Snat Sajem Tan/Pronouns

This lesson will teach you how personal pronouns work in Sajem Tan.

Sajem Tan has 13 personal pronouns. Here are the first 12:

The 13th, žo, will be explained in link to whichever lesson this is.

First person pronouns refer to the speaker, like English "I" and "me". Second person pronouns refer to the person being addressed like English "you". And finally the third person pronouns refer to everyone and everything else and are equivalent to the English "he", "she", and "it". Pronouns equivalent to "we", "us", "they", and "them" are derived from these and will be discussed in Lesson 2.

The distinction between the 4 animacies is like the difference between "he", and "it" in English: "he" can only refer to things are animals (or only humans, depending on the speaker) while "it" can only be used for other things. In Sajem Tan these differences are more detailed and apply to all pronouns. The lithic (also called inanimate) class of pronouns are used to refer to things that are not alive. Some people restrict them further to only refer to things that are physical (so, rocks but not love or confusion). The floral (also called vegetal pronouns) refer to anything that is alive but isn't an animal. Plants, fungi, ents, and that vine which has been sneakily creeping up your left leg while you were reading this are all vegetal. Given the scope of the first two, it's probably not hard to guess that faunal, or animate, pronouns refer to things that are animals.

This leaves the neutral pronouns which, as the name might imply, are neutral with respect to animacy. They can be used to refer to absolutely anything, even objects that belong to the other three animacies. Therefore, if you are referring to a mixed group or something that you don't know the animacy of, or if you've forgotten the other pronouns, you can use these instead. If you don't believe in calling nonphysical things lithic, then these are what you would use to describe them. It is important to note that if you are unaware of which pronouns to use to describe an object, it is much more polite to use neutral pronouns rather than to assume animacy.

Traditionally, members of the tribe who are faunal refer to themselves in the third person and members who are floral use the second person. So if you asked a rock what it was the rock might respond "I am a rock" but if you asked a dog what it was it would tell you "He is a dog." However, if you asked a vine what it was it would tell you "You are a vine. Thank you for letting you curl around your leg." As you can see, talking to plants can get somewhat confusing and you need to be somewhat careful to understand who is being addressed.

Now, practicing pronouns by themselves would be kind of boring, so here's some verbs to put them with:
 * dûdenfê - distracted
 * gajinfê - saluted
 * vyjytfê - listened to music
 * xanönfê - greeted
 * xögakfê - was courageous
 * šizûtfê - remembered

You might notice that all of these end in -fê and indeed they do. We will explain why in Lesson 4, for now just use them in this form and don't worry about conjugating them.

The word order of sentences in Sajem Tan is somewhat different than in English. In English, the subject comes before the verb and the object comes after. In Sajem Tan the object comes first and the verb comes last. So while "Sê dûdenfê vo." may look like "I (an animal) distracted you (a plant)." it actually means "You (a plant) distracted me (an animal).". Note that English has a difference between "I" and "me", between "he" and "him", etc. Sajem Tan, meanwhile, doesn't distinguish between subject and object pronouns.

Example Sentences

 * Ţu dûdenfê du. - That distracted me (floral).
 * Sê gajinfê vu. - You (lithic) saluted me (faunal).
 * Do xanönfê dê. - I (neutral) greeted you (neutral).
 * Xögakfê vo. - You (floral) were courageous.
 * Dê šizûtfê sê. - I (faunal) remembered this.
 * Vyjytfê sê. - I (faunal) listened to music.
 * Vyjytfê žu. - You (faunal) listened to music.
 * Vyjytfê xyt. - Everybody listened to music.

And now I've slipped in a noun. Let's have some fun with it.


 * Sê dûdenfê xyt. - Everyone/everything distracted me (faunal).
 * Xyt šizûtfê vu. - You (lithic) remembered everyone/everything.
 * Ţu gajinfê xyt. - Everyone saluted me.

Exercises
Translate these sentences:

Now go the other way: