Interrogatives
The following are the basic interrogatives in Berlean. The locative marker is dropped when fronting¹ to a preverbal position occurs. The postposition may be dropped with or without fronting.
ယာစဥ (fars) – yes/no question particle
ရဧု (lir) – “to be how,” “to be in what way,” “why”
ဇီရဧု (zielir) – “how,” “why,” “like”
မီရဧု (mielir) – “what (kind of)”
ဇြမီခ (zlrmiek) – “how come,” “why”
ဇြတု (zlar) – “what,” “which”
စာစီရ (sasiel) – “what the hell” (vulgar)
ဇြောငခ (zlarnrk) – “who,” “which person”
(ဇဧ) ဇြတုးငီကဥ (စီရတု) ([zie] zlar-niegh [sielar]) – “where”
(ဇဧ) ဇြတုးဇီရခဥ (ငီမဥ) ([zie] zlar-zielk [nirmr]) – “when”
(ဇဧ) ဇြတုးယာရ (ခာစဥ) ([zie] zlar-val [kars]) – “how,” “by what means”
(ဇဧ) ဇြတုးအီမ ([zie] zlar-dhiem) – “why,” “what for”
¹This will be further discussed when talking about focus and topic constructions.
Inner and Outer Interrogatives
(ဇီ)ရဧု ([zie]lir) and (ဇဧ) ဇြတုးအီမ ([zie] zlar-dhiem) take on different meanings depending on their placement in a phrase. If they are to the right of or inside the domain of the verb, then they have an instrumental or purpose-oriented interpretation. If they are to the left of or outside the domain of the verb, then they have a causative or reason-oriented interpretation. There is a distinction between the inner and outer placement with epistemic and deontic/dynamic modal auxiliaries as shown with ယြဥ (flr). With epistemic ယြဥ (flr), the adverbial cannot be placed between it and the verb sir; however, with dynamic ယြဥ (flr), the adverbial can be placed in-between and still has the inner reading. This is because the deontic/dynamic modality is located lower in the syntactic topography than epistemic modality.
ယြဥ စဧု ဂဧ ငတ ပြတ ဇီရဧု။ (flr sir gie na bla zielir)
ယြဥ စဧု ဂဧ ရဧု ငတ ပြတ။ (flr sir gie lir na bla)
– “How are you going to cook?” (instrumental)
ရဧု ယြဥ ဂဧ စဧု ငတ ပြတ။ (lir flr sir gie na bla)
– “How come you are going to cook?” (causative)
ယြဥ ဂဧ စဧု ငတ ပြတ ဇီရဧု။ (flr gie sir na bla zielir)
ယြဥ ဂဧ ရဧု စဧု ငတ ပြတ။ (flr gie lir sir na bla)
– “In what way(s) can you cook?” (instrumental)
ရဧု ယြဥ ဂဧ စဧု ငတ ပြတ။ (lir flr gie sir na bla)
– “How come you are able to cook?” (causative)
ယြဥ စဧု ဂဧ ငတ ပြတ ဇဧ ဇြတုးအီမ။ (flr sir gie na bla zie zlar-dhiem)
ယြဥ စဧု ဂဧ ဇြတုးအီမ ငတ ပြတ။ (flr sir gie zlar-dhiem na bla)
– “For what purpose are you cooking?” (purpose)
ဇြတုးအီမ ယြဥ စဧု ဂဧ ငတ ပြတ။ (zlar-dhiem flr sir gie na bla)
– “Why are you cooking? (reason)
ယြဥ ဂဧ စဧု ငတ ပြတ ဇဧ ဇြတုးအီမ။ (flr gie sir na bla zie zlar-dhiem)
ယြဥ ဂဧ ဇြတုးအီမ စဧု ငတ ပြတ။ (flr gie zlar-dhiem sir na bla)
– “For what purpose can you cook?” (purpose)
ဇြတုးအီမ ယြဥ ဂဧ စဧု ငတ ပြတ။ (zlar-dhiem flr gie sir na bla)
– “Why are you able to cook?” (reason)
ဇြုမီခ (zlrmiek) is used exclusively outside the domain of the verb and may be used in conjunction with other outer interrogatives.
ဇြေမီခ ငီမ ဇီဇီခ ဂဧ ငတ ပြတ။ (zlrmiek niem zieziek gie na bla)
– “How come you’re eating right now?”
