Messarian language

Messarian
Amsarturi
ამსარტური
Pronunciation	[ɑmsɑːrturi]
Native to	Messaria
Region	Greater Dienstad
Language family	Mengriian Ingro-Zyguric Messarian
Early forms	Ancient Messarian Soteric Messarian Ingrian
Writing system	Messarian script
Official status
Official language in	Messaria
Regulated by	Messarian Linguistic Institute of Kharist
Language codes
ISO 639-1	mes
ISO 639-2	mss
ISO 639-3	me

Messarian is a language within the Ingro-Zyguric branch of the Mengriian language family. It is recognized as the official language of Messaria, where it is spoken as a first language by the majority of the nation's inhabitants and as a second by some regional subgroups. Messarian is the literary language for all Messarians, including other Messarian subgroups.

Classification

Messarian is the most-spoken member of the Mengriian language family. Unlike other members of the Ingro-Zyguric branch, Messarian has no adverbial case despite being directly descended from Ingrian.

History

Proto-Mengriian, also known as Common Mengriian, was spoken by the Mengriian tribes which inhabited the Messarian peninsula from prehistory to early antiquity. By early antiquity, Proto-Mengriian had taken the form of what is now known as Ancient Messarian. However, most speakers of Ancient Messarian were concentrated in the eastern half of the peninsula by the 5th century BC as a result of the steady Greek colonization which had been occurring since the 7th century BC. The western half of the peninsula was speaking Soteric Messarian by the 6th century BC, a form of Messarian which combined certain aspects of the imported Greek language with the native tongue. This resulted in a number of changes, such as the removal of a pitch accent and its replacement with a stress accent in accordance with the adding of Greek phonetics.

Soteric Messarian was spoken from the 6th century BC up to the 4th century AD when the First Messarian Kingdom broke up into smaller states. Ingrian, the language of the Kingdom of Ingria and the prevalent Ingro-Zyguric language at the time, is generally accepted as the ancestor of modern Messarian due to its gradual distribution to other parts of the peninsula and subversion of other Mengriian languages in accordance with Ingrian territorial gains from 762 to 1507 AD.

By 1602, the entirety of the peninsula had united into a single political entity, the Fourth Messarian Kingdom. The diffusion of various Messarian subcultures within the newly created kingdom contributed greatly to the emergence of modern Messarian, combining various aspects of the already similar Mengriian languages with Ingrian to create a single uniform language.

Orthography

Modern Messarian utilizes the Messarian script, which has been in use since the 4th century AD. Saint Menas the Skete asserted that Mizri the Great created the Messarian script in the 3rd century following the Christianization of Mengriia, but no evidence to support his claim has been found. While the earlier Soteric script is similar in appearance, it lacks characters for pulmonic and ejective affricates found in modern Messarian as a result of extensive Hellenization. It also utilized a bicameral alphabet, whereas the Messarian script is unicase.

Messarian lacks articles. For example: the Messarian word for "citizen" is mik'khali. "Citizen", "a citizen", and "the citizen" are all said as mik'khali. This can make it somewhat difficult to determine the context of such words when learning the language at a base level. However, through the use of relative clauses, one can establish the definite article by following the modified noun with a relativizer.

Messarian also lacks grammatical gender, save for its use in the pronouns of "she" and "he". Plurals are made by agglutination, and syncope is commonplace. When the plural suffix -ed- is added to a word containing the vowel a or e in the last syllable, the vowel sound is dropped and/or occasionally replaced with a u. For example: Mik'khali, the word for "citizen", becomes mik'khuledi; "citizens".

Notably, the diagraph kh has three different uses in Messarian. If placed at the beginning of a word, such as Kharist, it is pronounced with a definitive voiceless velar plosive. If placed in the middle of a word, such as bekhos (bread), it is pronounced like the voiceless velar affricate. If placed at the end of a word, such as ivakh (elder), it is pronounced like the voiceless uvular fricative in the Scottish loch.

Grammar

Nouns

	Mezi man		Lazi woman		Velo field
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	Mezi	Mezedi	Lazi	Lazedi	Velo	Veledi
Dative	Meza	Mezedis	Laza	Lazedis	Vela	Veledis
Instrumental	Mezae	Mezedos	Lazae	Lazedos	Velae	Veledos
Vocative	Meza	Mezedin	Laza	Lazedin	Vela	Veledin