Languages of Cerescapia

From NSwiki, the NationStates encyclopedia.
Jump to: navigation, search

Languages of Cerescapia details languages and language families in the region of Cerescapia.

This article is organized by language family.

Language Families

Currently, three language families and three isolates are considered to exist as native languages of Cerescapia. In rougly order of speech:

  • By far the most dominant of these is Macro-Mace, spoken along the coast from the eastern boundary of Cerescapia to the Delta of Nymphs (and formerly as far west as the island of Prosper in Metalgolem).
  • Next-most-spoken is Metalgolan, a Germanic branch spoken within the borders of present-day Metalgolem.
  • Third is the Asyhloan isolate, official language of Asyhlo AO.
  • Fourth comes Oxenian, descended from Old Oxenian, which is considered a language isolate; Oxenian is a minority language on the island of Oxenia.
  • The Cyber-Pilchard languages, Cyber and Pilchardese, are spoken on Pilchard Island, also as minority languages.
  • Satanic Ritual Speech has fallen out of use in religious services, but is studied extensively by linguists.

Additionally, Roma is often considered to be a significant language of Cerescapia, although it is not native to the region. Also, English is a major second or third language.

Macro-Mace

The Macro-Mace family was first proven to exist by Asyhloan linguist Loa Oyla in the late 1990s. It is the most widely spoken language family in Cerescapia, both in terms of native speakers and geographic spread.

The Macro-Mace languages are all descended from one language, termed "Proto-Macro-Mace", which broke up around 800 BC. It is thought that it was spoken along the coast north of Pmace Island, in the area where North Pmace City stands today. The Proto-Macro-Macian people are thought to have been more primitive than peoples outside the region, as well as the Cyber-Pilchardese and Oxenians on the islands to the south. However, the language family, and mostly its descendant language Pmace, have come to dominate the region.

A few things are common to the Macro-Mace languages, most notably the plural form in -p. An OSV word order is standard. Also, the word for "I" is nearly identical in all the languages: ya in Pmace, y (feminine) or yy (neuter) in Nymphatic, ya in Yamma, and ia in Insular Metalgol. (The Proto-Macro-Mace words for "you" (pa(y)) and "he"/"she" (ma/maya) have only been descended in some languages.) A masculine-feminine-neuter gender format has been postulated for the proto-language, although this was lost in most daughter languages. Gender and number (where they exist) decline on nouns and adjectives, but never on verbs.

Pmace

The primary descendant language of Proto-Macro-Mace is Pmace. It is first recorded in the 1100s AD by Cybernursian scribes. At that time, it was spoken across the island of Pmace as well as on the opposite shore to the north. After that point, Pmace became a significant trading language in its local area, used as the primary lingua franca east of the River of Nymphs. In fact, it was used in Yamma territory to communicate between different dialect groups, since it was viewed as a "neutral outside language". After the Metalgol decolonization in the late 1800s and especially after the era of revolutions in the 1960s and 70s, Pmace became a dominant language first as a diplomatic language across Cerescapia, and later as a first language across the region's western half.

Pmace exemplifies an Object-Subject-Verb structure, with adjectives coming before their nouns and adverbs clustered at the beginning of the sentence. It has relatively standard phonetics, with the vowels AEIOU pronounced roughly as in Italian and the consonants B C (which can be pronounced like "s" or "ch") D F G K L M N P R T V W Y Z (which is sometimes pronounced as a "zh" sound, as in the word kuczi, "zucchini").

Pmace has lost the gender system, which was present vestigially in some of the earliest inscriptions. Plurals are marked in the standard Macro-Mace -p.

Nymphatic

Nymphatic is the primary spoken language along the River of Nymphs. It was first written in the 1000s AD, although oral literature dates back to the 300s BC (dated by mention of the arrival of the Germanic Pre-Metalgol peoples). The language has recently lost out to Metalgol and Pmace, especially along the river's northern stretches, and has been banned on the western bank, which is controlled by Metalgolem.

