Let's look a bit into the sentence structure of the language. Again here is a bit of asian influence as sentences start with a topic (T), then comes a particle (p), then the verb (V) and the remaining complements and adverbials (C1 C2...Cn):
T p V C1 C2...Cn
For simplicity, so far all T's and C's consist of NP's (noun phrases) which I have talked a bit about in the post on reduplication. I haven't worked too much on the NP's yet, and there will probably also be a way to make complement clauses, but those are subjects of a different blogpost.
Back to sentence syntax. The particle is the fun part. It shows the tense, mood and voice of the verb. There are two tenses: future and non-future. And I still haven't decided on what moods to include, but maybe something like realis, irrealis, interrogative and imperative. That's as far as I will go into that for now.
The interesting part is the voicemarking. You can also think of it as marking the case of the topic, because it shows the topics role in the sentence. There are five voices in ‘Mhmmz:
Active (ACT)
Passive (PASS)
Dative (DAT)
Instrumental/genitive (INS)
Locative/temporative (LOC)
Active shows that the topic is the subject or agent of the sentence, as in "I run" or "He kicks the ball". And passive that the topic is the patient of the sentence, as in "It was given to me" or "This coffee, I like". Those are pretty conventional.
Now, dative is not normally a voice, but it is here. It shows that the topic is the indirect object of the sentence, for example "Peter was given a present". The next ones have multiple functions: The instrumental/genitive may mark the instrument of the sentence ("With the pencil he wrote a letter"), or that the topic is the possessor of one of the other complements ("The pencil has a dull tip" or "About the pencil, its tip is dull"). And finally the locative/temporative marks time and/or place, which I find pretty natural as they are often mixed up, as in "At the wedding he danced a lot" or "Now I am tired" or "There I will go next summer".
I'm sorry I haven't got any in-language examples, but it's simply not that developed yet, for which I have only myself to blame. I'm off to a party now, have a nice weekend guys (and gals).
Showing posts with label ‘Mhmmz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ‘Mhmmz. Show all posts
Saturday, 2 June 2012
Sunday, 27 May 2012
Script
I've been working on the script for quite a while and now I have finally organised my scribbles and scanned them in. First a sample, so you can get a feel of it:
The asian inspiration should be obvious, and I think that goes well with the tonal nature of the language. I have tried to mimic, mix and match (and even shamelessly stolen a bit from) scripts such as tibetan, devanagari, chinese, katakana, hiragana, hangul, tamil, mongolian and possibly many more. It is written vertically - another very asian feature - from top to bottom in rows from right to left.
Now let's break down the word into its individual parts:
The yellow things are punctuation: The first two circumflex-like things mean "begin paragraph", and the last vertical line means "end paragraph". I know. It's a very short paragraph.
Each syllable is enclosed in a 7-shaped bracket; the green ones in the image. Or if there is no onset simply a vertical line. This is from devanagari- and tibetan-influence.
The red characters are the vowels m and mm respectively. See how the shape of the long vowel symbol is derrived from the short vowel symbol? All long vowels of the script are, but each of them is derived somewhat randomly. But I guess this makes the script featural. At least a bit like hangul.
The bright blue character is the onset of the second syllable (h), and you may wonder where the onset of the first syllable (‘) is. It is not written directly, but the horizontal line of the syllable-bracket alone stands in for it. And as mentioned no onset is marked otherwise.
The purple curl at the end marks the tone, and so does the absence of a curl in the first syllable. I think you get the point of how this script works. Now jump in to get the full alphabet.
 |
| The name of the language (‘Mhmmz) in the ‘Mhmmz script |
Now let's break down the word into its individual parts:
 |
| Analysis of the word ‘Mhmmz |
Each syllable is enclosed in a 7-shaped bracket; the green ones in the image. Or if there is no onset simply a vertical line. This is from devanagari- and tibetan-influence.
The red characters are the vowels m and mm respectively. See how the shape of the long vowel symbol is derrived from the short vowel symbol? All long vowels of the script are, but each of them is derived somewhat randomly. But I guess this makes the script featural. At least a bit like hangul.
The bright blue character is the onset of the second syllable (h), and you may wonder where the onset of the first syllable (‘) is. It is not written directly, but the horizontal line of the syllable-bracket alone stands in for it. And as mentioned no onset is marked otherwise.
The purple curl at the end marks the tone, and so does the absence of a curl in the first syllable. I think you get the point of how this script works. Now jump in to get the full alphabet.
Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Numbers
‘Mhmmz used to have a duodecimal number system (base-12), but now they have changed over to a decimal system (base-10, like ours). This is by influence from some other language, that I have yet to come up with. There are still traces of the old duodecimal system: 11, 12 and some multiples of 12 have retained their old names.
