Tutorial. Preface

Let me say a few words before I start speaking.

This comprehensive tutorial is divided into sixteen units of hopefully manageable sizes. They start with easy things such as the Lemizh alphabet and gradually proceed to the queerer concepts of the language’s grammar. I’d recommend taking the units in their proper order. There are some backlinks to earlier units as reminders, and links to later units, 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. (Actually, I could give you inflection tables, but this would be like giving you multiplication tables to learn without telling you why 7×8=56. I’m not going to do this.)

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 unit 2 for an explanation.

Exercises

The pen invites you to do a little home exercise. The solutions are hidden behind the keys. Some of the exercises are a bit tricky, but the idea is to show you the niceties of the language. Correct answers won’t earn you any points.

	Solve this exercise:
	Click the key!

Remarks

Paragraphs marked with paper clips contain additional information. You will still be able to follow the tutorial if you omit them, but they might be interesting nonetheless.

This is a remark.

Unit 1