Parts of Speech:
The three parts of speech are:
Wod Dem:
Wod Dem are collecitvely the body of substintives, actions, and ideas that can be expressed as singular words. The can also dually (or even singularly) posses gramatical functions. Wod Dem include, but are not limited to: nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, adverbs, adpositions, and conjunctions. However, these traditional grammatical catagories are still used to education.
Nouns:
All nouns have one form that can act as singular or plural. A small number of nuuns have special plural forms retained for cultural preservation. Plurals are most often unmarked, however they can be marked explicitely by using the postposition "dem" or -erzj (only if the noun ends in -er).
Noun classes include: bah (spherical/celestial objects), pussn (human, ie mahn pussn), mahn/ooman (gender descripter, people only), beas/crittuh (animals, including subclasses: cat, dawg, bud, frog, fly) cya (cars), gun, brade, lily, rock, munt (obligatory), lan (used in most contry names), hus (buildings), room (rooms, only with verb), buk (literature), meat (replaces animal-food meat pairs), colluh (most often used with blud, oranj, grahs, worruh, bone, ashish, and dot), fruit, berry, and ting
Pronouns:
Pronouns are more complex in Melungeon than American English because they take from words in multiple source lagnauges and develop on Cherokee grammar. The types of pronouns include: subject, object/oblique, reflexive, dual, two-part (double subject), passive, and transitive (subject-object).
| wan | dem | ||||||
| foss | sekint | stree | foss | sekint | stree | ||
| subject | uh | ya | ii/hit | we | oonuh | dey | |
| object | me | ye/cha | um/err/hit | ous | yall | em | |
| reflexive | mesef | yasef | iisef | wesef | oonusef | demsef | |
| passive | memo | yem | erm | oum | yamo | demo | |
| possessive | meown | yorn | iiown/hern/hitn | ourn | yoruns | tharen | |
| personal | me'un | you'un | ii'un | we'un | yince | dey'un | |
| dual | foss:bofs | sekint:bofy | stree:bofem | ||||
| passive dual | foss:bofo | sekint:bofoon | stree:bofer | ||||
| two-part | wi uh | NA | shwe | shyah | shend | ||
| wi ya | skray | NA | chwe | chyah | chend | ||
| wi ii | eeno | nyo | NA | twe | tyah | tyend | |
| transitive | wi uh | memo | che | esh | NA | ||
| wi ya | erts | cher | ersh | ||||
| wi ii | bets | chwe | besh | ||||
Maakuh Dem:
Maakuh Dem are the set of words that exclusively posses grammatical functions within the language. These include markers to express tense, aspect, as well as modals and multi-function words.
| temporal | gwine, bin, beena, ad, a, des |
| aspectual | duh, dun, did, liketa, finna |
| habitual | duz, be, stay, studdeh |
| potential | may (mout, moutuh), coot (cuduh, cutn, cudy), (dun/nuh) bin guh (be) |
| obligatory | fuh (fuh dun, shutn, shudy), ort (orter, ortent), bleeze, gots, haffuh, mus (mussuh, musdon, mussy), mussy cuduh, moutuh cuduh, mout cudy |
Adjectives and Adverbs:
Adjectives and adverbs generally take the same, uninflected form. Adjectives mainly appear before their noun and adverbs generally appear after their verb (but can also appear before their verb or be topicalized to be the first word). Adverbs can also be marked semi-explicitly by using "fuh" as a perposition for the acjective; this allows the adverb phrase to have more placement freedom in the sentence.
Numbers:
Melungeon uses a number system inherited mainly, but not entirely, from Gullah:
Phrase Dem:
Phrase Dem are all words that would qualify for Wod Dem were they one word.