Triparic Conjunctions

English	Triparic
although	þo
and	i
as if, as though	visi
because	parsqe
but	mäz
either ... or	ŏt ... ŏt
if	si
lest	*See below.
neither ... nor	nä ... nä
once	ænfø
or	ŏt
rather than	conque
so that	zo qe
than	que
that	qe
unless	nisi
whether ... or	veter ... ŏt
while	dum
yet, nevertheless	doc

Shawn notes

although: This is the mild concessional conjunction: "I hate your brother, (al)though he's pretty funny." ("Even though" is the more emphatic contrast; we could do that with an adverbial phrase using ... þo once we pick "even" or "very" or something.) As for source ...

From Middle English thaugh, thagh, from Old English þēah ‎(“though, although, even if, that, however, nevertheless, yet, still; whether”), later superseded in many dialects by Middle English though, thogh, from Old Norse *þóh (later þó); both from Proto-Germanic *þauh ‎(“though”), from Proto-Indo-European *to-, suffixed with Proto-Germanic *-hw < Proto-Indo-European *-kʷe ‎(“and”). Akin to Scots thoch ‎(“though”), Saterland Frisian dach ‎(“though”), West Frisian dôch, dochs ‎(“though”), Dutch doch ‎(“though”), German doch ‎(“though”), Swedish dock ‎(“however, still”), Icelandic þó ‎(“though”).

So let's just use þo. Here's an interesting question: In how many of our verified words at this moment (morning of April 12) do we use Thorn? Answer: not one. Let's change that here.

lest: This is the opposite of "so that" in almost the same way that "unless" is the opposite of "if": "Don't go, lest you die" = "Don't go, so that you don't die". The weird gotcha is that the clause needs to be subjunctive to make it only a possibility. Latin and French do the same thing. French uses pour que or de peur que "for fear that". Latin has the conjunction nē (nē obliviscaris, "lest you forget"). I suggest we just use zo qe with a negative indicative: *Nac vade, zo qe ðŏ nac *mordest. "Don't go, so that you do not die."

Note: I starred *mordest because we didn't solidify "to die", but I starred the first *nac because some languages use a different negator on imperatives. Do we want to use nä there or is nac fine on imperatives as well as indic/subj? (I like nä, but the danger of it is that contextually you might split the command: nä vade! could parse as "Don't go!" or "No! Go!" Cf. "No. Don't. Stop.")

once: One of the correlative phrases we agreed uses fø "instance, time" where French would use fois, Esperanto fojo, German mal. I'm just repeating the morpheme here in its logical place. For "once", German uses einmal and French une fois. :)

rather than: "I want to go to the store rather than stay home." When you use it prepositionally, it's just like "instead of". "Shawn likes dogs rather than cats." It means its object is less preferred. Therefore if other prepositions are doing double duty as conjunctions (see below) we could let anplåx do the same, rather than (heh) making up something new. But, if we want something different, I nominate conque ("against-than"). Wiktionary lists almost no translations for "rather than", but one it does have is Italian anziché, which comes from anti- "against" plus che "than".

On the other other hand, we may want "rather" anyhow as an adverb (rather small, rather good) and then the relexing principle would apply as with "so that".

In short: anplåx, conque, or we come up with "rather".

so that: We have a "so" in the sense of "thus". We have a "that". English relexing, right?

unless: This is simply the opposite of if: "if ... not". German and Italian just do it that way: "I'm going to the store if you don't bring me cookies" = "... unless you bring me cookies" (wenn ... nicht, se ... non). French has à moins que with the subjunctive (moins = "less"). But Latin has ... nisi.

whether: This is just a lift from Germanic, of course. In English you can say "Do you know whether he ate?" and it is identical to "if" grammatically, but it implies "... or not?" With geeks you can say "Do you know if he ate or not?" and the snarky answer is "Yes. He ate or not." Whether really forces the choice of two alternatives. And looking at WT, other languages don't have that so much. So the only thing I would say here is that we discourage veter without an ŏt option. If you're only presenting one option, use si.

Prepositional Conjunctions

Many prepositions also operate as conjunctions, such as ante "before", bis "until", post "after", sæt "since", etc.