The Isu language alphabet is made up of 41 phonemes, which are used to build both words and numbers.

Under every character, you will be able to find the corresponding romanization.

The romanized phonemes using an underdot like ṇ or ṃ are different from their corresponding standard characters (e.g. “n” or “m”) and are meant to describe different phonemes / letters in the Isu Language.
They are pronounced usually by adding the sound /u:/ before or after the sound of the corresponding standard character.

a

A

à

b

c

d

e

è

é

f

g

G

h

i

ì

k

K

l

L

m

M

a

á

à

b

ch

d

e

æ

é

f

g

gw

h

i

ì

k

kw

l

ḷ

m

ṃ

n

N

o

ò

O

Q

p

r

H

R

s

S

t

u

U

ù

v

w

y

z

n

ṇ

o

ô

ó

ò

p

r

rh

ṛ

s

sh

t

u

ú

ű

v

w

y

z

In the following page, you will be able to find the already known personal pronouns of the Isu Language.

I	hM	hM HlabmNA hNdR apo ubospakomi I suspect theft from the inside
You (sing.)	dù	dù duh hàsòdi tA càyzàsi You are looking for what is part of you
He	Unknown	No Examples Yet
She	Unknown	No Examples Yet
It	Unknown	No Examples Yet
We	NsM	NsM N maHràcid sya Gar R HabmNòd For the labour we cannot do ourselves
You (pl.)	èù	èù tràc Rcàdi ig kLàdi You lock or hide them
They	toè	toè HNèsàè zo ubospaknosmid aèHòdica They must be suspicious in matter of imagination

"Grammatical case" is a linguistics term regarding a manner of categorizing nouns, pronouns, adjectives, participles, and numerals according to their traditionally corresponding syntactical functions within a given phrase, clause, or sentence.
In some languages, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, determiners, participles, prepositions, numerals, articles and their modifiers take different inflected forms, depending on their case.

Although not very prominent in modern languages, cases featured much more saliently in ancient Indo-European languages, such as Latin, Old Persian, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit. Historically, the Indo-European languages had eight morphological cases:

CASE	INDICATES	IT ANSWERS THE QUESTION
NOMINATIVE	Subject of a finite verb	Who or what?
ACCUSATIVE	Direct object of a transitive verb	Whom or what?
GENITIVE	Possessor of another noun	Whose? What of?
DATIVE	Indirect object of a verb	To whom? To what?
ABLATIVE	Movement away from	Whence? From where/whom?
LOCATIVE	Location, either physical or temporal	Where or wherein? When?
INSTRUMENTAL	Means/tool/companion present in/while performing an action	How? With what or using what? By what means? With whom? For which reason?
VOCATIVE	Addressee of a sentence	//

In the Isu language we can find most of these cases and in the tabs below you can find the suffixes that identify the various cases with some examples to better understand their use.




ISU NOMINATIVE CASE

The nominative case is used to indicate the subject of a verb.
Example: I (subject) ate an apple

In the Isu language, there are two ways of expressing the nominative case.

For INANIMATE WORDS (such as "sword" or "lake") the nominative is represented by the stem of the word with no declensions.


For ANIMATE WORDS (such as "father" or "children") the nominative is created by adding the suffix s.


ISU ACCUSATIVE CASE

The accusative case is used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
Example: I ate an apple (direct object)

In the Isu language it can be identified by three suffixes:

A	hM HlabmNA ubospakomi I suspect theft Used for INANIMATE and NON TANGIBLE words such as "hope", "fear" or "future"
c	hèz NRcdrM hèzc Nsèscid The key is the sword Used for INANIMATE and TANGIBLE words such as "sword" or "wound"
m	dù duàs dawHrm vRHàsi Will you save your children Used for ANIMATE words such as "children"

ISU GENITIVE CASE

The genitive case is used to indicate an attributive relationship of a noun to another one, to specify the meaning of the word it refers to or to show possession.
Example: I ate Mark's (possession) apple


IMPORTANT - In the Isu language it is usually placed right before the term it refers to.

