Modern Manish
Manish redirects here. For other stages of the Manish language, see Old Manish and Ancient Manish. For the language family as a whole, see Manish Languages.
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| Modern Manish | |
|---|---|
| Kîndokâkosthev | |
 | |
| Pronunciation | [[Help:IPA|ˌkɪn.doˌkɑ.kosˈθev]] |
| Created by | Andenor |
| Setting | Aior |
Manish
| |
Early forms | |
Modern Manish (kîndokâkosthev [ˌkɪn.doˌkɑ.kosˈθev]) is a Manish language spoken in the fictional world of Aior. It is the most widely spoken language on Aior, both by number of native speakers and by total number of speakers. Work on the language began in 2017, and it continues to be updated.
Introduction
Modern Manish as a native language is spoken primarily in Cartondin and Terithius. In addition, there is a group of Katorian pirates that use it. In addition to its use as a native language, the prominence of Cartondin in the world as a military and economic power has led to the use of Manish as a lingua franca in many interactions by educated people from nearly all nations. Typically, this usage is heavily influenced by the native language of the speaker.
Origin
The Modern Manish language as spoken in Cartondin and Terithius traces its origins back to Old Manish, which in turn derives from Ancient Manish, one of the five languages given to Aior by the gods near the time of the creation. Since then, several languages have branched off from the original tongue, but none has such a large group of speakers as Modern Manish.
Over the course of just over two thousand years, various groups have used Manish either as a native language or even more commonly as a lingua franca. This has led to the simplification of many of the morphological and phonological features of the language.
Typology
Some of the typological features of Modern Manish include:
- The phoneme inventory consists of fifteen consonants and seven vowels.
- Syllable structure is fairly simple. Every vowel is considered the nucleus of its own syllable, optionally followed by a consonant and optionally preceded by a consonant or a cluster consisting of a stop, /v/, or /s/ and a liquid.
- The basic constituent order is subject–verb–object. The language is almost entirely head-initial.
- The language is mostly agglutinative, but there are also a few fusional aspects.
- Verbs are inflected for gender of the subject, tense/aspect, mood, and voice. Each element is marked with an agglutinative prefix.
- Nouns and pronouns are marked for gender and number but not for case.
Changes since Old Manish
Partly due to its usage as an international lingua franca, Modern Manish has lost much of the complexity of the Old Manish verbal and nominal systems. However, it has also innovated various new features. Phonetically, it is one of the more conservative Manish languages. A list of various changes and innovations includes:
- Change of unmarked constituent order from subject–object–verb to subject–verb–object
- Loss of vowel length
- Loss of /ə/ in all positions
- Debuccalization of /f/ to /h/ followed by loss of /h/ in all positions
- Redistribution of the phonemes /ɾ/ and /l/
- Simplification of syllable structure
- Regularization of syntax such that the language is almost entirely head-initial
- Loss of the dual marker in all but the most formal speech and the Royal dialect
- Development of the prepositions perte and perite 'of' to replace the older construct state
- Loss of the construct state except in very formal speech and the Royal dialect
- Reanalysis of the definite state marker ra- as a definite article la
- Change of most postpositions to prepositions following loss of the construct state
- Loss of case on nouns and the simplification of case on pronouns
- Change of the remote and recent past tenses into past perfective and past imperfective
- Reduplication of the past perfective to produce a habitual aspect
- Change of the middle voice prefix pef- to mean passive and loss of older tôqâ-
- Use of particle po (from Old Manish pô 'yes') to ask questions
Major dialects
There are four major dialects of Modern Manish. Cartondish, the dialect of the majority of Cartondin, is by far the most spoken, but it is also the most divided. The Royal dialect is the form of the language spoken by the Royal Family of Cartondin as well as the dialect affected by those in the presence of royalty. The Terithian dialect is spoken by the majority of Terithius, the smaller country to the east of Cartondin. The Southern dialect is spoken by pirates from Katorias.
Cartondish
The Cartondish dialect (more specifically, the dialect as spoken in Rowesburg and surrounding areas) is typically considered the standard. As such, except when otherwise noted, descriptions of the language in this work refer specifically to the Cartondish dialect. While most common people write the way they pronounce words, scholars and other trained writers typically follow Cartondish orthography.
Royal
The Royal dialect is an interesting one because it is largely artificial. It is mostly based on the Cartondish dialect but makes use of many words and constructions considered archaic in other dialects. It is characterized by careful pronunciation and very few loanwords. It also revived the use of states in place of the definite article and the preposition perte.
Terithian
The Terithian dialect is mostly very similar to the Cartondish dialect, but it has typically been more open to external influences. Relations with Aidenvelle have opened the way for many of the sound changes of Aiden to begin to affect Terithian Manish as well, particularly those that have affected the pronunciation of diphthongs. Some Terithians may not pronounce syllable-final nasals, instead nasalizing and slightly lengthening preceding vowels.
Southern
The Southern dialect is characterized by heavy use of loanwords and calques from other languages, especially the various Manish and Elvish languages of Katorias. This dialect tends to be very innovative, but due to its perceived lack of prestige most of its innovations never carry back to the other dialects, making it at times difficult to understand. Despite this, it is generally still considered to be a dialect of Modern Manish as it has been shown that speakers of Southern Manish can understand the other dialects very well. Phonologically, the Southern dialect is simpler than other dialects. /a/ and /ɑ/ have merged into /a/, and /i/ and /ɪ/ have merged into /i/. /θ/ is pronounced by some speakers as a dental stop, but others pronounce it as [t], losing the phonemic distinction. Speakers who use a dental stop often pronounce /t/ as post-alveolar. In addition, Southern speakers sometimes aspirate voiceless stops.
