Daya!

My real issue was I went around with the mistake at all.

The wrong past tense form. I think of the fan-fiction authors I work with
who really wanted to have their character say 'Did not' and wind up saying
'Didn't'.

Contractions: no questions. I'm happy with them. Natako (no worries).

Here is my contractions page:

http://va-eheniv.conlang.org/Contractions!.htm

Tisala'e!,
Kristine
On May 16, 2016 05:29, "Alex Fink" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On Sun, 15 May 2016 10:44:32 -0400, Nina-Kristine Johnson <
> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >The word in question is *Das* = (to) Do. Its past tense form *Dat*
> (Did)...it
> >makes no sense!
>
> Well, it _nearly_ makes sense. It's an irregularity, as others have
> pointed out. You may or may not want irregular verbs in Ehenív; that's
> your prerogative.
>
> >It should have technically been *Dast* (did) not *dat*.
> >
> >However, (amendments will need to be made to the web-site, now) happily, I
> >now can have *Didn't* without it also looking like *Did not*.
>
> But I agree 100% with Christophe here. Having contractions is all well
> and good, but there is absolutely no reason why Ehenív should contract the
> same pairs of words that English does. Doing *that* is something I would
> say deserves the name "error": it is copying English too slavishly. I
> would suggest that what the Ehenív language is trying to tell you here is
> that its words for 'did' and 'not' do not in fact form a contraction! In
> fact... the way I'd suggest you celebrate your discovery is by going
> through your Ehenív texts looking for places with two short words in
> succession, and inventing contractions for some of these pairs, where
> English doesn't have contractions. For example, right on the title page of
> your website, I immediately see _žu va_ "of the". Might these be
> contractable to something like _žu'v_, say?
>
> Alex
>