Tutorial in nutshells. Preface

This short tutorial is divided into eight nutshells. It is meant as a more accessible introduction to Lemizh grammar than the full tutorial, but only treats the core concepts and will doubtlessly leave many questions open.

The tutorial starts with easy things such as the Lemizh alphabet and gradually proceeds to the queerer parts of the language. I’d recommend taking the nutshells in their proper order. There are some backlinks to earlier places as reminders, and links to later places, which should not distract you if you are reading the tutorial for the first time. If anything is unclear, or if you know how to make a point clearer, or if you find any factual errors, please contact me. Your feedback helps improving this website!

The most relevant parts of example sentences are often highlighted like this. Defining instances of technical terms are shown in bold and tracked (drawn out).

By hovering the mouse over Lemizh text you can display its transcription, and hovering over an abbreviation or symbol (marked with a dotted underline) will display its meaning – unfortunately, not on smartphones.

In lieu of a reference grammar

I have been asked to provide a reference grammar. The trouble is, there are no different parts of speech. There is no person, no number, no tense, no voice, no mood, and no aspect. You can express all of these concepts in Lemizh, but there are no inflection tables to learn – with two exceptions, case and level.

If you want a complete reference grammar: it is on the page Summing up, but it won’t be of much help before you have read the tutorial.

Translation examples

A light bulb marks examples. Many of the examples give a piece of text lemycù (in Lemizh), then the literal English translation in italics, and finally the text in ordinary English. An interlinear (word-for-word) gloss is given below the Lemizh text; see nutshell 1 for an explanation.

Nutshell 1