This is the first in a series of posts I’m going to do about the Beta language I created for the game Grey Goo. Today I’m going to go over a bit of the back-story that informs how the language was constructed and why it is the way it is in some corners, as well as introduce the sound system. In the coming days there will be discussion of the nouns and the all-important noun class system, then adjectives, then a quick look at verbs, and for the last (planned) post I’ll talk a bit about the semantics and metaphors of the language.

When I was brought on to create the Language (we’ll get to that capitalization in a moment), certain things about the Beta culture as it relates to language had already been established. In particular, that the Betas entry into space was primarily accomplished by four distinct groups on the Beta homeworld, but by the time we see them one culture, the one most amenable to incorporating outside influences, became dominant among the space-faring Beta. Second, the dominant Beta thinking about language was fairly expansive, with each word and utterance of each language part of a much larger narration, which is, simply, the the story entire universe. So, “the Language” can refer either to what individuals are speaking at the moment, or to the totality of linguistic expression.

As a consequence of this linguistic open-mindedness, the language I created is basically a Creole, with a dominant substrate language highly flavored with vocabulary from other language families. This dominant language is that of the Usandu people, the first to go into space. The other primary source is from the Imya culture. I imagined the Imya an old empire who had absorbed many peoples already, and through which all additional vocabulary and cultural material was filtered by the time it got to the Usandu. Think of the Imya like the French between the First and Second French empires, or the Hellenistic Greeks: a major political power, urbane, cultured and rich. They were happy to pay for others to go to space and let them do the heavy lifting first. Much of the Imya vocabulary in the resulting Usandu Creole relates to culture and the finer things in life, as well as politics, such as yúcha, “dish, meal,” póran “servant”, séri “reinforcements”, yento, “political district.” But there is also a substantial dose of more mundane vocabulary from Imya, too.

So, the Language is mostly Usandu, with some of the inevitable changes and simplifications that come when lots of non-native speakers learn a language, with a big dose of Imya. By the time the Grey Goo story campaign ends, there’s even a little English.

The sound system of the Language isn’t too complex.

Bilabial Dental Palatal Affricate Velar p t ch /tʃ/ k b d j /dʒ/ g f s sh /ʃ/ h m n ny /ɲ/ y w l r

The values of the consonants will be mostly obvious to any speaker of English. Note the dental series, though. T, d, n and l are pronounced as in Spanish, with the tip of the tongue off the back of the teeth, not off the alveolar ridge as in English. R is usually a flap, but will go in the direction of a trill if at the end of a syllable, and always when doubled.

The entire palatal affricate series (except, marginally, y), occur only in non-Usandu words. Both ch and j represent mergers of different Imya clusters (*ty, *ky > ch; *dy, *gy > j), which are noted in my grammar, and would have appeared in the writing system had we had time to work that out.

Pre-spaceflight Usandu had only three vowels: a, i, u. The a is more back, like English “father,” but will front to nearly /æ/ (as in “cat”) after any of the palatal series for many speakers. The Imya imports e (always like the vowel in “day”, not “fed”) and o (again the higher version, “home”) are almost entirely restricted to Imya words, though e is starting to head out and explore Usandu grammar. There was a central Imya vowel which got flattened on import into Usandu, but would have been present in the orthography.

There are two diphthongs: ai and au, pronounced rather like “fight” and “house,” though the first part of the diphthong should be more like “ah” than the “uh” sound most English speakers will make in some words.

The stress accent of the Language is a bit of a mess. In Usandu words it is largely predictable - accent is on the next to last syllable, except in imperatives, a particular verb form for certain verbs, and a small number of other exceptions. The stress accent of an Imya word, though, is entirely unpredictable. Rather than tax the voice actors, I simply marked the accent everywhere for their dialog. I will do the same for most examples I’ll be giving in this series of posts, just to make life easier.

Here are some words, with an English “faux-netic” transcription, as well as IPA for the linguistically savvy.

méno - MAY-noh - /‘me.no/ - “world”

- MAY-noh - /‘me.no/ - “world” íllau - EEL-lau - /'ʔil.lɑw/ - “there”

- EEL-lau - /'ʔil.lɑw/ - “there” sínjana - SEEN-ja-nah - /'sin.dʒa.nɑ/ - “silence”

- SEEN-ja-nah - /'sin.dʒa.nɑ/ - “silence” túlla - TOOL-lah - /'tul.lɑ/ - “home”

- TOOL-lah - /'tul.lɑ/ - “home” áram - AH-rahm - /'ʔɑ.ɾɑm/ - “time”

- AH-rahm - /'ʔɑ.ɾɑm/ - “time” lósha - LOH-sha - /'lo.ʃa/ - “voice; soul, vitality”

Well, that’s largely it for the sound system. In the next post I’ll introduce the noun, and the noun class system which pops up all over the rest of the language.