Inheritance Cycle/Culture/Ancient Language/Sentence construction

Sentence construction translations for the Ancient Language.

Sentence construction

Descriptions are placed after the object they describe. The most common mistake made by people trying to speak the Ancient Language is to place adjectives before nouns.

Example: "Aí skulblaka ramr" means "a strong dragon", but literally translates as "a dragon strong".

Unlike in English, descriptions can be placed in any order following the object. Example: "Aí oro ramr hvitr" (a strong, white arrow) can also be rendered as "aí oro hvitr ramr" (a white, strong arrow).

Aside from descriptions, the structure of a sentence in the Ancient Language is usually the same as it would be in English. Example: "Gath un reisa du rakr" would literally translate as "unite and raise the mist". No restructuring of the sentence is required.

There are no participles (e.g. walking, swimming) in the Ancient Language. Verbs are either past simple (e.g. walked, swam), present simple (e.g. walk, swim) or future simple (e.g. will walk, will swim). Example: "I am following" would have to be rendered as "I follow" (Eka tauthr) in the Ancient Language, "I was following" as "I followed" (Eka tauthro) and "I will be following" as "I will follow" (Eka weohnata tauthr).

When two nouns are joined together to form a single noun, the descriptive noun comes first, as it does in English. Example: "Fethrblaka" (bird) is a combination of the nouns "fethr" (feather) and "blaka" (flapper).