The suffix for this case is:

às

ISU DATIVE CASE

The dative case shows the indirect object of a verb, meaning the recipient of the direct object [give to], but it can also show directions of movement [go to], both tangible and figurative (destination).
Example #1: I sent Mark (indirect object) a letter.
Example #2: Mark ran (go to) towards the Post Office

The suffix for the dative case is:

àè

A particular detail worth mentioning in the dative case is what we have always called as "dative of purpose or advantage" indicating a person or thing for whose benefit or to whose prejudice the action is performed.

In this case the suffix for the dative of purpose would be the same as the one for the causal case:

òd

ISU ABLATIVE CASE

The ablative case is used to express motion away from something, among other uses.
Example: Mark is travelling from Paris (motion from a place).

In order to express a motion from a place, the suffix should be:

os

ISU LOCATIVE CASE

The locative case is used to express a location in space or in time.
Example: I am in London (locative)

The suffix for the locative case is:

è

ISU INSTRUMENTAL CASE

The Instrumental case is used to indicate that a noun is the instrument or means by or with which the subject achieves or accomplishes an action.
Example: I washed it with the soap.

The suffix for the instrumental case is:

h

In latin this case would translate other complements besides the instrumental one and, for those of you not familiar with this kind of languages, it would translate all the parts of the sentence that would answer the following questions:


ISU CAUSAL CASE

The causal case is used to indicate that the marked noun is the cause or reason for something.
Example: I gave up because of him.

The suffix for the causal case is:

òd

ISU VOCATIVE CASE

The vocative case is used for a noun that identifies a person (animal, object, etc.) as they are being addressed, or occasionally for the determiners of that noun.
Example: Mark (vocative), give me the apple

Within the Isu language it looks like the vocative case for a word is expressed in the same way as the nominative case for that same word, as it often happens in Latin and is even more frequent in the more modern languages.

The verb to be is always placed as a suffix at the end of its predicative complement which can be a noun or an adjective.

In the Isu Language the verb to be does not need any marker to indicate the verb person and thus is used in the same way for any subject, while it needs to be conjugated for what concerns the verbal tense (present or past).

Present tense	id		Past tense	ad
doè ubospaknosmid They are suspicious			doè ubospaknosmad They were suspicious

The predicative complement itself can be identified by three suffixes (with some exceptions): A, c and m.

As you might have noticed, these are the same suffixes used for the accusative case and should be used, when writing the Subject, following the same rules used for the accusative case (A for inanimate non-tangible words, c for inanimate tangible words, m for animate words).

The same rules also apply to the predicative complements used with other verbs than “to be”.

In the Isu language, verbs are identified by specific suffixes or particles that give the reader information about:

• Verb person
• Verb tense
• Verb moods
• Verb voice

A. VERB PERSONS

In the Isu language there are six different verb persons and each of them has its own suffix to help the reader identifying the subject of the verb.
The verb persons are:

1st person singular	om	1st person plural	oms
hM hèw7comi I abandon		NsM hèw7comsi We abandon
2nd person singular	às	2nd person plural	àd
dù hèw7càsi You abandon		dù hèw7càdi You abandon
3rd person singular	òd	3rd person plural	Nd
?? hèw7còdi He/she/it abandons		toè hèw7cNdi They abandon

B. VERB TENSES

In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference.
The main tenses found in many languages include past, present, and future. Contrarily, some languages only have two distinct tenses, as it happened in the Proto-Indo-European languages, that is “present/future” and “past”.

That is also the case for the Isu Language, which, based on the current corpus, features two verb tenses only:

• Present tense: this tense is used to describe events happening in the present or in the future depending on the context of the sentence.
• Past tense: this tense is used to describe events happening in the past.

As a consequence, this means that there is no indicator in the sentence to suggest whether to consider it in the present or in the future. The reader needs to extrapolate that from the context.
Former Associate Game Director and Isu language creator Antoine Henry explained in a Twitter post that the Isu people did not need indicators to tell them how to interpret a sentence. As per his words, the Isu people had "A 6th Sense, that they locked away from us. "Knowledge" as Juno put it. We will never comprehend it fully, but some of us can awaken fractions of it. This is called many names, but the Animus introduced it to Desmond as "Eagle Vision". A capacity to understand intent."

