Metin

General information
Metin is a language spoken by about 57 trillion people in the Metii'nz'ou'ku and the surrounding areas, like Koryouz'ou'ku and Ishnnai'zou'ku. Metin is a Lingua Franca rather than a native language, it was spoken in its true form about 50 millenia ago at the founding of Metii'nz'ou'ku, since then, it has split into many daughter languages, which use old Metin as a language of common communication.

Vowels
Phonemes with * are marginal

''Letters in parantheses are romanizations. Sequences of sounds that could be confused for digraphs are seperated by a dash ( sx, /ʃ/ vs. s-x, /sx/).''

Note on romanization
The following consonants have differing romanizations depending on whether or not they are syllable initial or final

/θ/: tj at beginning of syllables, t at the end.

tján: /θán/, ket: /keθ/

/ð/: dj at beginning of syllables, d at the end.

djęę: /ðæ:/, uud: /u:ð/

/j/: y at beginning of syllables, yy at the end. (syllable final /j/ sounds more similar to /ʝ/

yį́ns: /jɨ́ns/, dayy: /daʝ

/ɣ/: G at beginning of syllables, g at the end.

Gáiɬ: /ɣáiɬ/, meeg: /me:ɣ/.

Consonants
The consonants marked with apostrophes are lateral sounds

To pronounce them, put the tip of your tongue at the base of your bottom teeth. Then, bend the rest of your tongue upwards until the center of your tongue is pressed against the base of the top teeth. Then, make a plosive, nasal, fricative, or lateral with your tongue in this position. You should sound like you have a lisp.

Plosive consonants and fricatives make a three-way distinction, voiceless, voiced, and breathy. v~w is considered an approximant, although it surfaces as the voiced bilabial fricative v before or after labial vowels. All fricatives, even aspirated ones, may occur at the end of syllables. There is no breathy Gh, nor are there p or b sounds (except in rare circumstances). The only consonant clusters in the Metin language are affricates and l clusters, such as kl, tl, dl, and dlh. l clusters may be voiceless, voiced or breathy. There are also x clusters, px, tx, tx', and Tx, there are only 4, and they are always voiceless.

Nasals are  only distinguished from eachother in the onset of a syllable, at the end of a syllable, they become the archiphoneme m*, which represents a nasal which agrees with the following consonant in place of articulation. If followed by a vowel, m* becomes, /m/.

Approximants can also carry no secondary articulations. There is also an archiphoneme for syllable final approximants, that is l*. l* becomes ł before voiceless non-retroflex consonants, r before retroflex consonants, vowels, and voiced consonants, and l before voiced palatal and dental consonants.

Vowels
Vowels are divided into two groups, normal and lateral.

A normal vowel has the tongue held straight during production. They cannot occur after a lateral or retroflex consonant.They are divided int three groups. The first group is the fronted vowels, or palatals, which are are i, e and ę. The neutral mid vowels are į, ą, and a. . The final group is the back vowels, or labial vowels, u, o and ǫ.

A lateral vowel is produced with the tip of the tongue at the base of the teeth and the rest of the tongue bent upwards. Frontness and backness are not distinguished, only openness and labialness. There are only two pure lateral vowels, unlabialized iy and labialized uy, the other lateral vowels are dipthongs with iy and uy, aay is a dipthong of aa and iy, oy is a dipthong of o and uy.

Phonotactics
A syllable may optionally have an onset with any one consonant or the permitted consonant clusters (listed in consonants section). The nucleus must consist of a vowel or sequence of vowels (vowels do not dipthongize, rather a sequence of vowels is pronounced with each vowel distinct.) The (optional) coda may be any fricative (including h and other breathy fricatives, which may be prenasalized.

Permitted syllables

v

ú, uu, e, į

cv

kiá, mái, klǫ, déé

cvc

kiis, naɬ, meZ

cvcc

maanh, kuíny, plóóns, dant, yǫ́h

Grammar
Metin is a polysynthetic, VSO language with most grammatical information indicated on the verb

Noun morphology
Metin numbers are divided into genders, which hold prefixes marking for the four cases and number. Number is not obligatory to mark, especially for inanimate nouns.

Gender 1
Gender 1 is exclusively for humans. The l* in sual*me and kal*me indicates that it is the archiphoneme l*, which changes to r before voiced noncoronal consonants (see phonology)

In fast speech, the prefix tsi is often reduced to just ts, ts'me is often heard in place of tsime, especially in Western dialects.

Gender 2
Gender 2 is usually used to mark machines and complex objects, and to make machines of verbs. It does not have a plural form, although the prefix dha can be used optionally

Gender 3
Gender 3 is used to mark a variety of inanimate objects.

Gender 4
Gender 4 is also used for inanimate objects, usually artifacts of nature or simpler objects

Gender 5
Gender 5 is used for uncountable objects, like water or sand.

Gender 6
Gender 6 is used for abstract concepts and qualities, like love, justice, or colors. Gender 6 nouns are also uncountable.

Gender 7
Gender 7 is used for locations and large inanimate objexts.

Verbs
The Metin verb is by far the most complex part of Metin grammar. Most of Metin verb morphology involves prefixes, allthough there are a handful of suffixes that can occur. "imfusyijaxkizok'eeh-ibha": I let him down there bit by bit hanging from a rope (I saw so).

Evidentiality
Evidential prefixes are the simplest part of the Metin verb. They indicate how the speaker knows about what they're talking about. They have only two forms, one for if they are followed by lexical prefixes and one if they are not.

Subject agreement with exponents
All metin verbs agree with their subjects. Subject agreement is expressed by prefixes that come immediately before the verb. The prefixes have enormous allomporphy depending on what else is going on in the verb, so each situation must be looked at individually to understand what is going on.

