The Cardassian language Initial development by Timothy Miller PHONOLOGY (how to pronounce things) These are the three basic vowels on Cardassian. Other vowel sounds will be heard but are not considered to be seperate sounds. and are the same thing, and and are the same thing, as well as the and the 'a' in the English word 'cat' being the same thing. Vowels a as in Father or Taco [e] as in Bay i as in Beet [o] as in Poke u as in Boot Voiced Consonants Stops b as in Bob d as in Dad g as in Good Fricatives v as in Valve z as in Zap j in Zhivago, in Measure, in Azure G same as in Klingon Nasals m as in Mom n as in None Glides w as in Wild or Wow y as in Young or Yay Liquid l as in Little Trill r Same as 'r' in Spanish, like in Perro Voiceless Consonants Stops p Pop t Top k as in Kick q Same as Klingon ' Same as Klingon <'> (glottal stop) Fricatives f as in Fear s as in Sad c in Shine x in Bach (german composer), same as Klingon h as in Help There are no digraphs in Cardassian, so letter combinations like , , etc. represent two seperate sounds next to each other, not a single sound like in English. MORPHONOLOGY (how words are formed) Cardassian words can have syllables arranged however necessary, but the structure of a syllable is fairly strict. There are several forms that a syllable can take (V = vowel, C = Consonant, F = fricative): VC VCF VCC (end of word only) CV CVC CVCF CVCC (end of word only) If a stop or fricative falls at the end of the word, it becomes voiceless, regardless of how it is written. When two vowels are found next to each other, at syllable boundaries, they are always seperated by a glottal stop, regardless of how it's written. If a glottal stop <'> is found in a position where it is hard to pronounce (like in verb tense suffixes), the glottal stop is often dropped in speech, regardless of what is written. Stress is placed on the last syllable of each word. SYNTAX (putting words together into sentences) The basic sentence structure requires that the Direct object be AFTER the Subject. The verb, however, can be placed before, between, or after them. An indirect object must be placed dead last in a simple sentence. -Verbs There are few words in Cardassian that can be classified as only functioning as verbs. Most verbs are derived from nouns or adjectives and suffixed with a tense marker. The tenses are: 'a Past 'i Present 'u Future For example, if you take the word for 'sight', which is and want to derive the verb 'to see' in the present tense, you get . When a tense is added to an adjective, it indicates that the subject has that property. For example, if you take the word for 'red', which is and attach <'i> to it, you get , which means 'to be red'. -Passive, Causitive, and Reflexive There are three aspects that can be prefixed to a verb. tu passive kin causitive jik reflexive Passive indicates that an action is being done TO a person, rather than BY a person. means 'to be seen' means "I am being seen." Causitive indicates that the subject of the sentence is causing the direct object to perform some action. means "I cause you to see the food." Reflexive indicates that someone is doing something to oneself. means "I see myself." And you can combine any of the three: means "I cause you to be seen." -Prepositions Prepositions head prepositional phrases and are prefixed to the head of the phrase. "In the red food." -Subordinate clauses Subordinate clauses, both dependant and relative, are handled by a prefix-pronoun pair. For dependant clauses (where a noun or verb is being modified), the prefix is attached to the word begin modified or referred to, and the pronoun is used in the next sentence to refer to it. would best be translated into 'that' in English, but it in relative clauses it can somes times be better translated as 'who', 'whom', 'to whom', or 'whose', depending on context. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you.", or more literally, "You ni-the-hand will-not-byte; it you causes-to-eat." Cardassian doesn't have participles (verbs being used as adjectives), but it can get the same effect by using a dependant clause. The sentence "The hired man is working." could be split up into "The man is working. He was hired." and mean nearly the same thing. One must split things up like this in Cardassian. Here, 'biting' is the present participle of 'to bite'. "I see the biting animal.", or more literally, "I ni-the-animal see; it bites." A relative clause provides additional information about a previously mentioned noun or pronoun. The relative clause is introduced as a seperate sentence that uses the pronoun to refer to the topic of the previous sentence. "That is the man that I see." "That ni-the-man is; I him see." -Possession In English, when a relationship of possession is being expressed, the word that is the possessor is modified, while that which is being possessed is not. Take the phrase "John's car", for example. Here, since John is the possessor, a suffix is added to indicate that relationship. Cardassian uses the exact opposite. Im Cardassian, the 'possessed' is modified, while the possessor is not. This is described as putting the possessed into the 'construct state', while the possessor is left in the (normal) absolute state. The construct state is expressed by adding the suffix to the possessed, and the absolute (possessor) is placed before the construct (possessed). "The man's house." -Imperative Imperatives are simply expressed by telling someone that they will (or will not) do something, in the future tense. "Eat this." (You this will-eat.) -Definiteness In English, a word is made definate by putting 'the' before it. In Cardassian, the same is accomplished by prefixing . -Adjectives and adverbs Adjectives and adverbs fall immediately after the words they modifty. Since Cardassian does not have gramatical gender or number, there adjectives are not modified to 'agree' with the nouns that they modify. -Numbers Numbers are treated as adjectives and therefore fall aftere what they modify. Plural is notexplicity in Cardassian. -To be The verb 'to be' is only used to express relationships between nouns in Cardassian. "Is is the man." If you wish to state that a noun has a certain property, you simply turn the adjective into a verb. "This is big." -Correlatives (not finished yet) -Gramatical modifiers (not finished yet) (augmentative, diminutive, pejorative, ameliorative) -Cardassian names USEFUL CARDASSIAN PHRASES "Hello" "To your health" (common greeting, closing, or toast) VOCABULARY Gramatical prefixes ra the tupassive kin causative tas not (verb prefix) nisubordinate antecedent Gramatical suffixes 'apast 'i present 'ufuture ik construct Prepositions cuf in Pronouns nuI, me ka you sihe, him, she, her nuka we (including the person spoken to) nusi we (excluding the person spoken to) lam it, that (demonstrative pronoun) hi subordinate pronoun Nouns visf sight, to see kith food, to eat tapx house tunka animal, to act irrationally kinat a bite (mark), to bite yut hand gato be duxt man 'udu sample, specimen hint health Adjectives gum red aws large ital unknown