This will be important later to understand the verb moods because, as we will see, the Irrealis moods have no correspondence in the Isu language.

Going back to the verb tenses, it is possible to recognize two suffixes at the very end of the verb (after the person suffix) that indicate the present/future and past tenses:

Present Tense	i	Past tense	a
hM hèw7comi I abandon/I will abandon		hM hèw7coma I abandoned

A special mention should be given to the PRESENT CONTINUOS TENSE, which should be considered along the other tenses, but has appeared only once within the current corpus and thus still needs to be corroborated.

In order to build a verb in this tense, based on the only example at disposal, the verb needs to be conjugated in its present tense followed by the particle: de



C. VERB MOODS

"In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used for signaling modality. It is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying (for example, a statement of fact, of desire, of command, etc.)" (Source: Wikipedia)


This is the reason why the so-called "Irrealis moods" are probably never going to appear in the Isu Language. That is substantiated by considering that some Irrealis moods, such as imperative and conditional, should have already been featured, based on the official translations, but no evident indicator has been found to signal their presence.
The reason is, as Antoine Henry stated, that thanks to their Knowledge, the Isu people did not need indicators to understand the intention of their interlocutor.

The Isu Language also features a single "Realis mood", that is the Indicative. This mood contains the past, present/future and present continuous tenses, as explained above.

Along with this, a number of additional verb forms can be found in the current corpus of the Isu Language:

INFINITIVE FORM

How to build it: Verb with no suffixes followed by the particle R oènosrs caH R calHèNdicR All are summoned to fight

PRESENT PARTICIPLE and -ING FORM

How to build it: The suffix for this form is Nd This form allows verbs to be used as adjectives SuàrNd cuès A burning sight

PAST PARTICIPLE FORM

How to build it: The suffix for this mood is to In this form the suffix never changes and, as it happens in a lot of languages, these verbs can be used as adjectives too. hA kLto wahèdac The hidden truth

D. VERB VOICES

The voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state) that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its arguments (subject, object, etc.).

In this category we can find the ACTIVE VOICE, which corresponds to all the verbal forms and tenses described above, and the PASSIVE VOICE identified by the suffix  cR


The Passive Voice also needs the writer to identify the verbal tense by adding i [present tense] or a [past tense] before the suffix cR.
Finally, the Passive Voice needs to also identify the verbal persons, as described above.

Nouns represent the name of specific objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.
In the Isu language nouns are used for a variety of purposes and always have to be declined according to the grammatical case connected to the function they need to carry out in the sentence (you can check the Grammatical Cases tab for more information).

In some cases, nouns in the Isu language are built based on other types of words such as verbs or adjectives.

In the following tab you can find all the grammar rules connected to nouns and their construction that we were able to compile, based on the current corpus. This tab will be updated as more information gets released.

VERBAL NOUNS

Nouns that derive from verbs (verbal nouns) can be constructed in at least two different ways, “with a slightly different connotation” from each other, according to Antoine Henry.

The first construction requires to use the root of the verb followed by the particle ès


The second construction requires to use the root of the verb followed by the particle mN




ADJECTIVE-DERIVED NOUNS

As it happens in many languages, the Isu Language too seems to feature nouns that are derived from adjectives. This is a type of nouns that uses specific suffixes to describe a concept based on such adjectives rather than a person or group of people endowed with the quality described by said adjectives (those would be substantive adjectives).

For example, in English an adjective-derived noun would be “strength”, based on the adjective “strong”, while the corresponding substantive adjective would be “the strong (people)”.

In the Isu Language, some adjective-derived nouns seem to be constructed by using the suffix os

The suffix os is also used as a case marking for the ablative case, so make sure to not confuse the two purposes of the suffix.



AGENTIVE SUFFIXES

In linguistics, an agent noun is a word derived from another word denoting an action, which identifies the entity that performs that action. For example, in English, agent nouns are words like “writer”, “donor”, “stylist”, which are created by using the verbs / nouns “write”, “donate”, “style” and adding the suffixes “-er”, “-or”, “-ist”.
These suffixes are called Agentive Suffixes, as in suffixes that indicate a word derived from an action.

