Mila: Difference between revisions

Mila is the language spoken by colonisers on the planet Kumla. It is descended from, and mutually comprehensible with the constructed language, Proto-Mila, as spoken on the home planet of Kumja. It has about 3000 speakers living in five settlements spread along the Siska River. There are slight dialectal differences between each settlement, though these too are all mutually comprehensible.

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.

Main sentence stress falls on the part of the sentence where agreement with the subject falls. This however is not the case if this word is a pronoun (which in non-formal speech are shortened). If there is a pronoun then the stress will fall on the verb, and if there is no verb, then the stress will fall on the subject. There is a rise in intonation before the main sentence stress and then the intonation falls from this main stress. There is no difference between statements and questions.

If coda /l/ or /r/ occur after /u/ or /i/ respectively then the /l/ and /r/ will be elided. We thus have the example of the word ''language'' '''ɷʌυ''' which has the root MRL. Without elision the syllabification gives /ʹmir.la/, but the /r/ follows /i/ and is in coda position, so the pronunciation is [ʹmi.ɫɐ]. Similarly the word for ''four'' is '''oυɾ''' which will syllabify prior to elision as /ʹpul.da/ but with elision it surfaces as [ʹpu.dɐ].

A grammatical /a/ can be inserted (which will take the word stress). This is shown in the orthography by placing an acute accent above the consonant it precedes. ''I am hungry'' is for example '''ɷ́on'''. As the acute accent is above the '''ɷ''' we must insert /a/ before this sound. This gives us the modified root of aMPC. Starting from this /a/ we then syllabify /ʹam.bic/. ''You are hungry'' translates as '''ɷón''' will insert /a/ before the second syllable giving the modified root of MaPC which syllabifies as /ʹmap.ca/. And finally ''(s)he is hungry'' translates as '''ɷoń''' giving the modified root as MPaC. Again starting from the left we start with /mV/ The vowel will be /u/ because of the following non-coronal sound, but the /p/ will not complete the syllable, but rather forms the onset of the following consonant, giving the syllabification of /muʹbac/.

Mila has a series of affixes, either prefixes or suffixes. In the orthography these are shown separated from the root with the symbol ''':'''. Syllabification of suffixes is a continuation of the syllabification process of the root. Prefixes are syllabified in the form VC. A word such as ''closed''-<span style="font-variant: small-caps;">adj</span> is ʌ:cιɾ:ω which syllabifies prior to phonological processes as /irʹsuh.tin/ but will surface as [iʹzuh.tin]. Because of the syllabification rules any affix may have a number of allomorphs. The dubitative suffix is ''':o''' /-p/ which may surfaces as [-up] if following an onset consonant, [-pa] if following a voiceless coda and [-ba] if following a voiced coda.