Central Mountain Mercantile Language
...Phonology ::ether

Consonants

Central Mountain Mercantile Language has 29 recognized consonants, though pronunciation historically varied. For certain consonants, the distinction between creaky and normal voicing is present, or the distinction between long and short.

Central Mountain Mercantile Language consonant phonemes

Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal Voiced m mː n nː


Creaky m̰ m̰ː n̰ n̰ː
Plosive Voiced p pː t tː
k kː ʔ
Creaky k̰ k̰ː
Affricative t͡s
Fricative Voiced
s

h hː
Creaky h̰ h̰ː
Approximate Central Voiced









j jː

















j̰ j̰ː
Central Creaky
l

Lateral
Trill r

Orthographic Notes

Sounds are orthographically represented by these symbols, except in the case of:

  • /t͡s/ is ‘ts’
  • /k/ is ‘c’
  • /ʔ/ is ‘ǔ’. While in standardized scripts, /ʔ/ is represented by its own letter, casual writing often leaves a blank space or a dot in place of the symbol for /ʔ/.
  • Creaky consonants are represented with an underdot, except in the case where the vowel is also creaky. The consonant remains unmarked if so. Additionally, only the first letter is marked as creaky in a long consonant.
  • In spoken Central Mountain Mercantile Language, consonants in a syllable with a creaky vowel may also be creaked, though this makes no distinction.
  • Long consonants are represented with repeating the vowel.

Vowels

Central Mountain Mercantile Language has 24 vowels, all of which can be distinguished between short, long, short creaky, and long creaky.

Central Mountain Mercantile Language vowel phonemes

Front Central Back
Close Standard i iː
u uː
Creaky ḭ ḭː ṵ ṵː
Close-Mid Standard e eː
o oː
Creaky ḛ ḛː o̰ o̰ː
Mid Standard
ə əː
Creaky ə̰ ə̰ː
Open Standard a aː

Creaky a̰ a̰ː

Orthographic Notes

Sounds are orthographically represented by these symbols, except in the case of:

  • /ə/ is ‘u̇’
  • Creaky vowels are represented with an underdot. Only the first letter is marked as creaky in a long vowel.
  • Vowels are often creaked but unmarked if the consonant preceding it was creaked. However, if the first letter in a consonant cluster is creaked, and not the one immediately preceding the vowel, the vowel remains standard.
  • Long vowels are represented with repeating the vowel. An exception to this is the rare /ə̰ː/, which is instead wrote ‘u̇u’

Morphology

Central Mountain Mercantile Language follows a C(C)V pattern, whereas C can be any consonant, and V can be any vowel. There are no restrictions as to what consonant clusters might form. Central Mountain Mercantile incorporates positional phrases into words, among quite a bit of other information, which can lead to unique single words which may contain a very high amount of syllables.

...Grammar ::1

Word Order

Word order is the central point of definition in Central Mountain Mercantile Language. The order of words at a base level is VOS. This allows all words in Central Mountain Mercantile Language to act as either a verb, noun, adjective, or adverb without any further notation or alteration of the word. In some situations, the verb, subject, and/or object may be omitted. In the script of the language, this is typically displayed through a blank word marker. Even if a sentence would not traditionally accept an object, the marker for a blank object is still made. However, in the romanization, this is marked by ‘ǔu,’ which is the sound that was noted in most casual speech. In alternative romanization, particularly those which focus on dialects of CMML which had pause instead of the ‘ǔu’ sound, it may be notated as ‘-.’

It should be noted that multiple parts of speech can be wholly absent, which leads to amusing cases like the sentence “ǔu ǔu ǔu,” which simply assumes you know what they are talking about, and what whatever it is they are talking about is doing, and what whatever it is they are talking about is doing to whatever else they are talking about. There are other ways of writing this as well, by noting the amount of omitted parts in the sentence that follow the current part and enumerating them, followed by the blank itself.

In the case of someone asking if a particular task can be done soon, one might confirm with “(It) will be done,” or “Hu̇celǔo trụǔu.” More literally, this translates to “Will do twice blank.” As with the example of the assumed sentence above, it would be written in this way as “Lǔuǔu.”

Although any word could act as a verb, noun, adjective, and so on, often certain common words would be filtered down to fill each role.

