The Mari-bla-komunta of UniSchiap presents the following proposal for a shared language for a independent, unified Mars. It is simple, culturally neutral, and separate from Earth languages, perfect for us to stake out or own path. As chana yaw firi Mari!
Letter pronunciations are not strictly set into stone. The guides below are well-meaning suggestions, but if you can't make that specific sound you are free to use a similar one that's easier or you.
For users of the Cyrillic alphabet such as Hellenes, the alphabet can also be represented as follows: А, Б, Ч, Д, Е, Ф, Г, Х, И, К, Л, М, Н, О, П, Р, С, Т, У, В, Й.
A valid syllable consists of an optional initial consonant, a secondary consonant, any vowel and a coda. Any consonant can be initial. Valid secondary consonants are L and R, and can only occur if the initial consonant is B, D, F, G, K, P or T. Valid codas are L, N, R, S, W or Y. Doubled consonants, as well as the combinations TL, DL, YI, WU, YW and WY are invalid.
Nouns are invariable. No change for case, plural or definiteness is made: kitabu means "a book", "the book", "books", and "the books", and Mari-persen means "a Martian", "the Martian", "Martians" and "the Martians".
Pronouns work much the same as nouns, with the exception of a mandatory plural distinction between mi "me" and as "us", and optional plural marking for tu "you", da "he, she, they", and ta "it" by means of the suffix -s.
Tense can be optionally marked on verbs via particles: is for present tense, le for past tense, wil for future tense and huy for conditional tense. Verbs can also be made transitive or causative by adding may "make", and intrasitive or passive by adding ben "become" to the verb: leni "learn", may-leni "teach", ben-may-leni "is taught".
Descriptors precede the noun or verb they describe. Comparatives are formed with the preposition nowar "over", and superlatives by doubling the adjective: choten bi bawe nowar dinter "autumn is better than winter", choten bi bawe-bawe yano-taya "autumn is the best season".
Yes-no questions are marked by ending a sentence with ...o no?, while WH-questions are marked with the pronoun ke placed in situ: tu chawa Mari-bla o no? "do you know Martian?", persen bla Mari-bla in ke leya? "where (lit. in which place) do people speak Martian?".
Relative clauses begin with da or ta, depending on whether the noun in question is alive or not. Subordinate clauses always begin with ta. In order for the relative clause to be valid, the noun in question must either be the subject or part of a prepositional phrase of the clause: persen da tara in sayen-hanu "the person who works at the lab", persen da le ben-chesi de mi "the person whom I saw (lit. who is seen by me)", persen wen da mi tara "the person with whom I work".
The numbers from zero to ten are as follows:
Numbers from 11 to 99 are formed by concatenation: 18 deka-eya, 22 du-deka-du, 45 fari-deka-fan, 70 sete-deka, 99 nayu-deka-nayu.
The numbers 100 and 1,000 are heto and kilo respectively. For bigger powers of ten, E notation is used, and E numbers and conventional numbers are combined with plus: 832,000,000 = 832 × 106 eya-heto-tri-deka-du e ses, 832,000,001 = 832 × 106 + 1 eya-heto-tri-deka-du e ses plus an.
Decimals are expressed differently. While the powers 10-1, 10-2 and 10-3 have their own words (desi, senti and mili respectively) and E notation can also be used for smaller decimals (0.00007 = 7 × 10-5 sete e minus fan), these methods are only used as shorthand or in compounding, especially in subdivisions of sols (123 tics = 0.123 sols heto-du-deka-tri mili-di). The conventional way of expressing decimals is using the word koma and then listing the digits one after the other: 2.71828… du koma sete an eya du eya… The two can also be combined in different ways: 832 000 000 = 8.32 × 108 eya koma tri du e eya.
The basic vocabulary is generated based on the most spoken languages of Mars, using a home-made script that calculates the weighted Levenshtein distance between the sources and the result (thank you, Jackey!). Outside of that, new words can be formed by compounding root words with a hyphen: bira-leni-hanu "university (lit. big-learn-house)".
The total base vocabulary is 750 words long and is only available to community members. The following list is an excerpt for public use.
Even with compounding, not everything can be expressed with just the basic word list, especially names and scientific jargon, such as names of species, chemical elements, and letter names. For those circumstances, loanwords are imported directly into Martian with their Latin spellings preserved. To make them pronounceable, the following transformation rules are applied:
Double consonants are simplified to singles. Letters in brackets are used or left out depending on phonotactic validity. Invalid biconsonantal clusters are buffered with E if their first element is a valid coda consonant, in a way that keeps the cluster intact if possible. In all other invalid clusters, the first consonant is mute. Invalid single coda consonants are buffered with E. Invalid vowel clusters are broken up using Y if the first element of the cluster is E or I and otherwise with W.
Letters of the Latin alphabet are refered to by their name in the NATO radio alphabet, reproduced below for easy reference:
Places and languages are usually refered to by their ISO codes if they do not have a standardised name, so "Olympus Mons" is Olympus Mons (olinpus monse) and "Noachis Terra" is Noachis Terra (nowakis tera), but "Spain" and "Spanish language" are Echo-Sierra-tuni and Echo-Sierra-bla (eko-sira-…) respectively. Chemical elements are refered to by their symbols spelled out alphabetically, followed by elemen: Xray-Echo-elemen (esray-eko-…) "Xenon (Xe)".
The Greek alphabet, most notably used for calendar dates, is reproduced below: