tai or ta,Īnd similarly with formal vi, av(i), va(i) li 's/he', ali or al 'he' and the masculine prefix, lai or la 'she' and the feminine prefix, etc. Personal pronouns take gender in a, and may drop their characteristic i ending when they do, just as nouns may drop their o: mi 'I', masculine ami or am, feminine mai or ma ti 'thou', masc. Even verbs can be marked for gender, with the meaning of performing the action in a masculine or feminine way. In a few words gender is marked by a, infixed before the last consonant for the masculine (tigar or tigaro 'male tiger'), suffixed and stressed for the feminine (tigrá or tigráo 'tigress'). Gender is optionally indicated by the prefixes al- for masculine ( altigro 'he-tiger', al-Dʒonson 'Mr Johnson'), and la- for feminine ( latigro 'she-tiger', la-Dʒonson 'Ms Johnson').

This includes the conjunction o: ʒənifu õ grafu 'start writing!'. Oblique case ( direct and indirect objects) may be marked by nasalisation of the final vowel of the noun and also of any attributives: ʒədonu zeã librõ 'give this book!'. The imperative is marked by the prefix ʒ-, which often requires a schwa to break up consonant clusters: ʒədonu 'give!', ʒəluso 'let there be light'. The affix e indicates past tense when prefixed (ebela 'formerly beautiful', eʃefo 'ex-boss'), but future tense when suffixed and stressed (sanéa 'healthy-to-be', urbéo 'city-to-be'). Tense is also optional, and may be used with verbs or nouns. Plurality and pluractionality may be shown through reduplication, usually partial: tatablo (or tablo-tablo) 'tables', dendeno or dedeno 'days', kloklora 'of many colours', marmarʃu 'walk repeatedly'. (See below.) Possessives take the -j- that converts nominals to verbals as well as the attributive -a: mi 'I', mija 'my, mine' vi 'you', vija 'your, yours' al 'he', alja 'his' la 'she', laja 'her, hers' lo 'it', loja 'its', etc. Personal pronominal roots end in i, as in Esperanto, but inflect for number and gender as do nouns. Nouns may instead be converted directly into attributives with the suffix -j-: denja luso 'daylight'. This a on its own is a preposition: podo a tablo 'leg of a table', luso a deno 'light of day, daylight'. (See below.)Īs in Esperanto, the attributive form is marked by the suffix -a: mega urbo 'big city', penda lampo 'hanging lamp'. On its own before a noun, this u is a copula: formiko u insekto '(the) ant is an insect'. The predicative form is marked by the suffix -u: urbo megu '(the) city is big', lampo pendu '(the) lamp is hanging'. They have two forms, an attributive form when they modify a noun like an adjective, and a predicative form when they stand on their own to form a clause like a verb. O by itself is a subordinating conjunction:Īl gefinu o fargu kaj egnifu o grafu 'he has finished reading and is beginning to write.'Īs in Japanese, adjectives and verbs are a single part of speech in Universal. Grammar Inflectional morphology Īs in Esperanto, Universal nouns are marked by the suffix -o, which is elidable in certain cases. Otherwise it is marked by an acute accent: á. If stress is not marked, it falls on the last non-schwa vowel preceding the last consonant of the word. The schwa ⟨ə⟩ is used to break up consonant clusters in compound words and the like.Ī palatalized consonant is marked with a hacek, a nasalized vowel with a tilde: ã (among other things, nasalization marks the accusative case a long vowel by a circumflex: â The affricates are written ts, dz, tʃ, dʒ. The Latin alphabet is used with IPA values, with five additional IPA letters: ø, ə, ʃ, ʒ, ŋ. The Universal reduplicated plural and inverted antonyms are reminiscent of the musical language Solresol. The antonyms are the pronouns al 'he' and la 'she', the ge- (completive) and eg- (inchoative) aspects, the verbs fin- 'to finish' and nif- 'to begin', and the verbs graf- 'to write' and farg- 'to read'. He finished reading and she started to write. Inversion can be seen in,Īl gefinu o fargu kaj la egnifu o grafu. It has inclusive and exclusive pronouns, uses partial reduplication for the plural ( tablo 'table', tatablo 'tables'), and inversion for antonyms ( mega 'big', gema 'little' donu 'give', nodu 'receive' tela 'far', leta 'near'). Universal is an Esperantido, a constructed language based on Esperanto. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. This article contains IPA phonetic symbols.

Nodus antonym