Outside of a very few exceptions, adverbs and adjectives are placed at the start of the root of the word. Prepositional phrases are added at the end of the root. Finally, possessive determiners nest the entire word. One can apply modifiers to the possessive determiner by including them at the start of a possessive nesting, or at the end if the possessive must be specified with a positional. For example, the phrase “My short father’s - who is near the water - tall father near the woods” would be translated to “ soj̣tsutsǔatucrotsǔatujlojiimucsẹtsǔatujlojiithẹsoso,” or literally “mine short father’s tall father near the woods father’s near the water mine.” Realistically, this sort of phrase rarely happens, as most speakers of CMML only rarely noted positionals or any other redundancies. While official documents of CMML can look very intimidating, most of the spoken language and most of the mercantile usages of the language took a very minimalist approach to the scope of words allowed through the grammar of CMML.

Nouns

Nouns in CMML can be any word, and does not require marking or notation to point out that it is a noun. There are a number of ways that a noun can be further developed, and the general order of such is as follows:

“Demonstrative or negative determiner + size + color + age + opinion + shape + worth + number + material + purpose + noun + origin”

The most common modifiers were purpose, origin, number, worth, and demonstrative determiners in most spoken CMML. It should be noted that in most casual and professional applications of CMML, having more than three modifiers to a single noun was seen as verbose and bloating.

The worth modifier is of particular note. It is typically noted through the formula of “number + shorthand word for money.” These values were typically only received through appraiser factions, some of the same ones who would eventually oversee the development of the script and some of the grammatical solutions to CMML. Those who assigned arbitrary or misleading values were often greatly criticized and seen as foolish. As result, casual speakers adopted a way of poking fun of certain concepts by applying arbitrarily high values to things. This was notably applied in the trio performance *~Nocucju~*ǔpụ~Sturana~. In practically an advertisement for a local baker, one of the three performers would claim that the pastry recently crafted by an unnamed baker was of incredible value. Upon being asked by the second actor how much it was truly worth, the third actor would very suddenly begin to count to twenty-five. In those twenty-five seconds, often barked out, the first actor would begin to list the largest number that they could, leading to an undecipherable numeric barrage for the audience.

Additionally, proper nouns are handled in a distinct way as well. In the case of a person’s name, a place of importance’s name, or a concept of great value to the writer, the text is nested in decoration. These decorations depend from writer to writer, and can change within the same document as well. In the romanization of CMML, this is typically done through a myriad of non-letter symbols of the writer’s choice, often mirrored across the word. This, too, is placed within the nesting of the posessive determiner, if any. If the root word is a named thing rather than a particular general concept, the decoration goes around the root. Otherwise, it goes around the root and its other modifiers.

Verbs

There are no restrictions as to what can and cannot be a verb, and although some words are commonly chosen. As with nouns, verbs in CMML can be developed in a number of different ways. The general order in which words may be affixed to a verb for further specification is as follows:

“Demonstrative, negative, or conditional determiner + manner + frequency + time + continuity + verb + combined verb + adpositional phrase or adverbial clauses of reason.”

As such, to specify time, frequency, manner, negativity, conditionality, or demonstratives, an appropriate word is applied to the start of the root word. To say “I drink,” would be translated as “Cu̇lmee ǔu so.” To say “I will drink,” this could be translated in a number of ways. “Cu̇cu̇lmee ǔu so” would mean “I will drink very soon,” whereas “Hu̇cu̇lmee ǔu so” would mean “I will drink (at an unspecified future time).”

Continuity is expressed through the word ‘hepị’ or ‘to be’ most often. This is done to suggest that something is or will be the embodiment of that action for an unspecified duration. At times, specifications of continuity can use the same words as time-marking words. Some who communicate with CMML may opt to use the formula of “time + (hepị + continuity),” but that is typically reserved for only when it is absolutely necessary to be clear.

Combined verbs are also a special case in CMML. In order to express ideas like “I want to walk,” it would translate to “Ntọntọcesppe ǔu so.” Literally, this is “Want do/how walk, I.” The shortened form of ‘celǔo’ is most often used to link the two verbs together. While some older documents use the target words (‘hore’, ‘nịṃra’, ‘phajẹ’) to link the verbs, it was noted that doing so could cause some confusion in later developments of CMML.

Targeting Words

Targeting words are something often used for a myriad of purposes, and do have some unique rules to them. The primary use cases for them is as an adposition linking a word to a place of origin, or a specific entity a word is meant for, or as an adposition to a certain place. However, they are used more than most any other preposition, and are quite flexible as a generalist preposition when the specifics of the phrase do not matter as much.

