Changing the tense suffixes
When writing the Gilgamish (see last post) I started to realize that there are really alot of fricative sounds. That’s not surprising given that the language has a lot of them. But I’m thinking of ways to reduce them. One way is to limit fricatives in grammatical affixes. The tenses has two fricatives, past tense -sh and future tense -z (present tense is -g).
I am also thinking that it could be nice to align Zhâburi to either Svartiska or LoS. So now think I will change the future tense -z to -b which corresponds to both Svartiska and LoS -ub (that would be the intransitive future in Zhâburi) and let the -z suffix mark past tense corresponding to LoS past tense -uz. I could use the Svartiska ending -(u)l but that would coincide whith the third person marker -ul.
That would give us:
past tense: -sh > -z
present tense: -g (no change)
future tense: -z > -b
Or maybe I just change the future tense to -b. I kind of like the past tense -sh.
Here are the published Gilgamish lines with -z as past tense suffix
- Lubashi-gha narz dubi, dalab gav-khu, ganazanûk
- Guzhubadazanûk, ishazanûk
Gilgamish-gha narz dubi, dalab gav-khu, ganazanûk
Guzhubadazanûk, ishazanûk - Fushazanûk ruk kând Bârad-khu
- Khutazanûk gûludûk shû-khu
- Ganazan dhûri, badzazan buzhi
- Ruzhazan zhabazhi zhûsh-ikhu shub-ishibû bâradbâ-iza
In the Shadow of Elvish - The Black Speech and Orcish 