Part 1: The 3 Letters Law

A Simple Example

Let's talk about how 3 Letters Law works. We take the letter group "p, b, m" for demonstration.

For words start with p, let's take "pe" /pe/ (to be) as an example. If the subject is first person (I and we), as we mentioned before, no conjugation is applied, so it remains "pe" /pe/ . But if the subject is second person (you), it becomes "hpe", pronounced as /be/ . If the subject is third person (he, she, it, they), it becomes "npe", pronounced as /me/ .

Look carefully at the pronunciation of these words, have you noticed the pattern on how the consonant changes?

/pe/ -> /be/ -> /me/

That's right, we can observe that they are all in the letter group "p, b, m". The changes is p (1st person) -> b (2nd person) -> m (3rd person).

This conjunction rule applies for all words starts with letter "p".

Adding the Pronunciation Alteration Prefixes

Once we know this change pattern, we can easily predict the pronunciation for the words that undergo PVIM. To spell it out, we just add the prefixes "-h", "h-" or "n-" to the first letter of the word to change its pronunciation. For words start with letter "p", we just need the voiced marker "h-" and nasal marker "n-" as we want to alter its pronunciation to /b/ for 2nd person mutation and /m/ for 3rd person respectively.

Then, you may have a question: instead of writing "pe", "hpe", "npe", why don't we just write "pe", "be", "me"? The reason is we would like to preserve the original word even after applying PVIM. This is to prevent confusion in reading as there can be cases that a conjugated word looks the same to an unconjugated word if we don't use a marker for the pronunciation change.

One more thing to mention: "h-" and "n-" are never capitalized. For example, we write "hPe" instead of "Hpe".

More Examples

What about words starting with "b" and "m"? Since we know they are all in the letter group "p, b, m", the way of conjugation would be similar to the words starting with "p". Let's take "bay" (to see) and "mor" (to go) as examples.

The changes of the first consonant are like following:

bay: /b/ -> /m/ -> /p/

mor: /m/ -> /p/ -> /b/

It is just a shift with rotation in the letter group "p, b, m".

• For 1st person mutation, the shift amount is 0, so it remains the same letter.
• For 2nd person mutation, the shift amount is 1, so "p" shifts to "b", "b" shifts to "m" and "m" goes back to "p".
• For 3rd person mutation, the shift amount is 2, so "p" shifts to "m", "b" goes back to "p" and "m" goes back to "b".

Summary

The whole process of PVIM can be summarized into these steps:

1. Determine the letter group by looking at the first letter. ("bay" is in group "p, b, m")
2. Get the shift amount base on the person. (We want to do 3rd person mutation, so shift amount is 2)
3. Shift the first letter with rotation to get the pronunciation. ("b" -> "m" -> "p", so the pronunciation is /p/)
4. Apply the pronunciation alteration marker to the first based on the type of resulting pronunciation. (/p/ is voiceless consonant, so we use "-h" and get "bhay")

So now, you should be able to say "He sees me!" in Pwekish. (Nrow ņra bhay!)

Example Sentences

Exercise

1. Write down the 2nd person and the 3rd person mutations of the following words.

i. pe ii. bay iii. mor
iv. masul v. parím vi. morgra
vii. basa viii. powo ix. bentleb

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i. hpe npe
ii. nbay bhay
iii. mhor hmor
iv. mhasul hmasul
v. hparím nparím
vi. mhorgra hmorgra
vii. nbasa bhasa
viii. hpowo npowo
ix. nbentleb bhentleb

2. Translate the following sentences into English.

i. Ņos masul.
ii. Ntyus nur hpe.
iii. Awú ņra bhay.

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i. We sleep.
ii. You (all) are humans.
iii. The dog sees me.

3. Translate the following sentences into Pwekish.

i. You are a human.
ii. They sleep.
iii. My mum sees me.
iv. We go home.
v. You read a book.

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i. Ntyu nur hpe.
ii. Nrows hmasul.
iii. Má ņra bhay.
iv. Ņris/Ņos dorn mor.
v. Ntyu(s) baln nbal.