Adjectives are in fact verbs. Articles are in fact adjectives which in turn are verbs. Prepositions are in fact nouns. e.g. the word for "time" also means "at the time of", "when", "while". The word for "place" also means "at the place of", "where". The word for "inside, interior" also means "inside, in". "Beside the house" is therefore translated as "side"+"house" ("side of house"). "Where I live" is translated as "place"+"I"+"live". Generally speaking, some nouns have, like verbs, a transitivity. Some nouns can be intransitive ("cat") and some transitive ("place", "time", "side", "father", "friend"). Indeed you can be the friend *of* someone, so "my friend" will be translated as "friend"+"I". You may have noticed that appending two nouns together is like joining them with "of". This is only true, however, for some nouns. "My cat" or "my eyes" will not be translated as "cat"+"I" or "eyes"+"I" but as "cat"/"eyes"+"owned by"+"I". The language is an SVO language. The usual structure of a /phrase/ is: (subject: noun phrase) + verb phrase + (object: noun phrase) A verb phrase is: verb + (adverbs) A noun phrase is: noun + (noun | phrase) A whole /sentence/ is: phrase + (complements: noun phrases) + (conjunction + sentence) Negative and affirmative indicators, as well as tense indicators, are adverbs. Now some examples for the tricky problems of relative phrases. The language has the very useful word "*o" (roughly translated as "which", "that"). I see the cheese that the cat eats / eaten by the cat: I see cheese eat which cat I see where the cat eats: I see place cat eat I eat when the cat eats: I eat time cat eat What the cat eats: thing eat which cat The house in which the cat eats cheese: house inside which cat eat cheese The inside that the cat eats: inside eat which cat The cat eats good cheese: cat eat cheese good The cat who eats cheese is nice: ( cat eat cheese ) nice In the last example you can see that in some cases you need to group a part of the sentence together. This can be done with special words that work like braces in mathematics. To sum up, the role of this "*o" ("which") word is to invert the relation of the previous word: "eat"+"which" means "be eaten by". So, added to a verb it will create its passive form. "inside which" has exactly the same meaning as in English. So, added to a noun it creates its reciprocal form. "father"+"which" means "child (of)" A verb can sometimes be used as a noun (the action of...) but not the opposite. A verb that becomes a noun keeps the same transitivity: if it was an intransitive verb, it becomes an intransitive noun. If it was a transitive verb, it become a transitive noun. For example "to be able to" becomes "ability to".