The Isu Language features Agentive Suffixes, such as dac, which indicates “a person that does..”.

Using Antoine Henry’s words, dac “is a complex noun-forming suffix. It's kind of archaic in the Isu language, a remnant of an even older form of the language.” As such, this suffix can also have different purposes than the agentive one.


There seems to also be a second construction working as agentive suffix, and that’s by using the root of the verb followed by the particle ér, which should indicate "a person that does.." or "a thing that does.."

Currently there is not much evidence to prove the existence of this construction, but there are even more nouns ending with this suffix, such as mactér - “mother”, HLbmRvér – “designs” and HNhér – “father”, which might prove to be useful to confirm the construction in the future.

In the Isu Language, adjectives are to be placed before the word they are referring to and with the same conjugation.
The only exception is represented by the verbs in their past participle and present participle forms used as adjectives: in these cases their declension does not follow that of the word they refer to but it keeps to the past participle suffix To and the present participle one Nd.

Sometimes adjectives can be used to replace the name that they would modify. In that case they are called substantive adjectives and, as suggested by their name, they act as substantives / nouns.
To give an example to better understand this rule, in the sentence "out with the old, in with the new", “old” and “new” act as substantives with the meaning of "old things" and "new things".

In the Isu language, the substantivized adjectives are identified by the suffix s and rs (for the plural).

The suffixrs seems to also be used to determine collective nouns, that is nouns indicating a group of entities, such as Hàbérrs – “The Workers”.




Another important and irregular class of adjectives is the possessive one, which does not always follow the declension of the word it refers to (hence the irregularity).

Currently it is still not clear how the possessive adjectives are to be declined as some if not all of them seem to behave irregularly (such as the Isu correspondent to "their").
In the following table, which will be updated as more data becomes available, you can find the already known possessive adjectives of the Isu Language.

My	hmàs	hM hmàs cNHUh hasòca I was part of my family
Your (sing.)	duàs	dù duàs zwayrA hèw7càsi Abandon your fears
His	Unknown	No Examples Yet
Her	Unknown	No Examples Yet
Its	Unknown	No Examples Yet
Our	Nsmàs	Nsmàs hucA vRH R Save our future
Your (pl.)	Unknown	No Examples Yet
Their	trAs toèm tràè	zéHUàè hrA lèsrs trAs hàGRmècA hnomNdi Fate is what the weak name their cowardice toè toèm lolhèsrA cNdè zdòNdi They go against their desires tràè hNzàhèsàè cN saHA azHN R To guarantee control over their behaviour

Postpositions and some adverbs are always placed after the word they are referring to. The following table contains the currently known ones:

Against	cNtè	Supports the dative case àè
As	laèH	Supports the dative case àè
Before/in Front	bR	Supports the locative case è
From	apo	Supports ??
In	hN	Supports the locative case è
In matters of	zo	Supports the dative case àè
Instead	stLmNè hN	Idiomatic form
Over	cN	Supports the dative case àè
When	Kardè	Adverb
Where	az	Adverb

In addition to that, adverbs deriving from adjectives are often recognizable from their ending with the letter h.


In a way, that can be related to the Grammatical Instrumental case because adverbs deriving from adjectives often express a way in which the action is performed.

To better understand it, we suggest having a look at the "Grammatical cases " tab of this page, in the Instrumental case section.

As we mentioned in said tab, in Latin, the instrumental case would translate many complements and, for those of you not familiar with this language, it would translate all the parts of the sentence that answer the following questions:


Back to the topic at hand, if we analyze a sentence with an adverb inside of it, we will be able to see how adverbs sometimes answer the question "How?"

For example, in the sentence "The sun shone warmly", the sun is the subject, shone is the verb and warmly answers the question "How does the sun shine?" → Warmly/with warmth.

This may be a reason why, in the Isu Language, some adverbs have the same suffix of the instrumental case.

