The Grammar of Manmino

2nd Edition

0. Foreword

Manmino is a constructed East Asian Auxiliary language intended to bridge the gap between the diverse but undeniably interconnected cultural region of East Asia, spanning from Japan to Myanmar and Mongolia to Indonesia. Utilizing a phonetic inventory that balances ubiquity without overly favoring any one group, a simple agglutinating yet analytic SOV structure with high structural flexibility, and vocabulary drawing from a well balanced mix of with both historical and contemporarily important languages such as Classical Chinese, Sanskrit, among many languages, Manmino aims to be a nuanced yet easy to use language for those in East Asia.

The cause for which Manmino stands behind is fostering a sense of unity in East Asia that would triumph over historic tensions and rivalries in the region by creating a platform for international communication that is more easily accessible than English, as well as fostering free flow of information and ideas in the region beyond government, cultural, or linguistic barriers in a manner that prevents the domination of any one particular entity in the region’s artistic and intellectual environment.

As one idealistic Pan-Asianist said a hundred years ago, “Success through union and defeat through disunion is a law of nature known to all”; Team Manmino hopes that through learning and using this language, people of East Asia would be able to successfully work together to create and share great feats of art and intellect.

1. The Alphabet and Sound System

Manmino is written in the Latin Alphabet (Latin Aksala or Latin Munji in Manmino), a system familiar to all in East Asia and Southeast Asia. One may optionally use Manmino Aksala, a pseudo-abugida specifically designed for Manmino, only in limited situations where the Latin Alphabet cannot be used for various reasons.

The Manimno Alphabet (Manmino Aksala) uses the following letters:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P S T U W Y

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p s t u w y ’

1.1 The Consonants

Manmino has the following consonants.

1. The phoneme [ŋ] may not be used as an initial consonant.
2. The precise realization of Fortis consonants and Lenis consonants is provisionally left undefined due to split demographic preferences in greater East Asia.
3. The glottal stop can optionally occur to disambiguate certain words, but is not necessarily phonemic in Manmino.
4. ⟨s⟩ is pronounced as [ɕ] when preceding ⟨y⟩ or ⟨i⟩ in palatalization.
5. Among all consonants in Manmino, only the nasals [m], [n], [ŋ], non-glottal fortis stops [p], [t], [k], and the lateral [l] can be used as coda consonants.
6. Other letters of the Latin Alphabet not included here such as ⟨q⟩, ⟨x⟩, ⟨z⟩, may be used to write proper nouns.

1.2 The Vowels

Manmino has five vowels: a, e, i, o, u. Manmino also allows for the following diphtongs and triphthongs.

1. Consonants cannot come after ⟨w⟩ or ⟨y⟩, but they can come after ⟨u⟩ or ⟨i⟩.
2. In front of the vowel ⟨e⟩, ⟨y⟩ is only allowed as a initial consonant and not as a glide. The only exception to this is after ⟨s⟩.

1.3 Phonology Explanation

Overall, Manmino’s phonetic inventory has been developed in a neutral manner. After obtaining the full phonetic inventory of 20 major languages in greater East Asia, the phonetic inventory of each language was cataloged and assigned a value equal to the cube root of the language’s speakers. Then all phonetic inventories were added together, and the phonemes that had a value exceeding the halfway point were added while the rest were culled.

Using the phonemes listed above, Manmino utilizes C1VC2 syllable structure. C1 excludes [ŋ], and C2 is limited to the nasals [m], [n], [ŋ], non-glottal Fortis stops [p], [t], [k], and the lateral approximant [l]. The glottal stop is only necessary in careful speech, and therefore may be considered mostly non-phonemic in common usage.

