Modern Manish: Difference between revisions

'''Modern Manish''' (''kîndokâkosthev'' [ˌkɪn.doˌkɑ.kosˈθev]) is a language spoken in the fictional world of [[Verse:Aior|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.

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.

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.

*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.

#Change of unmarked constituent order from Subject-Object-Verb to Subject-Verb-Object

#Loss of vowel length

#Debuccalization of /f/ to /h/ followed by loss of /h/ in all positions

#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

#Reanalysis of the definite state marker ''ra-'' as a definite article ''la''

#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

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.

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.

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.

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 /r/.

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 does not affect its morphology, but it does require 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.

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 ''-kin''. 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.