Monday, May 18, 2009

Just a little more silliness

http://sites.google.com/site/psalmofdreams/Home/introduction-to-babel-grammar/can-you-we-they-trade-jobs-the-question

Epistle XLIV: Can you we they trade jobs, the question?

You just going to dance about and no be doing any work at all? Oh xhèjern thiînaka khaingósa khaûnaka, oh Nǚshén Megami, oh Cælestial one. How come you no have to do any of the toiling at all? Oh sure you the going and free all the slaves, and what the big difference been for us? I worked for the Qhíng all my life, all the months and years and years of it, and yes that was bad, but now still I we the scrubbing the floors and napping in the corner and hiding from Grandfather Thiêfhilos and trying to get Aîya to do all my work. Where the why the how do I get your job? Anyway I can apply to be a ballerina princess? I good at dancing, I can skip about upon the warship and not have to do the cooking and cleaning and having Puîyos the carrying me all about. I have wings! I want the Crown Prince to carry me all around.
We the rest of the slaves just think you making the whole thing up. Sure, you have some really weird scars on your wings, the rest of you us them far too polite to mention it, but it look like someone breaking all your bones and sitting on you. But you not really so hurt enough that you can’t lick the deck clean. And why I keep getting the job of keeping Xhnófho non-hyper? The he guzzling down the pink lemonade as fast as he can smuggle it into the fleet, and the next thing I know Honored Fhèrkifher crying out, Somebody better get some slaves to help Xhnófho staggered upright, we can’t have the sub-admiral puking in front of the Crown Prince. Yeah, I clean up Pirate mess all the time! And do I complain! Yeah! And do anyone listen! No!
So, just for to show you that I no want to be slave any longer, I we decided to take vengeful justice on the caste system of your language. See, Grandfather Thiêfhilos, he the one ordering us around all the time, thin old man he’s like a twig man, that’s what he is, a thin twig man, hope a big wind just blow him down on his twig tummy, he saying that Babel have seven castes to it and some caste do the subject and others the whatever it is, and I’m thinking, sure, I bet one caste does all the work and the other castes say, Oh I think I’ll take a preposition and just sleep through the rest of the sentence. Yawn. I can’t be bothered with syntax. I one lazy dative caste. And don’t even get me started on the instrumental caste. What is that supposed to be? A type of fungal soup?

So, for the rest of the day I we have decided to mess up the caste system. Sure, Babel is an agglutinative language, but now we’re going to inflect it in squishy squishy ways. The affixes are in rebellion! These xhìqhila cases are dance dance dancing!


New Rebellion Caste!
This is what it means!
This the old stinky Caste!
Nominomative
Ulqwos
The one-eyed coyotl-jaguar doing it on purpose
Fhwárqhayan
Voxomoximative Voximus Maximus
Ulqwe
Hi, one-eyed coyotl-jaguar!
Aîfhwárqha
J’accuse!
Ulqwom
Done to the one-eyed coyotl-jaguar
Fhwárqhayùpwar
Genesis
Ulqwos
Of the one-eyed coyotl-jaguar
Fhwárqhayòlkha
Ablivimative
Ulqwón’
From the one-eyed coyotl jaguar
Fhwárqhayèkhmo
Dative
Ulqwói
For the one-eyed coyotl jaguar
Fhwárqhayàswaor
Locomotive
Ulqwoi
In the one-eyed coyotl jaguar
Fhwárqhayèxhyeu
Instrumentivemive Minimus
Ulqwo-x
It chanced that the one-eyed coyotl jaguar
Fhwárqhàyepakh

Oh, I can the making pretty charts too. So the fhwárqha declension not silly enough for you! I the way going to make something so incredibly fun, you going to dance the words all the very night long!

Anyone e'er thought about writing in this space before?
Language will Never Be the Same Again!
Ha ha ha ha hah!
Poor old castes they won’t have any one scrub their particles and inflect them anymore
Onomatothete
Kirya
The sky ship went about to do this
Talqantàntheyan
The Book Case
Kiryá
Done to the cruiser
Talqantantheyùpwar
Dative
Kiryan
Unto the air living ship
Talqantantheyàswaor
Ginormous
Kiryo
Of the air yacht
Talqantantheyùlkha
Possessive Construction
Kiryam’a
Belonging to the seastead
Talqantantheyèntir
Locative
Kiryats’e
In the vimāna vessel
Talqantanthèyaloi
All for me none for you
Kiryanya
Untowards the quickship
Talqantanthèyutakh
Obliterative it all again
Kiralyo
From the paradox ship
Talqantantheyèpwo
Instrumental
Kiryanen
It chanced that the suabōg
Talqantanthèyepakh
Just here for to pay my respects
Kiryas
In the context of the sky ship
Talqantanthèyatser

Oh that not crazy enough for you! Then I we the preposing the strangest bestest wildness most unfetteredest caste system in the history of time and doughnuts and space. Revealing, this:

This is a perfectly good space on the letter to leave jokes and insults. Not like we the insulting anyone around here though.
Super Rebellious Caste!
Tee hee hee hee hee!
Bet you’d never guess this meaning! Hah hah hah hah hah!
Your old stinky caste thing!
Nomen omen
Puu
The tree doing something of its own accord
Úlaxhéyuyan
Partimotive
Puuta
Some of a tree
Úlaxhéyuyòtya
Gigimous
Puun
Of the tree
Úlaxhéyuyòlkha
Inessive
Puuts’a
In the tree
Úlaxhéyuyèxhyeu
Elative
Puusta
From the tree
Úlaxhéyuyèkhmo
Illative
Puukh’un
Into the tree
Úlaxhéyùyaloi
Adessive
Puulya
On the tree
Qir úlaxhéyu
Obliterate!
Puulta
Away from the tree
Xhrir úlaxhéyu
Allative
Puulye
Towards the tree
Úlaxhéyùyutakh
Abessive
Puut’a
Without the tree
Úlaxhéyuyèlwil
Prolateriatprolative
Puutse
Along a tree
Xhnir úlaxhéyu
Translative
Puuk-si
Becomes a tree
Sopaingate’ úlaxhéyu xhroe
Essive
Puuna
Like unto a tree
Úlaxhéyuyèthya
Comitative
Puuné
Associated with a tree
Úlaxhéyùyuqei
Instrumative Nothing to see here folks time to go home
Puunè
It chanced that a tree
Úlaxhéyùyepakh

There you have it. Vengeful justice best served with giggles and plenty of iced cream. Not like we slaves getting any iced cream. That only for the big folk. Big folk who have rooms and beds and toys et cet. Well, I’d better start going back to toiling.
Get back to work Empress of Tomorrow!

Your loving slave,
Fhólus

Gender Problems

http://sites.google.com/site/psalmofdreams/Home/introduction-to-babel-grammar/babel-grammatical-gender

Notebook Entry: Babel Grammatical Gender

I feel better now than I’ve felt in quite some time. I’m not at all sure how long I slept after I ate. Puey insisted that I eat at once. I sate in his lap and he spooned honey pouridge and milk into my mouth. By then I had no idea where my parents had gone. Later on I found out that they the fleet and disappeared unto realms or dimensions somewhere quite far away. Mother wanted to leave me in Grandfather Pátifhar’s protection, but Father chanted that I was to be Puey’s responsibility from now on, at least that’s what I heard. I am not at all concerned about the details any longer. At this point I really can’t be bothered with anything at all.
I think I fell asleep when Puey took me out of my corset. I do have a vague memory of wheels and clockwork streaming upwards and biting at his fingers and striking at him. My dearest Prince just has no understanding of machines and no luck at all with regards to rouage. Perhaps in the days to come, as he teaches me how to play Xhwongeîthe and chase the sock, and I teach him to dance and to talk I may get around unto helping him to understand machines. I don’t think they’re too terrible at all. At one point I was conscious enough to know that he was unbinding my wings and washing each of the bones. At least Mother knit my bones together, but I think they were covered in blood. When I woke up I was lying in bed in a fresh set of pajamas, and my wings were open for the first time in quite a while. I wonder, though, did Puey really undress me or did he get a female servant or Vestal Virgin to do so? I plan on embarassnig him on the point later. When I awoke it was already the third hour. Puey fed me in bed and told me that I had no chores and no responsibilities whatsoever save to start getting better. My wings, I must say, started twittering with glee even though I tried to stop them. Puey also reassured me that he thought that my wings were already feminine and starlike as they were. Sometimes I just don’t understand Mother at all. My wings are quite lovely, even if they are a little ungainly and don’t quite move the way I want them to and keep shuffling from side to side and smacking Puey in the face, but I always apologuise with lots of kisses. I do not know for certain whether wing-binding is a custom among my Mother’s people, for she implied that it was practiced among both the Brothers and Sisters of the Stars, but if so I plan not to continue this custom with mine own children.
I must have fallen asleep again in the middle of the day. Puey fed me in bed again, and he rubbed my wings and I feel asleep far too early. And now it’s day again. Puey says I don’t have to do anything at all today if I don’t want to. The fleet, he told me, will be returning unto the Void and the last battles of the War. He says that we may be able to end the Winter the seeks to destroy all reality, and then we shall have spring again. Hurray! I’m hoping that at any moment now Puey will return and sweep me up into his arms and start kissing me with passionate kisses in celebration. I hope, though, that Mother comes through on her promise to teach Puey to fly. She may be a little overwhelved with having a single child to teach flight, especially since I’m the only child of the Áme and her kind are not exactly accustomed to the idea of change and childhood, but one day she told me Puey will have Raven wings to match my butterfly wings.
Puey has just returned with some fluttering ravens. He has letters for me. Let’s take a look at them.

Dearest Princess,
I am so happy that you are safe and found again. I wept for fear of you, and now I thank all the spirits and ancestors that you are returned unto us. Oh, what an happy day!
Fhermáta

Sister by Marriage,
I’m sure it’s great that you’re not dead yet, but I just want to tell you that contrary to popular report, I did not go through all your possessions at home and plunder them for all they’re worth. The two copper beadcoins you left with me are safe and sound. On a completely different matter, everything in my room is mine and for all time, and don’t you dare claim that any of those toys were once yours, and I can assure you that none of those beads and emeralds I took from your luggage. In fact, let’s just stay out of my room completely.
Siêthiyal

Éfhelìnye,
Did you bring me any presents from your little journey? I bet you got to see lots of colors and shapes and scribbles and things bursting upwards in the dimensions up there. Auntie Qtìmine is making pancakes tonight! That truly is worthy of celebration! You did bring me presents, right?
Post Scriptum:
Whatever you do, don’t hurry home, because I don’t want to keep having to copy these epistles of yours. Boooring!
Post post scriptum scriptum:
Um, whatever you do, don’t look in your room. Somebody took all your stuff. And she says that if I say anything about it she’s going to pound me into the floor. I’m just warning you. Don’t look for anything.
Post post post scriptum scriptum scriptum:
Um um um, there’s some rumor going about the marketplace that your Mother was going to purchase one hundred wives, one thousand concubines, and ten thousand love slaves for Puey. !! as Puey would say. I don’t suppose you would care to explain that, would you?
Your best and darlingest little Sister
Karuláta Khniêma Akhlísa the Great love for all time!

To be honest, I have no idea what Kàrula meant by my Mother purchasing wives for Puey. I shall bring it up to my Mother at the earliest opportunity. But right now I’m far too relaxed and tired to care.

My cousin Ixhúja was kind enough to send me an epistle also. I’ll have to give it some good thought. When will Puey and I get around to finding her an husband? She’ll only be completely happen when she’s in love, so I’ll have to find some strong hero for her, perhaps some soldier or a Sylvan Knight who will hold her in his arms and sweep her off her feet and won’t mind at all that she doesn’t talk and has clockwork flowing down her tresses.
Anyway, here’s the letter that Princess Ixhúja wrote unto me.

My Dearest Cousin,
I rejoice that you are well and in Puîyos’ safe hands. I cannot begin to imagine what sort of ordeal you must undergone up there in the cloud and dust realms. I have not had too many good experiences with angry Ancestors or Immortals myself, I rather prefer what is known and real and solid, beasts and clockwork, creatures that I can fight with mine own hands. Now that you are back among us, my cousin, I hope you shall be getting back to your letters about grammar. I’m hoping that we can discuss grammar a bit more, sepecially whether Babel is patriarchal or not. In the essay I wrote for you I came to the conclusion that Babel was not patriarchal and I still believe that, even though I may have some misgivings about the union of the Clockwork Heresy and the Winter Patriarchy that you and Puîyos have in mind. I do think, though, that the language you have created does have an inordinate number of words for flowers, blood, dancing, warfare, silly things, and harsh things, and I cannot yet guess whether that makes the language too feminine or too masculine. I have noticed though that sometimes the language has a three-way gender system and sometimes a two way gender system. To modify some of the sentences which Akhlísa has described before.

Xhthènteqhe Puîye wtsatimùjhwa púsa. Puîye kú.
I wended from green Puey. He is Puey.
Xhthènteqhe’ óqla wtsatimèkhmo púsa. Óqla kei.
I wended from Þe green flower. It’s a flower.
Xhthènteqhe qiêl wtsatimèpwo púsa. Qiêl kei.
I wended from Þe green hill. It’s an hill.

Jaê Puîye wtsatimètyikh púsa. Puîye kú.
I saw some of green Puey. He is Puey.
Jaê’ óqla wtsatimòtya púsa. Óqla kei.
I saw some of the green flower. It’s a flower.
Jaê qiêl wtsatimùtya púsa. Qiêl kei.
I saw some of the green hill. It’s an hill.

