Metin

General information
Metin is a centrally standardized lingua franca spoken by most residents of the Metin nation and in the surrounding Daiwe. Metin is a koine rather than a native language, it was spoken in its true form about fifty milennia ago at the founding of Metin nation, since then, it has split into many daughter languages, whose speakers use old Metin as a language of common communication. Its audibly spoken form is considered a language of ceremony, art, and intimacy. Metin's corresponding binary form is used extensively to communicate with technology, as a format of information storage, and for radiotelepathy.

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
Sequences of consonants that could be mistaken for a digraph are split up by a dash.

gadha: /gadha/

gad-ha: /gaðha/

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, j at the end. (syllable final /j/ sounds more similar to /ʝ/

yį́ns: /jɨ́ns/, daj: /daʝ

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

gjáiɬ: /ɣáiɬ/, meeg: /me:ɣ/.

Consonants
Plosive consonants and fricatives make a three-way distinction, voiceless, voiced, and breathy. 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.

Syllable initial nasals are always pronounced /m/. Syllable-final nasals assimilate to the following consonant, but are pronounced /n/ in isolation. A syllable final nasal disappears before a succeeding /h/, nasalising the preceding vowel. Some speakers will also nasalize the preceding vowel in other contexts. Before a pause, the final nasal is pronounced /n/.

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
Metin vowels may be closed, mid, or open in height, and front, central, or back in backness, producing a total of 9 simple vowel qualities. They may be short or long. Long vowels are written doubly, giving aa, ii, įį, uu, ee, ęę, ǫǫ

E and O are more closed than Ą. Ę and Ǫ are more high than A. The back vowels, U, O, and Ǫ, are all rounded. Į is pronounced almost as far back in the oral cavity as U, but is unrounded.

Diphthongs and Triphthongs
Metin has close and mid onglides and offglides, which may be rounded or unrounded, comprising I, E, U, and O, respectively. . A vowel may have both an on and off glide. All syllables containing diphthongs and triphthongs are considered to be long. The glides E and O may not occur with E, Ę, O, or Ǫ. I may not occur with I and neither U with U. In the diphthongs ui and iu, the first element is considered the glide.

The glide I, as an onglide, may not occur after any sylable-initial palatal consonant. As an offglide, it may not appear before a syllable-final palatal consonant.

The glide U, as an onglide or as an offglide, may not occur after a syllable initial W or before a syllable-final W.

Pitch Accent
Short vowels may be either low pitched, which is marked, or high pitched, marked with an acute accent, like V́.

Long vowels, diphthongs, and triphthongs may have low pitch, high pitch, rising pitch, or falling pitch. On a long vowel, these are written as follows:

VV, V́V́, VV́, V́V

On a rising dipthong, they are written as follows (G is glide, V is central vowel)

GV(V), ǴV́(V́), GV́,(V́) ǴV(V)

On a falling diphthong, they are written as follows

V(V)G, V́(V́)Ǵ, V(V)Ǵ, V́(V́)G

on a triphthong, they are written as follows

GV(V)G, ǴV́(V́)Ǵ, GV́(V́)Ǵ, ǴV(V)G

Phonotactics
A syllable has an optional onset with any one consonant or the permitted consonant clusters (all of which are listed in consonants section). Words starting with a vowel acquire an excrescent glottal stop, otherwise, glottal stops do not occur in Metin. The nucleus must consist of a vowel, diphthong, or triphthong. The optional coda may be any fricative, the final nasal N, or the final nasal followed by a fricative.

Examples of permitted syllables

V

ú, uu, e, į

CV

kiá, mái, klǫ, déé

CVC

kiis, naɬ, mez̨

CVCC

maanh, kuíny, plóóns, dant, yǫ́ng

Verbs
Verbs are the most important important portion of the Metin sentence, giving the rest of the sentence its structure. They consist of two portions, a gesture and a root. The gesture contains most of the syntactical information, such as the verb's argument structure, its subject, object, tense, aspect, mood, and other adverbials. The root inflects in a limited and not predictable manner for aspect, and also can receive clitics that subordinate the given verb to a larger structure. The gesture is obligatory in all sentences, in some constructions the root is omissible.

Li: The gesture of quality or quantity

Li is used with roots to create intransitive sentences indicating that a noun in the absolutive has a certain quality. Without a root, it is used with a locative phrase to indicate where something is, with a quantity to indicate how many or much of a noun exists, or with nothing to indicate mere existance.

Lįį oame; Oame lįį: There are people.

Lįį oame fuu; Fuu lįį oame; Oame lįį fuu: There are two people.

Leun fuu ímą: There are only two of us.

Léhé sxiitl'ans: Are you at the lake?

Tsita liímay, Tsiga léarish: This person is young, the other is old.

lįįdas: I am tall.

Eeyyii liuyqéi: The servile is small.