Phonology
Modern Manish phonology has remained largely faithful to that of Old Manish. The most noticeable difference is the loss of long vowels and the simplification of many consonant clusters. In addition, the system of stress has become much more regular. While some dialects have further simplified the phoneme inventory, they have typically done so in a mostly regular fashion. Because of that, specific dialectical pronunciations will be touched upon only briefly.
Consonants
| bilabial | labiodental | alveolar | post-alveolar | velar | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| stop | p b | t d | k g | ||
| fricative | v | θ | s z | (ʃ) (ʒ) | |
| tap | ɾ | ||||
| lateral approximant | l | ||||
| nasal | m | n |
Notes
- /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ only occur in loanwords, mostly from Umnan. Some speakers (particularly less educated speakers) do not pronounce them differently from /s/ and /z/, which occur natively.
- /n/ is pronounced [ŋ] before velars.
Vowels
| front | back | |
|---|---|---|
| close | i ɪ | u |
| mid | e | o |
| open | a | ɑ |
Notes
- The major distinction between /i/ /ɪ/ and /a/ /ɑ/ is tense-lax. The Southern dialect merges /ɪ/ and /ɑ/ into their tense counterparts.
- Some speakers, especially in Cartondin, pronounce /ɑ/ a bit higher and more front, leading some to transcribe it /ɐ/ or even /ə/.
Orthography
Prosody
Stress
Primary stress most often occurs on the penultimate syllable of a root if its nucleus is not a lax vowel, or if the penultimate nucleus is lax, on the last tense vowel in the word. However, many words which have lost a final syllable since Old Manish now retain stress on the final syllable. This is most often the case when the word ends in a consonant, although some words which previously ended in -te also have this stress pattern. In these cases, stress may be marked in the romanized orthography, but the native system does not mark stress, so it must be memorized.
Stress is used in a few marginal cases to distinguish between what would otherwise be homophones. However, in most cases there is a tense-lax vowel distinction that is only accompanied by stress, so it is disputed whether stress can actually distinguish homophones.
Secondary stress typically occurs every other syllable, starting on either the first or second syllable such that the primary stress also falls on what would be a secondarily stressed syllable.
Primary stress is normally found on a word stem or derivational affixes, not on inflectional affixes. The word kîn 'to be' is an exception. When conjugated, stress may fall on the prefix to avoid stressing the lax vowel, /ɪ/.
Words which are written as compounds orthographically often retain multiple stressed syllables, being pronounced as separate words. This is most common in verbs, which often combine in writing.
Intonation
Phonotactics
Consonant clusters
The only allowed consonant clusters in Modern Manish are /s/, /v/, or a plosive followed by a liquid. The only exceptions are the clusters /dl/ and /tl/, which never occur. These clusters are found only in syllable onsets.
Syllable structure
The syllable structure in Modern Manish is simple. Every syllable consists of a vowel or diphthong, optionally preceded by a consonant or allowed cluster and optionally followed by a single non-stop consonant other than /ɾ/.
In most cases, a sequence of two vowels is considered to consist of two syllables. However, if one of the two vowels is /ɪ/, it is pronounced as [j], and the sequence is considered a diphthong.
Morphology
Nouns
Compared to the nouns of Old Manish, Modern Manish noun morphology has been heavily simplified over the course of time. The old dual marker has been all but lost in most dialects, and case marking has been lost. The Old Manish collective suffix is no longer productive, but continues to be used on a few nouns. In all but the Royal dialect and a few fixed phrases, the construct state has also been lost. Marking on nouns is now limited to gender, number, and augmentatives or diminutives.
Gender
All Manish nouns belong either to the masculine or the feminine gender. On native Manish nouns, this is usually indicated by the presence of a final -o or -i for masculine and feminine, respectively. The gender of a noun affects adjective and verb agreement. Nouns borrowed from other languages may or may not end in -o or -i. Typically, if a noun was borrowed that already ended in -o or -i, it simply took the respective gender. Nouns that did not end in -o or -i are unpredictable. Some have since had -o or -i appended, belonging to the respective gender. This is especially common when there was a semantic connection between the word and a masculine or feminine referent. However, in other cases the original ending is kept intact. Most often, these words are considered masculine, but there are many exceptions.
Number
Manish nouns without modification are typically singular. In order to pluralize a noun ending in a vowel, it is simply necessary to add the suffix -n. If the word ends in /m/ or a liquid, it is replaced by an -n. If the word ends in a fricative, -en is appended. No words end in stops. Words that already end in -n in the singular have identical singular and plural forms, and context or an explicit number is required to disambiguate it.
Old Manish had a dual marker, -qim, which is reflected in Modern Manish as -kîn. However, it is not commonly used except in the Royal dialect and with a few words that naturally come in pairs, such as eyes. Because the Old Manish form began with a uvular, vowels often undergo ablaut when this suffix is used. Since this form only exists for a few nouns, they are typically considered irregular.
Old Manish also had a collective marker -kale, which has fallen out of use in all standard dialects of Modern Manish. However, a few standard Modern Manish words derive historically from this form. For example, brîkale 'council of gods' from brîko 'a god'. These forms are typically irregular in meaning.
Augmentative and diminutive suffixes
Only one diminutive suffix and one augmentative suffix remain common in every modern dialect of Manish. The endings are dependent on the gender of the noun. Masculine nouns take the suffix -rono for diminutives and -ro for augmentatives. Feminine nouns take -rini for diminutives and -ri for augmentatives. These suffixes can only be applied to native Manish nouns and loan nouns that have been assimilated with an -o or -i ending. There are also some dialect-specific augmentatives and diminutives.