Meowsernese

Meowsernese

Basics:

What does the alphabet look like?

The standard English Latin alphabet, with 3 additions: ‘ä’, ’ö’ and ’å’.

Alphabet

When saying out the alphabet. When you pronounce each letter independently, you do it like this:

A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J
/ɑː/	/beː/	/tseː/	/deː/	/eː/	/ef/	/geː/	/hɑː/	/iː/	/jeː/
K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T
/kɑː/	/el/	/em/	/en/	/oː/	/peː/	/kveː/	/er/	/es/	/teː/
U	V	W	X	Y	Z	Ä	Ö	Å
/uː/	/veː/	*	/iks/	/ʉː/	/zeː/	/æː/	/ø/	/oː/

*Dubbel V /dubəlvː/

Continuing on the topic of pronunciation, there are several things to keep in mind.

‘sh’	‘sj’	‘sk’*	‘g’*	‘gj’	‘tj’	‘ls’	‘ng’	‘nk’	‘k’*
/ʃ/	/ɧ/		/j/		/tʃ/	/j/	/ŋ/	/ŋk/	/ʃ/

* When a soft vowel follows

- Soft Vowels: E, I, Y, Ö, Ä

- Hard Vowels: A, O, U, Å

Some more unusual things to remember:

Jag ( I ) is pronounced as /jɑː/ - The g just got silent over time

Mig ( Me ) is pronounced as /meɪ/ ( Also goes for Dig )

Examples:

Word	Pronunciation	Translation
Katt	/kɑtː/	Cat
Köp	/ʃøːp/	Buy / Shop
Skicka	/ˈɧɪkːa/	Send
Skulle	/ˈskulːə/	Would
Själv	/ɧɛlːv/	Self
Sång	/sɔːŋ/	Song
Shampoo	/ʃampu:/	Shampoo

If you don’t yet understand this, that is okay. Just focus on trying to read and pronounce it correctly based on what you know.

Hej, jag är ny skrivar sum tåtar som ett språk!

/heɪ, jɑː æːr nʉ skrɪvɑr sum toːtɑr som etː sproːk/

( Btw, that meant “Hey, I’m writing some things about this language! ” )

Pronouns:

Subjective

Singular			Plural
Word	Pronunciation	Translation	Word	Pronunciation	Translation
Jag	/jɑː/	I	Vi	/vɪː/	We
Du	/duː/	You	Ni	/nɪː/	You
Han	/hɑn/	He	De	/de/	They
Hon	/hon/	She	Man	/mɑn/	One*
Den	/den/	It
Hen	/hen/	They

Objective

Singular			Plural
Word	Pronunciation	Translation	Word	Pronunciation	Translation
Mig	/mɛj/	Me	Oss	/osː/	Us
Dig	/dɛj/	You	Er	/er/	You
Honnom	/ˈhonːom/	Him	Dem	/dem/	Them
Henne	/ˈhɛnːɛ/	Her
Den	/dɛnː/	It
Hennom	/ˈhɛnːɔm/	Them

Possesive

Singular			Plural
Word	Pronunciation	Translation	Word	Pronunciation	Translation
Min	/mɪn/	My/Mine	Vår	/voːr/	Our/s
Din	/diɪ/	Your/s	Er	/er/	Your/s
Hans	/ˈhans/	His	Deras	/deras/	Their/s
Hennes	/ˈhenːɛe/	Her
Dess	/dɛsː/	It/s
Hens	/ˈhɛns/	Their/s

Possesive – plural*

Singular			Plural
Word	Pronunciation	Translation	Word	Pronunciation	Translation
Mina	/mɪnɑ/	My/Mine	Våra	/voːra/	Our/s
Dina	/dinɑ/	Your/s	Era	/era/	Your/s
Hans	/ˈhɑnsː /	His	Deras	/derɑs/	Their/s
Hennes	/ˈhɛnːɛs/	Her
Dess	/dɛsː/	It/s
Hens	/ˈhɛns/	Their/s

Is used when the “object” the subject is “possessing” is plural

Reflexive *

Singular			Plural
Word	Pronunciation	Translation	Word	Pronunciation	Translation
Mig	/mɛj/	Myself	Oss	/osː/	Ourselves
Dig	/dɛj/	Yourself	Er	/er/	Yourselves
Sig	/sɛj/	Himself	Sig	/sɛj/	Themselves
		Herself
		Itself
		Themselves

