Tegirenai, originally Tigerian, was my first serious attempt at a conlang, and as such has a grammar very similar to English, with some influences from Spanish. At the time when I began the work, I knew very little about how different languages work in terms of their grammar and syntax, but over the years I have at least attempted to coax it into something like a respectable language.
The grammar below is one I expect to be in a state of constant flux and improvement as I work to refine ideas begun twenty years ago and flesh out areas of syntax and methods of expression I either never thought about or never bothered to address.
One notable feature about Tegirenai is the fact that most words have suffixes to show their part of speech. This was done very early on, in an attempt to make the language seem ordered and more understandable from the perspective of someone making it as he went along. All the same, it is at least a sometimes useful feature, and if nothing else gives the language some manner of character.
The other notable concept I introduced, while creating Tigerian, was that of the Tigerian Language Council, a fictional body in Tegireserana charged with protecting and tending the language. At times their "improvements" to the language are thoroughly sensible and necessary, but at other times some of their decisions show that perhaps they were not all experts in linguistics. Partially (or perhaps mostly) this is to cover for my own faults; for the rest, remember that this (as all conlangs) is a work constantly under construction.
Nouns in Tegirenai are known as shanasin, or "names." Common nouns in Tegirenai end with the suffix -na in the singular form, hence their common alternate term nasin. Proper nouns often also end with -na, with the exception of personal names or inflected nouns (e.g. Jonatha, Tegirenai).
Nouns are made plural with the addition of the suffix -sin. E.g. matena (
Pronouns in Tegirenai are called nierashanasin from the verb nierane, "to replace," and shana, "name/noun." They carry no part-of-speech suffix.
| Nominative/ Accusative | Genitive Singular | Genitive Plural | Reflexive | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First-person singular | ha | han | hanen | na | |
| Second-person singular | hea | hean | heanen | nea | |
| Third-person singular | Masculine | hir | hiren | hirenen | nir |
| Feminine | hin | hinen | hinenen | nin | |
| Neuter | heran | heran | heran | neran | |
| First-person plural | hao | haon | haonen | nao | |
| Second-person plural | hea | heanin | heanin | nea | |
| Third-person plural | hun | hunen | hunenen | nun | |
| Nominative/Accusative | Genitive | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Proximal | this | shua | shuan |
| these | shun | shunen | |
| here | shuraha | shurahan | Distal | that | on | onen |
| those | os | osen | |
| there | oraha | orahan | |
Tegirenai sentences follow a Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) pattern:
San nemena rusilesani ina firilesana.
The boy reads a book.
Where a prepositional phrase acts as the object of a verb, it also follows it:
San nemina talini ton hinen tehana.
The woman walks to her house.
Haon maituna arudinin thalie Mitharagona.
Our guest came from Mitharagona.
When multiple prepositional phrases describe a verb, they are listed in the following order: means, company, purpose, direction, target, time, opinion:
Hean arena talinin turan san taielana firian hirenen matenasin thalie Hirona ton haon tehana turan hidearehana lor haonen sucanasin.
Your brother walked on the road, with his friends, for dinner, from Hirona, to our house, on yesterday, per our hopes.