Fenekere’s Root Words and Their Derivations

The general meaning and function of Fenekere’s root words and the rules for finding derivative words via conjugation and declension (table included)

Root words in Fenekere consist of four consonantal phonemes and four vowels, making four syllables, with this structure: CvCvCvCv. The romanization appears to have consonantal clusters, such as CC and CCC, but in the original orthography these are represented by single characters. The default vowel, denoting the root meaning, for all four syllables is ‘e’. This renders the word to be a proper noun referring to an an emotion, an element, a part of speech, certain body parts that are considered elemental in nature, individual who performs a particular art or skill.

These roots are broken up into two classes, elemental and artisan. These two classes are mostly only relevant to the mythological origin of the word. An artisan class word refers to a being or deity who was the first to perform that art or skill, while an elemental word refers to a thing in the universe that is treated like an agent even though it is not necessarily sentient. However, all root words are semantically treated as meaning “the agent that performs [verb]” for the purposes of understanding derivative words.

All other primary words in Fenekere are derived from these roots by altering the vowel structure. As each syllable can contain one of five vowels, a table of these modifications looks like this:

As you make sense of this and read the rest of the Fenekere grammar, it is important to remember that nearly any combination of words and word particles is considered to be a legitimate sentence. But minor differences in placement of prefixes or vowels chosen for derived words can sometimes make enormous or very subtle changes in meaning. A listener may well be able to puzzle out what you mean, even if you get something slightly off, but until you get a feel for the subtle details it is always good and acceptable to double check.

How to interpret the above chart:

The word fenemere is the root word meaning “the Artist of Composing Poetry”. It is a proper noun that is the name of the Artist of Poetry, who is a child of the Great One, ‘e. In fact, ‘e is a pronoun and the shortened form of the full root word ‘e’e’e’e, and can also be read as “the Artist of Bearing 900,000 Children and Making a World out of Their Body to Protect Them”. But let’s focus on fenemere. Pronouns will be explained later.

We will not cover all of the possible variations here, as that would include 625 derivative words. To understand the meaning of more complex derivatives, a certain amount of fuzzy logic must be applied.

If you change the first syllable of the root fenemere, it alters the meaning in this way:

fenemere – (unaltered root) the Artist of Composing Poetry.

fanemere – an (instance of) the Artist of Composing Poetry. (Since the second syllable is still ‘e’, this still refers to the one individual deity, so it can be assumed to refer to a moment in that deity’s existence, or a manifestation of their presence.)

finemere – the ideal, or abstract concept, of the Artist of Composing Poetry.

fonemere – an idea, or a version of an abstract concept, of the Artist of Composing Poetry.

funemere – the collective ideal, or the stereotypical abstract concept held by most people, of the Artist of Composing Poetry, with an emphasis on ‘stereotypical’. This also can be read to mean “reputation”.


If you change the second syllable of the root fenemere, it alters the meaning in this way:

fenemere – (unaltered root) the Artist of Composing Poetry.

fenamere – the collective instances of all Artists of Composing Poetry (“all poets including fenemere themself”). (note: if you combine this with the indefinite first syllable, it is a common plural noun and means “a group of poets” and may not refer to fenemere themself.)

fenimere – the artist of composing poetry, as a common noun. Used to refer to any given poet you may be talking about.

fenomere – will compose poetry. This is the future tense form of the verb. To alter the tense, change the last syllable.

fenumere – belonging to fenemere. The possessive adjective/adverb form of the word. To turn it into a qualitative or descriptive adjective/adverb, change the first syllable to ‘i’, ‘o’, or ‘u’. (e.g. “funumere” means “the subject of this sentence is like a stereotype of fenemere, the Poet”.)


If you change the third syllable of the root fenemere, it alters the meaning in this way:

fenemere – (unaltered root) the Artist of Composing Poetry (as the subject of a sentence).

fenemare – this moves the noun to become the object of the sentence. Specifically, this is to be interpreted as the recipient of the verb. So, if you “fenomera fenemare”, it means that you are composing a poem for the benefit of fenemere (and are likely to give it or recite it to them).

fenemire – this moves the noun to the adverb clause of the sentence. Without an adverb or adverb’s verb, this becomes a type of indirect object that means something close to “in the manner of fenemere”. Since the adverb ‘finumore’ also means that, there can be assumed to be a difference in abstract proximity to or derivation of fenemere. ‘fenemire’ implies that fenemere is more present in the action, and possibly an active and guiding participant, while ‘finumore’ implies that the subject is keeping fenemere in mind while acting.

fenemore – this moves the noun to the verb clause of the sentence. Without the verb’s verb, this becomes an indirect object that means something close to “made from”. To remember this, one can imagine that if you add a verb to that clause, it will mean that the verb that you are performing performs another verb on fenemore. (e.g. ‘fe fenomera fenemore’ means “I am composing a poem using fenemere as my medium.”)

fenemure – this moves the noun to the adjective clause of the sentence, making it the object of the adjective of the subject. Without the adjective or the verb of the adjective, this becomes a more removed form of the possessive. This is the difference between an alienable possession and an inalienable possession. (e.g. ‘fenumere’ means that fenemere owns the subject as if it is a part of them, while ‘fenemure’ means that fenemere possesses the subject as if they are holding it like a rock.)


If you change the fourth syllable of the root fenemere, it alters the meaning in this way:

fenemere – (unaltered root) the Artist of Composing Poetry, referring to the proverbial Poet themself.

fenemera – the action noun of the Artist of Composing Poetry, the act performed by fenemere.

fenemeri – an imitation of the Artist of Composing Poetry. This one is tricky, since the second syllable means that it is fenemere themself, this would be an instance that is fenemere but also a pale reflection of them. Typically used to refer to avatars, photos, illustrations, shadows, and reflections of the deity themself. If the second syllable is ‘i’, then it refers to such things of any given poet, or to refer to an agent who is trying to be a poet but is a poseur and bad at it. Specificity is drawn from both syntactic and environmental context.

fenemero – the produce of the act of the Artist of Composing Poetry, the poem composed by fenemere.

fenemeru – the consequences of the act of the Artist of Composing Poetry, the feelings or social impact of the poem composed by fenemere.


Example sentence

From all of this, it is possible to write an entire sentence using only one root word. Word order doesn’t matter, but we’ll do this in English typical order to make it easier to parse:

fenemere fenomera fenamiro fenamare

“Fenmere composes poetry of all poetry for the benefit or honor of all poets.” Or, more figuratively, “Fenmere writes their greatest ode to all poets through the existence of all of poetry.”