Telehe Nouns

Nouns in Telehe decline for five case Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative and Locative, with two numbers Singular and Plural, and are categorized into two genders Animate and Inanimate.

Gender
There are two genders in Telehe:


 * Inanimate - Non moving and living things: bamu "sand", itē "root".
 * Animate - Moving and living things: tlefe "priest", atta "father".

Cases
Telehe as an inflected language, i.e. the endings of most of its words change depending on their function in a sentence. Features the following cases Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative and Locative.

Nominative
The nominative case is used for the subject of an active or a passive verb:

Asay īčīste asod = The king drank honey.

Accusative
The accusative case is used for the object of a sentence:

Tlefe glazrē īdendri = The priest pets the dog.

Genitive
Used for possessives:

Tērēsu yom = Horn of cow.

Dative
The dative case means "to" or "for". It is frequently used with verbs of saying or giving as an indirect object:

Tey ōzdeste myamyal gōve = She gave a flower to mommy.

Locative
The locative case talks about location, equivalent to english "at", "in".

Yaš tiš tlefe īlzazbu = I saw the priest at the temple.

Noun declension
Each declension has its quirks and peculiarities as we can see bellow:

First declension
First declension nouns have the stem-vowel a. There are at least two types of first declensions and one subtype:


 * Ending in -a (e.g. četa "moss") mostly inanimate.
 * A subtype ending in -aC (e.g. issač "skin")
 * Ending in -ar (e.g. angār "tree") mostly animate.

Second declension
Second declension nouns have the stem-vowel e. There are at least three types of second declensions and two subtypes:


 * Ending in -e (e.g. tlefe "priest") mostly animate.
 * A subtype ending in -ei (e.g. ziglei "altar")
 * A subtype ending in -eC (e.g. īdem "dog")
 * Ending in -he (e.g. Telehe "the Telehe people") mostly animate.
 * Ending in -rer (e.g. ībrirer "rabbit") mostly animate.

Third declension
Third declension nouns have the stem-vowel o. There are at least two types of second declensions:


 * Ending in -o (e.g. eperēyo "law, religion, tradition") mostly animate.
 * Ending in -oC (e.g. tavōs "Blue Jay") mostly animate.

priest-NOM eat-3sg-CVB sweet_bread-ACC

'The priest is eating sweet bread'yaš yere-č bode-š

1SG.NOM book-ACC read-1SG

'I read the book'

Genitive
Divided into two Genitives, the genitive I is -l it means nominal dependency and possession, while the genitive II means addressee in dedications, composition, origin and apposition with the suffix -su, sometimes Genitive II assumes dative functions, depending on the phrase and the addressee.tērē-su yom

cow-GEN horn

'cow horn'

Ablative
It indicates a location, where, in, on, at and by, marked with -pu.

Adjectives

 * -yicu - from the root to be similar, it is an suffix similar to the -ly in English.

Some exceptions
Sometimes when two words connect to form a new one and these words form a long string of vowels an intrusive h is inserted between them.