The Language Vorlin (2006)

### Chapter 4: Pronouns

personal pronouns

The personal pronouns are:

ya : I/me
ti : you
ku : he/him/she/her

Add -s to form possessives: yas (my), tis (your), kus (his/her). Think of this -s suffix as a contraction of the particle es. The possessive forms of the personal pronouns are used quite frequently, so it seems desirable that they be monosyllabic.

These three pronouns are assumed to be singular unless marked as plural. Add men (which means “more than one”) to create the plurals menti (you plural) and menku (they/them). It is possible to say menya (we/us), or you might prefer the less ambiguous option of saying the equivalent of “you and I” or “they and I” or “you and they and I.” (Note that men has become attached to the subsequent pronoun, e.g. there is no space between the two morphemes in menti.)

it

Vorlin, like many other languages, does not have a single word corresponding to all uses of the English pronoun “it.” This is because “it” has many different functions: sometimes it signals the presence of an impersonal verb (e.g. “it is raining”), sometimes it refers to something that has already been mentioned, sometimes it refers to something that is about to be mentioned (e.g. “it seems strange that you are laughing”), and sometimes it is shorthand for “the most important thing” as in the political proverb “it’s the economy, stupid.”

Vorlin does not have impersonal verbs; we say the equivalent of “rain is falling” instead of “it’s raining.” In referring to something which has already been mentioned, you can repeat the noun which names that thing (which is not a great burden, since the most common nouns in Vorlin are only one syllable in length). Vorlin also has a special pronoun that means “the idea of the previous sentence” and demonstratives corresponding to “the previously-mentioned,” “the about-to-be-mentioned,” and so forth.

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