Beginner's Unit

Introduction
Pronunciation Guide
1: First Words
2: Simple Phrases
3: Greetings
4: Questions
5: Answers
Revision 1

Sarus Forum

Sarus 2 Dictionary

Lesson Three:

Greetings
written by chluaid

In this lesson you will learn a simple greeting and a simple farewell. You will also be introduced to a few new words and your first question word.

Possessive nouns

In the list above we have two possessive words: 'mine' and 'your'. Notice that these are reversed 'me' and 'you'.

• dr - me
  rd - mine
  -- - -
• dm - you
  md - your

Do not confuse the English words your and you're. The first is a possessive word, meaning 'belonging to you' and the second is an abbreviation of 'you are'

• md - your (belonging to you)
  - - --
• dm t - you're (you are)

Reversing words

Just like the possessive nouns above, you'll find that reversing any two, or three-syllable Sarus word can help you translate it. Very often the reverse means the exact opposite, and most others are closely related to their reversed counterparts.

In the list above, we have two adjectives, bad and late. The opposite of these words will obviously be good and early. Simply reverse the Sarus syllables in those words like so:

• sm - bad
  ms - good
  - -- -
• fmd - late
  dmf - early

Farewells

Using what you now know about reversing 2 and 3-syllable Sarus words, you have probably figured out the following:

• mt - hello
• tm - goodbye

The word fmd means 'late', but is also used as a farewell. Literally, 'later'. In the same way, another farewell you can use is 'dmf' (soon), meaning 'see you soon'.

• fmd - late, later
• dmf - early, soon

Red som

"My bad!" - This is literally an admission of guilt, and in Sarus, admitting you're guilty is as good as an apology. You would say "red som" in any situation where you're apologising.. like knocking an old lady over, spilling a gangster's drink or accidentally sneezing in someone's mouth.

Pronunciation

The upside-down 'e' in the pronunciation column above (ə) is pronounced 'uh'. If you've read and understood the Pronunciation chapter, you'll know that 'uh' is how all the latter syllables in a Sarus word are pronounced.

This character (called the schwa) is also used to separate two of the same syllable in consecutive words. For example, in the following example, a schwa (ə) is used at the end of the first word to separate the two 't' sounds, so they don't blend together when spoken.

• dt t - dotə ti

Without the schwa to separate them, the pronunciation of 'dot ti' sounds a lot like 'do ti', making it difficult to translate. Therefore, always use a schwa at the end of a word whose last syllable is the same as the first syllable of the next word. Other examples are:

• dm m - domə mi
• dmf f - doməfə fa
• ds sm - dosə som

Important Note: One-syllable words in Sarus consist only of a 'Prime' syllable, and as explained in the Pronunciation chapter, all Prime syllables are pronounced in a unique way. Therefore a schwa is never used in single-syllable words.

Did the last one (F) catch you out? I'm sure you figured it out easily. Even though we haven't learned the word 'there' yet, you knew it'd be likely to be the reverse of 'here'.

Whenever you come across a word in Sarus that you don't know, your first thought should be 'do I know its reverse meaning?'. This is of enormous value in learning Sarus.

--- --- ---

Now translate the following English sentences to Sarus. Notice that I haven't used a question mark (?) in the example. This is because 'rm' (what) is a question word. Marking a sentence with a question word is the same as marking a sentence with a question mark in English. In short, question marks are not used at all in Sarus.

In the next lesson, you'll build on your vocabulary with more words.

© A Phillips 2006