Runes and Sounds of the Browniin Alphabet.
The
table below shows an overview on pronounciation and transliteration in the three
different kinds of Browniin Languages. Click on the sound example link to hear the
sounds according to the Brownie rune:)
* The sounds
and runes of these two are interchangeable in
Memnoor Browniin.
** The sounds and runes of these two are interchangeable in
Auhu'o Browniin.
Grammar
and Structure.
There are no tenses,
articles, or plurals in Browniin, no word for "to be", and consonants were
originally optional, but have gradually become more standardized, and in the
last 50 years new symbols have been devised for the consonants and even begun to
be used in writing.
Browniin words are from 1-4 (or for the newer words, more) letters long and are
drawn in the four quadrants of an imaginary circle from top counterclockwise,
usually inscribed with a knife on a strip of inner tree bark. Subjects are
generally written slightly larger than their modifiers, to aid in reading the
main point of a document quickly. Letters are drawn out from the center of the
circle making each letter be right side up at the top of a word, upside down at
the bottom, and sideways to either side.
There are considered to be two parts of speech in Browniin: subjects and
modifiers. Basically, Browniin writing goes from left to right. The top line
contains only the subjects. The modifiers go vertically under the noun they
modify. Subjects consist of every word that does not modify another word in the
sentence. They are easily identified in written Browniin
as they are carved in the top line of each segment of writing. Modifiers are
placed below the words which they modify, and consist of all the adjectives,
verbs, adverbs, emotions, colors, and detail nouns and are placed under the
subject they modify in writing, and after the subject in speech.
There are three ways of reading or speaking Browniin:
1. Every word, vertically. This is considered very formal.
2. Only the subjects (the top line). This is
Brownie quicktalk, used when speed is important.
3. The subjects, with only the most essential modifiers. This is the most common
way of speaking.
Numbers for Brownies are written in base-5, so written numbers can quickly get
quite long. For example, counting from one to ten in Browniin would be as
follows: 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 20.
The Three Browniin Languages.
There exist three different kinds of the Browniin Language.
Each of these languages
is unintelligible to speakers of the other two Browniin languages, yet they
share a common written language:
-
LLaoihrr
Browniin
LLaoihrr Browniin is the language that remains closest to the Browniin language
as created by Keekoo. Becoming more high pitched, it is now used in the
500.000-strong Vale of
Brownies in South-Western
Sarvonia.
-
Aohu'o
Browniin
Aohu'o Browniin was heavily influenced by the sounds of nature, with each of its
sounds eventually being replaced by the calls of birds and animals that the
Aohu'o
tribe came into contact with. The
Aohu'o
language is now used by 70.000,
both on the central plain of Akdor and throughout
Caelereth.
-
Memnoor
Browniin
Memnoor Browniin soon lost the carrying quality of
Keekoo's Browniin, as there
was no longer any need for such in the quiet deserts of Aeruillin. It is now
used by 3.000 in the junction between the Desert of Light, the Plain of the
Dead, and the Etherial Void.
History and Development.
When the
Brownies were
first formed from fragments of bark from the Tree of
Life, each individual had his or her own language, fully
formed, inside his or her head, ready to use. By tradition, 144 different
languages were thus spontaneously brought into existence.
The difficulty with this situation was that each language was spoken by only one
or two individuals of the first generation of Brownies.
Perhaps two
thousand years passed. As Brownies
married and had families, the languages they spoke combined.
Brownies learned
each others languages easily enough, communicating with those other
Brownies that they
had contact with, but each Brownie
child would end up speaking a blend of the languages of his or her
parents. During this time it was normal for a young
Brownie to have to
learn several other languages in order to communicate with
Brownies from
other family groups.
The Brownie empire
of Birn, though dead since 10003 b.S.
according to a large cache of records and histories which was discovered in 4018
b.S. by Keekoo the Deliverer, spoke
various languages, each a composite of several of the original
Brownie languages.
Keekoo taught himself to read two of the
languages contained in the records, and later used their contents and the
languages they were written in to construct a new unified language for the
Brownie race.
4.000 b.S. the Brownie
people newly freed and living in the
Auturian Forests,
spoke dozens of languages, both languages descended from the original
Brownie languages,
as well as the languages of the other races, among whom they had lived for six
thousand years. They desperately needed a common language in order to avoid
fragmenting again into dozens of smaller groups.
Keekoo rose to the
occasion, combining and adding to elements of the two languages used by the
middle class in long-ago Birn
to create the Browniin language, which was originally designed as a way
for a Brownie to
shout or call information to another Brownie across a distance. In 3989 b.S. he
began teaching it to the rest of the Brownies.
A few years later, when these Brownies
divided into three tribes and began to wander in search of a land to call
their own, they took the new language with them. The
Brownies that
never came to the Auturian
Forests, thus missing out on
the new Brownie
civilization, kept their unique, ancient languages and never learned Browniin
(later these non-Browniin speakers came to be known collectively as the
Rat Brownie tribe).
The three tribes wandered for hundreds of years. Because of the different
environments they encountered, they each began to develop peculiar accents,
which soon developed into dialects and eventually into the disparate languages
of the Browniin language family. Each came to be known by the name of the tribe
with which it was associated.
Examples of Browniin Words.
In the table below you can find examples of Browniin words:
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
Yelang
(name) |
eeehLLah |
 |
Sun
(Ookpik) |
ooih |
 |
Brownie (or bark, or skin) |
rrao |
|
|
|
|
|
|