As an example, the word, “*~~sarụ̇rti~~*horemucsẹ,” if we interpret ‘*~~sarụ̇rti~~*’ as a person’s name, ‘hore’ as the target word adposition, and ‘mucsẹ’ as forest, can still mean a myriad of things. It could mean:

  • ‘Sarụ̇rti of the Forest,’ as in Sarụ̇rti comes from the Forest.
  • ‘Sarụ̇rti for the Forest,’ as in Sarụ̇rti supports the Forest or is a representative of it.
  • ‘Sarụ̇rti in the Forest,’ as in Sarụ̇rti is in the Forest.
  • ‘Sarụ̇rti by the Forest,’ as in Sarụ̇rti is found nearby the Forest.
  • ‘Sarụ̇rti made from the Forest,’ as in Sarụ̇rti was crafted by materials from the Forest, or that Sarụ̇rti has had their life significantly defined by the forest

The different things that target words can seem complex, but they often are not used in more official language. There are more specific and precise words for these concepts mostly, but most common speakers and writers utilize the simplicity provided by these words. Additionally, as the three primary target words are very easily recognized, it helps in listening to the spoken language.

‘Hore’ by itself carries some distinctive meanings. In the example shown above, ‘hore’ denotes that Sarụ̇rti has deep and important connections to the forest, and it holds quite a bit of value to them in some way. The same is likely true for whoever would write the phrase as such. ‘Hore’ is most often used in this way, or in reference to people the communicator is close with, is affectionate towards, or admires. More commonly, one might use ‘phajẹ’ when referring to the forest. This denotes it as a mundane, unimportant, or inanimate object, but ‘phajẹ’ could also mean that the idea is a dangerous animal or person, although the latter is rarely used. The final most common targeting word is ‘nịṃra,’ typically used to denote nonthreatening animals, general people, or somewhat notable concepts.

...Sample ::2

Lọohoretsạ*~○tuciitsi○~*

known also as Prayer, by Ducky Chix

Under the Free-Canon-System of Neuetotal, there is no direct answer we can give to 'eurobeat is canon' or not.

I feel like this goes without saying, but this is sort of a placeholder sample for now. It should be noted that the grammar was not entirely understood when we wrote this, but it does get the general feel across.

"Htammụ cu̇lọohorephajẹtsicnajǔashịmmaa ǔu"

"Say a little prayer for this broken heart."

Lit: “Say little prayer for this many split heart”


"Htammụ cu̇lọohorephajẹsopịsittaso ǔu"

"Say a little prayer for this love of mine."

Lit: “Say a little prayer for this romance of mine”


"Maṇemppammutrụǔhụ mmolịḥetjocnuuhta so"

"Tonite I feel so cold and lonely."

Lit: “Feel tonight cold and lonely I”


"Ntọntọhoresupịsittasu so"

"I long for your loving."

Lit: “Want for your wonderful romance I.”


"Jjạhtammụnịṃraso celǔophajẹhẹnjjịhorepịsitta ǔu"

"Tell me why your love has gone away"

Lit: “Now say to me the reason of departure of your great romance”


"Jjạmaṇemppa hrarụ̇lojichu so"

"I’m so sad"

Lit: “Feel somewhat intensely sad I”


"Jjạsnaṇẹro ǔu nru̇siṇumracjuprimọṇrunsẹnị"

"Everything I thought was good has now gone bad"

Lit: "Now rot all things assumed good"


"Hepị lhịṇu̇sejhịresoṇulosaraso tsi"

"Makes me mad"

Lit: “Is the cause of my anger this.”


"Sonru̇sipịsittaso"

"All my love"

Lit: “All my love” (Note, due to the VOS system of the language, this and the next verse might more practically be swapped had it been written in CMML.)

"Socẹpu̇mọcusu c̣cac̣nishhọocco"

"That I gave to you was precious"

Lit: “Was gifted to you akin to jewels”


"Jjạhepị hẹnj̣jị su "

"Now you’re gone"

Lit: “Are now gone you”


"Jjạhepị socẹhịṇu̇ sunru̇sijmịrunusu"

"All you've left is memory"

Lit: Is all memory you left afterwards

...Lexicon ::3

The lexicon is growing and changing as time goes on. Below is a link to the current lexicon

Browse the CMML Lexicon