Ke ovahi o kii vahi,
Mata Nui uamo.
inihe ka usmo ia ngie,
ke orna hu Matoran,
lhe ii arta.
In the time before time
The Great Spirit descended
Out of the Heavens carrying we,
The ones called the Matoran
To this paradise.
--First lines of "The Legend of Mata Nui"
=l Preface l=
First, I must make a confession. For the past ten (or so) years, my primary hobby has been an obsession with constructing languages: "conlanging". In the words of J.R.R himself, it is the "secret vice". And, as might be expected, I have not been able to keep it from spilling over into my interest of Bionicle. This is the result: an attempt to formulate a grammar of the Matoran Language (using the basis of the dictionary already posted elsewhere in the blog).
As a basic principle, I have attempted to imitate some grammatical structures common to Polynesian languages such as Hawaiian, Māori, and Samoa. Ultimately, however, the majority of the grammar is more or less arbitrary (or "a-priori"). And, of course, this means that (almost) the entirety of the grammar presented here is non-canon.
But now to the point! This grammar will be posted in a series of lessons designed specifically for "beginners" (or, at least, "people who aren't hard-core linguistics-people"). A good general knowledge of "grammar" and "phonetics" will be an advantage to any reader here, but I will aim to present linguistic concepts in the least jargon-heavy manner I can come up with (no promises ). I'll be starting out with a discussion of phonology in this post, followed by posts on Nouns, Verbs, the Matoran Alphabet itself, Adjectives, Syntax (Sentence Structure), etc.
Enjoy, if you will.
Or as the Matoran say:
A kanga ri o'atukhe.
=l Lesson 1 l=
Basic Pronunciation
First, it's best to establish that, while Matoran obviously don't have the same vocal organs as humans (teeth? tongues? what?!), they are capable of producing a similar array of sounds; or, at least, similar enough that we humans can come pretty close.
With that said, here's a basic list of the principal sounds of Matoran with English equivalents where necessary. Unless otherwise specified, all sounds are pronounced as in English:
-Consonants:
b
c – as <k>, except at the beginning of some words, where it is pronounced as <s> (an unfortunate hold-over from English orthography...>.<)
ch – always <k>
d
f – also spelled <ph> (a more archaic orthographic convention in Matoran)
g – always as in "dog"
h
kh –like the German <ch>, harsher than English <h> (would be called a "velar fricative")
j – optionally pronounced as in "jar" or "yard" (like <y>)
k
l
m
n
ng – as in "sing" at the beginning of a word; as in "finger" in all other positions
p
r – trilled, as Spanish <r>
rh – not trilled, more like English <r>
s
sh
t
th – as in "think" (very rare)
v
w
y
z
-Vowels:
a – as in "all"
e – as in "rate"
i – as in "machine"
o – as in "go"
u – as in "loose"
y – as German <ü> (rare sound). Pronouncing <i> ("machine") while rounding the lips like <u> ("loose") gives a close approximation.
All vowels can be either short or long. Long vowels are written simply by doubling the letter (aa, ee, oo, etc.) and are held twice as long as short vowels.
If you haven't dealt with spelling systems other than English before, the most important thing to remember is that every letter represents a sound—every letter is pronounced. There are no "silent letters" in Matoran, and there are only a few "digraphs" (two consonants with one sound: th, ch, etc.).
-----
And that concludes Lesson 1. Thanks for reading if you got this far. Next up: Lesson 2--Intro to Nouns, which will hopefully be a little more interesting.
JRRT
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