* Själv is used after – dig själv ; Sig själv

Prepositions:

Word	Pronounciation	Translation
I	/ɪ/	In
På	/poː/	On
På	/poː/	At
Att	/ɑtː/	To
Från	/froːn/	From
För	/frøn/	For
Med	/med/	With
Av	/ɔv/	By
Av	/ɔv/	Of
Under	/Undər/	Under
Över	/øver/	Over
Mellan	/Melːɑn/	Between
Genom	/jeːnom/	Through
Iny	/ɪnʉ/	During
Före	/førə/	Before
efter	/efter/	After

Here are just some of the most common one. If you need some extra, we can add it, as for anything here

Conjunctions:

Word	Pronunciation	Translation
Ai	/aɪ/	And
Men	/men/	But
Eller	/ellər/	Or
Eller	/ellər/	Nor
För	/før/	For
Ännu	/ænːu/	Yet
Så	/soː/	So
För att	/før atː/	Because
Även om	/æːven om/	Although
Sedan	/sedan/	Since
Om inte	/om intɛ/	Uneless
Medan	/medan/	While
Om	/om/	If
Enten.. Eller	/entən.. ellər/	Either... Or...
Verken.. Eller.	/verkən ellər/	Neither... Nor...

Possession:

To symbol that <something>, is <someone>’s. In a similar sense to English, and a bunch of other Germanic languages, we do it by adding an ‘s’.

So, Adam’s house, for example, is Adams hus. But, saying that in practice, you’d probably want to put an article there somewhere (as will be talked about in a little bit), just like in English.

Or as seen before,

Min hus – My house

Basics of verbs:

The verb is the same for every person. So,

Jag är,

Du är,

Hon är,

And etc.

Infinitives are in a similar form to English: “to <verb>”: “att <verb>”

På exampel:
Att skriva (To write).

How you transform a verb in the infinitive form the the ”conjugated” form. Is based on a few rules regarding how the infinitive looks.

There is some variation with how the infinitive of a verb can look like

The suffix “-a” -> By far the most common one
”Short Verbs”

The root of the verb is what you get after removing the suffix. And with short verbs, you just leave them alone. So,

Att Skriva – Skriv, ( Write )

Att Köpa – Köp, ( Buy / Shop )

Att Komma – Komm ( Come )

And so on...

How can you tell, what is a “short verb”?

Well, for one, they’ll usually be pretty short. And second, they don’t have to end with –a.

Examples:

Att se, ( See )

Att ät, ( Eat )

Att bo, ( Live )

Att var, ( Be )

Att har, ( Have )

Att veta ( Know / Have information )

You don’t touch short verbs at all. You just leave them how they are.

For the “normal” verbs, you take the root, aka. Stem and add ‘-er’.

Examples:

Att skriva: skriver

Att gå: gå

Att se: se

Att komma: kommer

There are of course some exceptions. The one you will likely come across very often is att vara. For which the “used form” is “är”. Here are some of them:

Articles:

The thing we use both as ‘a’ and ‘the’ is ‘en’. Similar to Swedish, just without grammatical gender. So, no en/ett - only en.

The equivalent of ‘the <word>’ is: <word>en;

And the equivalent of ‘a <word>‘ is: en <word>

For example:

A house: en hus

The house: husen

This is a slight difference from Swedish, as “hus” is of the “ett” gender, so it’s a bit different. In here, as stated before, there isn’t grammatical gender.

Tenses:

The ‘present’ is the default. That’s what we’ll spend a lot of time here talking about, as the other three. I’ll just list the 4 tenses here.

Past,

Present Simple,

Present Perfect,

Future

If you think that’s complicated… Look at English... Or any other language. English has 12, Swedish has 6, German has 6 as well. So be happy.

Let’s look at them.

Past

You use this when an action has finished. Simple. It’s the past

Examples:

He ate. They walked... Simple

How do we make these?

Remember our two “versions” of infinitive verbs?

The short and “normal” ones?

Well, we will use that here.

To turn a short verb into the past tense, we will take the infinitive of that verb. Let’s take ‘att bo’ for example ( to live).

