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Why Reading Hadraic Sucks
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this article’s purpose is to demonstrate how an abjad system works in Hadraic
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 19 Dec 2019, 03:52.

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Menu 1. Word 1 2. Word 2 3. Word 3 4. Word 4 5. Word 5 6. Word 6 This article’s purpose is to demonstrate how an abjad system works in Hadraic.

Let’s break down a Hadraic sentence, written without vowels… yay

The sentence is:

الدّشي ورق رحڤ ألتقح أوليلزميم يومنو

Okay. So what does this mean? Let’s break it down, one word at at time…

[edit] [top]Word 1


The first word is الدّشي. The transliteration (letter by letter) of this word is ālddšī/y. Alright. Now, if you look this up in a Hadraic dictionary, you obviously won’t find this word. So we have to make educated guesses about the vowels that are missing in this word and what the different parts of this word mean.

If you see an aleph (Hdr. ʾarif) in the beginning of a word in Hadraic, it is most likely the definite article. This comes in two variants, one that is just “ā” for noun that begin in a consonant, and “āl” for those that begin in a vowel. In this word, we can clearly see “āl” in the beginning of the word (this also, by the way, means the word must be a noun). Now, this could be a coincidence, the noun could simply begin with an “l”, but more likely than not the noun begins with a vowel. However, you will notice that the letter after “l” is a “d”. How is that possible? Simply, the vowel is not written.

Alright, we have so far: āl-Vddšī/y. Okay. But if you look up “Vddšī/y” (written in Arabic, obviously), you still won’t find any results. This must mean that we have to break up the word further. There cannot be any further prefixes, so there must be a suffix. To spare you the reasoning, the only suffix that might work here would be the “ī/y”. The reason there’s a slash is that the final letter, , can represent either /i:/ or /j/, depending on context. This also means the suffix could have one of two meanings. It could be the suffix -iy, the singulative (“a piece of“), or -ī, meaning “my”. We’ll have to wait to see what the meaning of the noun is before we can decide. That leaves us with Vddš as our noun. Due to Hadraic’s phonotactic constraints, there must be a vowel between “d” and “š”, so VddVš, written in Arabic as دّش. Looking up that word we get one result, the word әddiš, with two meanings, “car” or “cart”. The exact meaning is not really important to us in this sentence. However, we can now determine the meaning of the suffix. “A piece of a car” makes less sense than “my car” (also the singulative is rarely used in this circumstance). So finally we have the word:

الدّشي āl-әddišī, meaning “the car of mine” or “my car“.

[edit] [top]Word 2


And that’s just one word. The next word’s transliteration is wrq. This is a fairly small word, and is likely an adjective, so looking it up just as it is gives us three results: “green” (warәq), “leaf” (warq), or “foliage” (warqә). As I said, this is likely an adjective (and “my green car” would make sense), however, it is possible this is a construct state, meaning that a noun following another noun (with the construct suffix, which is unwritten, but pronounced -a) is possessing it, except in this case the noun is already possessed (by me), so that is ruled out.

الدّشي ورق āl-әddišī warәq, meaning “my green car”

[edit] [top]Word 3


After that we have rḥv. This is also likely an adjective, for the same reasons as before. Looking it up in the dictionary gets us raḥiv, with meaning related to large size.

الدّشي ورق رحڤ āl-әddišī warәq raḥiv, meaning “my big green car”.

[edit] [top]Word 4


The next word’s transliteration is ʾaltqḥ. The length of this word effectively disqualifies it from being indivisible. This is almost certainly not a noun (it would most likely have the definite article prefix, which it does not), and the ʾa prefix seems likely, making this a verb. ʾa is the first person subject pronoun, meaning that the subject of this verb is, well, me. But wait, this means that all of the words we just decoded are either the object or describing it. We have to go back and add the oblique suffix to every word (adjectives agree with nouns in case), so we have āl-әddišīә warәqә raḥivә. Back to the verb… after ʾa we have ltqḥ. This must be the verb. There is no prefix l- after the subject pronoun, and there is no suffix -ḥ. Most verbs in Hadraic have a triconsonantal root, and there are four consonants here, one of which is t. This is likely the perfective infix, making this verb effectively in the past tense, or at least completed. This leaves us with lqḥ (put in the infinitive form — laqḥә), which has the meanings: “bring”, “get”, “take”, or “use”. Crap. We’ll have to wait for the rest of the context to figure out the exact meaning. Let’s go for “bring” for right now. The verb lqḥ is u-class, meaning that the vowel between the last two consonants is u, leaving the first one to be a, giving us ʾaltaquḥ “I brought”. However, we’re forgetting that we have an object, which the verb has to agree with, so we have to add -u, the third person object pronoun, “it”.

الدّشي ورق رحڤ ألتقح āl-әddišīә warәqә raḥivә ʾaltaquḥu, meaning “I brought* my big green car” or lit. “the big green car of mine, I finished bringing* it”

*we don’t know yet

[edit] [top]Word 5


Phew. What’s next? The next word’s transliteration is ʾawlī/ylzmī/ym. Oh god. Often times when you encounter a long word, you could try looking it up in the dictionary as it is and seeing how far you get. I get as far as ʾawlī, meaning “in front of”. This seems likely (adpositions in Hadraic come before the noun), meaning that lzmī/ym is a noun. Looking it up as it is gets us lazmayim “school”. Since there is a preposition preceding it, it must be in the oblique case, so ʾawlī-lazmayimә “in front of the school”. However, we’ve been sticking with “bring” as the meaning for the verb for now, but bringing a car in front of the school doesn’t make any sense, and neither does taking. Out of “get” and “use”, “use” makes more sense.

الدّشي ورق رحڤ ألتقح أوليلزميم āl-әddišīә warәqә raḥivә ʾaltaquḥu ʾawlī-lazmayimә “I used my big green car in front of the school”

[edit] [top]Word 6


The final word is ywmnw. At this point this can only be an adverb. Looking it up in the dictionary gets us as far as yawm “day”, meaning nw is likely the suffix. Luckily there’s only one suffix this could be, -әnwә, meaning “this”, so we have yawmәnwә “this day“ or “today”. So finally this is the meaning of the sentence:

الدّشي ورق رحڤ ألتقح أوليلزميم يومنو
Āl-әddišīә warәqә raḥivә ʾaltaquḥu ʾawlī-lazmayimә yawmәnwә.
[ˌa:lәd:iˈʃi:.ә ˈwaɾәqә ɾaˈħivә ˌʔaltaˈquħu ʔawˌli:lazˈmajimә ˈjawmәnwә]
DEFDefinite
"the"
-car-1SFirst person singular (person)
speaker, signer, etc.; I
.GENGenitive (case)
possessive
-OBLOblique (argument)
indirect or demoted object
.SGSingular (number)
one countable entity
green-OBLOblique (argument)
indirect or demoted object
.SGSingular (number)
one countable entity
big-OBLOblique (argument)
indirect or demoted object
.SGSingular (number)
one countable entity
1SFirst person singular (person)
speaker, signer, etc.; I
-use\PFV-3SThird person singular (person)
neither speaker nor addressee
in.front.of-school- OBLOblique (argument)
indirect or demoted object
.SGSingular (number)
one countable entity
day-this.NOMNominative (case)
TRANS subject, INTR argument
.SGSingular (number)
one countable entity

“I used my big green car in front of the school today.” or ”I drove my big green car to the school today."

Hadraic is a horrible language.
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