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Mutesz

Mutesz

English • Português

Mutesz is one of the oldest languages in Evea, its greatest contribution was to create the first writing system.

This writing system years later would spread to the world and originate the scripts used by Eleli and Kathłat.

Unfortunately, after centuries, besides the language continue being spoken, the old writing system and the knowledge of how to read it was lost.

Those are 10 lessons teaching the basics of Mutesz, in a period were the writing system was under development.

  1. Nouns
  2. Possessives
  3. Verbs
  4. Verb Object
  5. Postpositions
  6. Verbal mood
  7. Pronouns
  8. Numerals and Adjectives
  9. Subordinates
  10. Obviation

See Appendix for ramblings about the development of Mutesz as a conlang.

Lesson 1 - Nouns

Those are some words used in the following sections:

The nouns as seem above are in their simplest form, as kot meaning "king".

This is the singular form of a noun, that is, it refers to a single person or thing. To talk about more than one person or thing the plural is used.

The plural is made with a suffix, a termination put at the end of a word. The suffix for the plural is ut, then to refer to "kings" we say kotut.

But, when the word ends with a vowel, like ma "mother", the suffix changes to t, then to refer to "mothers" we say mat.

To ease our understanding of the examples, all suffixes will be separated from the root word by dots (.). Those are not pronounced and would not be written in proper texts.

Take a look at the previous words in their plural form:

To say "A and B" in Mutesz, we use u meaning "and", for example ma u sze "mother and father".

In the plural only the last word has the suffix ut, then ma u sze.t "mothers and fathers".

Lesson 2 - Possessives

Possessive are used to refer to things like "my house" or "your house". In Mutesz, that's also done with suffixes, like the plural.

oo my    katam.oo = my land
re your kot.re = your king
ne their ma.ne = their mother
am our sze.m = our father

The vowel in am is removed by the previous in sze.m, similar to what happens to ut. But that doesn't happen with oo, like in ma.oo "my mother".

Another form is to indicate possession between A and B, this is done with the grammatical structure A B.ki, so "king's house" is sak kok.ki.

The ending t in kot was assimilated with k, that phenomenon also happens with the encounter of t with other consonants.

This kind of phrase also indicates other kinds of relations, like in îpu sak.ki "inside a house".

To get used to these suffixes, take a look at the plural of some previous phrases:

Lesson 3 - Verbs

The verb "to be" is the most useful in all languages and can be used to make some simple phrases.

Verbs in Mutesz are conjugated by person, meaning they have suffixes that show who is doing the verb.

This is the conjugation table for the verb at "to be". You can see the suffix ut merged in the plurals.

at.en I am
at.e you are
at.esz it is
at.enut we are
at.erut yall are
at.eszut they are

See some examples:

In Mutesz the verb is the last thing in a phrase, all the nouns go behind it. So think in the order king am, instead of I am king.

All the verbs are conjugated with the same endings as at, just replace it in the previous table.

As seen with other suffixes the e vowel is removed in nee.n, this occurs with the initial e on any of the conjugations.

The simple verbs in Mutesz express present or past, im.en can be translated as "I run" or "I ran", depending on context.

Lesson 4 - Verb Object

The verb not only has suffixes but it can also have prefixes, they are put in the start of a word.

Some prefixes indicate who is affected by the verb, the following table shows different forms depending whether the verbs starts with a vowel or consonant:

i me    i.nee.sz = it saw me
o.os.esz = it cut me
e
r		 you e.nee.sz = it saw you
r.os.esz = it cut you
im
m		 us im.nee.sz = it saw us
m.os.esz = it cut us
eru
er		 yall eru.nee.sz = it saw yall
er.os.esz = it cut yall

In some other cases the verb doesn't need a preffix, as in 3anna sak nee.sz "the woman saw the house"

In the previous sentence its obvious "the house" is affected by the verb because houses cannot see. The same is not true if what was seen is a person.

In the sentence 3anna kot.an nee.sz the suffix an is used to show that kot is the one being affected by the verb. This suffix is used mainly in humans, but it may be used in any case where there would be some ambiguity.

Here are some more sentences:

Lesson 5 - Postpositions

Postpositions are suffixes that establish relations of position, time or manner. Mutesz has only two of those words and they have many functions.

