Chapter Text
Real life linguistics can already be complex, so a quick overview of necessary linguistics terms is-
Phoneme: a sound that a language uses, one that “matters” to speakers. Phones not in a language will sound strange, or be mentally replaced with whatever is closest in the language. A language’s phonology is all of its sounds and how they can be used to make words.
Morpheme: the smallest unit of a language with meaning. These can be words (e.g. apple) or affixes like -s or -ment in English (for plural or turning a verb into a noun, respectively). A language's morphology is how it makes and arranges morphemes into words.
Syntax: the order of words in a sentence or phrase. Different languages put things like the subject, object, and verb in different orders, along with adjectives and so on. Some languages have mostly free word order, meaning words can go in nearly any order in the sentence.
Tense-Aspect-Mood: qualities of a verb about when an action takes place (tense; past, present, future), status of completion (aspect; perfect, imperfect, continuous, etc), and reality (mood; imperative, indicative, subjunctive, etc). Languages express these things in a variety of ways, and might not have distinct grammatical forms for each of them. For example, English has present and past tense (run vs ran) but uses a separate verb to express a future mood and has no true future tense (run vs will run). English primarily expresses TAM with additional auxiliary verbs rather than verb conjugations (I am eating vs I have eaten vs I had eaten).
Language Families: All languages change over time, and eventually over time one language will change so much that compared to where it started, it’s a completely different one. Where the exact cut-off point is is basically impossible to determine, but this allows languages to be grouped into families of related languages that share certain common features or similar words.
Cybertronian Specific Terms
Subglyph: an additional word or morpheme pronounced at the same time as the primary word. Cybertronians are capable of making many sounds simultaneously, and use subglyphs to clarify or add meaning to words. Subglyphs can also be added to names, to indicate relationships, rank, respect, etc.
Harmonics: the metallic over- or undertone when Cybertronians speak. This is commonly used to express grammatical mood or things like surety, confidence, questions, etc. Very strong harmonics, like how Soundwave speaks, can make up for otherwise stilted or bare speech by containing all the important information.
Cybertron has three main language families:
Auraen Languages: from the Northern Plateau, centred on what is now Vos. Old High Auraen split into High Auraen (spoken on the plateau) and Low Auraen (spoken in the lowlands). High Auraen further split into Old Vosian and Old Rodioni, which became the modern versions of those languages; Low Auraen developed into Old Praxian and Old Urayan, the former becoming modern Praxian the latter becoming extinct (supplanted by modern Protihexian).
Helexii Languages: the largest language family, from around the Rust Sea. Proto-Helexii developed into Old Northern Helexii and Old Southern Helexii; the Northern branch split into Old Polyhexian, Old Protihexian, and Old Altihexian which became the modern versions of those languages; the Southern branch split in Old Helexii, Old Tetrahexii, and Old Hexii (spoken in Petrus Hex) which developed into their modern versions.
Polar Languages: from the south pole, near the Stanix region, and (via the Core Tunnel) the north pole concurrently. Ancient Polaris split into Southern Polar and Northern Polar, which spread out from the poles and further developed into Old Yussite and Old Stanixi in the south, and Old Krustallish and Old Nyonite in the north. These became the modern forms of these languages, with Modern Krustallish being more commonly called Crystalline as the main language of Crystal City. As Polar languages were commonly seen as prestige languages, Cybex Standard formed primarily based on Crystalline with some Northern Helexii influence.
There are also some language isolates, or languages not related to any of the main language families, like Kaonite and Classical Iaconi.