Méri

The Méri language is a conceivable lingua franca that could have been spoken in the coastlands around the Black Sea lake around 8500 years ago. Its name means “of-the-sea”. Some common Méri words can be found here.

At the time of the great Tuméra, the flood that devastated the Sweet Sea, some people were experimenting with the use of symbols. These were useful for transferring the ideas of spoken words onto a permanent surface such as a pot, or a tree. Some of these symbols can be found here.

A distant descendant of Méri evolved into the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). That was spoken on the steppes to the north much later, around 3500 years after the great flood recounted in the book In the Day of the Flood and other events of the Four Lights series. Some of the words and ideas in that language survived into languages like Latin, Sanskrit, Greek or Russian, and even into languages spoken in the deep future, like English or Spanish.

Tales and myths from the Proto-Indo-European language include the “smith and the devil”, and its deities had names like dyewus phter (sky father) and dheghóm mhter (earth mother).

Méri is the oldest known form, the one that is found in the book In the Day of the Flood.

It could be spoken or sung. The structure was something like this:

• Word stems had two syllables. Each stem had a similar meaning across parts of speech. So déya = bright = light = shine.
• Stress is usually on the second to last syllable, marked for ease of reading or singing aloud.
• When two stems are joined, the first is a modifier. So light (déya) + village (háma) becomes “bright village” (deyaháma).
• Two of these compounds could also be joined, so deyaháma lurakána would be “the weeping-song (lament) of the bright village”
• Postpositions are used, such as -du (towards), -gu (from) and -ni (in). Thus méradu: “to the sea”.
• Pronoun/case endings are added such as -lo for the first person singular. Thus lúba (love) but lúbalo (my love/I love).
• Tenses are also endings: lúbalo (I love) but lubatálo (I loved).

The language had a few more rules and many more quirks.