The postposition a when used with people means the action is meant for them, like in sak sze.m.a poo.n "I build a house for our father".

When a is used for a place it indicates where the verb occurs or movement towards that place. Using ike sak.a s.at.esz "the knife is at home", the verb also gets the preffix s, that shows that the sentence includes a place, it can be roughly translated as "there", as in "the knife is there at home".

This sentence combines both cases:

The postposition o3 has many meanings, one of them is to show an instrument being used, ike.3 os.en "I cut it with a knife". Used with places it indicates origin sak.o3 im.en "I came running from home".

Postpositions also mark time, with op.a being "during the night" and op.o3 being "since last night".

Here is a summary of the relations:

Place Time People Objects
a in, at, on, towards while for on, towards
o3 from since with, using

Lesson 6 - Verbal Mood

Other group of verb prefixes is used to indicate the intention of the speaker about the sentence.

The ka prefix makes the verb negative, as in kot ka.nee.n "I didn't see the king".

On the other hand the prefix tza makes the sentence affirmative, that's used for emphasis or intensity, as in sak.a tza.s.at.eszut "surely they are home".

When answering a yes or no question, the response would be a verb using ka or tza, words that purely mean "yes" or "no" don't exist.

To give orders and commands the prefix pa is used, for example p.etz! saying "eat!".

It can be combined with ka making prohibitions.

Similar to pa, the prefix te expresses wishes when directed to other people, or directed to the speaker themselves to convey "wating", look at the following examples.

The prefixes ma or a, both are the same, expresses possibility or doubt, as in ma.oo3.e? "would you know?".

It's usually combined with another sentence. As an illustration when answering a question like "what would you do?", a possible anwser would be sak a.poo.n "I would build a house".

Lesson 7 - Pronouns

Isolated personal pronouns aren't commonly used in Mutesz, this is because they are already shown in the verb conjugation.

an I
ara you (sg)
na he/she/it
ama we
arat you (pl)
nat they

Otherwise the demonstrative pronouns 3u and essze are used to refer to things already mentioned, 3u means "this", and can be used like 3u sukut to refer to "this ring".

The pronoun essze is related with the suffix sze, similar to "that", which means something that is not present or visible. essze is used to refer to something introduced with sze previously.

Here is a sequence of sentences illustrating them:

For asking questions the relative pronouns ina and i3a may be used, they refer to people and object respectively.

Lesson 8 - Numerals and Adjectives

Mutesz numbers from 1 to 32:

1 te 9 rite 17 sote 25 szute
2 na 10 rina 18 sona 26 szuna
3 ki 11 riki 19 soki 27 szuki
4 ou 12 ri 20 no 28 szoo
5 tepa 13 matte 21 note 29 szu tepa
6 napa 14 manna 22 nona 30 szu napa
7 kipa 15 makki 23 noki 31 szu kipa
8 enna 16 mat 24 szu 32 szu enna

Numbers and adjectives go after the noun and all together is suffixed in the end, the plural marker ut is not necessary if there is a number.

The second example shows how suffixes go with the number in this case:

Mutesz adjectives act pretty much like the nouns, but very often they are made from verbs that have been transformed into nouns with the suffix a.

Putting the suffix in taa "to send" we obtain taa.a meaning "that was sent", sukut taa.a sutza.3 at.esz "the ring that was sent is made of copper".

For making a comparison we use the grammatical structure Z X.ki Y un.esz, that means "X is more Z than Y" or literally "Z of X exceeds Y":

In order to say "the X-est" the form un.a, as in sutza rik un.a "the brightest copper".

Lesson 9 - Subordinates

Subordinate phrases are phrases that come inside phrases. In Mutesz the verb in a subordinate phrase uses the a suffix.

They can be used for example to modify a noun, as an adjective, for this the phrase starts with one of the pronouns ina or i3a:

The subordinate phrase is shown in brackets [ ].

This same kind of construction can be used with the subject or object of a verb:

These subordinate phrases can get postpositions just like nouns, and with them they can express relations with other sentences, the following table shows some of them with the verb poo:

o3 poo.sz.a.3 = after they build it
a poo.sz.a.a = while they build it
ki poo.sz.a.ki = because they build it
k.a poo.sz.a.ka = before they build it

The î prefix makes the verb infinitive, like the to form of a verb or the ing form.

