The Grammar of qosta

qosta

qosta was Arimah’s second language.

It is something of a minimalistic conlang, with rather few phonemes and not very complex grammar, however it does use some suffixes and prefixes, and there’s much grammatical agreement, especially in gender, throughout the language.

The qosta language actually reflects the culture of the qostuti very well; the qosta language often divides things into categories (especially inanimate/animate/male/female, but also, for example, the Noun classifiers), which rarely (if ever) overlap. The qostuti society works in a similar fashion, being very much of a class society. Interestingly, despite this, the language lacks formal pronouns, and contrary to what the language would seem to suggest, the difference between male and female isn’t very large.

To make up for the lack of formal pronouns, however, the usage of verbs is quite important. For example, “What do you want?” would be asked to someone of a lower social class, while “What do you desire?” is reserved for asking those of a higher status. A soldier would never ask his tactical officer (who is of higher rank) “What’re you thinking?”, but rather something along the lines of “What plan have you devised?”.

More on this will be available as soon as a documentation of qosta culture and society is written.

If you are new to the qosta grammar site, it is recommended that you start with the orthography and personal suffixes. If you refuse to go there first, or if you’ve been here before, here’s a list of pages about the grammar of qosta:

• Orthography and personal suffixes
• Nouns
• Noun classifiers
• Postpositions
• Verbs
• Adjectives and adverbs
• Pronouns, intro
  • Personal pronouns
  • Relative pronouns
  • Demonstrative pronouns
  • Interrogative pronouns
  • Indefinite pronouns
• Native writing system (preface)
  • Native writing system (font)
  • Native writing system (images)
• Sample texts (coming soon!)

There is also a qosta dictionary.