Prefixless Verbs
These verbs have nothing but the subject prefixes added onto them, and are thus the simplest to conjugate. At the simplest level, Metin subject prefixes can be divided into two groups, continuous and momentous. The continuous prefixes are roughly used for verbs whose actions are stretched out over a long period of time, while the momentous are used for solitary actions. The difference of meaning between these two prefixes is often not clear, so it is best to memorize which prefixes are used where.

Inner prefixes
Inner prefixes bear the greater portion of the grammar in Metin, and they interact with eachother in complex ways, thus, it is difficult to talk about them in isolation.

The subject prefixes
These are the basic forms of the subject prefixes. The prefixes rarely surface identically to their basic form, but instead change according to their environment. The verb below shows the forms of the prefixes when they are not preceded nor followed by any other prefixes.

Bare subject prefixes
Notice two things: Every subject prefix recieves an initial cononant (o to wo, iz to hiz), vowelless prefixes get a peg hï, f changes to hu, yał changes to yeł, and the verb recieves the suffix -wa to indicate plurality.

With evidentials
This table shows the form of the prefixes when preceded by an evidential. Notice how the subject prefixes are now almost identical to their base forms (except f, which has changed to u. f changes to u whenever it is sandwiched between two consonants.)

With lexical prefixes
This table shows the forms of the subject prefixes when preceded by a lexical prefix. Notice how the lexical prefix's vowel is long in the forms marked with an *, and short elsewhere. Forms marked with a * trigger what is known as the ''lexical prefix vowel change. ''The lexical prefix vowel change usually lengthens the prefixes vowel, but occasionally other changes will happen (For example, the lexical prefix drai changes to drayee before an *, as in drayeefdheu (drai-f*-dheu), "You barely finish climbing." Vowel changes will be listed next to a lexical prefix's entry in the dictionary.

Classifiers
Classifiers are prefixes that come after the subject prefixes, usually indicating transitivity. There are 2 classifiers, a and e

Combination of subject prefixes with classifier e
These subject prefix-classifier combinations are highly irregular and must be learned by rote. As before, forms arked with an * will trigger lexical prefix vowel change if preceded by one. The following table shows what these prefixes look like with preceding lexicals.

Combination of subject prefixes with classifier a
Classifier a behaves almost identically to classifer e. It is most frequently found in intransitive verbs. and with lexical prefixes

Stative prefixes
The stative prefixes are used with verbs that involve continuous, stable states that do not require internal input. The present and past statives are used with the stative stem of the verb dhatu (often homophonous with the continuous stem), and the future stative (which often has a meaning of "become") is used with the continuous future stem.

Simple Noun phrases
A simple noun phrase consists of at least 1 noun, the head noun, declined for case.

fįgoon "chair"

The head noun may be followed by one or more descriptors, such as adjectives or demonstratives

fįgoon Za "that chair"

fįgoon mui's "beautiful chair"

It may be followed by a postposition

fungoon Za dez "by that beautiful chair"

Genitive constructions
All Metin genitive constructions are marked by the genitive suffixes These suffixes are added to the posessed noun, which may chang form to accomodate them

tsime: person tsimeyo: my person

fįgoon: chair fįgoonmén: his chair

The posessor may be further specified by a noun following the posessed noun. If the relationship between the two nouns is one of ownership or interpersonal relations, the following noun is put into the oblique case.

fįgoonmen tsuałtxen: txen's chair.

tsimi tsuarbhii: Bhii's mother

If the relationship is one of subordination, the following noun is put into the ablative case

sxuJaoyi luoometin: City of the Metin

cábhenzhayi muooji: surface of the water

If the relation is one of composition, the common case is used

fįgoonmi luukaw: diamond chair

sxumiyi luqoo: white dwelling

Many attributive verbs may also use the genitive construction, in this case, the modified noun takes a third person inalienable suffix and the verb takes no prefixes.

Complex Noun phrases
Conjunctions

Two noun phrases may be linked by conjunctions such as ppi or zxá

fïgoomen quo Za ppi fïtooq tliue ta "that white chair and this green plant"

fïgoomen quo Za zxá fïtooq tliue ta "that white chair or this green plant"

fïgoomen quo Za hi fïtoq tliue ta hu "that white chair, this green plant, and other things"

Comparisons

Comparisons in Metin are structured like this "Quality-posessive suffix-quantity-OBL-head noun-mu-compared noun

luquoyen zhaax fungoomen mu funtooq Za. whiteness-3ps great OBL-chair mu plant that "The chair is whiter than the plant" (Literal: The chair's whiteness is great compared to that plant."

luquoyen Gui fungoomen mu funtooq ta. "the chair is less white than that plant."

The copulas Dhaa, bhaa, and mimi.
The copula always comes first in the sentence

Dhaa

Noun phrases may be marked equivalent by the copula Dhaa

Dhaa sime te sibeh suałsuho. "That person by you is my friend's sister"

COPULA person here-by you sister-3ps OBL-friend-1ps

Or be stated without the copula to convey the same meaning

sime te sibeh suałsuho. (same meaning)

bhaa

The copula bhaa is used in the same way as Dhaa, but changes the phrase to a question. It is used most often in the respectful and distant registers.

bhaa sime te sibeh suałsuho? "Is that person by you my friend's sister?"

Like Dhaa, bhaa may be ommited, the only indication that the statement is a question being the tone of voice. bhaa is most commonly ommited in the close informal register.

sime te sibeh suałsuho? (same meaning)

mimi

The copula mimi indicates that two noun phrases are not equivalent. It is used like the other copulas.

mimi sime te sibeh suałsuho "That person by you is not my friend's sister"