Nymphatic is the only modern Mace language to retain the gender structure at all. However, it has collapsed the masculine and neuter groups, leaving a feminine-neuter distinction. The feminine form is unmarked, and is shown by an Object-Subject-Verb structure (standard for Mace languages); sentences where the primary actor is neuter have their order reversed, to Verb-Subject-Object, as well as placement of adjectives after nouns as opposed to before in the feminine form. The syntax can be mixed to express shades of the total gender of the sentence.

The letters are the vowels A E O U Y and the consonants F H K L M N P R S T V W Y (Proto-Macro-Mace B D G Z collapsed into P T K S respectively). Plurals are formed in -p, but are sometimes left off of neuter words.

Yamma

Yamma is perhaps best described as a "dialect grouping", with small dialects spoken across the farming territory of modern-day eastern mainland Pmace. Examples given here are of one of the most centralized and significant dialects, that spoken around the village of Yam City.

Yamma was never a truly written language, as by the time writing arrived in the area in the 1700s, it was already easier to just write in Pmace since few could understand your local dialect. In modern times, the various dialects of Yamma are disappearing fast, and all but a very few are only spoken by the very elderly. Pmace is now the standard language in the area.

The word order is Object-Subject-Verb, which is changed to Object-Verb-Subject in questions and some exclamations (e.g. "How absurd!", literally "Absurd is it how?"). The letters are: A E Y O U, D G K L M N R S T W Y Z (H was dropped; all labial sounds (B F M P V) except for W were collapsed into M, making it by far the most common sound in the language).

Yamma contains traces of the ancient gender structure: it is seen in some set phrases, and is declined in the third person singular on the verb "to be", meama. Plural is in -m.

Insular Metalgol (Extinct)

Insular Metalgol was first spoken by the inhabitants of coastal eastern Metalgolem around the 500s BC. At its peak in the 300s BC, it was spoken along the coast from the island of Prosper to the Delta of Nymphs, but with the invasion of the Germanic Old Metalgol tribes in the 300s, its territory began to shrink. The last words of Insular Metalgol were probably spoken on either Prosper or Rapture in the 400s AD. It is mostly known from a few scraps in Metalgol texts.

While it was spoken, it retained the full three-gender system, as did all the Macro-Mace languages at that time. The word order was strict Object-Subject-Verb. The known sounds are A E O U Y and B D G H K L M N P R S T V W Y (F and Z probably were also used, but they were uncommon enough that they did not appear in any surviving texts. To this day, F is the least common letter in all the Macro-Mace languages except Yamma, which eliminated it.) Plural was marked in -p.

Metalgolan

See also Metalgolem

Metalgolan is a branch of the Germanic languages. It was spoken by invaders from the north who settled the area in the 300s BC. It remained one united language, known as Old Metalgol, up until about 1300 AD, when it broke up into about fifteen different languages.

Old Metalgol

Old Metalgol was the common language of all of mainland Cerescapia west of the River of Nymphs from 300 BC - 1300 AD. It is extensively recorded, with numerous epic battle poems and other great works. It is notable for its high number of words for weaponry, which originated not just from Germanic sources, but also from Celtic, Latin, Greek, Finnish, and Chinese (it is possible that the word lueg, meaning a strong but primitive stick primarily used to bash in the skull of the guy in the canoe next to you, is borrowed from Insular Metalgol).

Old Metalgol retained a small amount of the Germanic case system, with Nominative, Accusative, Dative and Genitive cases, as well as the masculine-feminine gender system. Plurals were (and still are) formed in -s. The word order was Subject-Verb-Object, with secondary verbs pushed to the end of the sentence.

Standard Metalgol

The predominant language of modern-day Metalgolem, Standard Metalgol is normally just called "Metalgol". It was spoken in the area between Despair and the southern Metal Plateau after the breakup of Old Metalgolem in the 1300s. Its number of native speakers jumped in the year 1970, when all other descendant languages of Old Metalgol were declared by the Metalgol government to be dialects of it.

