Mboronhe

English • Português

Mboronhe was made to be the proto-language in a future family of conlangs. It's an isolating language with VSO word order.

Dictionary only in Portuguese for now

Context

Mboronhe is spoken by wa Ngowa ("the First") people, they are hunter-gatherers that live in a tropical forest.

People live in groups of around 40 people called ngata, usually formed by families in a matrilineal lineage.

They make temporary settlements of wood and leaves, and stay in the place for about 1 month, after which they move to another place.

Most of their diet comes from fruits, roots, and fish. Larger animals are hunted mainly for their fat and skin. They use tools made of wood, stone, and bones.

A ngata does not have a complex social organization, everyone is treated as equal and they make decisions by consensus. More details about this are explained in Family.

Region

They are an isolated people, so they avoid interaction with people who speak other languages. That is why the language does not have many loanwords.

Phonology

The phonology shown here is from a very old stage of the language, which was spoken for a long time.

At a later stage it would separate into two branches, one further to the west and the other to the east, which would later give rise to different languages.

Consonants

Mboronhe has a very small phoneme inventory, but it is an unusual one. It does not have pure nasal consonants, but instead many nasalized consonants.

The consonants /ᵐb ⁿd ᵑɡ/ can be realized as [m n ŋ].

/h̃/ can be hard to do, it can also be realized as nasalized approximants [j̃] or [ɰ̃].

The /r/ is a trill, but in rapid speech it can be a simple tap.

Vowels

Vowels are mainly distinct by front, central and back.

/e/ and /o/ may be [ɛ ~ i] and [ɔ ~ u] respectively, and /a/ may be [ə]. There are no rules for these allophones, they occur in free variation.

Vowels are nasalized if the next syllable has a nasal consonant like mw, nh, mb, nd or ng, this also happens cross word boundaries.

Syllables

Only CV syllables are allowed, vowels do not occur alone.

There are no restrictions on consonants, they can occur anywhere in a word.

Mboronhe has no stressed syllables, they have all the same pitch and duration, but whole phrases have alterations in pitch that are important in speech.

Intonation

Some parts of grammar depend on intonation to avoid ambiguity.

In declarative sentences, tone is lower at the end, in interrogative sentences it gets higher.

Besides that, nominal phrases end in a slightly higher tone, in speech this makes clear the separation of the subject and the object.

The following sentences show intonation patterns, words with ↗︎ are higher in pitch and words with ↘︎ are lower.

Morphology

Mboronhe is a highly analytic language, that means words do not inflect. Grammatical structures are formed by multiple words.

Reduplication

Words may be duplicated to convey collectives, repetitions or large ammounts:

• nhe´a "hut" > nhe´a nhe´a "many huts, settlement"
• rowa "stick" > rowa rowa "bundle"
• sembo "to jump" > sembo sembo "to keep jumping, to bounce"

Composites

Some terms can be composite. The word to "person" may be used before another word to mean "person that does/is --":

• to mwo "leader" — lit. person head
• to pemwa "hunter" — lit. person hunt

This usage is just like adjectives, but some of them are just considered like a single word.

Verbs can have their meaning slightly altered or specified by a noun, as usual:

• nhahe honga "to celebrate" — lit. be.happy celebration

Types of words

Words in Mboronhe can be classified into 4 classes:

• Nouns — Names of things, but also includes numerals and pronouns.
• Verbs — Indicate actions and states.
• Coverbs — Words similar to verbs but whose main function is to connect sentences.
• Particles — Words that only have a grammatical function and are not independent.

Adjectives are usually stative verbs, and the roles of adpositions, conjunctions, and some adverbs are played by coverbs.

Sentence structure

The basic word order in Mboronhe is VSO (Verb Subject Object), but this can change in some situations.

This is the structure of a typical sentence:

The order changes to SVO in interrogative phrases.

In sentences with a topic the order may look like SVO, in reality the topic allows the subject to be omitted in the following statements. It makes more sense when talking a long conversation.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns in Mboronhe are an open class. There is only one real pronoun: wo used for the 2nd person, singular or plural.

Pronouns can be omitted from a sentence completely. In this case the topic of the sentence is considered a implicit subject.

Here are some words that function as pronouns:

When there is no topic, the person is considered to be talking about themselves.

Here are some examples:

ko pronouns

The word ko originally means "itself", but is often used to mean the first person as object "me".

It can form reflexive pronouns when used together with another pronoun, for example wo ko "yourself".

Demonstratives

Demonstratives are used to indicate people or things depending on a reference.

Proximal indicates proximity to the speaker; medial indicates proximity to the listener; distal is for anything else.

Demonstratives can be used alone or together with another word as determiners.

