Intro to the Mãsyowa Language
Mãsyowa Ngõtyã (lit. "the mouth [language] of the blood of the Great Lake of Origin") was spoken in the large central area of the Lakeland region of the Antarctic Continent, which extends from the border of the Ko Desert, all the way to the Coastal Range.
It was of the Lakeland language family, one of the three primary language families on the Continent, and serves as the model for the family as a whole. The Lakeland region is characterized by many mountains and valleys, with many small rivers and freshwater lakes.
The Mãsyowa language area was centered on the Great Primordial Lake, aka the Great Lake of Origin, from which humans first emerged, according to myths of the Lakelander peoples. Due to this prestigious location, The speakers of this language have been influential throughout the Lakelands and beyond, and have influenced the languages of the entire region.
A map of the Lakelands, with the extent of the Mãsyowa language at its height, circa 400 years before present.
The Antarcticon epic novel series is tentatively going to be set about 400 years after the height of the Mãsyowa language, after which time an outside imperial conquest, then a dramatic and cataclysmic fall of said empire occurred. In the modern period, Mãsyowa has evolved into several daughter languages, which diverge about as much as the Arabic dialects in our world, or perhaps similar to the Romance languages.
Mãsyowa was also spoken as a majority language in several enclaves throughout the Lakeland region, and as a family or minority language in many communities. This was due in part to the unified culture of the entire region, with people tending to see themselves as part of a wider Lakeland community, and still do to a lesser extent even today.
For example, legends and myth cycles tend to be shared across language groups, even though specific mythic events remain tied to specific real-world places, so that a Mãsyowa speaker might tell a story set hundreds of miles away, and consider it a native tale, rather than a foreign one. Extending from that concept, pilgrimages to various far flung Lakeland areas are common at specific times of year, and wholesale relocations have also happened in the past.
Typologically, here are some of the language’s features:
Ergative-Absolutive alignment
VSO word order
Palatalized consonants
Nasal vowels
Largely-prefixing verbal morphology
Noun class system with 10 different noun classes.
Agglutinative, though fusional in places, and isolating in others
Several auxiliary modal verbs and verbal particles in addition to several verbal prefixes.
Also notable is the system of article-determiners, which are required to precede every non-proper noun, and encode both definiteness (4 levels) and distance (3 levels), while also agreeing with noun class.
And finally, here's a few examples:
BLUE = Absolutive argument phrase and agreement marker PINK = Ergative argument phrase
Ngengakyatĩkye drõ dukyũ bo byõ gugi. nge-nga-kyatĩ-kye drõ dukyũ bo byõ gugi 3sg.sing-past-eat-indirect DET man ERG DET cat That cat ate that man.
Nyut ngemukyatĩdi, nyut nyemuyatidi mokyesa. If he eats, then I will be happy.
Ra sẽngawĩ'õkye sõ pasyõ'e bo kyõ byonik! Ra sẽ-nga-wĩ'õ-kye sõ pasyõ'e bo kyõ byonik! COMP VEG.sing-past-hit-firsthand VEG.far.def tree ERG DIU.far.def lightning That lightning smashed into the tree!.
Ngengapũkikye nyet karoga bo byõ ngõgrut, byã bungakyigakye byõ nyongep. Nge-nga-pũki-kye nyet karoga bo byõ ngõgrut, byã bu-nga-kyiga-kye byõ nyongep. 3SG-PST-kill-FRST 1SG.POSS lover ERG DET.OVO.MED.DEF sabrebeak, therefore OVO-PST-stab-FRST DET.OVO.MED.DEF 1SG.ERG The sabrebeak killed my lover, therefore I stabbed it.
Until Next Time!
-TL Spaulding aka mesosylvania