Mila: Difference between revisions

Mila is the language spoken by the lula on the planet Kukca. The lula come originally from a technologically advanced planet. The planet Kukca had been terraformed many million years previously and was deemed ripe for colonisation. The colonists were sent under the pretext that they would be repairing the on-planet communication system (in the form of a pyramid), but were not told that they would subsequently become colonists, (it has been discovered that finding willing volunteers is a far from easy task and the home planet necessarily resorted to tricks to send colonists). The colonists had been genetically altered to thrive on the planet, based on readings sent from the communication towers.

Other planets which have been previously terraformed have become 'zoos' which may be occasionally visited (our own Earth is one such planet), holiday destinations or like this one colonies, and partly as an elaborate social experiment from the home planet to see how lula can cope. The colonists first arrived about 150 years previous to the language as described here is spoken. On colonisation the language was completely regular having been the constructed lingua franca of the home planet.

The original aim of Mila was not to create a whole language fitting into a constructed world, but rather a way to experiment with language change. I wanted to create a language with a simple phonological system and phonotactics which may be manipulated to explore how language can change and to test certain linguistic hypotheses, historical phonology being my main area of interest. I soon discovered though that it would be a good chance to improve my knowledge of other areas of linguistics and it has inevitably developed into a full language. I didn't want at an early stage to deal with loan words which is why I felt it necessary to have the language in complete isolation and a constructed world has thus also been created. With a constructed world and culture it brings with it all the problems of translations from Earth-based languages. How does one translate 'dog' for example? Mila does have a word for 'dog' but it should be understood as a dog-like creature, as opposed to an actual dog. As such the goals of the language have somewhat drifted, now focussing on a realistic setting for the language, though development of the language into separate daughter languages is also an ultimate goal.

The lula who first inhabited the planet were raised by scientists in isolation, a necessity as they had been genetically moderated to cope with the planets climate (which is much hotter than the home planet) and air (which is richer in oxygen than the home planet). The scientists, being from an international background, spoke the planet's lingua franca, which is itself a constructed language, based on many of the home planet's language families. The original Mila (meaning simply 'language') was therefore completely regular. In the 150 years since colonisation the original population of 56 has risen to a few thousand (they breed quickly) and the language is now the everyday mother-tongue of the speakers, a situation which has never occurred on the home planet, such that Mila on the home planet has changed little in years. As a mother-tongue, though, the language has undergone a number of changes and irregularities have crept in, most notably in the phonology, shortenings of pronouns and semantic shifts.