The only remnant of the case system in Metalgol is the Genitive, marked in -h (although it is unmarked after most consonants). The gender system has been lost, except in a few set phrases (comparable to Yamma). The word order has shifted to Subject-Object-Verb, possibly under influence from Pmace, although it was not a large jump: in Old Metalgol, when an auxiliary was present, the main verb would be pushed to the end of the sentence. Plurals are formed in -s.

Other Metalgol Dialects

There were many other daughter languages of Old Metalgol spoken after the 1300 breakup of Old Metalgol. In 1700, it is estimated that there were ten Metalgol languages, including Standard Metalgol and Baalze, and by the 1970 revolution, there were eight. However, after the revolution, policies against non-Standard Metalgol were instituted, including the banning of "minor dialects" in print and in spoken relations with government officials. It is now estimated that only three dialects remain with more than a few speakers: Standard Metalgol, Baalze (see below), and one isolated dialect spoken in the northern part of the Metal Plateau.

Baalze

Baalze, language of the former nation of Baalzebob, was the most divergent of the descendant dialects of Old Metalgol. Originally spoken around the port city of Baalze, it is now the first language for most people living in that city and to the north and west.

Baalze completely lost the Old Metalgol case and gender structure. The word order remained Subject-Verb-Object, although if an auxiliary is present, the main verb can be moved to the end of the sentence for emphasis. Plurals are formed in -s, although in informal speech, the Pmace -p is sometimes substituted when a word sounds better that way (as in the word hos "home", where hoses (pronounced "HOSS-uhs") is replaces by hosp). This usage has declined since the revolution, especially among the upper class and in rural areas.

Asyhloan

See main article: Asyhloan

Asyhloan was probably first spoken around 1500 AD, when the first inhabitants arrived on the island of Asyhlo AO. It is not known to be related to any other language. Looks into Asyhloan's past began in the 1980s: Haalahy (1984) proposed that Asyhloan was related to Pmace based on syntax evidence; he was closely followed by Yallo (1985) who proposed a link to Old Oxenian due to sound structure.

Currently, the most comprehensive study of Asyhloan's genetic relationships is Loa Oyla (1992), who looked at each language in Cerescapia (Old Metalgol, Pmace, Proto-Cyber-Pilchard, Old Oxenian, Yamma, Nymphatic, and even Satanic Ritual Speech and Roma) and managed to prove Asyhloan was not related to any of these. More recent work on Asyhloan linguistics has attempted to link it to French, Turkish, and even Basque. However, no solid theory has gained general acceptance, and Asyhloan is still considered an isolate.

Asyhloan has very simple phonetics, with vowels A O Y and consonants H L S Y. There is a masculine-feminine gender system, with neither being considered unmarked. The only verbal affix is a subjunctive/imperative form in -s. Tense, as well as what are in English helping verbs, act as "verb assistants" at the end of the sentence; the only two tense words are borrowed from Metalgol. There is no plural form.

Asyhloan is Object-Subject-Verb, like the Macro-Mace languages, although the indirect object is placed after the verb while adverbs are placed at or near the beginning; in the Macro-Mace languages, the two are lumped together at either the beginning or the end of the sentence. Adjectives precede their nouns.

Most Asyhlo vocabulary is native, with no corresponding forms in other languages. Much of the vocabulary is borrowed from Metalgol, especially words borrowed in during the 1800s. Modern technical terms are mostly borrowed from English or Pmace.

Old Oxenian

Old Oxenian is recorded as the primary language of the island of Oxenia since the mid-1300s. It was recorded on clay tablets in several scripts, including the Oxenian Syllabary, Cyberscript 1.0, and, after the advent of printing, the Latin alphabet. Additionally, a number of tablets are written in a fourth script, called Oxenian Script B. It is not certain that the language contained in Oxenian Script B is even Oxenian: one linguist has proposed that it may actually be an early form of Asyhloan.