What you do, is simply just add the ‘dde’ suffix

So, the past tense of bo, is bodde.

To live: att bo

To have lived: att bodde

( and yes, that is a valid way to say it, you’re technically making an infinitive form out of it again, but yk )

There are some irregular verbs as well. For now, let’s take the verb att gå ( to go )

The past form of gå, is gick.

So ‘went’ is ‘gick’

Let’s look at more regular examples right now.

Att tro – trodde ( trust / believe )

Att må – mådde ( feel )

Att bry – brydde ( care )¨

Att titt – tittadde ( look )

What about normal verbs?

Also, similarly to the short verbs you append a suffix to the root ( after removing –a in the infinitive form, or –er in the used form ), the suffix you append, changes slightly based of the last letter/s of the root.

Let’s take these two verbs:

Att köpa ( to buy ),

Att höra ( to hear )

The roots of these would be:

‘köp’ and ‘hör’ respectively.

But it would be köpte and horde

So if it ends on a voiced consonant, you add –de, and if it ends on a voiceless consonant, you add –te.

But not entirely!

There are some exceptions of course!

For example:

Att prata: pratade ( to talk )

You keep the a here, as like pratde would just be hard to pronounce. A lot of the times, you can like “sense” that it should be like that. But I will ( with time ) a spreadsheet, or table or whatever with exceptions in all sorts of categories. But for now, I will leave at at those few.

Simple enough, right?

Well, except for the irregular verbs, which I know we all love, yeah, it is.

Speaking of irregular verbs, let’s take a look at some, as there are a few:

Infinitive	Present Simple	Past Simple	Translation
Att saga	Säger	sad	To say
Att veta	Via	vet	To know
Att Vara	Är	var	To be
Att gå	Gå	gick	To go
Att ge	get	gav	To give
Att se	ser	såv	To See
Att komma	Kommer	kom	To come
Att ta	Tar	Tog	To take

Present simple

Well, I mean. As I said, that’s what I will mainly be focusing for the rest of this whole document thing.

One thing though,

My language doesn’t distinguish between for example “I go” and “I’m going”, or “I eat” or “I’m eating”

Both are the same simple form

So yk. I’ll just leave this at that

Let’s take a look at the a bit more complicated

Present Perfect

This is used, when an action from the past, still matters in the present.

In the same way English uses “have”, “has”, “had” and etc. Swedish and my language have “har”

Att har ( to have )

Then you need to know what the supine form is.

It is in a way similar to the past form, but instead of “dde” you add “tt”

So, to form present perfect verbs, you put “har” and then the supine form and this also kinda bypasses irregular verbs.

So to say “ I have been going ”,

You’d say “ Jag har gått ” – See how gå is irregular, but the normal –tt rule still applies?

Or maybe “ Jag har bott ” for “I have been living”

Future

Two ways,

Ska / kommer att

When to use each of them?

You use ‘ska’ when there is like a clear intention, plan, decision, promise or something controlled by someone ( kinda like shall in English )

You use kommer att for neutral predictions, forecasts or inevitable events.

So,

It is going to rain tomorrow -> kommer att

I’m going to japan -> ska

Question Words:

Word	Pronunciation	Translation
Vad	/vɑːd/	What
Vem	/vɛm/	Who
Var	/vɑːr/	Where
När	/nɛːr/	When
Hyr	/nɛːr/	How
Varför	/vɑːr.fœr/	Why
Vilken	/ˈvɪl.kɛn/	Which

Word	“Used form” **	Meaning
Att få	Få	To be allowed to / can
Att kunna	Kan	To be able to / can
Att måsta	Mast	To have to / must
Att böra	Bör	To be supposed to / should
Att Vilja	Vill	To want / intend to
Att skola	Ska	Shall / Will *

* usually seen as “ska"

** Modal verbs are special in the way that they have different and sometimes seemingly unrelated used forms, there are a few more than those though, we will look at those in a second.

Basics:

Alphabet

Examples:

Pronouns:

Prepositions:

Conjunctions:

Possession:

Basics of verbs:

Articles:

Tenses:

Past

Present simple

Present Perfect

Future

Question Words:

Modal verbs:

Example sentences