Grammar
Nama has a subject–object–verb word order and has three gender classes: male, female and neuter. Male and female nouns have a singular, dual and plural; while neuter nouns only have singular and plural number.
| singular | dual | plural | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Female | piris | pirira | piridi | goat |
| Male | arib | arikha | arigu | dog |
| Neuter | khoe-i | n/a | khoen | people |
Khoekhoe distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive 1st person plural pronouns. Sida is the exclusive form for we, it only includes a specific group; as opposed to sada, which is inclusive and refers to all.
Read more about this topic: Khoekhoe Language
Famous quotes containing the word grammar:
“Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“Syntax is the study of the principles and processes by which sentences are constructed in particular languages. Syntactic investigation of a given language has as its goal the construction of a grammar that can be viewed as a device of some sort for producing the sentences of the language under analysis.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.”
—Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886)