olo Grammar

Nouns and prepositions:

While pronouns have plural forms, nouns do not. You simply provide the number of them as a modifier before the noun. It should be noted however, that there are only five numbers in olo.

Ex. 

• hu ta'pa'i -> zero dogs
• ape ta'pa'i -> one dog
• ni ta'pa'i -> two dogs
• ko ta'pa'i -> three dogs
• u ta'pa'i -> four or more dogs. 

Nouns do not have a masculine and feminine form. There are third person masculine and feminine pronouns but they are only used when specificity is required. 

Objects are proceded by wa when it isn't obvious from the sentence structure the object is. 

Posession is typically indicated via the use of ha. The word proceeding ha is possessed by the noun or noun-phrase following it. There is also meu which means to possess. 

Ex. 

Tom's house. -> pale ha [tomu]. 

I have a house -> meu ei pale

Definite and idefinite articles: 

olo has e (definite article) and a (indefinite article), but they are omitted unless you must be explicit. 

iti ei sa pale -> run i towards house. 

In English you would say "I run towards THE house", but specifying "a house" or "the house" doesn't actually provide any useful information to the reader so, in olo, it is omitted. 

wunevi ei e miyu'pa'i -> receive i the cat. In this case one assumes you've previously discussed a particular cat and are now specifying that it is that cat which you've acquired as opposed to some random cat. 

Proper nouns

Proper nouns are enclosed in square brackets. Similar to using a cartouche in heiroglyphics. 

maya (earth, dirt, soil) [mayati] (earth, the planet, the spirit)

Adjectives

Adjectives precede the word they modify. In the case of words that are both nouns and adjectives context is used to determine the current form.

Ex. 

piyo ei lipama -> I fill (the) container

e piyo lipama ->  the filled container 

When adding multiple adjectives, each adjective modifies the one to its right and are generally appear in ascending importance. The leftmost one being the least important and the rightmost one being the most. That is to say, it works in the same way as English's adjectives.

Verbs

There is no verb to be. 

Verb Conjugation

Verb conjugation is fairly trivial. Verbs followed by -na are active, verb that aren't are passive. There is no temporal or gender conjugation. 

Ex. 

• iti -> to run
• itina -> running
• iti ei -> i run
• iti nea -> she runs
• ma iti ei -> i ran
• ma itina ei -> i was running
• ka iti ei -> I will run

However, any noun or adjective can have a verbal form.

Ex.wowueilite (cold), wowueilitena (colding), and wowueilitemu (becoming increasingly cold)

wowueilite describes a state of being cold. wowueilitena would be what an air conditioner does when simply maintaining a room's temperature. It's not making it colder. It's just keeping it cool. wowueilitemu indicates that the temperature is dropping (it may or may not be cold at the moment but it's heading that way).

Tense

Olo has past, present, and future tense but verb conjugation does not change based on it. Instead you specify the tense at the beginning of the sentence and proceed as nomal. If tense changes mid-way through a sentence you simply re-specify at the beginning of the section with the new tense. 

Ex. 

ma olomo ei / ka iti ei / ma olomo ei toku ka iti ei. 

PAST walk 1pl. FUT run 1pl. PAST walk 1pl but FUT run 1pl.

I walked. I will run. I walked but I will run.

Questions:

To convert a statement to a question simply add ai to the end. This is similar to Japanese's use of "ka". When spoken there is a rising tone on the ai. Otherwise ai precedes the thing your are questioning, acting as a modifier. 

• how:  ai eine (what means)
• who: ai pa (which person)
• what: ai amo (which thing)
• when: (ala) ai tale ((at) which time)
• where ai ala (which place)
• how many: ai tiku (which number)

Changing parts of speech: 

With the exception of -na words, part of speech is derived from context.

Interpersonal Relationships - Social Heirarchy

Like many languages there are phrases in olo that are based on a social heirarchy. People are either above, below, or at the same level as you, however these levels are based on your respect for the other person or people. So, while you typically give respect to ancestors and group leaders, this is not a requirement. As an example, an American citizen might give respect to the office of President, but many simultaneously had no respect at all for George W. Bush.  So, while you might "look up to" (wueili wosa saele'iuno) the President, you would be unlikely to "look up to" George W. Bush. 

Loan words

olo makes frequent use of loan words. Typically these are just proper nouns and will show up in square brackets using the orthography of the originating language. If a word becomes frequently used a variant that follows olo's phonological rules will typically be created.