It's plausible that this language might be in the habit of borrowing words from its neighbours, but without more information about who or what those neighbours might be it's hard to say much on this topic. For the sake of having some examples to work with, I'll pretend here that the source in question is UK Standard English, but if you want to imagine loanwords coming from Etruscan or Klingon then feel free to apply the same general principles to those.
PERSONAL NAMES are always treated as regular epicene nouns, and unless you've gone to the trouble of teaching people to read and write in the Roman alphabet first, they'll be borrowed purely by sound – by which I mean their idea of how the names sound. So for instance Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie would be liable to turn into Píta, Súsan, Étamanta and Lúse Pébanse (though an American Peter would be more likely to be heard as Pírur).
GENERAL VOCABULARY is put through a similar phonological mangling:
| fúpol | “(game of) football” |
| íngilis | “English (language)” |
| sámuis | “sandwich(es)” |
| tarausa | “(pair of) trousers” |
This language is noticeably reluctant to import verbs or adjectives, preferring instead to take nouns and build up other words and phrases from there: uikente “(a) weekend”, uikente·da acha·uk “to party”; chíkimpos “chickenpox”, chíkimposaga “infectious”.
Interjections are sometimes considered a word class in their own right, since they stand slightly outside the syntactic structure of sentences and therefore don't qualify as anything else.
FORMULAIC INTERJECTIONS such as ¡ utonnuáchap ! “hello!” and ¡ ousanaut ! “goodbye!” are the kind most likely to get into a dictionary. They originate as conventionalised set phrases (uton[·na an]nuach·ap “I greet you”), and often have a range of minor variants (e.g. for “we greet thee”). There are particularly variable sets covering roughly the same ground as our “thankyou!”, “sorry!”, and so on, but learners may be better off sticking with the usefully generic ¡ jejale ! “please!/excuse me!”
Also in need of some explanation here are the words “yes” and “no”. The translations given in the lexicon, ¡ uarde ! and ¡ muarre !, are used rather differently from their English equivalents, since a yes‐or‐no question like ¿ desen·uton ? “did you speak?” can be answered simply by echoing the verb in either plain or negated form (VIIb): ¡ desen·ap ! “I spoke (= yes!)” / ¡ me·desen·ap ! “I didn't speak (= no!)”. The specialised words may be used to form “echo questions”, establishing the expected answer: — suodanut·a, ¿ uarde ? “it's easy, right/isn't it?”; but answers that contradict the questioner's expectations are less likely to use an overt “yes” or “no” and may add the word silal (“but”): ¡ silal me·re·s ! “no, it isn't!”
EXCLAMATORY INTERJECTIONS may vary in form from one language to another, but they don't necessarily abide by the usual phonological bylaws and are often hard to classify or to spell, fading off smoothly into nonlinguistic vocal phenomena such as laughter.
| ¡ ia ! ¡ ua ! | expressions of amazement/admiration |
| ¡ ei ! ¡ ege ! | shock/disbelief |
| ¡ a ! ¡ aikh ! ¡ aukh ! | surprise/pain/disgust, etc. |
| ¿ o ? ¿ oi ? ¡ ou ! | confusion/dismay |
| ¡ ff ! ¡ ss ! | “shh!”, “wait, be careful!” |
Ordinary words can also be used as exclamations, but this tends to be mediated via the derivational prefixes defined below; for instance the commonest and mildest of oaths is ¡ s·iafakh·ap ! “by my soul!”
DERIVED INTERJECTIONS are a type of word that doesn't occur in English; they are formed with the aid of a specialised set of noun prefixes. Like verb prefixes (VIIa) these don't affect the placement of stress in the word they're attached to; the prefixed nouns look like subjects as far as adjective agreement is concerned, but don't occupy any such position in the sentence (they may for instance be epicene while the verb carries neuter subject‐agreement – IVa).
Although treated as a case in some languages, the vocative is a special kind of word that can be used to specify (and, often, attract the attention of) the addressee, as in “hey, kids!” or “o Caesar!” – and just as this language has two second person pronouns (IIIb) it distinguishes two kinds of vocative. If you're talking to somebody you would address as uton (VIa), use the polite form: ¡ khi·ortothién·ap ! “sir!” (“o my commander!”); ¡ lo khe·kua ! “gentlemen!”. If you would address them as na then that pronoun's twin is used as a vocative prefix, expressing attitudes that range from ¡ na·sajan·ap ! “darling!” (“o my heart!”) to ¡ l·a na·saiók ! “you dogs!”. In colloquial speech – i.e. most of the time – na· gets worn down into reduced forms: ¡ m·Pit ! ¡ n·Sus ! ¡ n·Et ! ¡ l·Lus ! “hey, Pete, Sue, Ed, Lucy!”
European languages don't have a traditional equivalent for this, but it's like a first‐person mirror‐image of the vocative, used to label oneself (“as a…”). It is most likely to be encountered padding out a humble vocative (“o my lord, speaking as your oldest servant, wouldn't you prefer…?”), though it also has less formal uses – such as n·arkhan·ap u·arkhan·an…, literally “hey my friend, as your friend…”, or more idiomatically “c'mon, mate…”
A last two suspiciously pronoun‐like prefixes are used to form “invocative” interjections, meaning “in the name of/for the sake of/by…!” The s(i) form is used if the noun it's being prefixed to is neuter, the i form if it's epicene; hence ¡ i·ji·om, si·nikhom·om ! “for king and country!”
This has two distinct functions. First, it frequently occurs with a sense roughly equivalent to “Oh what (a)…!”, as in ¡ jorda·ra ur·umfoun ! “what a big room!” (though it can't be used for “how enormous!” – it's strictly a noun prefix). Second, it can be used (usually with just a noun and no adjective) in grand introductions: ¡ ul·lul·ap ! “welcome to my home!”, ¡ ur·ji·oton ! “behold your (new) king!”
