DERIVATIONS
Affixes
Noun → adjective: -thī
Adjective → noun: -du
Noun → verb: -tho
Verb → noun: -shu
Verb → adjective: -mo
Adjective → adverb: -lasa
One who Xs (e.g. paint → painter): -rre
Place where (e.g. wine → winery): -si
Gerund: -baza
Degree: “less” dovu- “more” levi-. To express “most” and “least”, the adjective or noun itself is reduplicated.
“Best” (most good) → levi.duadua
Sequential Numbers: “-st”/”-th”: -are
“First” → peto-are
“Third” → cheto-are
“Tenth” → uni-are
“Eighth” → apalu-are
“Seventeenth” → uni-use-are
“Fifty-Fourth” → ulima-sesho-are
Numbers: base 10 (counting on fingers is common). While illiterate, because of the importance of birth order in Seaspeak culture, most of the people have a decent grasp of math - addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They learn early, usually using small stones or reeds for counting.
Compounds
Agglutination: pronoun-noun-adjective is a common combination structure, as well as adverb-verb-tense-mood. Very short and simple sentences are pronounced so indistinctly that they may be transcribed as single words.
New word creation: often by compounds of existing words. Seeing what we would call a cow for the first time, a Seaspeaker might say that it is an “orca of the land” or virado. The part that seems to be doing the modifying, like an adjective, comes first.
Examples:
Write → tablet-speak → butu-lala
Rice → small-seed → sisi-ūno
Otter → fish-cat → mabā-māhle
Prosper → life celebrate → sisho asho-tho
Overflow → big-fill → ivu-asi