In this example, they serve to distinguish different things:

The pronoun mbo is used as a 3rd person pronoun for non-people, who normally use to. For example in the sentence below:

Noun phrase

The structure of a noun phrase is formed by:

Demonstrative, Article or Topic - Quantifier - Noun - Modifiers

Modifiers can be Genitives or Verbs as modifiers.

Definite article

The article is a particle that has the function of marking definiteness in Mboronhe. Definiteness indicates that something being talked about is already well known or that it is a new topic.

The definite article wa indicates that the referent is known, something that has already been introduced before:

Topic

The topic marker ´e is similar to an article, it is used to indicate the subject of one or more sentences. In sentences without a topic, it can be understood that the topic is the speaker.

The topic can be placed before the verb, if the topic is the subject this changes the order from VSO to SVO.

The topic is also used to make a generic aspect with stative verbs. This means that it is used to indicate general truths.

The topic sets the context for several sentences:

Quantifiers

Quantifiers are words that give a general quantity to something. In Mboronhe they can modify a noun or be used alone.

Numbers

The Mboronhe number system derives from a very old base-5 system.

People generally do not have to count very large numbers, they are hardly used.

Genitive

The genitive establishes a relationship between nouns, it is made with the particle sa, and can be translated as "of" in English, which does pretty much the the same things:

Pronouns are used with sa to indicate possession. A special case is sa ngeko which means "my".

Verbs

Verbs are divided into two categories: dynamic verbs and stative verbs.

Stative verbs indicate a state and not an action, for example: kamwa "to be cold" and kape "to be long". They correspond to adjectives or adverbs in English.

Verbs do not have any inflection, the verb phrase can have one of 2 aspects — simple or imperfective — and 2 voices — active or passive.

Imperfective

The particle ´endo makes the verb imperfective, which means that the verb is not a complete event. So the verb is not an event as a whole but part of a process.

A verb without the imperfective marker does not necessarily mean that it is perfective but that depends a lot on the context. Compare the following sentences:

In the second sentence the sentence can mean a complete action, but if the speaker is clearly in the process of building a hut, then ´endo is not necessary.

The imperfective is used to indicate relative time, using the simple verb as a reference point.

Without the imperfective it is not clear that the movement of the rain is happening, and that people keep talking about it.

Infinitive

Verbs can be used in the infinitive using the particle ro, this can be translated as "the act of...".

The infinitive can be made up of whole sentences, these sentences are used as subject or object in complex sentences:

Nominalization

Nouns can be derived from verbs with the article wa, this applies to both dynamic and stative verbs.

Some verbs can be used as nouns without an article, such as ndoko "masculine/man", mbako "feminine/woman" and ´eto "to speak/word":

Passive voice

The passive voice transforms the subject into the patient of a verb, it is made with the particle ke before the verb.

With stative verbs the verb changes from "to be --" to "became --":

An agent can be indicated in a passive construction by the cove1rb ngo:

Verbs as modifiers

Stative verbs used in a noun phrase work as adjectives:

The same goes for verb phrases, where they function as adverbs:

Dynamic verbs or verbal phrases function as subordinate adjective clauses.

They can be put in the passive voice with ke.

Verbal mood

Mood is indicated using modal verbs. They are used as normal verbs, modifying a verb, or as adjectives.

Here are some examples of modal verbs:

Coverbs

Coverbs are verb-like words that perform various grammatical functions, such as of prepositions, conjunctions, and adverbs.

For example, the coverb se´e means "not to be" when it is used as a verb, but it can be used in general to form Negation.

Coverbs join with other words to have more complex meanings, forming some syntactic patterns.

Negation

se´e is used for negation in any context, whether with verbs, adjectives or nouns.

Adpositionals

ro (In/On/At/To)

The coverb ro has a locative or dative function. It means "in" referring to places or time, and it means "to" referring to people.

ngo (With/Using)

The coverb ngo has an instrumental function, specifying the use of tools.

When talking about time ngo means "during"

As shown previously, in the passive voice ngo is used to indicate the agent:

ngo can be used for similarity comparisons with stative verbs:

we (And)

The coverb we has a comitative or inclusive function. In simple terms it means "with", but it can be used several times meaning "and".

we only means "and" when it joins noun phrases, it cannot be used with verb phrases.

Coordinators

Coordinators are coverbs or expressions that establish a relationship between sentences.

They also form adverbial phrases of time.

´eko (When/Because) / ´eko we (If)

´eko has the function of indicating the cause of a sentence, and sentences with ´eko are in the past tense only.

The sequence ´eko we also means "when", but it is used for the future. The pattern ´eko we ... is used to mean "if ...".

po (Then)

po is used to indicate an event that occurs after another.

ro kepe we (While)

The sequence ro kepe we connects two verb phrases that occur simultaneously, it can be literally translated as "as long that".

ngo sa (For/To)

ngo sa is used to indicate purpose.

