Melanja

Melanja (Melanja: Mièlanghjè, mee-LOUNGE-uh) is a constructed language belonging to the Romance language group. It is spoken in the Pyrenees, straddling between France, Andorra, and Spain by approximately more than 100,000 people. It is the language of Spanish people from northern Guadalajara and neighboring provinces who migrated to the said mountain range to escape the previously ongoing violent battles in their area. It was originally plain Spanish, which diverged more and more from the language as their duration of reclusion increased (and exposure to French increased as well); also, it lost some of its characteristics.

According to the Organissatiènnè Èspagnol poùr le Preservatiènnè du Idiom Mièlanghjè (English: Spanish Organization for the Preservation of the Melanja Language, Spanish: Organización Español para la Preservación del Idioma Melándia ) or OSPM, there were 127,962 people who spoke Melanja in northern Spain and extreme southern France. It possesses three semi-distinct dialects: Standard (Èstandar); Rural (Campestir); and Basque (Vasc). The OSPM is the official, national regulating body of Melanja in Spain, with regional branches in Andorra ( Organització Andorrana per a la Conservació de la Llengua Melanja ) and France ( Organisation Française pour la Préservation de la Langue Melange ).

Additionally, the fictional ISO 639-2 code designated for Melanja is mlj. In 2014, a separate school subject was created for Melanja in northern Spain (specifically all provinces with Melanja speakers), supported by the former OSPM committee chairwoman Evonne-Marie Corasson.

Classification and Dialects
Melanja is a Romance language, originally Castilian Spanish, which diverged as time passed, because of the lack of exposure of speakers from other people. On the other hand, it became more and more exposed to French words and vocabulary. It belongs specifically to the Ibero-Romance branch. Melanja has three semi-distinct dialects: Standard (Èstandar) which is spoken by the urban dwellers from the areas surrounding Andorra; Rural (Campestir) which is spoken just outside of the geographic distribution of Èstandar speakers by commonfolk; and Basque (Vasc) which is spoken around the Basque Country's territories. Of them all, Basque is the most unique, possessing a plethora of loanwords from Basque. As seen in the image below, the distribution of these dialects in Spain are as follows:


 * Standard: Girona, Barcelona, Tarragona, Lérida (Catalonia); Huesca (Aragon); Navarra; Madrid
 * Rural: Castelló (Valencia); Huesca, Zaragoza, Teruel (Aragon); Guadalajara (Castilla-La Mancha); Madrid; Asturias; León, Palencia, Burgos, Segovia, Soria (Castile and León)
 * Basque: Araba, Bizkaia, Gipuzkoa (Basque Country); Cantabria; León, Palencia, Burgos, Segovia (Castile and León); Navarra: Madrid; Castelló (Valencia); La Rioja

However, the Standard dialect has two sub-dialects too: the Andorra and Zaragoza. The Andorra Standard is spoken in Catalan-majority areas, while the Zaragoza Standard is spoken in everywhere else. They are recognized by natives as different "registers" of the same dialect; the Zaragoza Standard uses more colloquialisms, slang words, and word and sentence shortening than the Andorra Standard. Take this sentence for example:"Andorra Standard: Le pistol est sur le tavèl rot."It means "The gun is on the red table." Here, there are neither colloquialisms, word shortening, nor slang. It could be compared with the following equivalent translation in Zaragoza:"Zaragoza Standard: L' pittol'st su'l' tavèl rot."It can be observed that "s" assimilated with "t" to form the geminated "tt". "Le" became shortened to "l'", "est" became suffixed as "'st", and "sur le" became replaced with "su'l'".

History
On

Phonotactics
The maximum complexity that Melanja allows in a single syllable is CCCGVGC wherein C is a consonant, V is a vowel, and G is a glide (there are only two glides in Melanja: ü /w/ and i /j/).