However, much is known of the Old Oxenian language and culture from the existing tablets. The people of the time were largely nomadic, with the only permanent settlements located along the northern coast. They knew some agriculture, but were largely a herding culture.

Old Oxenian had the following letters: A E I O for vowels and C D G H K N Q R S T X Y Z (C, H, Q and X were various fricatives and affricatives, that descended as those letters in later Oxenian). Oxenian had a basic gender system, with masculine nouns ending in consonants and feminine ones ending in vowels. It was a Subject-Object-Verb language, with adjectives coming before their nouns. There were no plurals.

Modern Oxenian

Modern Oxenian has been heavily influenced by Pmace, and has been nearly supplanted by it. It is now spoken largely in the rural areas in the south of the island, as opposed to the Pmace-speaking north.

Modern Oxenian has had several changes since about 1900. A number of letters were collapsed:

  • C merged into S or X
  • The "gh" diphthong merged into G
  • Q merged into K
  • Y merged into I or was lost
  • Z merged into S

Additionally, the Object can now precede the Subject for emphasis. Also, a plural has been added in -t, the closest sound to the Pmace -p in the phonetic inventory.

Proto-Cyber-Pilchard

Pilchard Island was the first of the three main southern Cerescapian islands to be settled. Estimates suggest it was settled in the 300s to 600s AD. The Proto-Cyber-Pilchard language split up in the 900s, but the two languages stayed on similar courses due to their close geographic proximity.

Proto-Cyber-Pilchard had the vowels A E I and the consonants B C D F L P R S T. There were three tenses, the present, progressive in -s, and perfect in -f. The plural is recorded as -p, although it is likely this is not native and was borrowed from Proto-Macro-Mace; thus, it has been postulated that Proto-Cyber-Pilchard had no plural (compare Asyhloan and Old Oxenian, spoken on the other two southern islands). The syntax was Subject-Object-Verb, with adverbs and indirect objects clustered at either the beginning or the end of the sentence.

Cyber

Cyber was the language spoken in the southern part of Pilchard Island. It was the dominant literary and diplomatic language in Cerescapia from about 1200 until the rise of Metalgol in the 1700s. It was written first in Cyberscript 1.0, an alphabet known for being very blocklike. Beginning in about 1350, Cyberscript 2.0 was used, known for its "ticks" (equivalent of "serifs" in English) and whorls. In modern times, Cyberscript 3.0 is used, known for its curvature and lack of excess flair.

The following phonetic changes occured between the year 1200 and today:

  • I became Y, still a vowel
  • S merged into C
  • F was lost, probably under influence from Pmace.

The present and progressive (in -c) tenses remain, but the perfect was lost along with the phonetic shifts; the progressive tense has taken on a more future sense of meaning, as the present has moved closer to the past in compensation. The plural is still in -p. Syntax is still Subject-Object-Verb, with adverbs calcifying at the end of the sentence.

Pilchardese

Pilchardese, spoken on the north side of the island, has been much more heavily influenced by Pmace. It is now only spoken by a few elderly people, due to the total dominance of the Pmace language on the north coast of the island.

In Pilchardese, B merged into P, C became Ch, and F was merged into P. All three tenses are still in use, although the perfect is now in -p. The plural is still in -p. The syntax also remained Subject-Object-Verb, although in contrast to Cyber (and in comparison to Pmace), adverbs have calcified at the beginning of the sentence.

Satanic Ritual Speech

Satanic Ritual Speech is a religious language used in Nymph religious services. It is not related to any Cerescapian language, and probably was constructed as a language of worship. It is notable in that it has six genders: one for men, -y, one for women, -l, one for satan and associated deities, -r, one for edible things, -s, one for dangerous things, -t, and one for everything else, -f. Verbs have separate conjugations for each one as a subject and object. There is no number in Satanic Ritual Speech, and syntax is completely free - in most cases, the gender makes it clear what part of speech is which.