Alternative

... ngo ... ´embe / se´e ´embe (Or)

These are patterns for listing alternatives, ngo ... ´embe is used for two options, se´e ´embe is used in lists of options, where it is placed before the last item.

se´e ´embe can be used to convey possibility.

mbakese (Otherwise)

mbakese is used to connect adversative sentences.

Comparison

pomwese (More than)

Used to make general comparisons with the sequence pomwese ... ngo.

A sentence with pomwese can be nominalized into a superlative.

mbakese (Less than)

Also used for comparisons, but means "less" or "not as much".

Questions

Questions can be made with interrogative words. They are classified as coverbs but are a little different from the others.

In questions the end of the sentence has a sharper and more drastic tone, as in many languages.

The word ´a can make an interrogative with anything.

Interrogatives cause subject fronting, similar to the topic. This makes sentences with SVO order:

If the subject is in the second person it can be omitted.

Yes or no questions use the pattern ... se´e ... (A-no-A) and also change the order to SVO.

In casual conversation questions may be unmarked and use only inversion of order and intonation.

Vocabulary

Common phrases

karemba is a word used as a general greeting and farewell.

samwako is a word used to express gratitude and to pray to deities.

To ask for something politely, the verb rato is used instead of the verb tako.

Time

The day is divided by the positions of the sun. There are no other more precise divisions.

"Today" is called panha and future days are called sanhego.

The word kemba is used to refer to an indeterminate period of more than one day. Past days are called kemba ngowa.

There are no other major divisions of time, if necessary you can refer to the period of the moon.

Family

The family in Mboronhe is strongly linked to the ngata, which is translated as band.

A band is a group of people, usually from the same family, who live together as hunter-gatherers. They usually have about 30 people and can reach almost 50.

The family is strongly matrilineal, this means that it follows the line of women. This is due to the fact that men usually change ngata in search of other women, this means that men from the same family may not be in the ngata.

Family tree

For better understanding, let's use a family tree.

The circles are the female members and the triangles are the male members, the square is "you".

Your siblings and cousins ​​are called hando, they are marked in green.

Your direct parents are called mwe´e, they are inside the dotted box.

Your father and maternal grandfathers are called ndoha, they are marked in blue.

Your mother and maternal grandmothers are called mbaha, they are marked in red.

The people with dotted borders are not part of haha.

Table of terms above:

These names can be combined to explain more specific relationships.

Going down the tree you use the words for "man, woman and child", these are other terms:

Music, Art, and Games

Much of the music made by Ngowa is sung by voice, people may hum alone, or several people may make melodies in groups. Both actions are called hemwa "singing".

In rituals the singing is accompanied by percussion in wa poka "drums" and nhe nhe "clapping".

After the daily tasks of hunting and gathering, people have a lot of free time, which can be used to make tools or baskets.

The making of objects is a time when people can make art, decorating objects with markings, which is also used for identification of the object.

But other common activities are games involving bones or stones called ´eseke "things".

Religion

wa Ngowa believe in a supreme deity called Ngeke linked to the forest, who provides everything necessary for the people's lives.

Minor deities that represent elements of nature are called mwoko, a ngata can venerate one of these deities with rituals as thanks for something that happened at some point in the family.

Death

They believe that after death the spirit goes to a place called rambesaro "the other side" where it ages forever.

For the transference to occur, the body must be exposed to the elements, so the dead are left outdoors after a cleansing ritual is performed, and the place is then abandoned.

Cleansing is necessary because, like other local cultures, they also believe that these spirits can return to the world in the form of sambota that haunt dreams and bring bad luck.

wa Ngowa take care of the elderly who are weak and sick while they can, abandoning them would be a problem for the reasons above. If it is too difficult to continue with them, they are encouraged to kill themselves so that the appropriate rituals can be performed.

Magic and medicine

Medicine is done using many herbs and fruits available in the forest.

Before using medicines, someone with experience in magic makes a diagnosis of the patient's problems. This diagnosis, called nhakewa, is made by throwing stones and bones with specific markings on the ground and interpreting the result.

The items are interpreted according to natural elements (ngengo, papa, hoto, seke, wenhe) and body parts (ndoko, mbako, mwo, to, nhe), the exact interpretation may vary between family traditions. The interpretation tells things like the possibility of treating the disease and whether it can be cured completely.

Personal names

Names in Mboronhe have a tradition of being suffixed by -mba (feminine), -ndo (masculine), -to, -ko, or -ro (generic).

These suffixes help to differentiate proper nouns from normal nouns and make them more unique.

This table lists some names and their meanings. Here they end with -to, but this can be changed to any suffix.