Mellyrn Conlang
At first I was torn between a Black Speech style language with harsh sounds but I was drawn to elvish by a mysterious force, known as sadness. This new language, is an attempt to create a language, in the style of the elven languages of Middle-Earth. This language hopefully will have a good long wordlist, which is capable of developing healthy pieces of text and phrases. So lets begin.
Name Creation:
Whilst browsing a hapless copy of The Lord of the Rings, I came across the Sindarin word used to describe the tree’s in the dwelling of Lothlórien. The word is Mellyrn. I like the sound of this word, and as it is Sindarin it evidently fits in with the sound pattern I am trying to achieve. So the name has been chosen.
Mellyrn Grammar:
As I have already stated above I am aiming for an elvish style, with words that flow into each other, and frankly sound well dope. Well, one must not dabble lets begin.
I will start I suppose with a few words randomly strung together to make a phrase, and correct it as I like.
**Crame ná i meno rhustu Mellyrn
This is currently translated as: Welcome to the new language Mellyrn.
After the changes have been outlined the phrase will be written again in its new form below.
Analysis and change:
1: Change 1 that has already occurred without you knowing was the change from crame to hrame, this change was abut due to me hating the sound of the harsh c. This is likely to happen many times over the duration of this piece.
2: i in this case means “the”. Whenever this occurs it must be attached to the word it is highlighting via a - , this is just to highlight it belonging to the next word but keeps it from becoming a prefix.
3: The new word Hrame, now receives a friend in the way of ná becoming a suffix, which means to. So now we have Hramená.
So now hopefully we have something that looks vaguely respectable, here is the new phrase, fresh from make-up.
Hramená i-meno rhustu Mellyrn
This looks so much neater than before, it has the presently correct grammar, but until new rules emerge this will have to do.
Note 1: On speech, when speaking this language, it should be quite fast, as the language is meant to flow, so the faster the better.
Pronunciation:
A quick lesson on pronunciation, this is how the phrase should be pronounced.
Hramenar e-meno rooshtu melyarun
An expanded section on pronunciation will appear later in the document.
Mutation:
As I have shown earlier the word corresponding to “the” is i. Well when this word is placed in front of certain words, the i changes (mutates).
The mutation, I will highlight, occurs when proper names are concerned. In this case we will use for our example, The Sun.
**i-phrenemor, after the first section this is what you would expect. But with mutation in front of a proper name this must become:
a-phrenemor (phren- “Sphere”, -emor “fire”) This means the Sun, but loosely translates to “the ball [of] fire”. But this is a proper name for the Sun.
This mutation does not occur when it is not a proper name , proper names are places, people, and special objects like the Sun, planets etc.
This Mutation is called the Copula Mutation.
(anything marked with ** is now considered incorrect)
Consonant Mutation:
If you are finding this mutation lark rather complicated, I highlighted above that I was going for a language “in the style of the elven languages of Middle-Earth”. And this occurs in Sindarin. But in this language will not be as many mutations compared to that of Sindarin. Well let’s begin.
When the consonant mutates our copula must as well to help keep a clean flowing sound.
e.g. **i Rhustu “the language”
with consonant mutation this becomes:
e-thrustu
Analysis:
That at the moment looks terribly complicated, but here is the analysis of what you just saw.
Thrustu, at first we will analyse this word, the first thought will be why has the word not become **thrhustu, you may be able to tell when you pronounce it, this is a very awkward cluster, which I do not like.
So now you be asking, why has the h disappeared? Well there is a simple answer to that, it hasn’t. It becomes part of the e-thr… , and because it is placed there, there is now no need to add the h is rhustu that you would expect.
The e is just to help the sound, really it has no significant use other than to denote the word “the” where i did it before. And the – we all are familiar with its use.
Here is a table of the mutations:
Basic consonant Mutation
| b... | e b... |
| bl... | e bl... |
| br... | e br... |
| c... | e ch... |
| cl... | e chl... |
| cr... | e chr... |
| d... | e d... |
| dr... | e dr... |
| f... | ef f... |
| g... | e g... |
| gl... | e gl... |
| gr... | e gr... |
| gw... | e gw... |
| h... | e ch... |
| hw... | e w... |
| l... | ed l... |
| lh... | e thl... |
| m... | e m... |
| n... | e n... |
| p... | e ph... |
| pr... | e phr... |
| r... | ed r... |
| rh... | e thr... |
| s... | es s... |
| t... | e th... |
| th... | eth th... |
| tr... | e thr... |
The basic consonant’s before mutation are on the left then when the i is added, the mutation is on the right. (i the true name for this is the definite article it will be now referred to as The Atricle).
Ok I suppose we best put this new rule into practice, as it is quite a difficult concept.
e.g. **i-thengu oronoth “the evil mountain”
This, with mutation becomes:
eth-thengu oronoth
(note the evil mountain is just a made up sentence, I’m sure in a mythos it would have a name)
The mutations are in fact the same as that of the Stop mutation rule occurring in Sindarin, as I keep referring back to I wanted an elvish feel so borrowing some rules is perfectly plausible. Also the word I used for mountain, oronoth, is a change on the Quenya word for mountain, which is oront.
Before we go any further I would like to discuss greetings. In this language there will be 2 greetings, 1 to be used informally when addressing people you know. The other to be used as a formal one, addressing people you don’t know.
Informal Greeting:
Suilath, mae govannén? “greetings, how are you?”
Formal Greeting:
Ngaurhon “loosely translated as hello, more likely Hail”
Analysis:
Lets start with the formal greeting Suilath, mae govannén?, this section will be analysed word by word.
Suilath = This word won’t really need any analysing apart from the knowledge that when I was drafting, this word originally appeared as **Suil but I felt that the word seemed incomplete, so the ending –ath was added to help the phrase flow. (suil still appears in the lexicon).
mae = This word, meaning “how” has undergone no changes since the draft, this word needs no analysing.
govannén = This word is the first example of a word to carry a gender inflection. The word meaning “are” is govan, but we also have -nén. -Nén means “you” but there are 2 forms of the word for “you”. There is -nén and -nín. The version -nén is used to denote masculine, and –nín is used for feminine. (both of the gender inflected versions appear in the lexicon).
Analysis of Ngaurhon:
Ngaurhon = This word originally started with out the front N but I again decided against the frontal g so I added the n. This I feel gives a fuller sound to it. Other than that, the word has undergone no changes.
If you were formally greeting a female, you would say Suilath, mae govannín? As you can see the e is changed.
Plural:
Now we can begin with the real stuff, how start building proper phrases, and sentences using the Mellyrn grammar.
The first section