Barsoomian is
the constructed language of
the fictional Barsoomians, the sapient humanoid inhabitants of Mars in the Barsoom series of
novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It was
developed from Burroughs' examples and descriptions by Paul Frommer for
the 2012 film John Carter of Mars; Frommer also created the Na’vi language for Avatar.
Spoken Barsoomian has mostly lexical words, with the equivalent of grammatical words such
as prepositions and pronouns conveyed telepathically. There are few
inflections, and word order is fixed to verb–subject–object.
Possession is indicated by juxtaposing the object with the possessor, as in Malay. There is a word that makes direct object
definite, as in Hebrew. The vocabulary is relatively simple, with little
poetic language.
Some inflection is found in
the pronouns. For the object, the initial consonant is suffixed: tu "I", tut "me"; ki "he", kik "him". To form the plural, the
consonants are voiced: du "we", dud "us", gi "they"
The effect of the language
is staccato. There are ten vowels, five long and five short, transcribed short a e i o u and long aa ey ee oa oo;
diphthongs are ao (as in how) and ay (as in high). Consonants are similar to English (b d j g, p t tj k,
v z, f th s
h, r l, m n, w y), with the addition of the velar fricatives ch [x] and gh [ɣ].
In the books it is mentioned
that Barsoomian is the only language spoken on the entire planet of Barsoom.
Therefore there never are any language barriers between different people from
Barsoom, no matter what country or city on the planet they originate from.
Written versions of Barsoomian however can differ greatly between
different cities.
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