Here are the numbers:
1 hmj
2 xnz
3 qz
4 ‘ml
5 kvn
6 fmj
7 kxqj
8 gmz
9 hnl
10 km
11 ‘mz
12 gnjf
These are the basic numbers, and also what they used in their duodecimal system, but from 13 it becomes decimal:
13 km-qz
14 km-‘ml
15 km-kvn
...and so on.
The tens are marked with a suffixed -k:
20 xnzk
30 qzk
40 ‘mlk
...and so forth.
Exceptions and bigger numbers after the jump...
Here are the numbers:
1 hmj
2 xnz
3 qz
4 ‘ml
5 kvn
6 fmj
7 kxqj
8 gmz
9 hnl
10 km
11 ‘mz
12 gnjf
These are the basic numbers, and also what they used in their duodecimal system, but from 13 it becomes decimal:
13 km-qz
14 km-‘ml
15 km-kvn
...and so on.
The tens are marked with a suffixed -k:
20 xnzk
30 qzk
40 ‘mlk
...and so forth.
Exceptions and bigger numbers after the jump...
Why?
Why invent such a language?
I was inspired by the words spelled uhuh and uh-uh and mean 'yes' and 'no' respectively. So I thought how would a language made up of solely nasal sounds be? And ‘Mhmmz is my answer to that question.
Why would people speak such a language?
I imagine it spoken by a sect, that wants to rid themselves of all opinion. They gave up speaking, because that way they avoid anyone quoting them for having an opinion. Some of the extremists even sew their mouths shut, leaving only enough room for a straw of bamboo, through which they could eat mashed foods.
But they couldn't keep it up, so eventually they started communicating in this language. Although if you asked them, they would deny that it is language (I'm going to make ‘Mhmmz mean 'non-language'). (And, yes, denying that what they speak is language, is opinion: I didn't say that they didn't have opinion, that's just their ideal, but most of them can't live up to it)
I was inspired by the words spelled uhuh and uh-uh and mean 'yes' and 'no' respectively. So I thought how would a language made up of solely nasal sounds be? And ‘Mhmmz is my answer to that question.
Why would people speak such a language?
I imagine it spoken by a sect, that wants to rid themselves of all opinion. They gave up speaking, because that way they avoid anyone quoting them for having an opinion. Some of the extremists even sew their mouths shut, leaving only enough room for a straw of bamboo, through which they could eat mashed foods.
But they couldn't keep it up, so eventually they started communicating in this language. Although if you asked them, they would deny that it is language (I'm going to make ‘Mhmmz mean 'non-language'). (And, yes, denying that what they speak is language, is opinion: I didn't say that they didn't have opinion, that's just their ideal, but most of them can't live up to it)
Sunday, 1 January 2012
IPA phonetic inventory
I am working on the grammar, and have found out I want to use a few different kinds of reduplication for inflexion. I am also writing a document with all the information on the language and some backstory of it.
Meanwhile, here's the phonology with extended IPA notation. It may not be accurate, and it may be more confusing than helpful, but I felt I had to put it in IPA.
Consonants:
Vowels:
Meanwhile, here's the phonology with extended IPA notation. It may not be accurate, and it may be more confusing than helpful, but I felt I had to put it in IPA.
Consonants:
| Nareal | Velopharyngeal | Glottal | |||
| Unvoiced | Voiced | Unvoiced | Voiced | Unvoiced | |
| Stop |
-
|
-
|
k [pm]
|
‘ [m͡ʔ]
|
|
| Fricative |
f [m͋]
|
v [m̬͋]
|
x [ʩ̊]
|
g [ʩ]
|
h [m͡h] or [m̥]
|
| Affricate |
kf [pmm͋]
|
kv [bmm̬͋]
|
kx [pm͡ʩ̊]
|
kg [bm͡ʩ]
|
-
|
Vowels:
| Labial | (Labial-)Palatal | (Labial-)Uvular | |
| Short |
m [m̩]
|
n [m͡ɲ̩]
|
q [m͡ɴ̩]
|
| Long |
mm [m̩ː]
|
nn [m͡ɲ̩ː]
|
qq [m͡ɴ̩ː]
|
Saturday, 15 October 2011
Welcome
This is the official blog of my conlang ‘Mhmmz. This will show the most up-to-date revision of the conlang.
The language has been posted in a number of places already in different forms and under slightly different names. The very earliest form is on the New CBB where it was known as either ‘mhm̋ or ‘ohaa. Here you can see some of the early development, for example it started with a one vowel system and now has three different qualities.
Then it was posted on DeviantArt (see picture below), where it was called 'M0hmm2. It is mostly a phonology as of right now, and the DeviantArt post is pretty much up-to-date. Only one change has been made to the orthography: Instead of numbers ( 0, 1, 2, 3 ) tones are marked with letters ( Ø, l, z, j ), since I found the numbers in text disturbing.
Well, that's it for now. I'll update this in a week or so, as I am going on holiday. See ya!
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