So when we talk about participles in some forms of the locative case, there are at least three genders bouncing about, one for persons, as in Puîye wtsatimùjhwa, from green Puey, and Puîye wtsatimètyikh some of green Puey, and one gender for flowers, óqla wtsatimèkhmo, from the green flower, óqla wtsatimòtya, some of the green flower, and a third gender for objects, qiêl wtsatimèpwo, from the green hill and qiel wtsatimùtya some of the green hill. From the notes that I was able to rescue from Siêthiyal’s pillaging I have located that you call these genders the Sentient-Animate, the Non-sentient-animate, and the Non-sentient inanimate. That’s all well and good. But what about the pronouns at the end of the sentence? Puîye kú means He’s Puey. Excellent. But the same gender is used for both flower and hill, Óqla kei, Qiêl kei mean It’s a flower, it’s a hill. What happened to do of the genders!
And what are we to make sentences like this:

Xholajakhtàqta Puîyos. Puîyos koxhing.
Puîyos is a male warrior. He’s Puîyos.
Xhelejakhtàqta’ Ixhúja. Ixhúja kexhing.
Ixhúja is a female warrior. She’s Ixhúja.

Now we have masculine and feminine prefixes on the participles, xhola- and xhele-, but we also have the option of using koxhing as a masculine pronoun and kexhing as a feminine pronoun.
So, my little grammarian cousin, how many genders do we have in Babel? Do we have three for participles? Do we have two for pronouns? And how to males and females fit into these paradigms? Are you just making this up as you go along? Or are you really confused about something? You’ve always seemed a little confused about gender roles, I think. You’re supposed to be the one rescuing Puey, you know. You just don’t have this entire courtship dance down correctly.

So, cousin, are you going to change this entire gender arrangement? Are you going to make participles and personal pronouns fit into the same clockwork? If you wish to change the gender system of Babel, I have come up with a few ways that would certainly simplify it. For one, let’s just abandon the entire animate, sentient, and male and female distinction, it’s a little too complicated. Second, let’s use blinks, purrs, kicks, and punches as parts of words. Here are a few suggestions.

Two Gender System:
Feminine gender (marked with a punch)
Everything else gender (marked with a purr)

In this system we may say something like this:

Jaê’ Ixhúja(punch) wtsàtim (punch) pú (punch).
I, feminine, see green Ixhúja, who’s also femine.
Jaê Puîyos (purr) wtsàtim (purr) pú (punch).
I, feminine, see green Puîyos who is of the set of everything not feminine.

If you don’t like that system I have another:

Gender for feminines, animate objects, plantimals (marked with snarl)
Gender for men, violence, water, anything unpredictable (marked with giggle)
Gender for clockwork (marked with sigh)
Gender for fruit and vegetables (marked with low kick)
Everything else gender (marked by punching someone in the face)

So we’d have sentences like the following:

Jaê jakhtàqta (snarl) stélar (snarl).
The feminine princess sees the feminine warrior.
Jaê Puîyos (giggle) stélar (snarl).
The feminine princess sees the violent and possibly unpredictable Puîyos.
Jaê sòjhwa (sigh) Puîyos (giggle).
Masculine Puîyos sees the clockwork dragonfly.
Jaê xhmàrpta (low kick) sòjhwa (sigh).
The clockwork dragonfly sees the pomegranate fruit.
Jaê jaê (kicking everyone in the face) Ixhúja (snarl).
Ixhúja sees lots of things and possibly kicks them all in the face.

Perhaps, mine erudite cousin, you wish a completely different system. I have many ideas.

Princess gender (do a little dance)
Dragonfly gender (flap arms or, if one has them, wings)
Hunting tools and weapon gender (slap someone)
Anything that reflects light gender (slay someone very hard)
Everything else gender (break someone’s face)

I think that the possibilities may be endless.

Khmír stélar (doing a little dance) jakhtàqta (breaking someone’s face).
The warrior loves the princess.
Khmír sòjhwa (flapping one’s arms about) xhlir jairientaôlu (slapping someone) stélar (doing a little dance)
The Princess loves the dragonfly with a māccuahuitl.
Khmír khmír (break someone’s face) Eîl (slay someone very hard).
The sun just keeps loving everything else.

Or, perchance, if you think the above system is just a little too vague we can add more genders for different types of objects. We can add:

Heavenly creatures such as rainbows, moons gender (go into bersarker rage)
Other types of weapons, metallic objects gender, rings, hammers gender (run very quickly)
Food, edible plantimals gender (side kick)
Non-metallic objects gender (backflip)
Spheres, toys, clockwork gender (stand on one’s head)

Í jakhtàqta (breaking someone’s face) pejor khwíjo (let’s go into a bersarker rage).
The warrior was walking about while the moon was shining and possibly going berserk.
Xhùrnamat jaîretu (side kick) xhlir soîrxhla (run very quickly) stélar (doing a little dance)
The princess was eating the pie using a snickersnee.
Eûxi qir stán (backflip) Tánin (stand on one’s head).
The Automata were dancing upon a stone.

Perhaps all of motion and movement and leaping may be a little too tiring for you at first, my anæmic little cousin, but I think you do need to toughen up a little. When you get back into Jaràqtu I think I’ll pounce on you in the middle of the night and teach you how to wrestle.
From my point of view if there must be a gender system in language than there must be some sort of hierarchy. At the very top we should have people, or at least women. Next there should be clockwork objects and plantimals. Then there can be different types of objects, say long objects, liquids, small objects, sand, water. Next there should be abstractions, a gender for language, words, pejorities, numbers, infinities, and then any type of collection of mass participle.

I suppose one could make a little chart of the different ways that gender could be classified in a way which makes far more sense unto me. I shall start with highest to least important.

PEOPLE:
High class women
Huntresses, maidens, princesses
Low class women, all men
Children, food for people, materials for machines
CLOCKWORK AND PLANTIMALS
Clockwork creations, automata, clockwork insects
Trees
All other types of beasts, birds, and fishes
KINSHIP RELATIONS
Kinship by blood
Kinship by cloning
Kinship by marriage or fosering
Kinship by avoidance groups such as in-laws
NAMES
Personal names
Ceremonial names
Place names
Names of clockwork
Certain groups of people
BODY PARTS
Living body parts
Dead body parts
IMPORTANT SUBSTANCES
Sugar
Coffee
Oil
Blood
WEAPONS
Swords, māccuahuitl, impaling spears
Wood or trees used to make weapons
Cylindrical items
TYPES OF OBJECTS
Long objects, liquids, small objects, sand, water, inanimate objects such as books, abstractions, I am not sure whether there an be an hierarchy this low on the list.
LANGUAGE ABSTRACTIONS
Language
Words
Mathmatics
Infinities
Pejoratives
COLLECTIONS OF PERSONS OR THINGS
Populations
Mass participles
Silly items
Very silly items
Exceeding silly items

So the way I count it, I can think of at least ten different genders which have absolutely nothing to do with divisions based upon sentience, animacy, or the sexes. I doubt you’ll encorporate any of these ideas into the language you are creating, it seems you already have a very full and complex system, and yet I don’t think that it has to be the only system there is.
By the way, before I end this letter, there is a rumor about the agora that your Mother wishes to purchase concubines for Puîyos. That’s not true, is it? I do know of several maidens who would not be completely averse to the idea, but it just seems like something against what you would permit.
Anyway, I need to go and stop Siêthiyal from taking all your stuff. I’ll write to you later.
Ixhúja.

So this is the response that I’ve crafting for her.

My Dearest Cousin,

I am so happy to hear from you and that you are well and that you are taking such a kean interest on these linguistic scribbles of mine. I don’t quite know when I’ll be well enough to return home. Right now Puey is washing my wings as I write this. I feel very sore, but I feel far better when he is with me and taking care of me. Oh, that reminds me, while I’m in the fleet I’ll be asking the acolytes to keep their eyen open to look for a potential husband for you. I don’t suppose you already have anyone in mind, but when I return home I shall certainly be thinking about what type of man should be your lord and husband. You just don’t know how good if feels to be in love all the time and have Puey right next to me to protect me. Puey keeps telling me that I shouldn’t be concerned with finding you an husband, that you are far too young, but it doesn’t hurt to look around. Plus, whoc an guess what the Immortals have intended for us? From my experience with them, the Immortals are just as capricious as the rest of us.
Puey just looked o'er my shoulder and told me that perhaps you are too young to be thinking of having an husband. I disagree, I think you’re old enough to be thinking about kisses and marriage and being held by some very special person. I think Puey is just being shy thinking about you all grown up. He does wish to protect us all.
Puey’s not looking at the epistle anymore. Good. I’ll tell you then, I plan on tricking him tonight and forcing him to kiss me. I’m too weak to walk by myself, let alone fly, so he’s been carrying me around, but I think I can grab onto the edge of some curtains as he carries me, and in the resultant fall I’ll be able to thrust my face towards him and force him to kiss me for as long as I want. Also, and don’t tell him, please, even after I start feeling better, I don’t intend to let him know, so he can keep on holding me all the time. I just like being held.

So, for you pleasure, I think I shall write a few words on Babel Grammatical Gender

Babel Grammatical Gender
Sentient, Non-Sentient, Animate, Inanimate, Male-gamma, Female-alpha-beta, and Epicine-both-all

I’m writing this in a box because my Mother used many little boxes in the note she just left me. And I do suppose that boxes are pretty. Now, as we begin this discussion, first I shall mention that we actually have two words different words which mean gender in Babel. Qhén is the regular word for grammatical gender as in some sort of division or way to view or qualify participles. Qhén can thus refer to sentient-animate, non-sentient animate, non-sentient inanimate, animate epicine, animate male-gamma, animate female-alpha-beta, or animate-epicine-both-all. Qhén are however distinct from the level two suffixes that I call classifiers, suffixes such as –ingpis which refer to spirits, dreams, souls, or ancestors, -ixorng which refer to inanimate things, or –elpul which refer to deceased persons or creatures. So when one speaks of wtsatimìngpis, a green spirit or dream or wtsatìmixorng, a green thing or wtsatimèlpul, a green dead person, one is not referring to grammatical gender but really as a type of description. In addition to the word Qhén we also have the word Fhwìpu which can refer to gender but also to grammatical valence. Fhwìpu thus is broad enough to refer both to ideas of sentience and animance, but also to the way that clauses and sentences are put together in terms of telicity and volitionality. For the purposes of this discussion, however, we shall only be discussing qhénàjhwen, grammatical gender in terms of describing a participle, personal pronoun, or a relative pronoun.
My cousin, Ixhúja, grammatical gender in Babel is complicated by several facts. For one, there are several competing ideas of gender which do not all cover the same territory, and so create some interesting gaps in the system. For instance, there is a major division between sentient and non-sentient, that is a Real Person or Soul or Dream as opposed to everything else. Then there is the division between Animate and inanimate, which is between something alive such as a person and tree and flower and everything else. We also have divisions of sex, the first which corresponds to male or gamma and the second to female and alpha and beta. Then we have a third group which is the epicine which can refer to any male or gamma or any female or alpha or beta, or to groups of them all, or both or all three at the same time. The second complication is that grammatical gender is really only noticible in certain grammatical constraints. These tend to be environments that are demand a great deal of description, such as certain vocatives, some possessive constructions, the construct case, deictics, and focus participles. So, in many sentences and in many circumstances the gender of the word is not at all shown, and the words just dance around, but the in other sentences and in other constructions, one must be careful to match everything up. And third, I thought it was very interesting that from your description above that personal pronouns seeed to have fewer gender distinctions than participles, but as we shall see personal pronouns actually have far more distinctions. In general, the more words that are being used in a clause or sentences, the more divisions personal pronouns like to employ so that one can keep track of them all.
We shall discuss participles first. There are eight grammatical particles that are realized as different affixes depending upon the gender of the word that they modify.

Gender Affixes
On Participles

Sentient·animate epicine
Sentient·animate masculine
Sentient·animate feminine
Non·sentient animate
Non·sentient inanimate
Translacioun
Jai·
Jai·
Jai·
Jhao·
Jhao·
Non·vocativë honorifick (2·p)
Xau·
Xau·
Xau·
Tlhoi·
Tlhoi·
Non·vocativë beloved (2·p)
Jhenta·
Jhenta·
Jhenta·
Xoiqha·
Jakhna·
My/our (5·p)
Khuswe·
Khuswe·
Khuswe·
Xitlha·
Khleikha·
Your (5·p)
Paje·
Paje·
Paje·
Xhnalwa·
Teiqha·
His/hir/thair (5·p)
Khemle·
Khemle·
Khemle·
Khmampe·
Jhanwa·
His/hir/thair (another) (5·p)
·ejikh
+ xhroe
+ xhroa
·ejikh
+ xhroe
+ xhroa
·ejikh
+ xhroe
+ xhroa
·olkha
+ xhroe
+ xhroa
·akhmikh/ulkha
+ xhroe
+ xhroa
Construct (1·s)
·etyikh
·etyikh
·etyikh
·otya
·utya
Partitivë genitive (1·s)
+ Kae
+ Kae
+ Kae
+ Pfho
+ Pfhu
Ingeminate (+ 1·s)
·ujhwa
·ujhwa
·ujhwa
·ekhmo
·epwo
From, out of (1·s)
·engit
·engit
·engit
·engat
·engut
Þis (10·s)
·alyir
·alyir
·alyir
·alyar
·alyur
Þæt (10·s)
·elkhim
·elkhim
·elkhim
·elkham
·elkhum
Yon (10·s)
·ekhwis
·ekhwis
·ekhwis
·ekhwas
·ekhwus
Yon (another) (10·s)
·anwa
·axhwa
+ xhmoe
·enwe
·axhwa
+ xhmoe
·inwi
·axhwa
+ xhmoe
·ojhwo
·axhwa
+ xhmoe
·ujhwu
·axhwa
+ xhmoe
Focus (15·s)

Please note, my cousin Ixhúja, that some forms of the affixes only distinguish between sentient and non-sentient, such as jai- and xau-, and these I have represented in green italiξ on the one side and with underlined jacinth ink upon the other side. Some affixes have a three-fold distinction of sentient animate, non-sentient animate, and non-sentient inanimate such as in the -ejikh/olkha/ulkha distinction in the construct case, or the particles + kae, pfho, pfhu for the ingeminate case, and this is represented with italiξ green one one side for sentient animate, and purple for the non-sentient animate, and a silvern ink for the non-sentient inanimate. And finally you will note that of all of these inflexions that only the focus particles make a fivefold distinction for gender, and I have marked them in bold red, and it is perhaps fitting that the focus particles should be the most varied and most specific with gender, since such have some of the most varied and complex grammatical of uses. You will also notice that I have painted a few affixes in orange ink, these are all identical across the distinctions of gender. So, in the construct case one may either use a gender specific suffix such as –ejikh or a gender neutral one such as -axhwa, moreover to mark something with the focus one may use something specific such as –anwa or something non-specific such as -axhwa.
Puey is looking o'er my shoulder again and is telling me that this chart is far from simple. I beg to disagree. He keeps telling me that Language is far more complex and varied than anything he would have created. I’m telling him that if he calls Language complex again he owes me seven kisses.

