The Relay Museum

Eic: we-yomuɂos mawəɂes taaiɂai dətaaugod. Nhəteirin aa taaiš itooiɂ, eic hlo
fəfeteirin taaiš,
“cafeifətis hodəšeɂodan.” Eic hlo fəfeteirin tooiɂaeš,
“bəceitis hodəšeɂodan.” Fəbeifeteirin taaiš,
“dəɂooltoo rəpaeriifedaeš pinhaen dəcičodaš.” Dəcaebaicoin tooiɂaeš,
“Gelpinhaš?” Fəbeifeteirin taaiš,
“Fəšeɂus aa pinhon, yeegəcon deigočod. Fəsaepaeriiifoč nhətəcooɂčodef
but-šaɂub.” Dəcaebaicoin
tooiɂaeš,
“es nhəliɂeč šabutub dəɂečteitočed?” Fəbeifeteirin taaiš, “geeagoč bərətooiɂtooč
dətətiinaečed, yu
nhəgeeagoč bəšeɂtooč legon.
Note: I have put all the word roots in bold.

Here follows a tale about a cleverly abstruse dragon. This dragon and a bird
were talking, and the dragon said,

"I am contemplating the Universe." And the bird said,

"You are understanding the Universe."And the dragon replied,

He who is brave sees the Secret Mountain." At this, the bird asked,

"What mountain?"

"We are on the mountain at a hard place. We fight against the Embarassing Ones
because of their mode of dress." The bird asked,

"You mean they want to fight over tasteless clothes?" And thus did the dragon
respond:

"I think that you are a funny bird, but they think that you are over yonder."

Nouns and Verbs

but-ša: mode of dress.
ceit: understand; know deeply
ci: hide
coin: ask
eigə: difficult
feifət: muse over the deep workings of something
geeagə: to believe to be true, though not with very much conviction
leg: over yonder
li: fight against to the death with every possible measure of effort
mawə: a short tale, often humorous or didactic; anecdote
ool: see
paeriif: to be physically courageous in battle
pinh: mountain
šeɂ: exist
taai: dragon
taau: to be clever
teir: Talk with (+acc.); speak
teitə: to be tasteful
tii: laugh
tooiɂ: bird
we-yom: change paths. In this context, to change subjects.
yeegəc: place; location

Particles

aa: the aforementioned
-ef: against
Eic: Lo; so; behold. Also a conjunction meaning “and.”

es: question particle
hlo: thus, referring to that which comes after
yu: but

Affixes
Nominal Affixes

-ai: for; about; in relation to.
-es: into
-ub: because of
-on: on; upon
gel-: what; which

Verbal Affixes

fet-: then; and
bai: in return; back

Classical Gagish is a heavily agglutinating, polysynthetic (at times) language.
Its basic sentence order is
VSO.
Before anything, I should probably clear up the issue of Gagish vowel harmony.
Gagish has a system of
vowel harmony that is two dimensional
(very much similar to the system in Finnish, actually, although there aren't any
neutral vowels),
distinguishing between high/low and front/back vowels:

i u
e o
ae a
You won't have any trouble with this with the roots, but the affixes are all
affected by it. Watch out for
this.
Gagish nouns affixes the following things in the following order:
Possessive Prefix (marks the person and number of the possessor) + Base
(consists of the root + any
derivational affixes) + Case (Nominative, Accusative, and Vocative,
as well as many adpositional cases).

Possessive Prefixes (all e's correspond to schwas here)
Sg. Pl.
1st t(e)- y(e)-
2nd p(e)- hl(e)-
3rd s(e)- ch(e)-

(The vowels in parentheses are only used if the following element sound is a
consonant; The syllable
structure in Gagish is CVC)
Case Suffixes
Nom. -(a)sh
Acc. -(a)n
Voc. -(uur)
The plural is formed via reduplication of the first consonant-vowel syllable of
the root. This is prefixed
directly before the root.

Gagish verbs affixes the following things in the following order: Person and
Number of Subject + Person
and Number of Object + Base + Voice + Mood + Tense/Aspect
Person of Subject Person of Object
Sg. Pl. Sg. Pl.
1st -- f(e)- 1st na- t(e)-
2nd b(e)- sh(e)- 2nd sh(e) hle-
3rd d(e)- nh(e)- 3rd ca- sa-
4th* f(e)- r(e)-
* Has to do with discourse salience, or something of the kind; I am fairly
certain that it marks nouns who
will later be salient in discourse.
It also provides a clue to determining which noun the object prefix may be
referring to; generally it will
refer to previously occurring nouns in 4th person, rather than 3rd.
Voice: All meanings are as on
Wikipedia Mood
Active -- Indicative --
Passive -(n)o Optative -(n)ohl Carries
the meaning of a wish, but also functions as the imperative.
Reflexive -(n)a Subjunctive -too Is used to mean
"that."
Reciprocal -(n)aa Conditional -be Means would.
Causative -(n)a Volitional -?* Sometimes
means "does willingly," as in this text several times, but more commonly means
"want to."
* Just consider this a glottal stop.
Tense/Aspect
The perfective aspect views actions as a simple whole. The imperfective views
actions as not perfective;
it is used with other auxiliary aspects.

The progressive aspect views actions as ongiong.

Perfective Imperfective Progressive
Past -(u)n -(a)nh -(o)r
Present -(u)g -(o)ch -(u)s
Future -- -(o)f -(a)?
One very important thing to note is that Gagish has no adjectives; all
adjectives are verbs. If you wish to
express what in English would be a predicate adjective,
then you must the relative participle, expressing a meaning very close to "who."
So, "the red cat that
lives there" would,
in Gagish, be "the cat who reds (or the redding cat) that lives there." They are
always accompanied by
the inflectional information of a regular verb.
Here are the rest of the verbal forms: Relative Participle, Simple Gerund, and
Progressive Gerund
(denoting an ongoing process). All of these are marked for case. The case marker
goes after everything
else.