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Lesson 4: Negation & Gender

How to Use This Lesson

This lesson is divided into four sections. Please move through them in this order: Grammar, Vocabulary, Practice, Flashcards.

Do not try to memorize! Just read through the content attentively. The warm-ups and flashcards will bring the vocabulary back later!

Negative

If kid is falfal, we know how to say things like "the kid eats" and "the kid drinks". But how do you say the kid doesn't eat something?

Just add um at the end of the verb! For example,

falfal i mo -> falfal i moum

How would you say the kid doesn't drink?

Can you create a few more sentences using -um?

Gender

All words in Oravia are gender neutral by default (includes all genders). But we have exceptions:

Oravia English
faejal man
faejor woman

Jal means male/man and jor means female/woman. When gender needs to be specified, put jal or jor before the word:

jor fare = mother
 ↓    ↓
woman parent

jal fare = father
 ↓    ↓
man parent

Unmarked words already include all genders. For explicit nonbinary, you can use torum (tor = two and um = negation, so literal translation non-binary).

Now take a look at these words from the FA cluster.

Oravia English
faibor spouse
fare parent
fano son, daughter
fasu sibling

See if you can say daughter, husband, mother, and brother.

You can add gender to other words too, for example:

jor hay = she

Preference is for not specifying gender, it's simpler! However, in certain situations, it can be necessary for disambiguation ("do you mean your brother or your sister?").

To sum up, 

 jor + word = female/woman
 jal + word = male/man

To sum up, 

 -um = no/not
 jor = woman
 jal = man

That's it for grammar today! Let's move on to the next tab: Vocabulary.

The MO Subclusters

Remember what MO indicated?

Click to check

MO = food, eating, and drinking.

A cluster gives a broad semantic domain. A subcluster narrows that domain. Look at the words below and see if you can spot the narrower patterns inside MO.

Remember, do not try to memorize them. Just read through them attentively.

Oravia English
molbai cup
molcui bowl
molvou bottle
moaria apple
moalen banana
moanih berry

What do you think the words that start in MOL have in common?

How about MOA, what do you think it means?

MOA and MOL are subclusters! They indicate subdivisions within the MO cluster. Each cluster can have between 0–4 subclusters. Subclusters are usually indicated by the third letter, completing a syllable. For example, with a cluster like MO, you could have subclusters that sound like MOL-ban, MOA-ria, MOU-je... but you would generally not have a subcluster like MOG-ali, because the third letter here is starting another syllable.

A few other MO words from the broad cluster:

Oravia English
moyi sugar, sweet
moval ice
moulu milk

🌍 Sound Connections

Moa means banana plant in Polynesian roots, and indicates all fruits in Oravia.

Banana is Moalen (moa + len). Len is like Latin longus (long), which is the root of the word longitude in English. Notice it is also similar to the word length.

So let's take a look at some other words:
yalen = long (quality + long), just like moalen = banana (fruit + long).

Matching Games

Time to practice! Match the Oravia words with their English meanings. Use sound-meaning associations as clues. For example, the subcluster sound tells you the category, even for words you haven't seen before.
If you don't remember or make a mistake, that's totally fine! We will have plenty of opportunities to practice. Right now just give it a try.
Click one word from each column to match them. The game will check automatically when you select both words.

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

🎉 Lesson 4 Complete!

Use the Flashcards tab for another quick review.

Come back tomorrow for Lesson 5.