However, you are quite correct that for most grammatical functions that note gender there is a threefold distinction. I will summarize the differences in this chart:


Sentient Animate
Non·sentient Animate
Non·sentient Inanimate
Sentient Beings, Real People
Spirits
Æons, Stars
Island planets, Suns, Moons
Dreams
Ancestors
Automata Tánin, Clockwork Toys
Dead, Ghosts, Wraiths,
One’s own Children
Drutrees
Plantimals
Non talking beasts
Monstren
Dæmons
Living body parts, eggs
Words for Life
Words for Spring
Childru who have not yet celebrated Uxèmatiit
Children of strangers
Things
Places
Abstracciouns
Dead body parts
Island planets, Suns, Moons (as nature)
Corpses
Living living ships
Scurrying rocks
Whispering mountains

Sentient-animate forms are used for the Real People, for all sentient beings, sentient spirits, Stars, Dreams, and the names thereof, and in reference to the Ancestors and the Dead, as well as creatures which are considered to have some independence of will such as wind up toys and ninjitsu Automata, as well as the children of one’s clan. Non-sentient animate forms are used for all other living things, such as trees and plantimals and fishes and non-talking beasts, as well as living body parts, and abstractions that pertain to life, such as éfhe life and fhrúla springtime, as well as the children of strangers or children who have not celebrated the rite of Uxèmatiit. The non-sentient inanimate forms are used for everything else, they are your Everything Else Gender, that you mentioned above, and they are used for all things, places, and other abstractions. Hence, the correct gendered construct form for óqla is óqlayòlkha, for éfhe it is éfheyòlkha, for tnèfhta it is tnefhtayòlkha, and for Puîye it is Puiyèyejikh, and for khnaôl it is khnaolùlkha or khnaolàxhmikh and for khmérn it is khmérnùkha and khmérnàxhmikh. Monsters such as my Father’s Ice Warriors are non-sentient, so their construct form is xhwaptuyòlkha even though they have been known to speak and have some volition. Living ships and scurrying rocks and whispering mountains are alive in some way, but they are always considered non-sentient inanimate.
Body parts also have a further distinction, my Cousin. If the body part is alive, it is considered non-sentient animate, but if dead, it is non-sentient inanimate.

Tnefhtayòlkha
Of mine eyen, that are alive
Tnefhtayùlkha
Of mine eyen, which are dead

In addition to the gender system of Babel, we do have very efficacious level two suffixes which I call classifiers. One which is of relavence here is –emlul which means deceased body part. So one could say

Tnefhtayèmlul
My dead eyen
Tnefhtayulkhayèmlul
Of mine dead eyen.

One usually would just say something such as tnefhtayùlkha or a classify such as –emlul when referring to dead body parts found upon a battle field or a laboratory or in references to blood sacrifice rather than to one’s own body parts. Babel is after all a very pragmatic language and reflects perfectly own own society.

The gender system sometimes allows for poetic ambiguity which can be difficult for to render in the gestalten of the language of beasts. Compare:

Tsenàfhilart ungtafhayùlkha siineqhimpíya Qlenólakh.
The Martian Princess Qlenólakh venerates icons of the Noiselords.
Tsenàfhilart ungtafhàyejikh siineqhimpíya Qlenólakh.
The Martian Princess Qlenólakh venerates the Sea Lords through their icons.

The second sentence can only make figurative sense, since icons are objects and must be non-sentient inanimate, but since what they represent must be the most sentient and most animate of all, the second sentence is possible. Fhìlart means those who worship or venerate someone or something, an interesting compound builded off of it is fhilàrtamern, which means ritual words or forms, philavery. Ùngtafha are icons of the Dead Ones while Siineqhimpíya is a word taken of your own culture, my beloved cousin, Khnìnthan Princess or Martian Callinymph, and it is formed of a word for Khnìntha, Siîn and one of the myriad words that we have for princeses, qhimpíya.

And this one:

Jaê tátoyàxhmikh Éfhelìnye.
Éfhelìnye saw doughnuts.
Jaê Tátòyejikh Éfhelìnye.
Éfhelìnye saw Táto.

Táto, doughnuts are usually non-sentient inanimate such as in the first example, but when referring to mine Great-Uncle unto whom Táto is a nickname, he is of course sentient animate.
Now, it seems that no matter what type of verbal system one may imagine, no matter how simple or complex the valence or gender may be, there is a great deal of rome for overlapping and complication. I for one am quite glad not to have an extra gender for princesses, bubble gum, weapons, and types of clockwork. I think that the basic five-fold division which we have full enough, and even ours has a great deal of room for all sorts of fun. Let’s play arounda little.

Úr Eîlejikh
The fire of Eîl
Úr Eilàxhmikh
The Light of the Sun
Jhwíjo kó.
She’s a Moon. She’s the Moon.
Jhwíjo kei.
‘Tis the moon.

Úr, úru is a participle meaning fire, light. Words referring to some Spirits which can be either conceptualized as forces of nature or as sentient Thoughts of the Immortals, words such as Island Planets, Suns, and Moons, can take either sentient animate affixes or non-sentient inanimate affixes. This is a concession to the way that we Mortals perceive reality, for we tend to see either the Sun as Light and Day or the Sun as Spirit and Flame and Father, but usually not at the same time. Generally such words for spirits take the animate affixes when one emphasies their animate qualities, inanimate for their inanimate qualities. I have noticed that my Mother tends to refer to Spirits and Moons in the animate, although from time to time she has used the inan imate. I do wish to mention that the animate/inanimate distinction does not correspond to the ending –o, -u, -ei found at the end of some lexical items. The personal pronouns ó and ú refer to sentient beings such as persons, spirits, and Immortals, while ei refer to non-sentient or semi-sentient beings such as beasts, forces o fnature, or abstraction.

With personal pronouns and relative pronouns we actually have different forms to correspond to the gender division between sentient animate and non-sentient animate/non-sentient inanimate. So one can think of the pronouns as the following, with a two fold division:


Sentient Animate
Non·sentient animate ør inanimate
Personal Pronouns
Pó, ó poa, pú, tepo, tepu, kepo, kepu, pexhe, poxha, tó, texhe, toxha, tú, kó, kexhe, koxha, kú, keko, kekexhe, kekoxha, kuku, exhe, oxha, ó, ú, khnón, pón;

Jin, teir, khes, khas, khrin, kekhrin, jhein, ajhoqhi, khnan, kekhnan, xhei, teqha, khnalikh
Pei, tei, kei, kekei, ei, khnón, pein
Relativë Pronouns
Pus, tus, kus
Xhyus
Per, ter, ker
Keis, koas, kes
Xhyeis, xhyoas, xhyes
ker

Khnón and ker, may cousin, work equally well for animates and inanimates.


Jaê jit khnón.
No one saw me.
No creature saw me.
Nothing saw me.
Jaê khnónejikh jin.
Jaê khnónolkha jin.
Jaê khnónulkha jin.
I saw no one.
I saw no creature.
I saw nothing.

Fhròkaot qiêl ker wtsàtim.
Þe hill that is green is old.
Fhròkaot Pátifhar ker wtsàtim.
Pátifhar, who is green, is wise.

However, my dearest cousin, I believe this binary division of gender in the pronouns is more a recourse of mismatched thinking. For instance, the relative pronouns make gendered distinction for both place and time, a distinction which is not found at all in personal pronouns or participles. Moreover, the personal pronouns also have special masculine and feminine forms which can be used for first, second, and third person. I suppose one could expand the chart above unto a wider one, and thereby see that pronouns actually make more distinctions in gender than participles do. However, the chart is a little imperfect, since I’m trying to make the personal pronouns match the relative pronouns. You shall see that personal pronouns, for instance make no distinction among non-sentient animate, non-sentient inanimate, place, and time, while relative pronouns do, but lack a distinction for epicine, masculine, or feminine.


Sentient Animate Epicine
Sentient Animate Masculine
Sentient Animate Feminine
Non-sentient animate or inanimate
Places
Time
Personal Pronouns
Pó, ó poa, pú, tepo, tepu, kepo, kepu, pexhe, poxha, tó, texhe, toxha, tú, kó, kexhe, koxha, kú, keko, kekexhe, kekoxha, kuku, exhe, oxha, ó, ú, khnón, pón;

Jin, teir, khes, khas, khrin, kekhrin, jhein, ajhoqhi, khnan, kekhnan, xhei, teqha, khnalikh
Poxha, toxha,
koxha, kekoxha,
oxha


Pexhe, texhe, kexhe, kekexhe, exhe

Pei, tei, kei, keikei, ei, khnón, pein
Pei, tei, kei, keikei, ei, khnón, pein
Pei, tei, kei, keikei, ei, khnón, pein
Relative Pronouns
Pus, tus, kus
Xhyus
Per, ter, ker
Pus, tus, kus,
Xhyus,
Per, ter, ker
Pus, tus, kus.
Xhyus,
Per, ter, ker
Keis,
Xhyeis,
ker
Koas,
Xhyoas,
ker
Kes,
Xhyes,
ker

In terms of Personal pronouns, they still take differing suffixeds depending on whether their referant is animate or sentient. This is most often seen with the following forms:

Sentient Inanimate
Non·sentient Animate
Non·sentient Inanimate

·ejikh
-xhrejor
·olkha
-xhrejor
·akhmikh/ulkha
-xhrejor
Construct (1·p)
·etyikh
·otya
·utya
Partitivë genitivë (1·p)
+ Kae
+ Pfho
+ Pfhu
Ingeminate (+1·p)
·ujhwa
·ekhmo
·epwo
From, out of (1·p)

And so:

Éfhelìnye túxing. Joîjae túyejikh pú.
You are Éfhelìnye. I see you.
Óqla teixing. Jiîjae teiyolkha pú.
‘Tis a flower. I see it.
Qiêl teixing. Jiîjae teiyulkha pú.
‘Tis a hill. I see it.

Personal Pronouns are clearly a subset of participles. In terms of gendered affixes which may be applied to personal pronounds, this is the complete list. I have tried to be consistent with the color scheme. As you can see, forms such as –xhrejor can be applied unto any gender, while the focus participles can make distinct for no gender or for all five genders.

Sentient·animate epicine
Sentient·animate masculine
Sentient·animate feminine
Non·sentient animate
Non·sentient inanimate
Translacioun
Jai·
Jai·
Jai·
Jhao·
Jhao·
Non·vocativë honorifick (2·p)
Xau·
Xau·
Xau·
Tlhoi·
Tlhoi·
Non·vocativë beloved (2·p)
·ejikh
-xhrejor
·ejikh
-xhrejor
·ejikh
-xhrejor
·olkha
-xhrejor
·akhmikh/ulkha
-xhrejor
Construct (1·s)
·etyikh
·etyikh
·etyikh
·otya
·utya
Partitivë genitive (1·s)
+ Kae
+ Kae
+ Kae
+ Pfho
+ Pfhu
Ingeminate (+ 1·s)
·ujhwa
·ujhwa
·ujhwa
·ekhmo
·epwo
From, out of (1·s)
·anwa
·axhwa
+ xhmoe
·enwe
·axhwa
+ xhmoe
·inwi
·axhwa
+ xhmoe
·ojhwo
·axhwa
+ xhmoe
·ujhwu
·axhwa
+ xhmoe
Focus (15·s)

Here’s an example of personal pronouns inflected in terms of gender. I use kú for all of the sentient personal pronouns, and then koxhing and kexhing for masculine and feminine pronouns, and kei for the non-sentient pronouns. As you can see, the personal pronouns can end up making more distinctions in gender than participles are wont to do, although participles can certainly make those distinctions such as with the prefixes xhola-/xhele- and the classifier suffixes.

