Basics

There are no uppercase letters in Modena, only lowercase letters.

Punctuations like the exlamation mark ! and the question mark ? are not used in Modena because they are not needed: they can be expressed using words.

The only punctuations that we have is to make writing explicit in situations where oral doesn’t have that issue:

  • The . (period) allows writing to separate sentences.
  • The - (dash) allows dialogues to be written clearly.

Note that unlike English, and like French, spaces always surround punctuation marks.

Commas are not used because sentences are already clear without them in Modena.

Quotes are not used either, because Modena has words to express them. (TODO: what word? Like ko … ok?)

There is also no italic or bold in Modena, but underlined text is allowed (and encouraged).

Who?

pronouns

the singular pronouns:

  • jo: me/I
  • tu: you (sg.)
  • sa: he/she/it

There is no politeness form in modena, this is intentional because

jo-mene: we tu-mene: you (pl.) sa-mene: they

you use

What?

Modena removes ambiguity as to what is the object complement in a sentence by using the construction “ko … ok”.

For example:

“I like apples”

in English translates to

“jo sarang ko pome ok”

in Modena.

  • jo: I
  • sarang: like
  • pome: apples

Complex sentences

Some sentences can be really hard to parse in english. For example:

“I like the blue car that you gifted me the day before we met your parents.”

In Modena, you can use two things:

  • linkers: “la” instead of “ok” to make the object complement the subject of the next part of the sentence.
  • pointers: to refer to complements of previous sentences, you can use label and point to them.

So using pointers you could deconstruct the previous sentence as:

  • the day before we met your parents you gifted me a blue car
  • I like this blue car

or using linkers: (direct voice?)

  • I like the blue car
  • the blue car was a gift
  • the gift happened the day before we met your parents

Let’s introduce the vocabulary first:

  • I: jo
  • to like: sarang
  • blue: azul
  • car: tram
  • to gift: cado

then in Modena the previous examples translate to:

  • pointers:
  • linkers: jo sarang ko tram azul la cado la …

Emotions