The pronouns of P-Elvish
This post is now outdated.
I’ve spent some time this weekend working on the P-Elvish pronouns. They have undergone the same phonological changes that all PE words go through - beginning at the Proto-Elvish stage and finish at P-Elvish. The only difference is that some of them have undergone irregular phonological changes which would be unexpected; but I simply justify them by saying all natural languages have peculiarities and irregularities.
Personal pronouns
The personal pronouns (I, you, she etc) come in two varieties. Firstly in word form; and secondly in suffix form, for suffixing to verbs. P-Elvish personal pronouns do not have different forms for the subject and object. Also, P-Elvish does not differentiate between he, her and it.
1st Person (all from the Proto-Elvish root NĪ)
Sing. nen (I, me) Pl. nem (we, us - inclusive); ner (we, us - exclusive)
2nd Person (all from the Proto-Elvish root NĒ)
Sing. nev (you) Pl. nel (you)
3rd Person (all from the Proto-Elvish root Ē)
Sing. ech (he, him; she, her; it) Pl. et (they)
The suffix forms are:
1st sing.: -n 1st pl.: -m (inclusive) 1st pl.: -r (exclusive)
2nd sing.: -v 2nd pl.: -l
3rd sing.: -ch 3rd pl.: -t
Demonstrative pronouns
English demonstrative pronouns are words like this and that. These demonstratives work differently in P-Elvish to how they would in English. In English the demonstrative is placed directly before the noun we are talking about:
This book That book
In P-Elvish this is done using a phrase corresponding to English “the book here” (this book) or “the book there” (that book). This is also true of Welsh; y llyfr ‘ma (this book, literally “the book here”) and y llyfr ‘na (that book, literally “the book there”).
English also has plural forms of these demonstratives; these and those, to be used with plural nouns:
These books Those books
P-Elvish does not need to use plural forms, but instead relies on the plural article and plural noun to do the same job.
The P-Elvish words for ‘here’ and ‘there’ then are:
hen (here) hel (there) - used for things/places which can be seen. sal (yonder, there) - used for things/places out of sight.
il euer hen - these birds (literally “the birds here”) ir hain ganad hel - that red blood (literally “the red blood there”)
Head over to the r/jonlang subreddit to talk about this.