Difference between revisions of "Languages of Cerescapia"

Revision as of 18:20, 17 September 2007

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.

Insular Metalgol (Extinct)

Metalgolan

Old Metalgol

Modern Metalgol

Other Metalgol Dialects

Baalze

Asyhloan

See main article: Asyhloan

Old Oxenian

Modern Oxenian

Proto-Cyber-Pilchard

Cyber

Pilchardese

Satanic Ritual Speech

Roma

Other languages

• English