He: Gesture of transitive causation

He is used to make verbs meaning "A changes B". These sentences may take clauses of description to describe the final state of B. Without a verb, it generically means "change".

Pxao, Fixao: Gesture of binary and plural relations

Pxao and Fixao are used to make verbs indicating a symmetrical relationship (where all parts are the same) between two or more than two nouns respectively.

pxáhóthay: Are you two friends?

fíxóthay: Are you all friends?

m: inner prefix of manner, event, or verbal object

y: inner prefix of rate of change

re-: gesture of ternary verbs of instrument

tsao-: gesture of two participant relation, assymetrical

txa-: gesture of inducing a change of state in self

Stative aspect
The stative mood is used to denotate qualities or arrangements of verbal participants without mentioning anything about the past, the future, or ongoing change.

Progressive aspect
The progressive aspect is used to indicate transitions from one state to another occurring at a certain rate. It is always marked by the -y- inner prefix, and also often by a change in verb root. Only progressive aspect verbs may admit arguments of rate.

Perfective aspect
The perfective aspect is used to indicate simple changes from one state to another (with no mention of rate). The change is still in effect at the time of the present currently or in the narrative (Metin has no notion of narrative tense). Perfective verbs may have a time argument indicating when the state changed. It is not marked differently than the stative. Many verbs have an alternative perfective aspect stem.

lįįfú įht'á ootlag k'íǫx: The rock fell of the table yesterday, and is still there

When used with process verbs, it means something like "began to verb and is still verbing"

utsúa hoonthaa sxutoó : We've been working on (our) garden since this morning.

Pluperfective aspect
Similar to the perfective aspect, except the state change has been undone by the time of the present or narrative. It uses the perfective stem plus the inner prefix áma. To indicate when the state change ended, a second time argument with cx'ó (until) may be used.

lįámafú įht'á ootlag k'íǫx: The rock had fallen off the table yesterday (but someone put it back).

tetúa hoomémathół įhtlag cx'ó lįįsįįh oasuhin: We had cleaned the table this evening until our friends ate (and it became dirty again).

Nouns
Metin nouns are head initial. They decline for 4 core cases and take a wide variety of disjunct suffixes.

Absolutive form
All nouns in Metin must be placed into an absolutive form when heading a noun phrase. The absolutive is marked by a multitude of prefixes, which vary based on the semantics of the prefixed noun.

Suffix morphology
There are 4 classes of productive suffixes in Metin

1: Vocal suffixes that start with a vowel, such as all of the posessive suffixes, like -oh, my (alienable)

2: Nasal suffixes that start with an m, like -mi (with)

3: Voiced suffixes that start with a voiced consonant, like -já (and)

Simple nouns do not interact with these suffixes at all and add them directly to the stem. These nouns always end in a single consonant. Many of these nouns descend from Old Saras nouns that ended in a Cį sequence, a consonant with schwa

This class includes nouns such as

chaguł: covering, coat, skin

chagułoh: my covering | chagułmi: with a covering | chagułjá: and a covering

sxutl'ans: a lake

sxutl'ansoh: my lake | sxutl'ansmi: with a lake | sxutl'ansjá: and a lake

Final cluster nouns usually end in a consonant cluster followed almost always an untoned į in isolation, though some end on other short untoned vowels. The į is deleted before vocal suffixes, otherwise, the suffixes are added directly. These nouns always have multisyllabic stems.

kácmį: a skirt

kácmoh: my skirt | kácmįmi: with a skirt | kácmįjá: and a skirt

Fortifying nouns end in a consonant which changes form before certain suffixes, typically becoming an affricate before vocal suffixes. Most nouns that end in -s, -l, -sx, -zx, -sh, -z̨, and -c are Fortiying''. ''-dj and -tj fortifying nouns are uncommon.

S fortifying nouns fortify s to ts before vocal suffixes

mhas: a lid

mhatsoh: my lid | mhasmi: with a lid | mhasjá: and a lid

Tj fortifying nouns fortify tj to t before vocal suffixes (uncommon)

Dj fortifying nouns fortify dj to d before vocal suffixes (rare)

chatǫǫd: solid

chatǫǫdoh: my solid | chatǫǫdmi: with a solid | chatǫǫd-já: and a solid

L fortifying nouns fortify l to tl before vocal suffixes

Sx fortifying nouns fortify sx to cx before vocal suffixes

Zx fortifying nouns fortify zx to jx before vocal suffixes

Sh fortifying nouns fortify  sh to ch before vocal suffixes

Z̨ fortifying nouns fortify z̨ to j̨ before vocal suffixes

Gj fortifying nouns fortify gj to g before vocal suffixes. They also nasalise to ngj before nasal suffixes.

sxumaag: a pool

sxumaagoh: my pool | sxumaangmi: with a pool | sxumaag-já: and a pool