In order to accommodate a wider array of speakers and to facilitate faster speech, Manmino allows flexible allophonic pronunciation of certain digraphs. Those rules are as follows:

• Nasal Assimilation: If a nasal coda ⟨m⟩, ⟨n⟩, ⟨ng⟩ is followed by a plosive or affricate of a different place of articulation, the nasal coda may be articulated at the place of articulation for the following consonant instead of the one for its original place of articulation. For example, the digraph ⟨mk⟩ can be pronounced as [ŋk] rather than [mk]. For this rule, Palatal consonants are considered a subset of Dental consonants.
• Double Plosive Assimilation: If a stop coda consonant ⟨p⟩, ⟨t⟩, ⟨k⟩ is followed by another stop consonant as the initial consonant of the following syllable, the coda consonant can be dropped. In this case, if the following initial consonant is lenis, it is fortified.
• The ⟨ph⟩ Assimilation Rule: The consonant cluster ⟨ph⟩ may be pronounced as /f/.
• The ⟨ty/dy⟩ Palatalization Rule: The digraphs ⟨ty⟩ and ⟨dy⟩ may be palatalized into /tɕ/ and /dʑ/ respectively.
• The ⟨kh⟩ Assimilation Rule: The consonant cluster ⟨kh⟩ may be pronounced as /h/.

In case of any confusion, it is recommended that you clarify your pronunciation to the best of your ability by either inserting dummy vowels or simply not utilizing the above rules in favor of speaking slower.

2. Particles

In Manmino, the function of a word as a noun, verb, adjective or adverb is primarily identified through position and particles, both prefixing and suffixing. As such, in Manmino, words in isolation are classified not as nouns, verbs, and modifiers, but as objects and concepts, actions and phenomena, and qualities. Their function as noun, verb, adjective, or adverb is determined by the particles around them.

2.1 Noun Particles

Manmino nouns are marked with the following suffixing particles that determine the function of the noun.

*: ji also has other uses in changing word function as well. See 2.3.

Manmino nouns are notable for not accounting for number or any gender: plurality in Manmino can be emphasized with either reduplication of the noun or with the suffix -tat.

2.2 Verb Modifiers

Manmino verbs are affixed with optional particles for multiple aspects, conveying information in the following order.

• Valency
• Passive li changes the verb so that the subject is no longer doing the verb, but the verb is being done to the subject.
• Causative hi changes the verb so that the subject is no longer doing the verb to themselves, but causing another target to do the verb.
• Polite si is one way a Manmino speaker can show reverence to the subject.
• Tense-Aspect
• Progressive jung marks a verb is in the middle of being performed at whichever time that is being referred to (assumed present, if otherwise unmarked).
• Perfect le marks a verb as an action that has been already completed (usually in the past)
• Prospective kalu marks a verb as an action that is yet to occur, either because it is a hypothetical or it is an action to take place in the future. In formal linguistics, this is referred to as irrealis.
• In Manmino, tense and aspect are not strongly distinguished in isolation. However, when these particles are stacked, the first particle marks aspect, and the second particle marks tense.
• Mood
• Exlamative ya marks a phrase as an exclamation.
• Interrogative ka marks a sentence as a strong question
• Suggestive ne marks a sentence as a weak question or a suggestion.
• Imperative ye marks the verb as a command.

It is noted here that prior versions of Manmino described time marking preceding completion, but now has been switched to better reflect the Korean tense-stacking system from which this system has been borrowed from.

2.3 Word Function Modifiers

As stated earlier, in Manmino, all base words are classified as Actions and Phenomenon, Objects and Concepts, or Qualities. Generally, each corresponds to verbs, nouns, and adjectives or adverbs; however, there are often cases where a word is not used in the manner most natural for its meaning. In those cases, a word generally must take on a helping particle or verb to function properly. The modifiers are as such:

1. An action or phenomenon or a phrase headed by an action or phenomenon being “used as an adverb” (like an adverbial clause) is expressed as "verb chains", where the head words can simply be put next to each other without modification to form the full verb phrase.
2. This is how phrases describing another noun phrase is created (Relative clauses).