Lesson 10 - Obviation

Verbs by default are in the past or the present, the suffix si puts the verb in the future tense, see tzi.si.in "I will go" and tumu as.si.sz "he will win".

Finally, there some more prefixes and suffixes related to the an ending on the nouns, a noun phrase marked with an is called the obviate.

When the verb doesn't have a prefix that tells who is affected, its implicit that the verb affects the obviate. But in case the obviate is the one doing the verb, then it is marked with the suffix e3.

And if the obviate is not the one being affected, but other third person pronoun, then the prefix ne is used. An example is given in the following sentence, in it the obviate marks the difference of the arguments of the verb.

In addition to the previous possessive suffixes there is the 3e suffix, that indicates possession by the obviate.

The obviate marker is not normally used for objects, because they rarely do actions, but in case it happens it can be marked with the ne prefix and the o3 postposition:

With all this complexity in verbs, sometimes verbs are fused with nouns to produce more complex nouns, an example is tzaap-s.im.a "a place to run".

The sentence below uses many of the things learnt through the course:

In it someone makes a joke about a man who cheated on his wife.

Appendix

Mutesz was a language created in a haste, the only purpose was to justify the writting systems of Eleli and Kathłat. Its grammar is heavily inspired by Ancient Sumerian, with some modifications.

I completed it in about a month, that might be the fastest conlang I've ever made to this day.

For those interested this is the phoneme inventory of Mutesz:

Labial Interdental Alveolar Postalveolar Velar
Plosive p t̪ ⟨t⟩ t̠ ⟨tz⟩ k
Fricative θ ⟨3⟩ s ʃ ⟨sz⟩
Sonorant m n ɹ̠ˠ ⟨r⟩
Front Central Back
High i ⟨î⟩ ɯ̈ ⟨i⟩
Mid ɛ ⟨e⟩ ə ⟨u⟩ ɔ ⟨o⟩
Low a ⟨a⟩

I wanted an [æ] first, but ⟨æ⟩ didn't look good on the orthography, so i changed it to [ɛ].

The vowels a e o may occur in long sequences like aaa or aaoo. The initial ideia was to have long vowels but longer sequences kept occurring so i discarded long vowels.

The best explanation is that vowels i and u assimilate to a e or o, while î becomes [j].

I also thought some allophonic changes:

t̠ > t̠ʃ / __{i ɯ̈}
ɹ̠ˠ > ɰ / __ɔ
s > ʃ / __t̠

t is assimilate to other consonants in clusters, forming geminates, but 3 and r cannot be gemminated, in that case t just disappears, 3 and r also cannot appear in coda position.

History

Mutesz created a logographic writing system that was used for a long time only for religious reasons, mostly to write the names of important people on tombs.

Around -1200 EV it was already considered a mature writing system, but it was still not very used and only specialized people knew how to use it.

After bronze took over the world, the kingdoms of Mutesz became a place with a lot of flow of goods, and they discovered that writing was very good for recording exchanges.

After about 500 years, traders used a simplified version of Mutesz with a logosyllabary and this writing system spread to other cultures that over time made their own adaptations for their languages.

And finally, with a catastrophic natural event, the society of Mutesz lost much of its traditional writing, which was replaced by a simpler alphabet similar to its derivatives.

I will not show you what the logosyllabary was like, when the results come out you can try to figure out for yourself what the original glyphs were.

I really wanted to have a logographic writing system that I could use and show people, but it would be an effort that I could use to finish the other conlangs that I consider more important.

Maybe after all is done I can do another massive retcon like I've done several times throughout this project.

Mutesz's Relations

Since Mutesz is in the middle of the continent it probably made some connections between the north and south that are geographically separated by a very arid zone.

The people of Mutesz call themselves Maatesz which means "the nobles" and the land itself is called Maat. The nearby peoples would be called by names made by themselves like Naru3aszki and Issutzeszat.

I need to think about what kind of things could come out of Mutesz and spread throughout the world like what happened with Mesopotamia on Earth, for example to this day we use base 60 to count minutes and seconds. They also say they invented maps, but I think people invented maps many times.

Woo, I am tired.