Roma

Sometimes considered to be a "language of Cerescapia" is Roma, spoken by the Gypsy people in northern and central Metalgolem. It is an Indo-Aryan language and first arrived in Cerescapia in the 1300s. It is notable for giving the word for "lollipop" to every Cerescapian language:

  • Pmace Lolipaba
  • Nymphatic Lolypava
  • Yamma Lolymmama
  • Metalgol Lolypop
  • Baalze Lolepop
  • Asyhloan Lolya
  • Oxenian Nonito
  • Cyber Lallybapa
  • Pilchardese Lallipapa
  • Even Satanic Ritual Speech has an official word for it: Lolivos (in the Edible gender)

Other languages

English is a significant language across the region. It is the major second language taught in schools in Pmace (in Asyhlo AO, it is Pmace, and in Metalgolem, no second language is taught). It is also used for interregional communication.

Proposed Higher-Level Links

Some linguists have proposed higher-level relationships between languages. One popular one of these involves grouping Asyhloan, Old Oxenian, and Proto-Cyber-Pilchard into one language group, called "South Cerescapian". Some linguists state that South Cerescapian was first spoken in the area around the Delta of Nymphs more than 3000 years ago. They propose that it was pushed out by a wave of Proto-Macro-Mace immigrants, probably from the east, and that they subsequently split into their constituent parts, although not before leaving traces in the Macro-Mace languages. It is occasionally proposed that Satanic Ritual Speech is a South Cerescapian language that became a religious language for the Proto-Macro-Mace people living along the River of Nymphs, but this is highly doubtful. Current consensus states that more research is necessary, specifically into Oxenian Script B, as well as into the earliest texts in Old Oxenian and Cyber-Pilchard before solid conclusions can be drawn.

Cerescapia
Main articles: Cerescapia, Languages
Pmace
Metalgolem
Asyhlo AO: Asyhloan Language, .aao
For more information or to see non-listed pages, please see Category:Cerescapia.


Languages of NationStates
Major constructed or created languages: Dienstadi | Gurennese | Jevian | Necrontyr | Noterelenda | Pacitalian | Pacitalian English | Rejistanian | Rethast | Riikan | Solen
Minor constructed or created languages: Alçaera | Algebraic English | Alvésin | Ancient Shieldian | Anguistian | Aperin | Avalyic | Baranxeï | Belmorian | Belmorian-Rejistanian | Celdonian | Chicoutim | Constantian | Dovakhanese | Edolian | Eugenian | Fklaazj | Footballian | Galadisian Quenya | Garomenian | Gestahlian | Gosian | Hockey Canadian | Isselmerian | Kerlan | Khenian | Kurma | Kzintsu'ng | Lank Jan | Latika | Lausem | Letilan | Limbruenglish | Mock Welsh | Neo-Virgean | Nielandic | Nord-Brutlandese | Nordaþ | Novian | Palixian | Paristani | Poirih | Rukialkotta | Sandrian | Scat | Schnan | Simple English | Søskendansk | Syokaji | Tetemelayu | Trøndersk | Volscian | Weegie | Weserian | Wymgani | Xikuangese | Yokarian
Selection of Real-life languages in NS: Albanian | Arabic | Belarusian | Catalan | Chechen | Chinese | Czech | Dutch | English | Esperanto | Faroese | Finnish | French | German | Greek | Hebrew | Hindi | Icelandic | Irish | Italian | Japanese | Korean | Latin | Latvian | Maltese | Maori | Mongolian | Norse | Norwegian | Persian (Farsi) | Polish | Portuguese | Punjabi | Russian | Samoan | Sign language | Sanskrit | Spanish | Sumerian | Swahili | Swedish | Tamil | Thai | Tibetan | Tongan | Urdu | Welsh
For a full list of NationStates languages see Category:Languages.