Metin

General information

Metin is a language spoken by about 57 trillion people in the Metii'nz'ou'ku and the surrounding areas, like Koryouz'ou'ku and Ishnnai'zou'ku. Metin is a Lingua Franca rather than a native language, it was spoken in its true form about 50 millenia ago at the founding of Metii'nz'ou'ku, since then, it has split into many daughter languages, which use old Metin as a language of common communication.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar-lateral	Retroflex	Palatal	Palatal-lateral	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal	m~n			n'	N	ñ
Plosive	bh		t, d, dh	t', d', dh'	T, D, Dh			k, g, gh
Fricative	f		s, z, zh		S, Z	sy, zy, zyh		x,G	q	h
Affricate			ts, dz. dzh	ts', dz', dzh'	C, J, Jh	c, j, jh
Approximant	v~w				r	y
Lateral fric.				s', z', zh', ł
Lateral app.				l			y'

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i,i'	ï	u, u'
Near-close
Close-mid	e,		o
Mid		ë
Open-mid
Near-open	á		A
Open		a

The consonants marked with apostrophes are lateral sounds

To pronounce them, put the tip of your tongue at the base of your bottom teeth. Then, bend the rest of your tongue upwards until the center of your tongue is pressed against the base of the top teeth. Then, make a plosive, nasal, fricative, or lateral with your tongue in this position. You should sound like you have a lisp.

Plosive consonants and fricatives make a three-way distinction, voiceless, voiced, and voiced aspirant. v~w is considered an approximant, although it surfaces as the voiced bilabial fricative v before or after labial vowels. All fricatives, even aspirated ones, may occur at the end of syllables. There is no aspirated Gh, nor are there p or b sounds. The only consonant clusters in the Metin language are affricates and l clusters, such as kl, tl, dl, and dlh. l clusters may beaspirated. The l clusters pl and bl exist, even though the p and b sounds do not occur in isolation. There are also x clusters, px, tx, and Tx, there are only 3, and they are always voiceless.

Nasals are only distinguished from eachother in the onset of a syllable, at the end of a syllable, they become the archiphoneme m*, which agrees with the following consonant in place and manner of articulation. If followed by a vowel, m* becomes, m before normal vowels and n' before lateral vowels.

Approximants can also carry no secondary articulations. There is also an archiphoneme for syllable final approximants, that is l*. l* becomes ł before voiceless non-retroflex consonants, r before retroflex consonants, vowels, and voiced consonants, and l before voiced palatal and dental consonants.

Vowels

Vowels are divided into two groups, normal and lateral.

A normal vowel has the tongue held straight during production. They cannot occur after a lateral or retroflex consonant.They are divided int three groups. The first group is the fronted vowels, or palatals, which are are i, e and á. The neutral mid vowels are ï, ë, and a. . The final group is the back vowels, or labial vowels, u, o and à.

A lateral vowel is produced with the tip of the tongue at the base of the teeth and the rest of the tongue bent upwards. Frontness and backness are not distinguished, only openness and labialness. There are only two pure lateral vowels, unlabialized i' and labialized u', the other lateral vowels are dipthongs, aa' is a dipthong of aa and i', o' is a dipthong of o and u'.

Syllable structure.

The onset consists of any consonant in the Metin language, or one of the permitted onset clusters, the l clusters (tl, dl, dlh), the affricates (ts, J, dz') or the x clusters (tx, Tx, px). The nucleus may be any vowel. The final may be any fricative, including h. Phonotactics: The vowels i and ï change to i' before lateral consonants. /s'ii/> s'ii', /t'ï/> t'i'. u changes to u' before lateral consonats /ts'u/>ts'u', /dzh'uu/>dzh'uu'.

Grammar

Metin is a polysynthetic, VSO language with most grammatical information indicated on the verb

Noun morphology

Metin numbers are divided into genders, which hold prefixes marking for the four cases and number.

Gender 1

Gender 1 is exclusively for humans.

Gender 1: si: example sime> person.

