#gitaxian braindump 2

[fierceawakening]

Lesson 2: Sentence Structure, Or Let's Sentence We-Make-It

(Lesson 1 is here: https://www.tumblr.com/fierceawakening/730475950583726080/okay-so-ive-got-more-people-asking-about?source=share)

@lizardywizard @izzet-league-mad-scientist @threeoftwelve

Phyrexian has a different sentence structure than English does.

In English, sentences are generally structured subject, verb, object:

I obliterate the opponent.

(Yes, we just confirmed the Phyrexian for "obliterate." Did you think I wasn't going to spend at least a day saying "obliterate" over and over again? Then you have not met me, friends.)

The subject is "I," a pronoun which tells the hearers that the speaker is talking about the speaker themself, the verb is "obliterate," and the object is "the opponent," the person the subject does the verb-thing to.

Phyrexian works very differently.

First of all, Phyrexian begins almost all sentences with what is officially called "a mood/tense marker," but which I'm going to just call a mood marker, because less typing.

This marker gives information about the sentence it starts. Is this a thing that's happening now? Is this something that the subject wants? Is this something that someone DOES NOT have or want? Is this something Great Yawgmoth did in the glorious bygone past of the original Phyrexia? Is this something Norn is commanding her faithful to do? The marker at the beginning of the sentence is how you know which of those you're dealing with.

To make this a little clearer, the most common mood marker you'll likely see is this guy here:

or, horizontally (which is how I'm gonna type going forward, I just wanted to do it vertically first so you can look at a vertical letter chart and not have to rotate it in your head, you're welcome):

Look at the alphabet from lesson one and you'll recognize these two letters as "xe." (Pronunciation note: "x" is pronounced not the way it is in English, but as it is in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which is quite different. It's like the "ch" in German ach or Scottish loch. So it sounds much more like "heh" with a breathy h than like "zeh" or "kseh" or something.)

Xe indicates that the sentence is in present tense and is declarative. So whatever the sentence is about is true (rather than false, hypothetical, wished for, etc) and happening now.

Declarative: (Subject verbs object.)

Or, to be a bit silly about it

Trufax: (Subject verbs object.)

So if I'm trying to translate the English sentence above, I begin with xe. I start with my starting bar to make sure my readers know I am a rube who writes horizontally, and begin with xe, as the sentence describes something I'm currently doing. Then I add my word separator/Pretty Spacebar, as xe is a whole word and more words will come next:

If you have any of the Phyrexian fonts (I got mine here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yR9HblQ2Hn3v-vlXuaF5NhbhFAfr_WCO/view?usp=share_link ), this looks like:

^xe-

So now let's talk about the obliterating I'm doing!

Right away there's another wrinkle.

Phyrexian does not order sentences like English either.

Where, in English, the order is Subject Verb Object.

the default in Phyrexian is

Mood Subject Object Verb.

This means that the vast majority of Phyrexian sentences you'll come across end with the verb.

Which means our sentence is going to look something like:

Trufax: (I the opponent obliterate.)

The I part is actually going to be indicated when we conjugate the verb, so we don't need to say that. (Think of how in English, if I say "Am hungry," it's a little off but it's still clear who is hungry, as "am" can only refer to the speaker themself.)

The "the" in "the opponent" is also left out. Phyrexian very often doesn't do a, an, the, etc. Usually the rest of the sentence will clarify that, or the noun for the object will specify a particular thing or group in a way that's not ambiguous.

[NOTE YOU CAN IGNORE IF THIS IS TOO MUCH ALREADY: Most likely, I'd translate this sentence using "my opponent," not just "opponent." I'm not doing that here because I'd need to change the word "opponent" to indicate whose opponent it is. I want to leave those specific "how you change basic words" bits for a later lesson. END NOTE.]

Trufax: opponent I-obliterate.

Which means the next word we need is "opponent." That word is:

əxnɒqč

So then we've got:

^xe-əxnɒqč-

Now we need "obliterate." That word is:

kšiπχ

So now we have all the pieces for our sentence.

However, we still need to conjugate the verb, to show that I'm the one doing it and that I'm doing it TO the opponent, rather than them doing it to me, me doing it to myself (ow!), etc.

Those conjugations are complicated and don't work like English, so that will be another lesson. I'm just going to do it myself now:

kšiπaχ

"I obliterate them"

So now we have a mood marker, an object, a subject (implied by the conjugated verb), and a verb!

That's a sentence!

^xe-əxnɒqč-kšiπaχ.

Trufax: Opponent I-obliterate-them.

I obliterate the opponent.

Next Time: How Do You Verbs? Fierce Attempts To Explain.