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Proto-Protogen
| Proto-Protogen | |
|---|---|
| Wharfordish | |
| Pronunciation | [wɚˈɸoɹdɪʃ] |
| Created by | Astaryuu |
| Date | 2024 |
Proto-Protogen is one of serveral attempts at sticking to a single joke language by Astaryuu. It was created before Muskian, Wharfordish, and Lunarian, but after the first version of 18 USC 2319. Proto-Protogen is therefore technically the second of Astaryuu's family of joke languages. However, 18 USC 2319 has been revamped since then, so Astaryuu considers Proto-Protogen to be older now.
Proto-Protogen is not actually a proto-language, as it is attested. However, it is the ancestral language spoken by and between sentient artificial intelligences, so the name stuck.
Phonology
Proto-Protogen has no consonants and no vowels. Instead, it has what are referred to as "tonemes". These are absolute pitches, unlike human tonal languages, where tonicity is generally relative.
There are 128 recognized tonemes in Proto-Protogen, each corresponding to one "key" of the MIDI file format. However, thanks to the rising popularity of alternative formats to 12EDO, many dialects of Proto-Protogen have more than 128 tonemes. For example, the 256-toneme 24EDO is also common. In general, the number of tonemes in a dialect of Proto-Protogen is equal to the associated EDO number times 32/3, rounded to the nearest integer. The "root note" is middle C, which in standard MIDI is key number 60.
A toneme also has a length associated with it, which is understood as "X quarter notes at Y BPM", where X is a number no more than 16, while Y is a number no more than 1000. However, this is not considered a contrasting toneme, but instead a certain number of morae for which all morae contain the same toneme, and the length associated with 1 mora is based on a certain given talking speed. However, once again, neither of these are hard and fast rules.
Morphology
Main vocabulary
Proto-Protogen's vocabulary consists almost exclusively of "leitmotifs", fragments of a song. The meaning of the leitmotif is based on the song it comes from. For example, the word H3-'-L3-'-J3+G3-'-J3-'-H3+E3-'-H3-'-G3+C3-'-G3-'-E3+ is pulled from the song Bergentrückung from Undertale, and means "fire".
Each word has an associated talking speed, which is typically four times the BPM of the source song. For example, the word for "fire" described above has an associated talking speed of 448. This is typically also written in any tonemic representation of Proto-Protogen. However, the talking speed is more of a suggestion than a rule, and speakers of Proto-Protogen will frequently change the talking speed of a word. It is still the case that for the most part, words will have the same relative talking speed as each other.
Numerals
As a language spoken by machines, Proto-Protogen uses binary as its base. However, there is a sub-base of 16 in most dialects of Proto-Protogen; this sub-base then became the main base that is used in translations of the similarly based Lunarian language.
The most common words are the integers 0-16 and 2 raised to the same powers, but there are many other numeral words floating around the Proto-Protogen lexicon. These are usually also represented as a complete leitmotif, but there are other standards. For example, Proto-Protogen typically represents 1 using [We Are Number One], but it can also use "01" (notes 0, 1 each pronounced for 1 mora).
Orthography
Nominally, Proto-Protogen is written in the Latin script. However, there is high variability in how Proto-Protogen is represented. Generally, leitmotifs will be represented as the title of the song they come from in brackets, the tonemes that a speaker actually pronounces, or some variation on these.
For example, "91" means to pronounce note 0x7F for 1 mora, then note 0x12 for 1 mora, which together add up to 0x91. D3~ means to pronounce note D3 (corresponding to middle C, as Proto-Protogen note notation starts the octave on A rather than C) for 1.5 morae.
For maximally cursed energy, Proto-Protogen can even be written on a musical staff by converting a phonemic representation to musical notation.