Wescori Ier Meridian (Battle for Earth: Prime)

Wescori Ier Meridian, in English: Wescovi’s Meridian, is the definitive Meridian textbook for teaching and refining the a speaker’s knowledge in the language. The twenty-second edition of the textbook has since become popular among non-Meridians from other worlds.

Chapter One
Salu (“Greetings!”), and welcome to the study of classical Meridian. You will soon see the fascinating possibilities of the Meridian language, exploring a diverse culture unlike any you've ever seen. In this chapter we will be learning some of the most basic rules of Meridian grammar and vocabulary, which will be the foundation for your Meridian knowledge.

Verbs

In Meridian as in English, verbs exhibit the following five characteristics:
 * Person: who is the subject, i.e., who performs (or, in the passive, receives) the action, from the speaker's point of view; 1st person = the speaker(s), I, we; 2nd = the person(s) spoken to, you; 3rd = the person(s) spoken about, he, she, it, they.
 * Number: how many subjects, singular or plural.
 * Tense: the time of the action; Meridian has six tenses, present, future, imperfect, perfect (or present perfect), future perfect, and pluperfect (or past perfect).
 * Mood: the manner of indicating the action or state of being of the verb; like English, Meridian has the indicative (which "indicates" facts) and the imperative (which orders actions), introduced in this chapter, and the subjunctive (which describes, in particular, hypothetical or potential actions).
 * Voice: an indication, with transitive verbs (those that can take direct objects), of whether the subject performs the action (the active voice) or receives it (passive).

Conjugation

To conjugate a verb is to list together all its forms, according to these fIve variations of person, number, tense, mood, and voice. If asked to conjugate the English verb 10 praise in the present tense and the active voice of the indicative mood, you would say:

Present Infinitive Active and Present Stem

The present active infinitives of the model verbs used in this book for the first and second conjugations are respectively:


 * caner, to sing.
 * adecas, to depart.

You see that -r characterizes the first conjugation and -s characterizes the second. Now from the infinitives drop the -r, which is the actual infinitive ending, and you have the "present stems":


 * cane
 * adeca