Lesson 2 — How to make a sentence
Basalo sentences can be put together in a variety of ways, with a few rules:
- The one doing an action, or the subject, always goes first,
- The one experiencing an action, or the object, always has a preposition before it,
- And a noun that's modified by an adjective will always have la before it.
For now, the object preposition will always be e, but later on we'll go over verbs with other object prepositions. Never ever forget your preposition!
Statements
With these rules, the basic structure is as follows:
| Type | Example | English |
|---|---|---|
| do-er, action, object | me yo yati e Basalo | I'm speaking Basalo |
| do-er, object, action | le e umal yo esa | he's eating an apple |
| la noun adjective | la taga imut | a good day |
| adjective la noun | naya la yok | a new game |
You'll notice that the verbs in these sentences have yo before them. This word describes an action that's unfinished or still happening, and always goes directly before the verb. However, you can get rid of this word if the do-er is a pronoun:
- me (yo) sin e salam. — I see a person.
- les e me (yo) dop ka? — Can they help me?
- mes e kafe (yo) esa! — We're drinking some coffee!
Questions
Questions are made by putting the question particle ka at the beginning or end of a sentence; sort of like a spoken question mark.
- le yo kan e kitap. — He has a book.
- ka le yo kan e kitap? — Does he have a book?
- le yo kan e kitap ka? — Does he have a book?
Negatives
In general, you can make a sentence negative by putting ma before the yo (or, as we'll see later on, the at or sa):
- aman yo nalu. — The water ripples.
- aman ma yo nalu. — The water is not rippling.
You can negate a specific word in a sentence by putting ma before it.
- ma inaki yo esa e mis. — The dog isn't eating the meat.
- inaki yo ma esa e mis. — The dog isn't eating the meat.
- inaki yo esa e ma mis. — The dog isn't eating the meat.
Wait, how do you say "the" and "a"?
You don't! Or, more precisely, there's no dedicated word for either of these. If you want to refer to one thing, you could use un, meaning "one":
- mama — the parent, a parent
- un mama — a parent, one parent
And if you want to refer to some specific object, you could use lel, which means "this" or "that". We'll become more acquainted with words related to lel in Lesson 5, as it's one of the doskamolas:
- kin — the plant, a plant
- lel kin — that specific plant
Remember, don't get confused with the word la; it's just there to mark what word is a noun:
- la oto naya or naya la oto — a new car, the new car
- la umal idaman or idaman la umal — a red apple, the red apple
Using lel versus le
Both lel and le are very versatile words which we'll see a lot in the coming lessons. In short, le means "he" or "she", while lel can mean "this" or "that".
- le yo meti e lel kitap. — He's putting down that book.
- tes sin e le ka? — Do you guys see her?
When we use lel before a noun earlier in a sentence, we can refer to that whole noun by just using lel, like so:
- lel salam, ka lel yo kan e mea kitap? — That guy, does he have my book?
- te yo sin e lel naja la yok? lel yo e aga kul. — Are you seeing that new game? It's super cool.
Some words to start with
Now that we know how to put sentences together, here's a few words you can play around with:
- me, te, le — I/me, you, he/she
- mes, tes, les — we/us, you all, they
- lel — this, that
- salam — person, man, woman
- mama — parent, mother, father
- kitap — to read; book
- sin — to see, look at
- esa — to eat, to drink; food, beverage
- yati — to speak, talk; speech
Don't forget the important sentence-building words yo, e and la!