It is noted here that previous versions of Manmino had the particle marking an O/C as an adverb as -syang, but it is now changed to -yang to make pronunciation easier and better reflect Classical Chinese and Japanese, which uses the corresponding etymology more frequently. It is also noted here that previous versions of Manmino had a separate particle for a perfective action being transformed into an adjective with a particle -in, but this has been removed in favor of -le-ji. In similar fashion, actions that have been marked as a noun can mark perfection by the construction -le-em, or -lem for short.

Negation is also another type of word function modifier, and quite unique in that it is the only prefixing particle in Manmino. Manmino negates verbs with a but-, and negates adjectives and adverbs with bi-. But-cey can be abbreviated to bey.

2.4 Independent Particles

There are also particles that function independently from words instead of being attached to any one phrase. These can either function as coordinating conjunctions placed between clauses, or be used at the start of the sentence as a function marker for the phrase.

Coordinate Conjunctions in Manmino are conjunctions that joins two independent clauses together.

Subordinate Conjunctions in Manmino on the other hand are conjunctions that join one independent clause to another clause (whether it’s independent or dependent).

Functional particles can also be negated with a but-. In those cases, it is assumed that the following sentence will clarify the relationship between the subject and the following verb phrase at a pragmatic level.

2.5 Pronouns

Manmino has a simple system of pronouns. In terms of personal pronouns, Manmino has the first person pronoun a, the second person pronoun ni, and the third person pronoun ta. There are also kun, nyang, ini, which are gendered and intimate alternatives to the second or third person pronouns. Each corresponds to male, female, and neuter.

Manmino has a modular system for generating other pronouns. Manmino pronouns have the following demonstrative parameters: first person proximal ko, non-first person proximal co, distal yo, interrogative ha, existential hok, universal man, negative mu, and alternative ta. These can be optionally suffixed to specify noun class of the target being demonstrated. Nonhuman objects are suffixed with -ka, people are suffixed with -nin, times are suffixed with -si, places are suffixed with -di, causes are suffixed with -yu, and method is suffixed with -i. It is noted that many universal pronouns do not use the standard target specifying suffixes due to prevailing pre-existing words in Sinoxenic languages.

3. Vocabulary

Vocabulary in Manmino comes from a variety of different languages. While some words are defined in the dictionary, Manmino generally has an open-ended vocabulary where words can come from any language, although words with widespread recognition are preferred over words used only in individual languages, and monosyllabic words should be avoided except for the most basic words. There are six different categories for where words can come from, with different situations calling for different source languages. These recommendations should not be considered to be exact rules, but should be interpreted flexibly according to the needs of the language.

The first category is of words of Sinitic origin. Generally, this refers to words from Classical Chinese which was the spoken language of Tang dynasty China and the traditional written lingua franca of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Manmino users are recommended to loan words from the Sinitic category when it comes to matters of Daoism, Confucianism, politics, diplomacy, economics, or other similar topics, and are recommended to avoid loaning words from the Sinitic category when it comes to names of plants or animals. It is also recommended that if creating new words not sourced from another language, users of Manmino should utilize Sinitic stems following established conventions for creating Classical Sinitic words, in the interest of compactness.

The second category is words of Sanskrit origin. While South Asia, the place where Sanskrit is native to, is not directly in the scope of Manmino, many languages in Southeast Asia consider Sanskrit and Pali as prestige languages due to Buddhism. Even in the Confucian realm of Vietnam, China, Korea, and Japan, Sanskrit had some vocabulary influences. As such, Sanskrit is an important language in the Manmino world, explaining its inclusion. Manmino users are especially recommended to loan words from Sanskrit when it comes to matters of Indic religions and philosophy.

The third category is words of Korean or Japanese origin. While Korean and Japanese have no proven relationship, they are well known to share many mutual similarities in grammar as well as some similarities of vocabulary in their shared sprachbund, and are, as such, considered to be in one category. There is no specific rules for how to adapt a word from this category as the cognates they share are too irregular to create definitive rules for (hence why they are still considered language isolates). Manmino users are recommended to use words of this category when it comes to matters of nature in cooler temperate climates, as well as words pertaining to the natural world in general, and whenever else there is a found overlap between Korean and Japanese.