Sentient·animate epicine
Sentient·animate masculine
Sentient·animate feminine
Non·sentient animate
Non·sentient inanimate
Translacioun
Jaikúxing
Honored one
Jaikúxing
Jaikoxhing
Honored man
Jaikúxing
jaikexhing
Honored woman
Jhaokeixing.
Honored thing
Jhaokeixing
Honored thing
Non·vocativë honorifick (2·p)
Xaukúxing
Beloved one
Xaukúxing
Xaukoxhing
Beloved man
Xaukúxing
Xaukexhing
Beloved woman
Tlhoikeixing
Beloved thing
Tlhoikeixing
Beloved thing
Non·vocativë beloved (2·p)
Kúyejikhing
Kúxhrejoring
Of one
Kúyejikhing
Kúxhrejoring
Koxhejikhing
Koxhaxhrejoring
Of him
Kúyejikhing
Kúxhrejoring
Kexhejikhing
Kexhexhrejoring
Of her
Keiyolkhaxing,
keixhrejoring
Of it

Keiyaxhmikhing
Keiyulkhaing
Keixhrejoring
Of it
Construct (1·s)
Kúyetyikhing
Some of one
Kúyetyikhing
Koxhetyikhing
Some of him
Kúyetyikhing
Kexhetyikhing
Some of her
Keiyotyaxing
Some of it
Keiyutyaxing
Some of it
Partitivë genitive (1·s)
Kú kae xing
Being one
Kú kae xing
Koxha kae xing
Being him
Kú kae xing
Kexhe kae xing
Being her
Kei pfho xing
Being it
Kei pfhu xing
Being it
Ingeminate (+ 1·s)
Kúyujhwaxing
From one
Kúyujhwaxing
Koxhayujhwaxing
From him
Kúyujhwaxing
Kexheyujhwaxing
From her
Keiyekhmoxing
From it
Keiyepwoxing
From it
From, out of (1·s)
Kúxinganwa
Kúxingaxhwa
Kúxing xhmoe
One indeed
Kúxingenwe
Kúxingaxhwa
Kúxing xhmoe
Koxhingenwe
Koxhingaxhwa
Koxhing xhmoe
One indeed
Kúxinginwi
Kúxingaxhwa
Kúxing xhmoe
Kexhinginwi
Kexhingaxhwa
Kexhing xhmoe
One indeed
Keixingojhwo
Keixingaxhwa
Keixing xhmoe
It indeed
Keixingujhwu
Keixingaxhwa
Keixing xhmoe
It indeed
Focus (15·s)

Relative Pronouns have as their major genders Sentience, Non-sentience, Place, and Time such as in the following:


Sentient Animate Epicine
Non-sentient animate or inanimate
Places
Time
Relative Pronouns
Pus, tus, kus
Xhyus
Per, ter, ker
Keis,
Xhyeis,
ker
Koas,
Xhyoas,
ker
Kes,
Xhyes,
ker

The declension of relative pronouns is even less complicated than that of personal pronouns, and in terms of gendered affixes one really only has these:

Sentient Inanimate
Non·sentient Animate
Non·sentient inanimate

·ujhwa·sas
·ekhmo·sas
·epwo·sas
From, out of (1·p)

Thwár tuyujhwas xhthènteqhe pú túxing.
You are Þe person from whom I go.
Thwár kuyujhwas xhthènteqhe pú kúxing.
He is Þe person from whom I go.
Óqla keiyekhmosas xhthènteqhe pú’ eixing.
‘’Tis Þe flower from which I go.
Qiêl keiyepwosas xhthènteqhe pú’ eixing.
‘’Tis Þe hill from which I go.
Oâ koayepwosas xhthènteqhe pú’ eixing.
‘’Tis Þe place from which I go.
É keyepwosas xhthènteqhe pú’ eixing.
‘’Tis Þe tyme from which I go.

Please note that corpses are considered non-sentient inanimate, but ghosts and wraiths are considered sientient animate.

Jaê pónaxhmikhh khmeníwayùlkha Puîye.
Puey sees Þe body of the sky pirate.
Jaê pónejikh ker khmeníwa Puîye.
Puey sees the candy pirate herself.
Jaê teiqhafhuinùlkha khmeníwa Puîye.
Puey sees bucchaneer’s corpse.
Jaê’ úyejikhh khmeníwàyejikh Puîyus.
Puey sees Þe Spirit of the Pirate.
Jaê pajekhninthiêlejikh khmeníwa Puîye.
Puey sees the Sky Pirate’s ghost.

In the examples above I use the words fhuîn, tio estas, corses, and khnìnthiel which are souls, ghosts.

Dearest Cousin, in the chart of the main threefold distinction in gender that I charted above I mentioned that one’s own children were considered sentient-animate but the children of strangers or children who have not yet celebrated their rite of Uxèmatiit are considered non-sentient animate. This is because of an element of the cultures of the Winter Empire, something which has been a part of our society since the earliest of days, but which when Puey and I become the Sun and Moon we shall abolish utterly. It is the Ceremony of Uxèmatiit, and it is something I hope to consign unto our history books for all time.
I refuse to write The Ceremony of Uxèmatiit and put it in bold red letters and in a fancy box. The ceremony was reprehensible and almost took my Puey away from me.

The societies of the Dreamtime are very ancient and complex, whether of the Imperium or of the Clockwork Heresy, and the language of Babel reflects that. In fact, proficiency in Babel is of so much importance that in the earliest of days it was institutionalized as an actual rite of passage. Among the various species, nations, and cultures within the Winter Empir almost all Children had needs to pass through the ceremony known as the Uxèmatiit. The purpose of the ceremony was to confer unto the child the rights of a loquent Real Person rather than that of amute beast. This rite was realized differently among the different species of course. Among the the Traîkhiim for instance, whose Triîmeling are talking almost within days of birth, this ceremony was superfluous and unknown, and being slaves they were not considered of importance, and among the Xhámi Færie this ceremony was only celebrated among children of Warrior Caste and belong, that is, the Children of the Noble Houses and of the Divine House of the Pwéru were exempt, since they are of the Blood of the Sun. In the ceremony of Uxèmatiit the child must prove unto the sylvan priests that he is fluent in the conjugations, moods, modes, and poetics of the Babel Language. Any child that cannot prove himself to be so proficient in language was nomen away and offered up as a burnt offering unto the Immortals who themselves created the storied worlds of the Dreamtime by singing in the Babel language. You have to remember, my Cousin, that Children in the Dreamtime, both in the Patriarchy and in the Clockwork Heresy, have no rights at all aside from the honor due unto their nation, clan, and caste. The ceremony has a very practical purpose, so the adults were always telling me. Babel is a very hierarchical and honorific language. It would be perilous to dwell within the societies of the Dreamtime without knowing how to be deferential one to another. Children must therefore be segregated from wider society until such time as they can learn to talk the language without offending others or bringing dishonor unto their community.
Perhaps you were lucky not to have grown up with such a rite, my Cousin, although I know that Khnìntha had some rather frightful customs that they inflicted unto their own children. I was completely ignorant of the Uxèmatiit until I was eleven winters of age, and of course there was the incident when Puey himself had to undergo the rite before he could be permitted to take the Aoqhàpro, the Walk of Dreams in Jaràqtu, before he could be permitted to be betrothed unto Fhermáta. I was able to get Puey to say a few words in the presence of the priests, but only when I held his hands tight and helped him. I don’t really want to talk about that incident though, the thought that Puey was almost burnt alive because of a custom upsets me so, even though it was a year ago.
Even though I created Language, I still have to reflect the worlds for good or for ill, Language is the dance, but people, whether mortal or not, are the dancers. The Babel gender systems reflects this vile custom. It is customary to refer to the children of one’s own family, clan, allies, and very close friends always as sentient animate. However, it is also customary to refer to children of strangers’ families, clans, and enemies as non-sentient animate until such time as they celebrate their Uxèmatiit. Noble children and Royal children are, of course, always sentient animate. Using this distinction is never considered rude. Children refer unto themselves and each other usually as sentient, unless they wish to insult one another, and narrators usually refer to the children who are main characters as sentient animate, although they may reserver non-sentient animate for lesser characters, as well as reserve non-sentient animate references to children in dialogue.

So one may make the following distinctions:

Childru of one’s own family, clan, allies, close friends – Noble ond Royal childers eke
Childru of strangren, other clans, enemies
Sentient Animate particlen:
Jai·, xau·, jhenta·, khuswe·, paje·, khemle·, ·ejikh, ·etyikh, kae, ·ujhwa, ·engit, ·alyir, ·elkhim, ·ekhwis

Non·sentient animate participlen:
Jhao·, tlhoi·, xoiqha·, xitlha·, xhnalwa·, khmampe·, olkha, otya, pfho, ·ekhmo, ·engat, ·alyar, ·elkham, ·ekhwas
Sentient animate personal pronouns:

Pó, ó poa, pú, tepo, tepu, kepo, kepu, pexhe, poxha, tó, texhe, toxha, tú, kó, kexhe, koxha, kú, keko, kekexhe, kekoxha, kuku, exhe, oxha, ó, ú, khnón, pón;

Jin, teir, khes, khas, khrin, kekhrin, jhein, ajhoqhi, khnan, kekhnan, xhei, teqha, khnalikh

Non·sentient animate ør inanimate personal pronouns:

Pei, tei, kei, kekei, ei, khnón, pein
Sentient animate relativë pronouns:

Pus, tus, kus
Xhyus
Per, ter, ker

Non·sentient animate ør inanimate relativë pronouns:

Keis, koas, kes
Xhyeis, xhyoas, xhyes
ker

I have read some texts where narrators do refer to children by the second set of pronouns, the non-sentient animate, and clearly that is a stylistic device. Of course one could only refer to me as Éfhelinyèyejikh and kú and never as Éfhelinyeyòlkha and kei.

When I first came to dwell in Jaràqtu I noticed that the folk of the Sweqhàngqu and Khatelèstan and Tásel and Saûqyufha would always say the following:

Jaê Puiyòsejikh pú.
I see Puîyos.
Jaê Fhermátàyejikh pú.
I see Fhermáta.
Jaê jakhtàqta xhroe Puîyos kae pú. Xhthènteqhe Jaraqtùyutakh kú.
I see Þe warrior, Puîyos. He goeth towards Jaràqtu.

But until the children passed their rite of their Uxèmatiit strangers used to say:

Jaê Puiyosòlkha pú.
I see Puîyos.
Jaê Fhermátayòlkha pú.
I see Fhermáta.
Jaê jakhtàqta xhroe Puîyos pfho pú. Xhthènteqhe Jaraqtùyutakh kei.
I see Þe warrior, Puîyos. Hee goeth towards Jaràqtu.

When Puey and I first met Fhèrkifher and Xhnófho they always refered to me as sentient animate since they recognized at once that I was of Noble Caste, although it took them some time to figure out that I was of Royal Caste. But they refered to Puey as non-sentient animate until they started to become a part of our family. When Puey and I started calling them Uncle Fhèrkifher and Uncle Xhnófho, they began calling Puey sentient animate, for by then he had become a child part of their friendship or alliance.

So we have traversed through sentience and animance, and finally we come to the biological divisions of male-gamma and female-alpha-beta. For animates Babel is further broken apart into three sub-fhwìpu genders.

Masculine and gamma
Both, Either, Epicine
Feminine and alpha and beta
Poxh(a)·
Toxh(a)·
Koxh(a)·
Kekoxh(a)·
Oxh(a)·


Pó, Pú, &c
Tó, Tú, &c
Kó, Kú, &c
Keko, Keku, &c
Ó, Ú, &c
Pexh(e)·
Texh(e)·
Kexh(e)·
Kekexh(e)·
Exh(e)·
Xhór·
Óxhai
Xhola


Aî·

Taê;
Túngai, kungai
Taôngai, kaongai
Xhér·
Éxhai
Xhele

Many of the species of the Dreamtime, however, do not have two sexes. The Qhíng, Kháfha, Qlùfhem, and Thùlwu have three sexes, none of which correspond to our notions of male and female. The Archaic Ones and the Traîkhiim are androgynous and able to shift gender. Grammatical fhwìpu gender is reflected in such participles such as Khòthwu, khòthwur, Alpha or Aleph females, and khùnkha, khùnkhar beta or beth females, and tsùtru those who are androgynous, having only one sex, and khneûtis and xàxhru, xàxhrus, those who are neuter.

Masculine and gamma
Both, Either, Epicine
Feminine and alpha and beta
n Males for two sex beings
n Traîkhiim and Xakhpàlqe when malen
n Gamma/Gimel sex for three sex beings such as the Qhíng, Kháfha, Qlùfhem Aûm, and Thùlwu Aûm
n Masculine Æons, Stars, ond Spirits
n Certain Immortals such as Raven, Death, Watcher
n Tánin
n All Real People, all Sentient beings
n Childru
n Family, Clan, Tribe, Phatry
n Groups of persons
n Females for two sex beings
n Traîkhiim and Xakhpàlqe when femalen
n Alpha/Aleph ond Beta/Beth sex for three sex beings such as the Qhíng, Kháfha, Qlùfhem Aûm and Thùlwu Aûm
n Androgenous beings in general such as the Traîkhiim and Xakhpàlqe
n Eunuchs slaves
n Feminine Æons, Stars, ond Spirits
n Tusked Traîkhiim who are neuter malens

Puîyus koxhing.
He is Puîyus.
Éfhelìnye kexhing.
She is Éfhelìnye.
Koxhing quja qìr xhré Fhólus kexhing quja qìr pé koxhing.
Fhólus was he, but now he’s she.
Xhnófho poxhing.
I am Xhnófho (gamma).
Tetratríxe poxhing.
I am Tetratríxe (a Tánin).
Jèrikes kexhing xhnoe Wthí Qhòrem kexhing.
She is Jerikes (alpha), and she is Wthí Qhorem (beta).

