A Copula is something that fuctions like an equals sign (=) in mathmatics. It equates one thing with another, or links traits to something. I've never heard of a language without a copula of some kind, whether its done by word order, a verb, or some other grammatical function. In English, the copula is "to be" and all its conjugations (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been). Instead, Sindarin uses the order of the words and the presense or lack of mutation to tell if a copula is at work. Think of it as all those fancy elves speaking like Tarzan.
The only time that the Sindarin copula appears as a word in Sindarin is when it's imperative.
When saying something that follows the pattern: "noun [to be] adjective" the adjective doesn't undergo any lenition, because it isn't part of the noun-phrase. It's called a predicate adjective. It has almost become a sort of verb. It still must be plural to match the noun or nouns that it is describing, but you don't need to lenite it. Look at the example below to see how two phrases with the same word order have different meanings.
I 'wend bain. - The maiden [is] beautiful.
versus
I 'wend vain - The beautiful maiden
A really good way to automatically indicate that the copula is connecting the noun and its adjective is to put the adjective first, and mutate the noun, like this:
Bain 'wend. - Beautiful [is] a maiden.
When a noun is the object of the sentence, it follows this pattern: noun [to be] noun, and unlike adjectives, the second noun is lenited. Prestanneth or lack of it is how we differentiate an "of" phrase from a "to be" sentence.
I ethir geredir. - The spy [is] a craftsman.
versus
I ethir ceredir - The craftsman's spy
Because there's no verb "to be", there's nothing for pronouns to latch onto. Instead, we use nominative pronouns. If you see a nominative pronoun, it almost always is pared with the copula.
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| First person exclusive | ni I am | *me we (not you) are |
| First person inclusive | *gwe we and you are | |
| Informal second person | ci you (informal) are | - |
| Formal second person | le you (formal) are | de y'all are |
| Third person | *te he/she/it is | ti they are |
| Near Demonstrative | *se this is | *si these are |
| Far Demonstrative | *sa that is | *sai those are |
| Interrogative | *ma what/who is/are | |
To make things fun, let's add a bunch of words for describing people so you have something to practice with.