Wikipedia:Grammar problems/en

From Wikipedia

No user of na: has any knowledge of Nauruan grammar, neither an admin such as CdaMVvWgS, Jon Harald Søby or Belgian man.

This is the project to find out something about Nauruan Grammar.

Help or not?

Quote of an anonymous user (Nauruan)

"Hi Belgian Man, I am sorry I did not realise it weren't you. I will maybe come back in future but now I am too busy. Sorry."

I've nothing heard anymore from these Anonymous. Belgian man 17:23, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Quote of admin CdaMVvWgS

"Thank you very much for the adminship. I'll surely be more active in July, when I'll be translating the Nauruan grammar into German (and maybe learning it a little bit). But at the moment I'm busy at school (I'm still a pupil). Ekamwawir Omo ;) -- CdaMVvWgS 19:54, 12 May 2005 (UTC)"

I've nothing heard from CdaMVvWgS about Nauruan Grammar since then... Neither on de:Nauruische Sprache. Belgian man 17:24, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Mail to nauru.de

User:Belgian man sent a message to [1], for asking if the people of this embassy know any native Nauruan. Belgian man 18:00, 5 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Crucial problems

The most crucial problems as of now, besides the lack of vocabulary, are:

  • Tenses in verb. Present tense, past tense? I think that only infinitive is used.
There are no real 'tenses' in Nauruan. What we have are implications of tense.  

For example:
clean (adj) - dereder
cleaning (v.) - kadereder (it is actually being cleaned presently)
clean (v) - kaderederin (v) - it has been cleaned
iret kadereder - he/she/it is currently cleaning
inan kadereder - he/she/it will clean it
clean (v) - derederin (it is now clean)
nouns are pluralized by two ways:
stating the article:
tebeke ion - one cigarette
arumen iti - two frigate birds
amerumano - those two men/women
arumae ibiya - twenty milkfish
 BUT
there are rules relating to what can be counted with the articles mentioned above.  You can not speak of arumen tebeke as this means 'two people cigarettes' arumen is strictly for counting living beings.  There are more than thirty sets of definite articles, each of which can be used for only for particualr groups of objects, depending on their physical characteristics.  

Are there any more ways in which i can help out with this?  If so, let me know.  I will check back at this page weekly.  Hope it helps.
Oh, great to finally have someone fluent in the language here! Thank you for your examples, they do make things at least a bit easier to understand (though the article part seems hard; to me that only makes the language more interesting). There is a lot to do here, but what you wish to do is of course up to you. Welcome! / Jon Harald Søby 17:42, 12 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I would say the same... Welcome here and a lot of thanks for these information. I'll add it to our Grammar index. If you want, you can log in here... (It takes only a few seconds, you must not give any facts of yourself, it is for free and it gives some advantages). Ekamawir omo, Belgian man 17:43, 12 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
These are indeed the most crucial problems. And yes, all verbs forms are for the moment (probably) infinitives... Belgian man 17:00, 6 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Grammar index

Template:Naoero