Haysh Gaelic ~Conlang

Mahean haoi - Chapter One

With this first chapter, you will be taught about

• alphabet
• sounds
• spelling rules
• broad and slender
• numbers
• time

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Lar doemor! (Let's go!)

The alphabet of Haysh isn't very complicated. In fact, there's less letters in it than in English, consisting of five vowels, fifteen consonants, and one special letter.

A B C D E F G H I L M N O P R S T U V Y È

Pretty much every letter is like English's, except the C always makes the /k/ sound, and never /s/. The vowels are a wee bit different though.

A - /a/ 'ah' as in 'aaaagh'
E - /e/ 'eh' as in 'elf'
I - /i/ 'ee' as in 'feet'
O - /o/ 'oh' as in 'over'
U - /u/ 'oo' as in 'loop'

That special letter, È, is the black sheep in the family. Just ignore it and we'll learn about it later. Ok? Maeh! (Good!)

A lot of the times, you will come across multiple vowels in the same syllable, as in 'haoven' or 'doemor'. What ever you do, do NOT read them phonetically. Bad bad. I'll show you all of them and their sounds.

Iu - 'i' as in 'bin'
Ao - 'ee' as in 'bee'
Ea - 'aye' as in 'hate'
Ae - 'eye' as in 'why'
Ua - 'ooah' just basically oo + ah
Aoi - 'ee' as in 'see'
Ue - 'oo' as in 'book'

Let's practice some reading...

Cat - /kah-t/ - cat
Far - /fah-r/ - man
On caona - /oh-n kee-nah/ - to get
Maher - /mah-her/ - mother
Vuena - /voo-nah/ - pleasant

Seems easy right? Well, sorry to say, but there's a lot more, and it only gets harder, heh. Don't worry. We will go one step at a time, and when you do so, you'll be just fine. Maeh! Remember, 'maeh' means good. Your first word! Yay! Anyways...

There's something in this language called, broad and slender sounds. Hard to explain, but I'll do my best. A, O, U are broad vowels, because the articulation are in the back of the mouth, sorta lower sounding vowels, and E, I are slender, in the front and higher. Ok, cute, but why's this? Well, these effect the sound of the consonant next to it. It changes sounds.

Let's look at this.

Ta - /tah/
To - /toh/
Tu - /too/

But....

Te - /cheh/
Ti - /chee/

Yep. And there's more, making there be more sounds to learn. Let's go over them.

You already know their sounds by default, which is the broad. Now time for slender.

SLENDER CONSONANTS:

D - /j/ as in 'jump'
L - /ly/ kind of a 'y' sound after 'l'
N - /ny/ like the slender l and like ñ
R - /sh/ as in 'ship'
S - /sh/ as in 'shark'
T - /ch/ as in 'chip'

Let's practice!

Te - /cheh/ - hot
Did - /jeed/ - past
Si - /shee/ - all

There's also a cool little thing you can do to change this rule up a bit. Like if you want to have the /ch/ sound before a broad vowel, you can do so.

Ti - /chee/
Toi - /tee/
Tia - /chah/
So on...

There's a lot more ways too.

Oi - broad ee
Oe - broad eh
Ia - slender ah
Io - slender oh
Eu - slender oo

Toi - /tee/
Toe - /teh/
Tia - /chah/
Teo - /choh/
Teu - /choo/

Soi - /see/
Sio - /seh/
Sia - /shah/
And so on...

This can also help you with learning your second word, 'doe,' which means I or me.

Now we can start talking about the letter 'è.' It's job is to turn a consonant into slender without a vowel, such as at the end of a word, or before another consonant.

Cat - /kah-t/
Catè - /kah-ch/
Spel - /speh-l/
Sèpel - /shpeh-l/

Remember, it makes no sound.

There's also a few other things and rules when it comes to sound and spelling, but it's more of a grammatical thing, and I'll go over that when we get there, so ignore the things like 'gc,' 'dt,' 'ch,' and yeah.

Now then. Since we just went over the alphabet and sounds, why not learn a bit about numbers, and use those numbers in things like time. The numbers are fairly simple.

1 - a haoi
2 - a du
3 - a tèroi
4 - a liord
5 - a casè
6 - a sea
7 - a siacht
8 - a ocht
9 - a nach
10 - a doerè

11 - a haoi doerè
12 - a du doerè
13 - a tèroi doerè
14 - a liord doerè
15 - a casè doerè
16 - a sea doerè
17 - a siacht doerè
18 - a ocht doerè
19 - a nach doerè
20 - a duya
30 - a tèroiya
40 - a liordya
So on...

I would show you how to count things, such as 'three cats' or something like that, but that actually takes some grammar rules, and we're not there yet. I will show you how to tell time, cuz that takes no grammar, and it's pretty easy. It is also a little bit different then how it's done in English, but bare with me.

The thing is, there's not really a way to say 'o'clock.' To say time, it's more saying 'it's 4 in the day' rather than 'o'clock.' Let me show you.

Morning - madin (mah-jeen)
Day - hean (hay-n)
Night - nicht (nee-kht)
In the - in (yes, in the can be one word)
It's - a

4 AM - Liord in madin
4 PM - Liord in hean
It's 4 PM - A liord in hean

I'm also gonna show you how to ask a stranger what time it is. It's not too hard. And I'll show you what the reply would be like.

What - casè
Time - tiat
To be - a/af
Now - fiun
The - an/na

What time is it? - Casè a tiat fiun.
What is the time? - Casè af an tiat

Which literally means 'what is time now?.' And yes, you have to say 'now' in the sentence. You can also say words like 'today' or 'this morning' as long as it has to do with current time.

Today - en hean
This morning - en madin
Tonight - en nicht

What time is it this morning? -
Casè a tiat en madin?

And you might get something like this.

A ocht in madin.
(Guess what that means)