The fourth category is words of Austroasian origin. Unlike the general usage of the term “Austroasian” in most other academic contexts, in discussion of Manmino, Austroasia refers to all of continental Southeast Asia, including the Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar. Continental Southeast Asia, or Austroasia, also forms a sprachbund where various languages share words either from genetic reasons or from exchange. Like as is the case for the Koreo-Japonic Sprachbund, the cognates they share are also too irregular to create definitive rules for adapting. Manmino users are recommended to use words of this category when it comes to matters of nature of warmer tropical climates, as well as words pertaining to the natural world in general, and whenever else there is a found overlap among Austroasian languages.

The fifth category is words of Austronesian origin. The Austronesian language family is the dominant language family in most of Maritime Southeast Asia, and today spans Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and to a certain extent, Taiwan, Singapore, among other nations. The languages of the Austronesian family often share cognates, and as such the shared vocabulary should be used whenever possible, especially in matters of navigation or the natural world in general.

The sixth category is words of external origin. These words are from languages primarily spoken outside the Manmino realm, such as Arabic, Spanish, or English. They are generally words that refer to information-era technologies, Abrahamic faiths, or other words that generally have not been nativized in Asia. Outside of those specific scopes, it is not recommended to use these words unless there are no other words in the Manmino source languages that would work.

3.1 Loaning from Classical Chinese

Words that are derived from Classical Chinese, or new words coined through processes followed in Classical Chinese, cannot be loaned solely based on one modern pronunciation of one language, but instead must be loaned based on a simplified version of the pronunciation they would have had during the Chinese Tang Dynasty, as that is the origin from which almost all modern readings derive from.

In Classical Chinese, most common use characters were classified by initial consonants and their “rime”, which is a combination of vowel and final consonant. This information is attested to in literature such as the Qieyun and the Yunjing. In the first table, the correspondences between Classical Chinese Initials and modern Manmino consonant values are given.

Classical Chinese classification of characters by rime (which indicate vowel quality, with “outer” rimes signifying open vowels while “inner” rimes signifying mid or closed vowels), rounding (with “open” rimes signifying unrounded and “closed” signifying rounded vowels", “division” (a 1-4 classification based on degree of palatalization), and final consonants (of which there were multiple). While final consonants are fairly straight forward, the other factors are not as straightforward, and their correspondences are given in the table below.

As expressed in earlier documentation, this rule is subject to change as needed, based on whichever fits the needs of the Manmino community better.

3.2 Loaning from Sanskrit

Sanskrit has been independently loaned into different languages across East Asia differently, and as such it requires a standard loaning method into Manmino as well, especially as Sanskrit becomes more important in Manmino.

The simplest method will be to initially render Sanskrit where possible, and, when necessary, simplify as minimally as feasible using rules established for Pali simplification of Sanskrit with modifications made for Manmino phonology. Some items of note in conversion of Sanskrit words into Manmino:

• Vowels
• Vowel length is ignored.
• Diphthongs are preserved.
• Final vowel can be dropped if legal in Manmino.
• Consonants in general
• Aspiration is ignored for both voiced and voiceless stops.
• Consonants do not go through Sanskrit to Pali consonant gemination unless necessary to be legal in Manmino pholology.
• In consonant clusters, voiced consonants are to go through devoicing before attempting to proceed further with Pali simplification. For example, “udvigna” would become “utwikna” in Manmino, not “ubiga”
• Nasals
• Sanskrit /ṃ/ can become /ŋ/ if descendant is more recognizable with that sound.
• /m/ becomes /w/ if needed to preserve another consonant.
• The nominative marker “-n” is dropped in Manmino.
• Fricatives
• /v/ becomes /w/ when preceding a front vowel such as /i/ or /e/, or when needed to preserve another consonant. Otherwise, it becomes /b/.
• /j/ and /c/ followed by another consonant gain a vowel /i/ after itself.
• All Sanskrit sibilants in consonant clusters are considered to be /s/.
• All Sanskrit fricatives followed by another consonant and not part of one of the above cases are dropped.
• Liquids
• Sanskrit /kl/ goes to /kil/.
• Invervocalic Sanskrit /ṛ/ goes to /a/, /i/, or /u/ depending on the following vowel.
• All Sanskrit liquids are dropped when between a preceding consonant and a vowel.
• Manmino does not allow laterals or alveolar consonant to merge with each other.

