I got an ask, and accidentally answered it privately, but I WANTED to post it because it’s about some really crazy grammar stuff, so here it is (thank you, Outbox)
aivi-rou asked: Only if you've time. This is prolly asking a lot but I'm still having trouble with possessives could you explain singular and plural or maybe use some in a sentence so I can see how it's supposed to look.
I’m actually working on a Grammar For Trigedasleng Learners thing right now, but here’s a short rundown:
Plurality (also called number) is how many things there are. In English, we put an s on the ends of words (or we change the word in some other way) to say “more than one” (1 cat, 2 cats, 18 cats, all cats). In Trigedasleng (I assume you’re asking because you’re trying to learn Trig), we don’t do this. We don’t change a word if it is talking about more than one (1 gona, 2 gona, 300 gona, all gona). For pronouns, the only really noticeable difference between English and Trig is that English doesn’t have a different word for a plural (more than one) “you” (unless you come from a region that uses “y’all”), but Trig does:yu and yo (from “you” and “y’all”, respectively).
Possessives are all about who owns what, what belongs where, and things like that. In English, if someone owns something, we can say it in two ways. We can put the words next to each other, with the owner first, and slap an ‘s on the end of the owner (usually). (the warrior’s knife), or we can put the words the other way around and drop of in the middle (the knife of the warrior). It’s the same in Trigedasleng, except if you put the owner first, you don’t put anything on the end. You just sit the words next to each other, owner first, and... you’re done (gona swis). Or, you can put them the other way around, and drop komin the middle where you’d put of in English (swis kom gona).
So what if you want to use pronouns? Well, here’s the basic rule: if you have to say the thing that is being owned (e.g. “my knife”, “his child”, “their village”), you follow the rules above. Easy. If you’re not explicitly saying the name of the object that is being owned, you use a possessive pronoun. In English, we have “mine”, “ours”, “yours”, “his”, “hers”, “its”, and “theirs” (”that’s mine”, “this is hers”, etc.). In Trigedasleng, we have ain (mine), oson (ours), yun (yours), yon (y’all’s), and emon (his, hers, its, OR theirs). So you get daun laik ain, dison laik emon, etc. (Yon is the possessive version of yo, which is a pluralyou.)
But when you get plural possessives, then you know someone’s owning more than one thing. The only time this is relevant is when you get a pronoun involved and the thing being owned is plural.
oma swis “[all] my knives” vs ai swis “my knife”
emo laik omon “they are [all] mine” vs em laik ain “it is mine”
oso swis “[all of] our knives” or “our knife” (”our” doesn’t have a different form here)
emo laik oson “they are [all] ours” vs em laik oson “it is ours” (”ours” doesn’t have a different form)
oyu swis “[all] your knives” vs yu swis “your knife”
emo laik oyun “they are [all] yours” vs em laik yun “it is yours”
oyo swis “[all of] y’all’s knives” vs yo swis “y’all’s knife”
emo laik oyon “they are [all] y’all’s” vs em laik yon “it is y’all’s”
om swis “[all] his/her/its knives” vs em swis “his/her/its knife”
omo swis “[all of] their knives” vs emo swis “their knife”
emo laik omon “they are [all] his/hers/its/theirs” vs em laik emon “it is his/hers/its/theirs”
I really hope this helps, and if not, I’ll make an announcement when the Grammar For Trigedasleng Learners is complete, and hopefully that will be much more in-depth and useful.