	Singular	Plural
Common	sime	oame
Ablative	soome	koome
Dative	sueeme	keeme
Oblique	sual*me>suarme	oal*me> oarme

The l* in sual*me and kal*me indicates that it is the archiphoneme l*, which changes to r before voiced consonants (see phonology)

Gender 2

Gender 2 is usually used to mark machines and complex objects, and to make machines of verbs. It does not mark a plural normally, although the prefix dha can be used optionally

Gender 2: y'aq: example: y'aqcaa'n: aircraft

	Singular	Plural
Common	ee'qcaa'n	(dhaee'qcaa'n)
Ablative	i'qoocaa'n	(dhai'qoocaa'n)
Dative	ye'ncaa'n	(dhaye'ncaa'n)
Oblique	yu'ncaa'n	(dhay'uncaa'n)

Gender 3

Gender 3 is used to mark a variety of inanimate objects

Gender 3: fï: example: fïïtooq: plant

	Singular	Plural
Common	fïtooq	dhatooq
Ablative	fuootooq	dhootooq
Dative	fintooq	jhintooq
Oblique	funtooq	jhuntooq

Gender 3 diminuitive: n'e example:n'etooq: sprout

	Singular	Plural
Common	n'etooq	(dhan'etooq) etc..
Ablative	n'ootooq
Dative	n'entooq
Oblique	n'untooq

Gender 4

Gender 4 is also used for inanimate objects, usually large immobile objects, or cities

Gender 4: cà: example: càDUh: house

	Singular	Plural
Common	càDuh	morDuh
Ablative	cooDuh	mooDuh
Dative	cAZDuh	muZDuh
Oblique	cuDuh	muDuh

Gender 5

Gender 5 is used for uncountable objects, like water or sand.

Gender 5: mi example: miji: water

	Mass
Common	miji
Ablative	muooji
Dative	minji
Oblique	munji

Gender 6

Gender 6 is used for abstract concepts and qualities, like love, justice, or colors. Gender 6 nouns are also uncountable.

Gender 6: lu example: luquo: the color white.

Common	luquo
Ablative	luooquo
Dative	luZquo
Oblique	lunquo

Verbs

The Metin verb is by far the most complex part of Metin grammar. Most of Metin verb morphology involves prefixes, allthough there are a handful of suffixes that can occur.

Metin verb template

Disjunct prefixes		Conjunct prefixes				Inner prefixes		Stem	Suffixes
Evidentiality	Lexical	Outer	Theme Vowel	Inner	Object	Subject	Inner
im	fu-syija	h	á	x	s	h	r	keeh	sis

"imfusyijaxkiásáhorkeehis": he let you down bit by bit hanging from a rope (I saw so)

Evidentiality

Evidential prefixes are the simplest part of the Metin verb. They indicate how the speaker knows about what they're talking about. They have only two forms, one for if they are followed by lexical prefixes and one if they are not.

	Saw/heard directly	Saw/heard unclearly	heard	felt/smelled/ tasted	Recording	Hearsay/literature	Inference	Hope
Followed by lexical prefix	im	om	iq	oq	il	ol	Az	eS
Followed by something else	iem	uom	ieq	uoq	iel	uol	ooz	ioS

Examples of usage: iemïdheu: he/she's climbing (I see him climbing) vs. imhaadheu: he/she's climbing up (I see him)

uoqïdheu: he/she's climbing (someone told me/ I read it) oqhaadheu: he/she's climbing up (someone told me/ I read it)

Lexical prefixes

Lexical prefixes are a large and varied group. Some, like "ha" and "fu", indicate direction of motion. "syija" indicates that a string or rope was somehow involved. "ma" is used in subjunctive clauses to mean "if" There is no strict limit on the number of lexical prefixes a verb may have, allthough it is rare for there to be more than 3. The lexical prefixes are ordered roughly like this.

direction>instrument>posture>time

fu-syija-txë-łi- huhedheu

down-with rope-entire body-long time climbed(refexive)

He climbed down slowly with a rope a while ago.