ရဧု ဇြေမီခ ငီမ ဇီဇီခ ဂဧ ငတ ပြတ။ (lir zlrmiek niem zieziek gie na bla)
– “How come you’re eating right now?”
If any of the outer interrogatives are combined with ဝီရ (‘iel), then it becomes a rhetorical question with an implied negative attitude.
ဂဧ ဝီရ ဇြေမီခ ငီမ ဇီဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။ (gie ‘iel zlrmiek niem zieziek na bla)
– “How the heck can you be eating right now?!”
Basic Adverbs
The following are a list of basic adverbs in Berlean. To make an adjective into an adverb, simply use the adverbial form.
မတု (mar) – “just,” “only”
ဇီင (zien) – “really,” “very”
ဇီငထ (zien-zien) – “truly,” “indeed”
စဧ (sie) – “also,” “too”
ယြဥ (flr) – “more”
ယြုဇ (flrz) – “most”
(ဇဧ) ဂုငီဂ ([zie] grnieg) – “there”
(ဇဧ) ငေီခ ([zie] nhiek) – “here”
(ဇဧ) ဂုဇီခြ ([zie] grzielk) – “then,” “at that time”
(ဇဧ) ငေီုခ ([zie] nhirk) – “now”
မုဇ (mrz) – “still,” “yet”
အုဇီခြ (thrzielk) – “always”
အုငီဂ (thrnieg) – “everywhere”
ယာခငီခ (fagniek) – “never”
ဂုယာခ (grvak) – “today”
ယာခငုာအ (vagnarth) – “yesteday”
စုယာခ (srvak) – “tomorrow”
ငုယာခ (nrvak) – “everyday”
ဇီခြးထ (zielk-zielk) – “sometimes”
ယြုဇယာခ (flrzvak) – “often”
ဇီဝေီုယ (ziehirf) – “finally”
ဇီဂြဥ (zieglr) – “actually”
ဇီအုခ (ziedhrk) – “otherwise”
Sentence-Final Particles
ရဧ / ရီဝတ (lie / lie’a) – soliciting approval, expressing possibility
ပီငဥ မာဒုခ ခတု ရဧ။ (birnr malrk kar lie)
– “I guess we can go.”
ဂတု ရိအ ရီဝတ။ (gar luoth lie’a)
– “It seems good, don’t you think?”
ရဝ / ရိဝတ (luo / luo’a) – friendly warning or statement
ပဧ ခတု ရိဝတ။ (bie kar luo’a)
– “Just letting you know that I’m leaving.”
ဂဥ ဝီရ ယုခ ဇီဂ ရဝ။ (gr ‘iel frk zieg luo)
– “This is for you.”
ဝဧ (‘ie) – exclamatory or assertive remark
ဂဥ ဝီရ ဇီင ရိအ ဝဧ။ (gr ‘iel zien luoth ‘ie)
– “This is so awesome!”
ဝီထဧ၊ ပီငဥ ခတု ဇဧ ငီရဂြာင ဝဧ။ (‘ie’ie’ie, birnr kar zie nielglan ‘ie)
– “Yay! We’re going to the beach!”
ပဧ ဝီရ ဂဥ ငုာအ စဧု ဝဧ။ (bie ‘iel gr narth sir ‘ie)
– “But I did do it!”
ဝောင (han) – question of surprise, reiterative question
ဂဧ ဝီရ ငီရဂြာင ရောအ ငာခတု ဝောင။ (gie ‘iel nielglan lhath nakar han)
– “You say you want to go to the beach?”
ဂဧ ဝီရ ယာင ငုာအ ယုာအ ဝဧ ဝောင။ (gie ‘iel fan narth farth ‘ie han)
– “You say you ate rice?!”
မတ (ma) – an indirect question, introduces a topic
ဂဥ မတ။ (gr ma)
– “What about this?”
ဂဧ စဧု ငတ ဇြတု မတ။ (gie sir na zlar ma)
– “Whatcha doin’?”
ဝတ (‘a) – realization, reiterative statement
ဝီရဝတ၊ ဂဧ ငိယ ဇီရိအ ဝတ။ (‘iel’a, gie nuof zieluoth ‘a)
– “Oh yeah, you’re right.”
ဂုငီဂ ဝီရ ဇီငထ ပြိစ ဝတ။ (grnieg ‘iel zien-zien bluos ‘a)
– “This place is beautiful indeed.”