The conjunction AND can appear in an Isu Language in a sentence in two ways:

• As a suffix affixed to the word it annexes, as in happens in Latin (es. Senātus Populusque Rōmānus)
• As a standalone particle

In the first case, presumably used to tie nouns or adjectives together, the encyclical conjunction is translated as follows: Kat

In the second onee, presumably used to tie sentences together, the conjunction is translated with the standalone particle: L


In the Isu language, the negation is expressed by using the letter N

As it happens with the conjunction “and”, the negation can also appear within a sentence in two ways:

• As a prefix to signify the contrary of the subsequent word
• As a standalone particle, working as a conjunction

In the first case, the encyclical negation would appear as follows:


In the second one, the conjunction is translated with the standalone particle: N




The following table contains the currently known conjunctions:

And	L as a standalone character Kat tied to the second word it annexes
But	hNu
Not	N as a standalone character N tied at the beginning of the word it refers to
Or	ig
When	Kardè
Where	az

PLURAL CONSTRUCTION

The PLURAL of a word can be built by adding a special character at the end of the word, right before the suffix of the case.
The character for the plural is: r


CRASES

In linguistics, a crasis is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong, making one word out of two. An example in modern day French can be found in determiners such as “de le” or “à les” which are transformed in single words, respectively “du” or “aux” to make the language more fluent.

Below we are going to list the known crases detected in the Isu languages up to now:

wahèAd [Was true]

crasis for

wahèA + ad [True + Verb “to be” in the past tense]

mNHNGardacs [The Polymath]

crasis for

mNH + HNGarDacs [Abundance + Person that knows / crafts]

IRREGULAR DECLENSIONS / CONJUGATIONS

In most languages it is very common to find that some words change their structure when they have to be conjugated.
Below we are going to list the irregular declensions / conjugations of the Isu Languages that we have found up to now:

• Words ending with z tend to be conjugated by adding a m before their appropriate suffix, but not with accusative cases or predicative complements.
  
  
  EXAMPLES
  

  Toz This [nominative]

  →

  tozmòd For / Because of this

  
  

  hèz The [nominative]

  →

  hèzmos From the

  →

  hèzc The [accusative]

  
  


• The word hàs – “Belong / Be part of” is seemingly always preceded by annexed words / complements ending with the letter h.
  
  
  EXAMPLES
  
  

  duh hàsòdi

  Is part of you

  hM cNHUh hàsoma

  I belonged to my family




• The verb “must” is translated via a periphrasis involving the passive voice of the verb aèH – “Require”.
  
  
  EXAMPLES
  
  

  toè kNcNdi aèHòdicR

  It is required that they doubt → They must doubt

COMPOUNDS AND OTHER PARTICULAR WORDS

The Isu Language contains a number of compound words and other particular constructions where different words (and their meaning) are put together to create new words with newer – but related – meanings, much like it happens in the modern languages.

Below we are going to list some examples:

The numeral system in the Isu language is hexadecimal. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, hexadecimal uses 16 distinct symbols: the symbols "0"–"9" to represent values 0 to 9, and "A"–"F" to represent values from 10 to 15.

In the tables below you can see which Isu number corresponds to a standard hexadecimal number and how the Isu numbers are romanized.

0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	!	"	£	$	%	&
o	i	ü	e	æ	a	à	ò	u	ì	ű	é	ǽ	á	â	ô

In the Isu Language the numbers are always introduced by a small dot as shown in the examples below.



In the decimal numeral system, it is common to use decimal numbers - for example 3,56 – which are defined by an integer part (“3” in the example) and a fractional part (“56” in the example), connected by a separator (the comma in the example). In the Isu numeral system this is represented by introducing the integer part of the number with a dot, as mentioned above, then introducing the fractional part with another dot (the separator).

The way to recognize if the Isu number in front of us is made up of two integers or an integer plus a fractional part is to check whether there is a space before the second dot or not.

The way to recognise if the number in front of us is a decimal one or not is to check if there is a space before the dot that should represent the comma.


In order to "translate" the Isu numbers, we have created an Isu Numbers Converter on this website.
If you have any question, feel free to ask in the comments below.