Mak'al

The Servant's Tongue

Striisk ku estoss. Striisk thif 'e estoss sfass chiio i estoss'rarr'esfreth shests.

— Paxpushi

Summary

Mak'al is a language long forgotten. It is mostly found on ruins and jewelry dating back millennia ago. Its origins are largely unknown by the scholars of the hearthlands, only suspected to be a constructed language. Few even know that, and even fewer know more. Those who do, know that it was created to be used by the servants of the ancient Krastux, a people know very little about. It has almost no voiced consonants which make for a language that is easily whispered. This is because the Krastux couldn't stand the sound of their servants and wanted to have a universal language for them. I say servants, but in actuality they were slaves. Slaves who used their vocal cords to make sounds and speak. This was something the Krastux couldn't do and so they made a language that was easily understandable for them, sounded a lot like their language, was silent and could be used to uniform the tongues of their various subjects.
In the modern age of Mithra, Mak'al is rarely seen. There are a few scholars who have deciphered the various runes that make up their language but there are no actual known speakers. Some of the temples in the white wastes and other northern parts of Mithra, where the Krastux held their power, have strange glyphs and runes that could be deciphered using Mak'al. These runes tell stories about the ancient keepers of which even less is known.

Dictionary

Dictionary

Phonology

Consonant inventory: /f h k p s sː sːː t ɹ ɾ ʃ ʔ ʧ θ/

↓Manner/Place→	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Palato-alveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stop	p			t		k	ʔ
Affricate					ʧ
Fricative		f	θ	s sː sːː	ʃ		h
Approximant				ɹ
Tap				ɾ

Vowel inventory: /e i ɪ o u a/

	Front	Back
High	i ɪ	u
High-mid	e	o
low	a

Spelling rules:

by pimenefusarund

The script used for mithra is made up of a series of runes. For the S, the amount of dots is used to implicate the length of the s sound. Furthermore, this script is written in from left to right sentence wise, but downards word wise. Words will get boxed in but apostrofes will be next to eachother in the same box. A word will be written downward with the next word in the sentence being placed next to it. An example is the sentence "I am a dog"

The sentence in Mak'al is: Chi rart ii'she

by Pimenefusarund

Romanization

Pronunciation	Romanization
Start of word: ks	k's
i	ii
ks	x
sː	ss
sːː	sss
ɹ	r
ɾ	r
ʃ	sh
ʔ	’
ʧ	ch
θ	th
ɪ	i

Grammar

Main word order: Subject-Verb-Object-Oblique. "Mary opened the door with a key"
Adjective order: Adjectives are positioned before the noun but as a prefix

Adjective ending with a vowel	Adjective -Ending vowel + ' + Noun
Adjective ending with a consonant	Adjective + ' + Noun

Adposition: Prepositions except Possession is postpositions

Pronouns

Mak'al has two pronoun cases.

• Subjective case: Pronouns used as subjects
• Possessive case: Pronouns used to express ownership of something.

Subjective:

1st singular	2nd singular	3rd singular	1st plural	2nd plural	3rd plural
chi> /ʧɪ/ I	striisk> /stɹisk/ you	ssorth> /sːoɹθ/ he, she, it	ess> /esː/ we	sfakt> /sfakt/ you (all)	sssat> /sːːat/ they

Possessive:

1st singular	2nd singular	3rd singular	1st plural	2nd plural	3rd plural
stret> /stɹet/ my, mine	fropt> /fɹopt/ your, yours	shrass> /ʃɹasː/ his, hers, its	kress> /kɹesː/ our, ours	shests> /ʃests/ your, yours (all)	sfo> /sfo/ their, theirs

Verbs

Future tense is indicated with the word: strep

Future particle

strep> /stɹep/ future tense particle

Present	No affix chiipt> /ʧipt/
Past	If starts with vowel: Prefix ts- Else: Prefix tse- tsechiipt> /tseˈʧipt/
Remote past	If starts with vowel: Prefix iɹ- Else: Prefix iɹe- iirechiipt> /ˈiɹeʧipt/

Imperfective aspect

The ‘imperfective’ aspect refers to ongoing actions, such as I am studying, and habitual actions, such as I study (every night).
It is indicated with the word: Ku
imperfect particle = ku> /ku/

Dictionary

4446 Words.

Common Unisex Names

Names in Mak'al are meant to de"humanize" (if that word can be used, considering humans were probably little more than primal animals when the language was spoken) the servant and enhance the Krastux. Masters had nicknames like whip, pain, high, ruler, master (probably the translation of the word Krastux) or lord. Contrasting this, servants and slaves had names like worm, fly, filth and snake.
Out of Character

Don't think that all Mak'al users were either slaves or Krastux. There were plenty of servants that had high power and constructed their buildings, wrote their books, guarded their castles and took care of their buisness. The Krastux were, besides being merely pawns themselves, rulers that ruled from high up their ivory towers. They rarely bothered with the business of the lower folk. They had their servants for that. Temples like the one the woodelf Red and Bernard of Redhill visited, were all built by these "servants", most without a single Krastux ever setting foot in it.