My dearest cousin Ixhúja, you best know the ways of the clockwork Tánin, and know that they do not reproduce, and yet they are not grammatically considered neuter. They are considered their own order of existance. Perhaps since they resemble Dragons in some ways they are uniformly considered masculine as a matter of convention. Once, though, I heard Tetratríxe and Qwatríxe refer to a feminine automaton whom they clepte Tànxhalil, but the full story about her I have never known.
And so one can further conceptualize the Personal Pronouns in the following way:

Sentient Animate
Masculine or Gamma
Sentient Animate Both, Either, Epicine
Sentient Animate Feminine or Alpha or Beta
Non·sentient animate ør inanimate
Poxh(a)·
Toxha(a)·
Koxh(a)·
Kekoxh(a)·
Oxh(a)·
Pó, ó poa, pu
Tepo, tepu, kepo, kepu
Tó, Tú
Kó, Kú
Keko, keku
Ó, ú, khnón, pón

Jin, teir, khes, khas, khrin, kekhrin, jhein, ajhoqhi, khnan, kekhnan, xhei, teqhe, khnalikh

Pexh(e)·
Texh(e)·
Kexh(e)·
Kekexh(e)·
Exh(e)·
Pei, tei, kei, kekei, ei, khnón, pein

And so, Ixhúja, we return unto the very beginning of our discussion on Gender. This is the very last chart that summarizes Babel Gender, I promise. As you can see I’m combining all that we’ve learned about sentience, animance, and the masculine, epicine, feminine division. In conclusion I’d say that Babel has a five-fold gender division which is only consistently inflicted in the focus participles, but which can be expressed in various ways with participles and relative pronouns. This is the last chart, my cousin.

A Summary of Babel Gender
The Final Chart!

Sentient Animate masculine and gamma
Sentient Animate, both, Either, Epicine
Sentient Animate, feminine and alpha and beta
Non·sentient Animate
Non·sentient Inanimate
n Males for two sex beings
n Traîkhiim and Xakhpàlqe when malen
n Gamma/Gimel sex for three sex beings such as the Qhíng, Kháfha, Qlùfhem Aûm, and Thùlwu Aûm
n Masculine Æons, Stars, ond Spirits
n Certain Immortals such as Raven, Death, Watcher
n Tánin

n All Real People, all Sentient beings, Real People
n Childru
n Family, Clan, Tribe, Phatry
n Groups of persons
n Spirit
n Æons, Stars
n Island Plantimals
n Suns, Moons, Dreams, Ancestors
n Automata Tánin, Clockwork Toys
n Dead, Ghosts, Wraiths
n One’s own Children

n Females for two sex beings
n Traîkhiim and Xakhpàlqe when femalen
n Alpha/Aleph ond Beta/Beth sex for three sex beings such as the Qhíng, Kháfha, Qlùfhem Aûm and Thùlwu Aûm
n Androgenous beings in general such as the Traîkhiim and Xakhpàlqe
n Eunuchs slaves
n Feminine Æons, Stars, ond Spirits
n Tusked Traîkhoom who are neuter males

Drutrees
Plantimals
Non talking beasts
Monstren
Dæmons
Living body parts, eggs
Words for Life
Words for Spring
Childru who have not yet celebrated Uxèmatiit
Children of strangers
Things
Places
Abstracciouns
Dead body parts
Island planets, Suns, Moons (as nature)
Corpses
Living living ships
Scurrying rocks
Whispering mountains
-enwe
-anwa
-inwi
-ojhwo
-ujhwu

And there you can see the five gendered focus participles at the bottom. That’s gender in Babel. Hurray!
Puey’s complaining again that this is far too complicated. He says that if he had created Babel he would have made one pronoun for every species and type and only inflected words for whether or not they smelt like candy. I’m going to go and force Puey to kiss me, and then I’ll send off this letter to you.
I can’t wait to see you soon, Ixhúja. I’ll start finding an husband for you, cousin!
All my love!
Éfha

Healing

http://sites.google.com/site/psalmofdreams/Home/introduction-to-babel-grammar/ordeal-finished----for-now

Notebook Entry: Ordeal Finished – For Now

I am so happy to be back with Puey. I am so sore that I can barely move. Mother knit back together my legs and white ankles and the bones of my wings and was good enough to kiss the wing bones back into their place, but I have lost a great deal of blood. Puey’s been carrying me around. I don’t think that I ate at all while I was with my Mother somewhere upon the marges of Etsèrjoir the Starscapes. Puey has brought me milk and honey and loaves of manna bread and I think I might have eaten just a little too much. Puey says that I’m even more anæmick than normal right now, so I’ll just have to rest.
Grandfather Pátifhar has written the necessary letters to Puey’s side of the family and quieted them down. Rumor has it that they were going to try and send Ixhúja and Siêthiyal after me, but I think that would have just been a mistake. Mother would finds Ixhúja … curious. I do not know what Mother would do with her. And as for Siêthiyal, I think Mother would just find her quite cute and try to make a dancer out of her, even if it kills her. Right now Mother is with Father and Grandfather Pátifhar. I think my parents are going to leave the fleet for a time and let the rest of us continue with the War. I wish to have more sympathy with my Mother, I understand that she sacrificed so much just to bear me, but the pain I’m feeling now reminds me that she is not a Mortal and does not understand all that she is doing. Perhaps she never will. I do not know whether the Immortals are truly capable of change. I think they can, otherwise we would not have attained the Flower, but still, they may not learn in grasp information the way that the rest of us do.
Tonight Puey is going to unbind m wings and get me out of this corset. I only want him to see what’s happened to my feathers. I know he’ll be gentle, but I’m so very embarrassed.
Mother did manage to surprise both me and Puey when he came for me in the middle of the night. I don’t know when she did it, it had to be while I was fainting from another bone braking and blood letting session, but she wrote up a few sheets of grammar for me and Puey to read while I rested. Sometimes I forget that Mother also had a great deal of trouble with Language, or at least, when she took Mortal form, of speaking in the way that we mortals do. I shall copy her notes below while Puey rubs my wings tonight and begins to unbind them and squeeze me out of this too tight clockwork corset.

My Children,
More than one hundred million years ago, when I was a young maiden and dwelling with Grandfather Pátifhar beside the forest, he also took it upon himself the task of trying to teach me to speak in the words of language. I could record all that he told me, rememberance like all else is perfect with me, but I shall try to summarize some of his earliest lessons for you. He told me that Babel is a language of fhtóte, of affixes, little participles that come before and after words. He told me that Babel is a language that is qòli and khmùtangur, that is agglutinative as if with glue. There are a few hundred possible affixes which may modify the participle, and a far smaller number for the personal pronoun and relative pronoun. The lrànkhus prefixes can indicatate conjunction, honorifics that refer to the speaker’s attitude, the number of something, the subject and object of a predicate, different types of possession, and locations and indirect objects. Suffixes can indicate case, common descriptions, colors, all manner of syntactic participles, aspect, modals, verbals, basical adverbs and interjections, derivational substantive endings, deictiξ, location, relative time, emphasis, clause makers, and ending conjunctions.
My children, I learned that an implied –Y- is added between tnòntha vowels for all affixes. So tsena-, a singular prefix plus the word óqla, flowers is written and pronounced tsenayóqla, a single flower. Óqla plus the construct case suffix –olkha becomes óqlayòlkha, of the flowers. Tsenayóqlayòlkha is simply a combination of tsena- and óqla and -olkha.
With so many affixes it would seem possible to create very very very long long long jhùfhra sentences. For instance this sentence is completely grammatical:

Jongarfhuitheupíyayantunajhworòxhrie khyeqhiirusqruniipìyipoa.
These great dragons here, in sight, like to approach delicious young maidens.

Such beings like Stars and Dreamers and Raven himself, who do not need to breathe in order to speak, feel completely comfortable in pronouncing sentences with all of the khmàlon affixes just piling upon each other. From a practical point of view, tough, the above sentence by most mortals would be pronounced something like:

Jongar-fhui-theupíya-yantun-ajhwor-òxhrie khyeqhiir-usqrun-iipì-yipoa.

That is, they would be pronounced almost as if the affixes were separate words which just happened to be strung together and should happen to receive the correct musical tone as if they quite long words.

I have noticed in your lexicon, child, that certain affixes are marked with a little Star like so – * –. You do that to indicate that this affix may appear in conjunction with others of its own catageory or family. For instance, it is possible to say janyalyiikhayóqla twice three flowers even though both janya- and lyiikha- are level three prefixes. However, it is ungrammatical to say, I suppose, lworanyawthá for oh beloved and loved ones! Entire categories or tribes you can mark with the star in your grammar, such as the leven two swètwan suffixes for adjectives, and leven three suffixes for colors, and the leven six suffixes for modals, and the level eight suffixes for adverbs and conjunctions, and the level nine suffixes for derivational substantives, and the level fourteen suffixes for clause markers.
However, my child, noe that only one participle at a time may receive these affixes. For instance one can say I go to the Starscapes by creating khniy-Etserjoir-oxhrie. However, if one wished to say I go to Eilasaîyanor and Jaràqtu and the Starscapes one cannot say khniy-Eilasaiyanor-ontet-Jarqtu-yontet-Etserjoir-oxhrie. One would have to use a full participle meaning going. One way to express that would be Khnixhthènteqhe’ Eilasaiyanorutakhòntet Jaraqtuyòntet Etsèrjoir pú, or even Eilasaiyanoroxhrieyòntet Jaraqtuyòntet Etsèrjoir pú.
There are some instances where the grammatical function of a Babel word is not marked by an affix. This may happen in the experiencer case, the vocative case, and the absolutive case. Sometimes the musical pitch of the experiencer case changes for depending on how it is being used.

The Abrupt Form of the Vocative Case

Puiyè! Jeûr! Xhthènteqhe qiêlutakh!
Puey! Jeûr! Come to Þe hills!

The unmarked vocatives take a falling accent on the final syllable of a participle and a circumflex upon the diphthong. A final rising accent, however, does not change. This is considered the sùnta, the abrupt form.

The above example is the abrupt equivalent of:

AîPuîye! AîJeur! Xhthenteqheyétyai qiêlutakh!

The Irrealis Experiencer – Another Abrupt Form

Khneuqrauyelónge púxhmi’ Éfhelinyè jhentajhkhuyériyalwòs!
Be my teacher, Éfhelìnye, an you love me!

This is equivalent unto:

Khneuqrauyelóngeyétyai púxhmi’ Éfhelinyè jhentajhkhuyériyàlwos!
Ør
Khauqrauyelónge jitexhmi Éfhelinyè tajhkhuyériyàlwos khleit!

The musical pitch for unmarked irrealis is the same as that of the unmarked vocative, that is, the unmarked irrealis take a falling accent on the final syllable of a participle and a circumflex on a diphthong. A final rising accent, however, does not change. This is also considered the sùnta, the abrupt form.

Khmír!
Love!
Jaê!
See!
Koaselóngè!
Love!

To form an irrealis without affixes is considered slightly rude in the presence of adult units. Natheless, it is sometimes done in emergencies or in extreme situations, or when addressing pets and plantimals and small children and little Princesses who have not yet grown their angel wings, yes, they may hear the sùnta forms and be reminded that they are growing.
When addressing a toy, one may say something like this:

Xhekìt aîTetratríxe!
Shut up, Tetratríxe!

Usually one would say
Khaûxhekit aîTetratríxe!
Xhekitétyai’ aîTetratríxe!
Xhèkit khrúje’ aîTetratríxe!
Xhèkit khrúje yories aîTetratríxe!

Unto an elder you both must say, should the need e'er arise:
Xhekitafhuxhlitei’ aîPápo Pátifhar!
Respectfully, be silent, Grandfather Pátifhar!

But a child may hear:

Tsuwò khleinajársòlkha’ Éfhelinyè!
Bind your wings, Éfhelìnye!

Tsùwo is another participle meaing ones who link or bind

Question Experiencer – Another Abrupt Form

It is possible although a little silly to create a question by raising the tone.

Takoaselónge jitt teir?
Dost thou love me?

This is equivalent unto:
Takoaselóngeyájhei jitt teir?

An unmarked question also takes a final rising musical tone or circumflex if the participle can withstand it.

Khmír?
Loves?
Jaê?
Sees?
Koaselóngé?
Loves?

Interjection Experiencer – Yet Another Abrupt Form

Also by changing the twuîlwa musical tone, almost any participle can me made into an interjection. The pitch accent follows the same pattern as the unmarked irrealis or vocative. This is also considered a sùnta abrupt form.

Patifhárù! Oh the holy words that are spoken!!
Ayèn! By the Æons!
Sqakhàn! Those stones!

I shall now write about the khmuîthno, the experiencer case for a time. Abbá Thiêfhilos was quite adament that I understand the various uses for the experiencer case, for it deamed it to be the strength and wings of the sentence.

In the sentence below the subject is in the experiencer case:

Xhajhyakhnaôlutakh xhthènteqhe Puiyusoâkhwe.
Puîyus always goeth to many places.

We that Puiyusoâkhwe is in the experiencer case because it can take an aspect marker. We call such useage of the experiencer the khyèqa, the subject experiencer for an monivolitional subject. If the sentence had been:

Xhajhyakhnaôlutakh xhthènteqhe Puîyus.
Puîyus goeth to many places.

Then the subject, Puîyus, would be in the absolutive case.

This following sentence uses the experiencer in what I was taught is called the khwèlipe, the predicate experiencer. There are actually two janyakhwèlipe in the sentence:

Tuînamat tnarlkhurlùlkha’ Eiyuláriye xúyaswaôrengit wthá.
One gives this person the name Eiyuláriye

Both tuînamat and Eiyuláriye, one of your names, are in the predicate experiencer. The predicate experiencer is applied in statements that involve naming, chosing, appointing, making something to be, thinking, or regarding someone or something as or to be someone or something. The predicate experiencer after such participles quite often tends to be names or titles, but sometimes it can be a word with the suffix –exhyeu which is so often used for purpose clauses.

Tnarjhwèkhmat lwánolùlkha khelenathayèxhyeu Puîyus.
Puîyus paints Þe castle for its being red;
Puîyus paints Þe castle red.

The participle Tnàrjhwekh, tnarjhwèkhmat could be defined then as those who paint someone or something to be someone or something.

If one compares these sentences:


Xhthelkhòrlamat wtháyejikh qtiên Pìpra.
Xhthelkhòrlamat wtháyejikh qtienèxhyeu Pìpra.