3.3 Loaning from Latin

Although not a language native to the Manmino realm, Greek and Latin are highly influential languages in the modern day as a language upon which many modern concepts initially from the west comes from. However, because there is a mix of different European influences that dilute understanding of where a given word comes from, it makes identifying the roots of a given Latin-based word more difficult than it needs to be. As such, Manmino has a standard set of shorthands that should inform how Latin-based loanwords should be loaned.

• Latin -Vs suffixes (with "V" standing in for any vowel) go to -i, and if the vowel can be dropped legally in Manmino, it is dropped. The following are a few examples:
• Latin suffix -aris (English "-ary") goes to -ali.
• Latin suffix -bilis (English "-ble") goes to -bili.
• Latin suffix -eus (English "-eous") goes to -i.
• Latin suffix -ens (English "-ent") goes to -en.
• Latin suffix -ivus (English "-ive") goes to -ifi.
• Latin suffix -icus (English "-ic") goes to -ik.
• Latin suffix -tas (English "-ty") goes to -ti.
• Latin suffix -tio and -sio goes to -si.
• Latin "r" as an initial is mapped to "l", and when as an onglide, it is mapped to "w".
• Latin "v" as an initial is mapped to "w" when used as an onglide, "b" before an "a", "e", or "o", and "f" before an "e" or "i".

3.3 Loaning Words from Other Languages

Manmino, despite having a highly technical description, does not aim to a fully prescribed language but a flexible protocol for natural communication. As such, these rules are best understood to be guidelines that can be interpreted freely as needed by speakers of Manmino. Speakers of Manmino should periodically formalize new conventions and record in or redact from this section the new conventions in the future, but these are some rules to consider.

Filler vowels, vowels inserted to break up consonant clusters incompatible with Manmino, in this context can be either i, a, or u, depending on whether the core vowel of the original syllable was an unrounded front vowel, a middle vowel, or a rear or rounded vowel.

Consonant conversion should follow conventions set by other languages for the specific word being loaned, but it is generally recommended v goes to b or w instead of f , and z goes to either j or s. However, these are merely recommendations: as long as the loans are recognizable, any conversion is legal.

4. Grammar

4.1 General Syntax

Manmino is a left-branching language with SOV preference free word order. Put simply, any clause that modifies another clause should be come before the clause it modifies. Furthermore, Manmino is a topic marking language and a pro-drop language; if an argument of a phrase can be deduced from the context, it can be dropped without issue. Inflectional particles can be dropped if contextually clear, but otherwise they must be present to prevent ambiguity.

4.2 Honorifics

In Manmino, there are three degrees of marking honorifics to consider. First is the respectful honorific level. In Manmino, one may mark respect for a referent by not using personal pronouns or names and instead using titles. If the referent is the subject of a phrase, the honorific marker -si- should be used in the verb (See 2.2 Verb Modifiers). The second degree of honorifics is neutral, which is unmarked. The last degree of honorifics is intimate, which involves the use of the intimate pronouns kun, nyang, ini, or a nickname in place of a formal name or title.

4.3 Numbers

In Manmino, numbers are used to mark abstract value, quantities, or place in a list (ordinal numbers). Abstract values are expressed either in their isolated Sanskrit form (for numbers 0-10) or as a compound formed from Sinitic roots (any other numbers). Quantities are expressed the same way, but they must be followed by a counter word, and then a -ji to associate it to a noun. The counter hway is used for the amount of an action, gay is used for countable inanimate nouns, dow is used for animals, and meng is used for people. Ordinal numbers use ban.