Snat Sajem Tan/Pronouns

Sajem Tan has 13 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 (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 4.

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 inanimate pronouns are 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). Vegetal pronouns, meanwhile, refer to anything that is alive but isn't an animal, so plants, fungui, 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 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 and are particularly useful 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.

Traditionally, members of the tribe who are animate refer to themselves in the third person and members who are vegetal use the second person. So if you asked a rock what it was the rock might respond "I am a rock." and if you asked a dog what it was it would tell you "He is a fox." and if you asked a vine 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 - to distract
 * gajinfê - to salute
 * gynömfê - to proselytize on behalf of gynaecology
 * xanönfê - to greet
 * xögakfê - to be courageous
 * šizûtfê - to remember

You might notice that all of these end in -fê and indeed they do. We will explain why in Lesson 3.

(word order)

(no distinction between subject and object pronouns)

(example sentences)

(exercises)