The first sentence hath qtiên as an khwèlipe predicate experiencer, while the second ina purpose clause with the suffix -exhyeu. The meaning of the first example is The Fallen Star sends men as empty away, or, the Fallig Star sends men away empty. The second example means, The Shooting Star sends men away to be empty. These two sentences, I feel, mean almost the same thing, and one who speaks in language is just as likely to say one as the other. The words I have used above are Xhthèlkhorl, xhthelkhòrlamat, those who drive away someone or something. And qtiên, those who are empty, as well as Pìpra, falling Stars, fallen Stars, shooting Stars, and one of mine own names.

Predicate experiencers are often used with the word jhkhùnwo, that is those who make a sound, a noise.

Jhkhùnwo Qwatríxe.
Qwatríxe makes a sound.
Jhkhùnwo xhìqtakem Qwatríxe.
Qwatríxe makes Þe noise Tick tock.

The verbal suffix –okhoam regularly takes the predicate experiencer.

Puiyùsokhoam Jaraqtuyùntur Éfhelìnye.
Éfhelìnye idenifies Puîyus as a Jaraqtun.

The participle lyèrnewo, lyèrnewim regularly takes te predicate experiencer. It means, those who see, consider someone or something to be someone or something.

Lyèrnewo sqàkhan xhroe xhmùpta qé.
They consider Þe scurrying rocks to be gold.

Pajelyèrnewim Khwofheilyàyejikh tyaqájaxing pú.
I consider Khwofheîlya to be a slave.

Other participles that also take the predicate experiencer are khyeqhíxhnoa, those who approximate someone or something to be someone or something and sáqhíre, sáqhíreqhe, those who enscribe someone or something to be someone or something and jèton those who consider, deem someone or something to be someone or something.

Khyeqhíxhnoa qielàxhmikh lwíji wtsoîse kúxing.
He approximated Þe hill to be 62 wtsoîse in height.

Sáqhíreqhe fhairotuyùlkha joîkhmír khleit jin jin.
I enscribed Þe book, ‘I love you.’

I’ve never quite understand numbers, but your Grandfather Pátifhar made me learn that wtsoîse are the span of two extended arms, about 2 and ½ cubits in length.

Participles that mean appont, select, elect, recognize often take the predicate experiencer to show unto what rank or degree something is being appointed. Such participles include khmemòsefhau, those who recognize, khnàtha, khnathelónge, those who appoint, set, place, fhoyeîto, those who adjudge, deam, pronounce, jùti, those who are excellent, who judge, and khriîne, khriînemat, those who put, place, install, appoint to (honors), put aside candy for an emergency, and qoxhwàrnyun, qoxhwàrnyuma, those who mark, elect, designate, arrange, promise, betroth, and qwìni, qwìnini, those who reveal, disclose and sàrosa, saròrosa, those who elect, select by alliance, and tewáratha, tetewáratha, those who are excellent, judge, and tìxhra, those who choose, selent, and tlhàna, tlhatlhánga, those who are excellent, judge, and wtseî, those who announce, declare, appoint, xhìfhtu, xhèfhtu, those who appoint, and xhnòsan, xhnòsama, those who appoint, put up, place someone or something in an high position, and xhràrxhnen, xhrarxhnèntu, those who appoint, set, arrange, and xhrelínger those who select and xhthiîfhta, xhthiîfhtamat, those who choose, select.

Khriînemat stélar Éfhelinyèyejikh Puîye.
Puey appointed Þe Princess Éfhelìnye.
Khriînemat Éfhelinyèyikh stélar Puîye.
Puey appointed Éfhelìnye as a Princess.
Qoxhwàrnyuma Fhólùsejikh Jaraqtuyùntar Pátifhar.
Pátifhar marked Fhólus as a Jaraqtun.
Tlhatlhánga poe’ Éfhelinyèyejikh akhairikhuyiîlii pú.
I judge mine Éfhelìnye to be a wee Star.
Fhoyeîto Tetratríxeyejikhòntet Qwatríxe janyàxhraxam fhanxhiyìxhna pú.
I pronounce Tetratríxe and Qwatríxe to be a pair of altogether annoying wind up toys.

I used the word Akhíkhra, akhaîrikhu for to describe my Daughter, one of the words for a Skydancer. Xhràxam are wind up toys, and for some reason they are considered sentient animate in gender. Fhànxhi means those who are pesky, who annoy someone or something, and the little suffix –ixhna means well, in a good fashion, clearly, perfectly, altogether, stark.

One also finds these participles using the predicate experiencer: Fhroê, those who paint, and Khlájar, those who paint, dye, color and Tnàrjhwekh, tnarjhwèkhmat, those who paint and wtsí those who are dyed, tinted, painted, colored and xhmòsqri, those who are covered in woad, painted.

Wtsí lwánolùlkha’ áxha Puîyus.
Puîyus paints Þe castle red.

Your Grandfather Pátifhar also taught me that in the ur … qoe construction, the participle or tòngqa personal pronoun after the qoe is also in the predicate experiencer.

Khníjur ur qoe qúraxing Puîyus.
Puîyus made Þe viceroy king psing.
Koaselónge’ ur qielàxhmikh qoe tsenatheupíya kú.
He made Þe maiden love Þe hills.
Khniêr ur kúxhrejor qoe tsenastélar Puîyus.
Puîyus made Þe princess kiß him.

Actually I think I shall amend that last sentence to:

Khniêr ur kúxhrejor qoe stélar tlhatlhàmaxúng Puîyus quja koaqing jiînxhemet qráyiingtayuqeiyàfhtong qir oâqe tùntha tùntha xhroe tàntha quja kexhexhnixing.
Puîyus made the princess kiss him even though she desires to abide with her true Mother during the expanse of being outside of time for ever.

The sentence is far better. Tlhám, tlhàtlham means those who are willing, fain, will or want someone or something and here I’ve made it negative with the suffix -axúng, and jiînxhe, jiînxhemet means those who abide, remain, endure, dure, dree, and you can see the koaqing prefix that marks it as something habitual, because she is wont to stay with me, and the suffix –afhtong on the word for mother means true, faithful, loyal, and tùntha, tùnthar means those who are eternal, for ever, outside of time, and it can be reduplicated to mean those who last for ever and ever, and tàntha means those who desire or want someone or something and the modal tàntha xhnir means wants to, or desires to.

Predicate Experiencers in Relative Clauses

Xhthènteqhe lwánol khelenathayèxhyeu Puîyus wtsàtim.
Puîyus, who is green, goeth unto the castles, which are red;
A green Puîyus goeth unto red castles.

This example contains two relative clauses. Relative clauses always take the form of X who is Y, where first comes that which is being described and then follow the descriptions. The first relative clause is lwánol khelenathayexhyeu, which is unto the castles which are red. Note that the suffix for the locative case is only added to the last word of the phrase. In a similar fashion Puîyus wtsàtim means Puîyus who is green. Since Puîyus is in the absolutive case, and it taking no affix, wtsàtim also does not need to take any affix at all. The suppletive and marked singular form is used since as a name Puîyus imples singleness. Babel words which do not have suppletive singular forms do not need to take the tsena prefix or –ing suffix on relative clauses that modify a personal name since one can usually imple the singleness of the phrase. Puîyus khelènatha means Puîyus who is red or red Puîyus and probably not the many Puîyus who are red. Puîyus tsenakhelènatha is not ungrammatical, but not a common way to express singularity.

Predicate Experiencer after Conjunctions

I’m going to paint a little box because it’s pretty

·aiqhor Ond, also, eke, ptoo, only, even; both …ond
+ xhnoe Ond, also, eke, ptoo, only, even; both … ond; until, zo
+ aqhus Ond
·ontet Ond, connects substantivë clauses; both … ond; … but also
+ xhnoipe Ond, connects substantivë clauses; both … ond ; … but also
+ fheil (Either) … ør

The level fourteen suffixes can yoke together a coule of words. +aqhus means and while –aiqhor and +xhnoe mean and, also, too, only, even, both … and, although xhnoe can also conjoin clauses and mean until, so. –ontet and xhnoipe means and, both … and, …. but also while +fheil means or, either …. Or, although it can also conjoin different clauses. For the present discussion, that’s a very pretty box, isn’t that, these conjunctions connect words in the same clause. In the construction X-aiqhor, xhnoe, aqhus, ontet, xhnoipe Y means X and Y while X fheil Y means X or Y. Y is considered the object of the same fhtóte affixes that are inflected upon X.

Xhthènteqhe qielutakhòntet lwánol Puîyus.
Puîyus goeth to Þe hills ond (to Þe) castlen.

This sentence can also be restated as:
Xhthènteqhe qielutakhòntet lwánòlutakh Puîyus.
Xhthènteqhe qielutakhaîqhor lwánol Puîyus.
Xhthènteqhe qielutakhaîqhor lwánòlutakh Puîyus.

Locative phrases after –ontet and –aiqhor and the others carry the potential for ambiguity.

Xhthènteqhe lyiikhaxhnalwaqielutakhòntet lwánol qúra.
Þe viceroy king goeth to his three hills ond castlen;
Þe viceroy king goeth to his three hills ond (his three) castlen.

The sentence could mean either of these.
Also, consider this ambiguity. Possessive pronoun prefixes plus a conjunction:


Teiqhalwánolòntet qiêl
His castlen ond his hills, ør
His castlen ond Þe hills.

Babel has no separate word that means X or Y or possible both or X among others, X and the rest. One must use the khleîxhme, the ingeminate case.

Xhthènteqhe qielutakhòntet lwánol lwánol pfhu púsa.
I wended towards Þe hills or the castles or possibly both.
Xhthènteqhe qiêlutakh aqhus lwánol pfhu púsa.
I wended towards Þe hills ond the castles among other things.
Subject Dropping

No, let’s put that into a box

Subject Dropping

A complete Babel sét sentence consists of a predicate. Isn’t that box lovely? The predicate may have objects in the appropriate case and subjects in the right case.

Wtsátim Puîyus.
Puîyus is green.
Jaê Puîyus.
Puîyus looks about.
Tsèfheir Puîyus.
Puîyus carries something somewhither.

Note, my little ones, that in the last two xhméja sentences that the language of beasts supplied an object complment or a location in order to complete the sense. Babel does not always require that as such can be implied from context.

Babel does not telick or volitional sentences that lack a subject, that is, pure predicate sentences unless it is an unmarked irrealis or a form of the deferential mode or ól, which is already inflected for the subject.

Wtsátìm!
Be green!
Wtsátimopaingakh.
Forgivë me, but I am green.
Wtsátimopaingakh púsa.
I myself am green.
Ólakh.
I exist.
Ólakh qé pi.
I indeed exist.

In poesy and music, the subject is occasionally omitted when it is obvious. This is seen as an extremely informal use of language, as Babel really likes both a predicate and a subject, and there can be some confusion with non-marked irrealis moods. Your Grandfather Pátifhar used to chastise the youth of the generation when I dwelt among mortal men for our informal use of language.

Xhthènteqhe Puîyus.
Puîyus goeth.
Ùtakhi Khatlhantikhùlkha.
Enters Khatlhàntikh.
Í xhmir Eilasaîyanor.
Goeth towards Eilasaîyanor.
Seîjae’ Éfhelìnye xhroe.
Sees Éfhelìnye.

This reminds me of a song from when I was only a few eternities of age.

Ólakh per jaê Jhàsqewa xhroe kùxha kae khnirlìyejikh.
I see Raven kißing Þe girls.

But musical tone distinguishes Þe following sentences:

Ólakh per jaê Jhàsqewa xhroe. Kùxha khnirlìyejikh.
I see Raven. Kißes Þe girls.

Ólakh per jaê Jhàsqewa xhroe. Kuxhà khnirlìyejikh!
I see Raven. Kiß Þe girls!
Ólakh per jaê Jhàsqewa xhroe. Kuxhá khnirlìyejikh?
I see Raven. Kißes Þe girls?

The first meaning is the most likely. The second is extremely informal. The third is possible, but easily distinguished by tone.

Babel has two sets of redundant pronominal inflexions. One of them inflects to show the subject and sometimes the object, and the other set is used for the indirect object. Pronominal supplementation oftwhen has the connotation of the predicate’s being humble, meek, shy, or bashful, thus pronominal supplementation is often called the humble construction or the humiliative construction. The exact rendering of it, however, does not always have to include the word humble. For instance, both sets of sentences below are grammatical:

Jaê khleit jin.
I see you.
Joîjae khleit jin.
I see you. I humbly see you.
Jiîkhmír Puiyùsejikh jin.
I love Puîyus.
Khmír Puiyùsejikh jin.
I love Puîyus. I humblye love Puîyus.

Qiêl Puiyusàswaor.
Khniêqiel Puiyusàswaor.
Puîyus hath hills.
Khmùqrau tepoxhmi kú.
Qraû tepoxhmi kú.
He teaches something to us.

However, the following sentences, wherein the pronominal prefixes indicate subject and object but either a subject or an object is missing, I was taught were ungrammatical.

Joîkhmír.
Love ya.
Jiîkhmír Puiyùsejikh.
Love Puîyus.
Khmùqrau kú.
Teaches us.

These jhùfhra sentences are certainly understandable, the meaning is clear because of the redundancy pronouns. And yet Grandfather Pátifhar and the Vestal Virgins who taught me told me that there was always a missing element unto them, even though from time to time one finds such sentences in songs and poetries and sometimes in very informal situations. I have heard you, Éfhelìnye, and sometimes Akhlísa and her Sisters saying such pàsqo sentences and using just redundancy pronouns and leaving out the subject, but I do not believe that such language is considered the Emperor’s Babel.

I should note, that sometimes in rapid speech one uses the redundancy pronoun and then realizes that one has to change the number or person of the object or subject. The result is that sometimes the predicate, object, and subject don’t quite agree.

Jiîjae kúyejikhing … kúyejikhul lwánòlaloi pú … tepu …
I … we (pú … tepu) saw him (jii·) … them in Þe castle …

Syntax

Babel has

Sorry

Syntax!!!

Babel has four parts of speech: the participle, the personal pronoun, and relative pronoun, and the particle. Participles can be substances or ideas or actions or descriptions. They can take tense and number and be modified by particles, or inflexions. Tòngqe personal pronouns and relative pronouns are a small group of words that point out other objects, and they can only take a few inflexions. Participles carry out all grammatical functions, of vocatives and honorifics and causitives, and adverbial prepositions, and cases, and deictics, and inseperable possession, and syntax markers, and emphasis, and clause markers. Particles either preceed or follow the participle they modify, and they may only be used in a certain order. They are affixes, suffixes and prefixes, but some of them can be separated from their modifier.

Úxha Puîyus.
Puîyus is blue.
Jaê’ okháxei xhroe’ Éfhelìnye.
Éfhelìnye sees the birds.

The construct case in the last example is made up of two elements, okháxei and xhroe which marks the construct case. It is all considered a single inflexion, a single word, even though it is written as two words, and pronounced that way also, for as a single word it would be pronounced as okháxeîxhro-e or something of the sort.

Predicates come first, then objects, then subjects.

Babel employs reduplication for emphasis, repetition, or for the superlative sense.

Khniêr khniêr Puiyòsejikh Éfhelìnye pajetlhatlhamaxúngatser jaiqráyiîngta.
Éfhelìnye kept kissing Puîyos even though her honored Mother does not desire it.

Stélar xhmoe’ Éfhelìnye xhmoe.
Éfhelìnye is a princess.
Popaingate stélar xhroe’ Éfhelìnye.
Éfhelìnye seems to be a princess.
Sopaingate stélar xhroe’ Éfhelìnye.
Éfhelìnye becomes a princess

[Scribbled on the side of the page]
Did I already talk about how singleness is discussed? Puîyos may have some difficulty in understanding the distinction between a participle plural and singular and massive participles. Singleness can be expressed in the absolutive case ending –upwar as well as the affixes tsena- and -ing. Tlhèfho are viceroy kings, but tsenàtlhefho and tlhèfhoxing is a king, Jhpaîpa khlopetèsqral are pious and obedient ballerinas while tsenajhpaîpa khlopetèsqral or jhpaîpaxing khlopetèsqral is a pious and obedient ballerina.

So, for to review:

PREDICATE EXPERIENCERS!!!

Predicate experiencers are not really marked for case. Predicate experiencers may follow another predicate experiencers. Let’s use examples.

Aîra’ Eiyuláriye kexhetlhi Kàrijoi.
Kárjoi hight her Eiyulárie.
Khlájar ijótlha xhroe’ áxha kúxing.
He paints the whispering mountains red.

The conjuctive particles are able to imply an unmarked case.

Eûxi’ Éfhelìnye xhroe xhnoipe Fhermáta xhroe = Eûxi’ Éfhelìnye xhroe xhnoipe Fhermáta
The dance of Éfhelìnye and of Fhermáta = the dance of Éfhelìnye and Fhermáta.
Qir ójo xhnoipe qir ijótlha = qir ójo xhnoe ijótlha.
In Þe water ond in Þe whispering mountains = in Þe water ond whispering mountains
Kó kus í xhnoike kus khníjur = kó kus í xhnoike khníjur
Hee who came ond he who sang = hee who came ond sang

The particles for the vocative and irrealis cases may be unmarked by changing their rising or rising-falling musical tone to a falling one.

Puiyùs! Éfhelinyè! Qìr poâ ì!
Puîyus! Éfhelìnye! Come here!

And in such wise did mine Abbá, your Grandfather Thiêfhilos instruct me in whilom days many, many generations ago.

Thus my Mother wrote out for me, and so I copied out into my notebook.

Everything Falling Asunder

http://sites.google.com/site/psalmofdreams/Home/introduction-to-babel-grammar/the-crisis

Epistle XXV: It’s Possibly Tragic, I don’t know

Hi, Brother, how are you? Everything’s fine here.
Except of course the disappearance of your future wife last week. I’m sure it’s upsetting. Perhaps even tragic. Anyway, it’s been very quiet here this last week. There have been no major mishaps, nothing has caught on fire, no explosions in the kitchens, no inventions running amock, not a single barnyard accident at all. We’re almost all falling asleep as we lean upon our shepherd staffs and count our toys and stick crickets down Karuláta’s neck. In fact I think I feel asleep a few times just in writing this letter.
Anyway, while you’re searching for your future wife, and I’m reasonably sure that’s important, although I can’t be sure, would you mind reminding our peiratical uncles that I need my shipment of raw cookie dough? The Sisters and I wish to bake up a new batch, and honored Fhèrkifher and beloved Xhnófho always know just where to pillage the best dough.
And good luck finding Éfhelìnye! Why, you may even want to keep her with you after you find her. I don’t mind all of this normalcy at all. I do wish that cousin Xataríyona would stop mooning and fussing about Xhás being so busy forging weapons for the war. Yawn! It’s not like her Brother has to fight monsters and fiends and collect toys for his beloved Sister all day long! What’s going to happen to Xhás, is he going to trip on his anvil? The way she talks, you’d think that Xhás was forging on an exploding and crashing ship about to fall into fire spumes of active volcanoes. How operatic is she?
Oh some of the Princess’ toys were lurking around and getting into trouble. I’ve decided to rebuild them and send them on their way. Charming little fellows, really, with lots of sharp knife claws. I think that all childrens’ toys should have movable knife parts unto them.
Good luck finding Éfhelìnye! And don’t hasten to send her home!
S.

Epistle XXVI: Please send her Home

My precious and most beloved Bride,
It took us so many years to find her again. But it is not our honor to keep her for ourself, nor should we strive to do so. No one else can know what she means unto us, but that is as it should be. She was not meant for us alone. She was ours to give away. And, my silver bride, if she were able to escape from the Dragons that I sent to guard her, if her beloved Prince were able to rescue her from the Gardens that I created deep within the fires and dread of my imagination, surely Puîyus will be able to find the asteroid dimension where you’ve tucked her away. He will figure it out soon. Just give her back. She will never be completely happy without him, and her happiness is all that we can desire.
Your Kàri

Epistle XXVII: NO!

[And the letter is a spinning shaft of the purity of light, and from it descend memory and thought and tide and time and the very evanescent longing that one feels in dreams]

My dearest Kàri,
Éfhelìnye is mine. She is my work of art. I want her. I waited for her such as no Mortal can understand. She is the only one born of my Clan. I shall keep her. Puîyos can wait. He will live for a long time, is that not true? I’ll let him have her in ten thousand years. Then she will be old enough for betrothal.
Today I feel like a qàsorn swan. I shall dance like unto a Qàsern this even.
I don’t like how Éfhelìnye keeps talking about kissing that young gossoon. I may have to cut her lips off. When they grow back perhaps then she will be old enough for betrothal.
Khnoqwísi

Epistle XXVIII: Concerning my Pious Daughter-in-Law

Be this unto the Regent Empress Khnoqwísi, my friend and kinswoman, the Daughter of Grandfather Thiêfhilos the Sorcerer of the Forest, and Mother of the future Empress of all the Land
From Lady Khwofheîlya of Sweqhàngqu, the Mother of Crown Prince Puîyus of Pwéru, the future Emperor of all the Land of Story and Master of Health and Prosperity of Life
By way of Telàqhawa, the Raven Courier Service Express
Writ by her own hand
In the summer of Jaràqtu

May the peace and blessings of the Ancestors, Spirits, Immortals, and the Father of Stars be unto you.

Greetings,
Holy Khnoqwísi, Virgin Empress.
I just wish to send you a little note informing of you of our continous blessing and goodwill towards you. I also wished to ask you for the formal return of my future pious Daughter-in-Law. Princess Éfhelìnye was quite happy to live with me and Puîyos’ Sisters and family, and we were making some great progress in teaching her how to live in a family and help to run it. Although there are many things which you, deathless as you are, must teach her, perhaps there are far more and far more urgent tasks which she will need to learn. For instance, although in time Éfhelìnye will have to understand her Star nature, as a child it is far more important for her to learn to interact with others her own age, to perform her chores, to be able to live with Siblings, to eat dinner at regular hours, to be able to form friendships, &c. She must first learn to be a young woman before we need to worry about the other part of her nature.
One could argue, of course, that you no longer have any legal right to my precious Daughter-in-Law. Both you and your husband, if one were to consult the Emperor’s Law, are the losing party of the War of Heaven, or at the very least, are a dynasty which is marrying into Puîyos’ family by the left hand. The only one who has any legal right to Éfhelìnye is of course Puîyos; she is by all the laws of the Land his personal property, even if he were not the Cælestial Crown Prince he has with all fairness won her hand in combat. And although it is true that Íngìkhmar and I have permitted you and your husband the Regency of the Imperium, that does not give you the right to abduct one who is by all accounts a Daughter of mine. But surely one does not have to turn unto the law to resolve a family matter.
I shall not permit my Puîyos to be distracted from the battle because of worrying for his future wife. I expect a prompt reply to this letter and am sending copies of this to the War Fleet to be read by mine handsome Íngìkhmar and Grandfather Thiêfhilos and Regent Kàrijoi as well as Puîyos the future Lord of Earth and Sea and Sky. And I think there are a few million former Ancestors in the fleet by now who may be interested in the situation.

Khwofheîlya,
Former Queen of the Dead

[scribbled on the bottom]

Khwofheîlya, you’d better not start making a bad situation worse.

Leave me alone, honored Tàltiin. I’m getting Éfhelìnye back. I’m not letting that Star take my Daughter away from me. Who has the paper now.

AUNTIE IS MAKING PANCAKES TONIGHT
LOVE, KARULÁTA KHNIÊMA AKHLÍSA

Epistle XXIX: Still No

Dear Mortal

I am Khnoqwísi of the Clan of Áme, I am Deathless, Perfect and Complete. No law can hold me. I forbid you to write unto me again. Puîyos will be Crown Prince because I designed it so.
Éfhelìnye tried to escape today when she saw your letter. I have broken one of her ankles because of you.
Do not annoy me.

[Unsigned]

Epistle XXX: Please!

My Love,
Please, my beloved,
Please just return Éfhelìnye to Puîyus or unto her family.
If I were unable to contain her, none can.

Kàri

Epistle XXXI: Have you Seen That Nymph

[The letter is written upon an explosion of feathers and pollen and dust, and for some reason the epistle is giggline all the while]

Twin Sister

Is it just me who are you just making everything nuttier! Here I am trying to rebuild these shattered dream dimensions. I have dæmons and Sàqajakh and various creatures you don’t even want me to identify bouncing about my floating castles and leaping Suns and creating so much havoc. Do you know how difficult it is to bring together this mass of myth and conciousness while hiding from my mortal wives and chase after all the Nymphs whom I’ve managed to trap in here, I mean Nymphs who of their own accord and having nothing at all to do with me have snuck into the Otherworld and just won’t leave me alone with their water tresses and diaphanous skin so tasty and shiny.
Wait, I need to finish this letter later. Bevies of nymphs are invading my dimension! Who keeps trapping them here?
I’m sure there was some reason for this particular epistle, but I can’t possibly remember what it was. As I was chasing after an errant Nymph, I mean, while I was busy doing something completely productive and not nympholeptic and completely in the aid of this War, I’m not causing any trouble at all not like the last ten thousand epochs, I was having a little dream of a dream of a dream about Éfhelìnye and I thought she was asking for me. I can’t imagine why. I thought we had already arranged a marriage for her. Is there something the matter? Oh, I can’t be bothered right now. Have you seen all of the Nymphs just pouring through these gapes in reality? I have no time to write at the moment. Go bother Qlarxhnàrxha for a time.
Raven

Epistle XXXII: You Forbid Nothing!

[Upon the front of the letter]

Beloved Khnoqwísi,
Please do not read the following letter. My pious Daughter-in-Law sometimes tends to say or write exactly what she is thinking, and that is not exactly always the best course of action. Please know that we are all honored to have you as a part of our family, and when you soon decide to return Éfhelìnye to us, it will be soon enough.
Tàltiin Xhelilamaramaláma of Sweqhàngqu

LISTEN YOU MISERABLE FORMER MOON EMPRESS!
I’m going to simplify this for you.

My Son conquered Kàrijoi. My Son is the new Emperor. Immortal or not, you were conquered. You are nothing but a slave in his eyen.
GIVE US BACK ÉFHELÌNYE AT ONCE, OR I’M SENDING ALL OF THE FORMER ANCESTORS AFTER YOU AND

[The rest of the letter is torn off. Affixed to the bottom is a new page.]

I’m sorry, I must have accidently torn off what my pious Daughter-in-Law just wrote. However did that happen? I’m sure it’s nothing at all. Please just disregard this letter. If Khwofheîlya were not so intent on mailing something I would have just burnt this entire parchment.
Tàltiin

Hi, Éfhelìnye! How’s it like up there in the crazy realms! Everyone’s fighting about you down here. Hope you bring me back lots of presents!
Karuláta

Epistle XXXIII: Command Me Not

Khwofheîlya,
No Mortal is permitted to address one of us in such a fashion. If you communicate with me again, I shall petition the rest of my brethren to descend unto Jaràqtu and begin slaughtering bird and beast and kine for such an insult. Your land will be blighted, Khwofheîlya.
Éfhelìnye is too excitable. She grabbed ahold of your letter. I had to break her leg to keep her from running away. I just wish she didn’t bleed so much. It is surely a fault of mortal construction.

