NP ADP savas serme 'in the middle of forest' (literally: forest-in middle)

Questions
Interrogative clauses have the normal word order. The verb has the interrogative prefix an:
Pend-ei an-mauńa-n? 'Did you wash your hands?' (literally: hand-your Q-wash-you)

Root Languages

• Proto-Ara-Faren

Spoken by

• Farens

Common Phrases

Ande / tainge / silmu aime

Good (literally:beautiful) morning/day/night

Uińu walmar ken, feles ásim ançelnan?

You are very beautiful, do you want to come to my house?

Run ásim antí lassed

My dog ate it!

Welles palaksára. Né ásek áskaiya raun des neilgani, kaiya yán maciyek palaksakas

I have a catapult. If you won't give me all your money, I'll throw a huge rock on your head.

Dialectal variation

The largest phonologican differences in Nem dialects are how the Proto-Ara-Faren long vowels are realised. In Standard Nem all of them, exept á, have gone through diphtongisation. Some dialects have produced different diphtongs, or retained some of the original long vowels.
Later the dialects have gone through different contact phenomenon. Many dialects have been influenced by from Standard Nem. The dialects of Der Fem Island have many loans and even some grammatical influence from the bilingual Ngad i zerib (Zeribian language) speakers, especially common are loan translations of Zeribian compound words. The Eastern dialects, for example in Tasalwíri are strongly influenced by Aradal.