OLD PONISH AND THE ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE

A Description of the Ponish Language of the Pre-Classical and Classical Eras

Ponish is a member of the West Thulean language family. The languages spoken in Coltifornia and the Crystal Empire are also West Thulean, and have partial mutual intelligibility with Ponish. The West Thulean languages are very distantly related to the East Thulean languages, which are spoken by some, but not all, ponies on the eastern continent. Early forms of Ponish from the Pre-Classical Era are referred to as Old Ponish. Though the spoken language remained diverse into the Classical Era, a conservative variety was standardised for use as the official state language in the new Principality of Equestria. This standard is known as the Royal Canterlot Voice. Only Princess Luna still speaks like this regularly.

CHAPTER I - THE WEST THULEAN METAPHONEMES

CHAPTER II - AN OVERVIEW OF PONISH GRAMMAR

This description of Ponish grammar is based on Old Ponish and the Royal Canterlot Voice. Modern varieties may diverge from these characteristics.

Much of the grammar of the Ponish language is based on a distinction between three animacy-genders. They can be roughly translated as "somepony", "someone", and "something".

In transitive sentences, Ponish grammar does not allow a lower-animacy subject and a higher-animacy object. This is avoided by using the antipassive.

The default word order in Ponish is Subject Verb Object.

Grammatical sex-gender marking is rare in Ponish, usually it only occurs on intimate second-person singular pronouns (similar to "thou" or singular "you", but only used between friends).

Ponish uses a senary (base 6) numeral system. Like the decimal base 10, the base 6 is a semiprime, though it is unique as the product of the only two consecutive numbers that are both prime (2 and 3).

Ponish has many words for specific colours, but they are grouped into three broad categories: blue-like, yellow-like, and grey-like.

CHAPTER III - NOUN AND ADJECTIVE DECLENSION

Ponish has a transitive morphosyntactic alignment.

There are six noun cases in Old Ponish and the Royal Canterlot Voice. These are the transitive, intransitive, instrumental, comitative, genitive, and prepositional.
Subjects and objects of transitive verbs are in transitive case, while subjects of intransitive verbs are in intransitive case. The instrumental case is used for inanimate instruments, but also for animate patients in the antipassive voice. The comitative case is similar to "with" and "and". The genitive is for possession and other relations. The prepositional has locative implications, but it is almost never used without a preposition.

Much of the grammar of the Ponish language is based on a distinction between three animacy-genders. They can be roughly translated as "somepony", "someone", and "something".

"Somepony" nouns are the same in the transitive and intransitive case.

"Someone" nouns have a variety of declensions, reflecting it being a diverse collection of subcategories. "Someone" adjectives are the same in instrumental and comitative.

"Something" nouns have identical form for the transitive plural and the genitive singular. The plural genitive and prepositional are also identical.

The typical regular declension is in the table below.
In RCV, "-e" becomes "-o" after vowels "u" and "o". In RCV, some endings are dropped on the final word of a noun phrase; see "∅".

Irregular "Somepony" Nouns
ɸouni/fhouni/(p)óni = "Pony"

"Someone" Nouns
-ija/-iya/-iya = ponyland
-u/-a -u/-a (∅/-e)/-a = pony body parts

CHAPTER IV - VERB CONJUGATION

present, past, antipassive

first person singular, second person, third person

singular subject, plural subject (include comitatives)

singular object, plural object, plural "instrumental" in antipassive (include comitatives)

negation (-nou/-nakw)

CHAPTER V - TRANSITIVE AND INTRANSITIVE VERBS

CHAPTER VI - ANTIPASSIVE AND REFLEXIVE VERBS

CHAPTER VII - RECURSION IN THE PONISH LANGUAGE

LEXICON AND DICTIONARY