Epistle XXXIV: There’s No Way this will End Well

My beloved Twin Sister

I hope everything is going well with you. There may be a slight problem. The Chthonic Lords are all trembling. Death spirits are flying all around me. I have honking and twittering and spitting spirits stampeding throughout the Undergloom. You’re not doing anything rash, are you? One would hardly e'er accuse my darling Khnoqwísi of, say, running away from home and eloping with a Crown Prince and causing all sorts of havoc for the Family …
Just what are you doing? Don’t make me ascend up there. I don’t have a descent skull to wear.

Yours, Qlarxhnàrxha

Epistle XXXV: Greetings to my Cousin

Holy Khnoqwísi,
My kinswoman, my cousin by marriage

Please, beloved, I want you to know that we all love you and none of us would e'er try to hurt you. Perhaps I can speak for you and get the Sweqhàngqu side of the family to calm down a little. It seems there are some strange rumors involving wing-binding and bone breaking, and you have to understand that such a predicament will surely cause us mortals to pause.
I know very well what it feels like to have dwelt in exile, to have hidden my true face, in a way, to have lived in another world and been within it but not truly of it. And in time I grew to learn what it felt like to have a Daughter who gave her heart to a young man, a warrior, and to give that Daughter away to a rather flighty and crazy family. If you want to talk about the Sweqhàngqu, I can tell you all you need to know about them. In fact, I think I know the Sweqhàngqu far better than Tàltiin e'er will. Be that as it may, I gave Khwofheîlya away, but I lost nothing at all. Perhaps I know how you felt when you met honored Kàrijoi my cousin and decided to forsake your birth clan to stay with him, for I remember when first I met Khangisqrírles upon Cnoc a’ Chléirich when all the wistaria were blooming, and I knew that I would never reclaim the name Pwéru which was mine from birth.
Moreover, beloved cousin by marriage, thou and I have a special bond, for thou and I were the ones instrumental in arranging the marriage of Íngìkhmar and Khwofheîlya. In a way, all that has come to pass in this last day is because of you and me, when we decided that we were going to save the Pwéru and all the Dreamtime.
So please, my cousin by marriage, know that we all love you very much, and we write to you because we miss our darling Éfhelìnye so. None of us are angry with you, we only wish you the eternity of happiness which is your birthright.

Xhàtrajhil of Otòrfhexes among the Pwéru

Epistle XXXVI: Crazy Mortals!

Baby Sister!
How are you? Everything is fine up here. We’re all dancing.
Question. The dance is a little broken. Is something happening down there? You’re not starting another war are you? Hah hah. Just kidding. Really.
Serious. Something wrong. All the rest of us are having trouble gleaming and leaping and dancing as we did before. Something quite wrong. Aside from the War and ending of realities. Something quite big.
When do we get to see Éfhelìnye again? You are going to purge her of all those disgusting mortal habits, right? Please don’t tell me she’s still ingesting matter. How wretched. Next she’ll be losing consciousness in diurnal rhythms. Gross!
Always consistent, always reliable, always
Khnúl, the Pole Star

Epistle XXXVII: This the Right Address, Question?

This even being the right place for writing? Details a little crazy down here in the fleet.
Question question question question. We Traîkhiim just full of questions.

So, when we getting back to the grammar? Or, to be more preciseling, when we getting back to the Gibberish. And pie. We love pie. Who keep mentioning pie?
So when get to see Éfhelìnye again? I we just want to hold her and bite her and gobble her up and eat her all the time. She just so delicious. You not cooking her now, are you? Find way to seal in her flavor. Feast! Love Feast for the Empress! Hurray!
So just itsy little bitsy questionling for you Khnoqwísiji dearest Empress of Yester. When do we get to eat Éfhelìnye because we they I very hungry and Puîyos wont’ let us have any fun at all. Wants us all to eat qhostaqhìsti lettuce all the time. Yukh yukh yukh yukh yukh.

Wait, some of the wind up toys wanting to write a message for you. Here, we I they passing the paper along.

Fhólus and Aîya and Fhólus

Is this the former Empress? We love you so much. We love you with all of our gears and mainsprings because you made precious little Éfhelìnye for us. We just love to spend time with you. You have her eternally prisoned with you, don’t you? We’ll come along so we can sing and dance for her. There are e'er so many games that we can play with her. We can play at tea and chase each other about and comb her long hair and play dress up. She has pretty little parthenal wings now. Do you want us to brush her wings? We can pluck her feathers and coat her wings in wax. Then we can dance for her.
And we trust that you’re forbidding that disgusting young lad from having any contact with the Princess for all eternity. In fact, don’t you just want Puîyos to be dead and in some horrible way? How about this, we’ll cut out his heart and give it to you, and then you can let us play with the Princess for ever and ever. I think this will be an amicable relationship for us all.
Death to Puîyos! Dance for the Princess!

Tetratríxe and Qwatríxe

How are you dopes getting the right Ravens for sending to the former Empress? I think all of you are altogether daft. You aliens and clockwork creatures, you do know that the former Empress is an Immortal, no? She’s not going to respond in the way that any of us expect or understand. Remember when Éfhelìnye ran away from her Father the Emperor? He began a War, at least that I can understand. Wait, no I can’t. But the Empress, she’s
I’ve got to go. Anyone even wondering how I got here? Because I sure am.

Akhlísa the Best at Everything

Epistle XXXVIII: I’m Coming to Visit

Beloved Cousin,

I shall call to visit you this afternoon. I do not wish to alarum you, but the Sweqhàngqu side of the family is quite concerned with Princess Éfhelìnye’s welfare. I am not quite sure whether I made this clear in my last letter, but references to breaking her bones and making her bleed can cause mortal to panick. You may remember that as part of the Song of Creation there was the alchemy of parental love. Mothers and Fathers can, how does one say this politely, go insane if they think something is a threat to their children. You are aware of at least one instance of that, when your beloved husband my cousin Kàrijoi created an entire War because of his only child. It is bad taste to mention this word, but I fear that the adults of the Sweqhàngqu may be falling subject to jhaqexára, the sacred parental wrath to defend their offspring. The fleet right now is in disarray, and if we do not resolve this situation soon, Crown Prince Puîyos will be unable to continue winning battles.

You cousin,
Xhàtrajhil

Epistle XXXIX: Mine

[The parchment of the letter is the flayed skin from some creation that no mortal could possibly identify. The ink of the letter is very clearly blood.]

I know you tried to send me an epistle, Khwofheîlya. I have begun the incineration of all Ravens arising from the wretched mortal realms of Jaràqtu. I have asked mine only child to copy out this letter for me in her own blood. I am thinking of completely purging her of all her mortal form. I am not entirely sure how that can come to pass, but it must be possible. I’m thinking of leaving her in fire for several generations.
Leave us alone, of you will be punished as only one deathless can punish you. She is my precious child. I waited eternities for her. If you try to take her away from me, I will make Kàrijoi’s war seem like a good dream.
To ensure that Éfhelìnye does not try to escape from me again, I have broken her other leg.

[The rest of the epistle is filled with broken feathers, the tips of which are covered in blood.]

Epistle XL: Note from Abbá

My beloved Child,
I, the only Father you have e'er known, begs you to reconsider this action. I know how you love Éfhelìnye, and perhaps only I can guess how you suffered to bring her to pass, and the rejection your own Family imposed upon you. I suspect that Raven and Death and the rest of your Siblings may be incapable of showing affection in the way that a poor old man like I can. All I could do was clothe you and teach you as best I could. Your Family creates realities out of their whims. And yet I beg you to remember that Éfhelìnye is not completely yours. She is also of the kindred of Pwéru, and her mortal qualities, her faults, her imperfections, the stubbornness she has inherited from both you and Kàrijoi, make her all the more endearing unto us all. She does not need to be purged or cleaned or changed in any way. She is our Éfhelìnye just as you were once my Khnoqwísi, and I let you go in time.
Puey will find her of course. I suspect he will find her sooner than you think.
Abbá

Epistle XLI: I’m Very Sorry

Be this unto the Holy Virgin Empress Khnoqwísi, the Bride of the ten thousand viceroy kingdoms, the Daughter of the Sorcerer of the Forest, the beloved of the Emperor of all the Land of Story and Master of Health and Prosperity of Life
From her foster Son and Heir Puîyos
By way of Telàqhawa, the Raven Courier Service Express
Copied by Emperor Kàrijoi
In the War Fleet

May the peace and blessings of the Ancestors, Spirits, Immortals, and the Father of Stars be unto you.

Greetings, holy Mother,

I, your foster Son and Heir all of Earth and Sea and Sky, with humble and contrite heart beg you for the formal release of my future wife, the Starflower Princess Éfhelìnye Kháwa Teîrtlhe Eilyorieyána Stèlyarel Eiyuláriye Kòkhafha Kheyòkhporii Khmelitóte Xhèyol Erstélar Asteranása Áxhneyeméxhe Qhòyeil Eiyàsqrii Éfha Qwasáta Tsetseîlwa Paplínat of Þe Royal House of Pwéru.
I shall arrive soon and in the night, alone, to meet with her. I know where she is. I can taste her thoughts. I have instructed the War Fleet to send some of their first ten thousand warships to follow me within the day. The other millions will start streaming upwards within three days. Thrice-honored Qhalúxha and the rest of the Dragons will be accompanying me.
My beloved Mother by marriage,
One would be honored if you would stay with me and Éfhelìnye in the warfleet after I release her from her place of captivity. Éfhelìnye has been without a Mother’s love almost all of her life, and has much to learn from you. As her future husband and Emperor to come, however, I must say that you are not to change her in any way. I already find her perfect. Not a single bone of hers will be broken. She will be eternally under my protection.
Emperor Kàrijoi will be following me within a day or so. He approves of my taking Éfhelìnye back with me.
Please do not be angry with Éfhelìnye. She just wished to stay with me, and like the rest of us does not understand that sometimes families react very poorly to disobedience.

Puîyos

Epistle XLII: Dreams of Creation

My Son
Because I bore a child, the only one born of the holy Áme, my Family devised the most horrible of punishments for me. You cannot begin to understand the exile, the misery, and the death they imposed upon me, without remorse, without any attempt at reconciliation. And now that I am finally reunited with mine Éfhelìnye, through her and your sacrifice, I find that I cannot let her go.
I do not wish for her to be betrothed and married. I don’t care about contracts or fate or law, I never have, I create mine own law and expect the rest of reality to conform unto it. Your Grandmother Xhàtrajhil will remind me that one cannot end a syuîkho betrothal and marriage contract. Mine Husband will say that she is only doing what I did once. I do not care. Éfhelìnye cannot leave me. I wish for her to be a little Star, smaller and cuter and just like me. I will pay you well for taking her away from you, of course. In recompense I shall provide you with one hundred queenly wives and one thousand concubines and ten thousand slave girls, surely those will be enough wives for you in your household. The Ravens and Draems were telling me that you have a prediliction for golden-tressed females, if that is so I can supply you with as many as you desire, or if you would prefer wives with a variety of hair colors, I can arrange that also. I am after all the very essence of justice and recompense. I am not terrible conversant on mathmatics, it always seems like a distraction from the true task of dancing, but I believe that your hundred queenly wives could provide you with about five children each, and your thousand concubines three children each, and your ten thousand slave girls a child. That would be about, by my calculation, a thousand children. That should be enough to create a new Imperial Dynasty and pay you for keeping my Daughter with me for ever. I can also pay you in perfumes, spices, books, rugs, jewelry of all sort, and the various sweet substances that mortals like to ingest and plunder from the horizon. Candies I think they’re call. I can give you lots of candy. I shall contact my twin, Raven, soon, and he can start providing you with many wives. Raven has always been able to find young women throughout the endless timelines. I am not entirely sure how, nor has it e'er been of use to me, but now I see that it can be used to create a bond among our families.
Éfhelìnye will stay with me for ever.

These little wind up toys are beginning to annoy me with their scampering and leaping and capers. I think I’ll vaporize them into nothingness. What odd little designs they are.

My Puîyos,
I remember the earliest of days. Éfhelìnye has not yet created vocabulary nor grammar to describe it for you. It was not even darkness. It was a silence and shadow deeper than merely darkness. It was beginning. We were all there, without form or substance or matter or energy. We just were.
We sang.
Imagine a deep thunderous call, and blinding white light. That is what Apálo is to me. I can still feel and touch and taste the original song of creation. It ripples outwards. In the unfolding of time, many more waves of energy came bursting outwards. We sang all the louder. Color and energy came into existance. Everything was rushing outwards.
The energy became a Sea. From the sea the Tree grew. And of the Sea and Tree arose great orbs of light which were like fruit and spheres and energy. The worlds were arising, they were dimensions. They became land and mountain and rock and hill and waters and clouds. They grew green and blue as they blossomed. The Tree became all of starflowers. The Sea became fractals and water. All of the Dreamtime came into existance. I was there. I danced at creation.
I’ve always had an idea for the ending. It can all somehow begin again. The Dreamtime may fade away. But we Immortals shall remain, we shall sing again in the beginning. Pulsations of Apálo will burst out again. The darkness shall bloom. New dreamlands were glow. And soaring high above them, in the changing and unraveling, will arise great fleets of warships and glass and hot air balloons and photonic arks, and all about them shall flutter the birds and porcines and fishes and pterodactyls of the airs, and upon the decks shall rest all manner of creature that walks and creeps and runs. And at the head of the fleet will be the Mortals entering the newness of creation. I used to think that you and Éfhelìnye would stand at the vanguard of the fleet, but I shall keep Éfhelìnye with me, she can dance before the Tree.

Khnoqwísi

Epistle XLIII: Nigh

Beloved Mother
I shall be arriving with the hour and alone. Please have Éfhelìnye healed.

Puîyos