Matzeriei: Difference between revisions

|name=Matzerieu

|nativename=e’macerieu hišet

|pronunciation=maˈt͡se̞.ɾje̞u̯

'''Matzerieu''' (Matz. ''e’macerieu hišet'') is a personal conlang conceived in December 2020. As of July 2021, it’s still under development.

Matzerieu started as a fun and interesting, but haphazardly made PIE-esque experiment based on a few marginal ideas, specifically that pre-PIE was a split ergative language, particularly active-stative, that had a genetic relationship to Proto-Uralic. The idea back in November 2020 was, simply put, to create some PU-looking roots, erode them to look like PIE and evolve a large family from it. Needless to say, this idea failed in a number of ways, including the fact that a beginner like myself wasn’t fit to tackle such a task.

The word ''macero'', the collective form of ''maca'' ‘chair’, refers to a place where people gather to tell stories, which is simply a group of chairs placed in a circle. ''Maceriei'' refers to a person that engages in such activity. Thus, the glottonym ''e’macerieu e’hišet'' means “the speech of the storyteller”.

The vowel inventory of Matzerieu is fairly simple, as it consists of only five vowels, all of which are identical to those of Spanish.

Diphthongs are a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds that act as the nucleus of a syllable, and consist of an open or mid vowel next to a closed vowel. Matzerieu has fifteen phonetic diphthongs. Two adjacent vowels in hiatus may be realized as diphthongs in rapid speech, as in ''oeltui'' /oˈel.tui̯/ [ˈo̯el.tui̯] ‘my sister’.

The consonantal inventory of Matzerieu is moderately large at 27 distinct phonemes. Stops beside the glottal stop occur in three series of voiceless, voiced and aspirated sounds. Fricatives and affricates come in series of voiced/voiceless phonemes, except /x/, which has no voiced counterpart. The aspirated consonants are strongly aspirated, even more than in English.

Stress in Matzerieu is usually fixed on the antepenult syllable. This means that bisyllabic and trisyllabic nouns have stress on the first syllable.

Matzerieu is written with two different scripts: a modified version of the Latin aphabet and a partially featural native alphabet. The Matzerieu alphabet is largely phonemic, that is, each letter corresponds to one phoneme and vice versa. There are no digraphs or silent letters. Out of the basic Latin alphabet, the only letters that aren’t used are ''x'' and ''y''.

Matzerieu nouns can be divided according to their gender in animate and inanimate. Animate nouns refer to autonomous beings, like human beings, animals, plants and trees, deities, and even simple microorganisms and personified objects that exhibit apparent autonomous movement, like androids and automata. Inanimate nouns refer to any inert object: natural materials, man-made products, celestial objects, and abstract concepts. By nature, inanimate nouns cannot be the volitional agents of a verb.

Matzerieu nouns have either one of two numbers: singular or plural. However, plural marking is unnecesary when a numeral is present. There’s a dual number, but it’s very marginal and it only applies to nouns that appear naturally in pairs, like certain parts of the body like the eyes or the hands. Mass, uncountable nouns, like ''šar'' (‘water’) or ''žul'' (‘rice’) are invariable for number, although they could optionally take the collective marker ''-éro'', or a quantifier, if a sense of pluralization is needed. The plural number is marked with the suffix ''-(a)n'', whereas the dual is marked with the suffix ''-ce''.

| colspan="3" | ''cei šarhi šarel''

| cei || šarhi || šar-el

| colspan="4" | ''Ožek femel sasten hanirne.''

| ož-ek || femel || saste-'''n''' || han-irne

| {{smallcaps|1sg}}-{{smallcaps|dat}} || red || apple-'''{{smallcaps|abs}}''' || {{smallcaps|cop.npst}}-{{smallcaps|3pl.inact}}

| colspan="4" | ‘I have red apples.’

There are seven grammatical cases in Matzerieu: ergative, absolutive, dative, genitive, locative, ablative, and instrumental. Semantically and sintactically, the first three are the core cases of the verbal phrase.

| -el || -anel || -l || -nel

| -en || -anen || -n ||-nen

| colspan="3" | ''Te’vos te’ʒenǯui uhriʒetát.''

| te=vo-s || te=ʒenǯu-i || uhriʒe-t´-at

[[Category:Matzerieu]]