#ubese

The Ubese alphabet is simple, consisting only of fourteen letters and three punctuation marks. Stress in vital in Ubese for distinguishing between different words, such as "ya-tei," meaning "I concur," vs "yatei," meaning "dismember me." Stress falls in an alternating pattern— for example, "ya-teiset-ga," meaning "they are not agreeable," is stressed on the even-numbered syllables, while "yateis-etga," meaning "they are not separated," is stressed on the odd-numbered syllables.

Topic Markers

Topics in Ubese indicate the the subject or object of the sentence, depending on whether the verb that follows is active or passive. For example, "o, ta-chei" means "I hear you," while "ei, tasho" means "you are heard by me." The topic marker is often voiced as a comma in spoken Ubese and is transliterated in Basic accordingly. Not every Ubese construction requires a topic— for example, "ta-chei" means "my ears work perfectly." Third person verbs are inflected with either animate or inanimate pronouns. Sentient beings, droids, animals, and plants are considered animate; all other objects are considered inanimate.

Suffixes

Negative suffixes in Ubese negate a given verb. For example, "a, ta-cheitga" means "I didn't hear that," and "edchat-ga" means "that is not edible."

Optative suffixes in Ubese express a desire for something to occur or be true; for example, "os, yo-teish" means "I want to show you something," and "udis-esh" means "may they learn."

Polite suffixes soften an otherwise direct verb form. For example, "a, yuh-to" means "give me that," while "a, yuh-tocha" means "please pass the bloodworms."

Adjectival suffixes turn verbs into descriptions, which generally serve the role of nouns in Ubese. For example, "a, eg-teis" means "we eat," while "eg-taza" means "food," or literally, "it is for eating."

Mathematics

Ubese is a highly contextual language with no actual root nouns. Thus, they do not have base cardinals. Instead, numbers are expressed in terms of arithmetic. For example, to say "I would like to buy four jogans for one credit," one would say "a, de-go. Ei, ze-gei," or, "add four jogans to my cart, I will add one credit to your pocket." Inverse operations are expressed in negatives; for example, to say "I will only give you half that much," one would say, "O, gyuh-tatga," or, "divide the amount of jogans by two."