A particularly unusual drawl in some unspecified location in the British Isles have brought forth this highly aberrant language, which while clearly descended from English has been altered so extensively that there are no doubts that it is a completely separate language. There are some speculations that the radical and at times implausible changes are a product of conscious change rather than unconscious wandering, but such claims have never been supported with evidence, short of a few sporadic word derivation systems here and there.
The language has a special relationship with English, which exists elsewhere in the remnants of the British Empire. There is a one-way system for translating English words into g’Mòdyfäjq, which is called c’preq. The “translation“‘s goal is not to import the word into g’Mòdyfäjq, but to make an alternate version of the word that has features and qualities unique to g’Mòdyfäjq. This system grew out of an in-joke of sorts that has spread to become part of the standard language and there is sufficient evidence in the way of written records to confirm that this feature at least is a deliberate and conscious addition to the language. The alternate orthography, which is in Cyrillic, provides further obfuscation and is another invention.
A typical g’Mòdyfäjq word is composed of three parts:
- Preäpostrophe
- Postapostrophe
- Posthyphen
“Breaking” (c’preq, preq-q) is a specific transliteration mode. In most other transliteration modes, a name is adapted with the greatest fidelity afforded by the language. In breaking however, the transliteration is wild and unpredictable, with significant and deliberate deviations from the original word even if there is a higher-fidelity alternative to that particular translation – because that is not the point of breaking; the point of breaking is to form a creative distortion of the original, such that it looks like but is clearly different from the original.
Breaking is creative and there’s more than one way to do it. However, the freedom is somewhat limited and that’s why the process can have a name to begin with.
Breaking only makes sense when applied to English words. This is one of the features that makes g’Mòdyfäjq have a “special relationship” with English, though it is not the only one. This makes sense as supposedly the origins of g’Mòdyfäjq is English anyway.
Words from other languages can be broken by first translating or transliterating them into English. In this case however a second layer of obfuscation can be added by intentionally making the translation sloppy or unorthodox.
There are two mechanisms that come into breaking: one is the standard ordered-definite-complete system, and there is also the random-random-random system.
The ordered-definite-complete system is conventional linguistics, although they are not applied to translations but rather diachronics:
- Rules are applied in order.
- They are always applied.
- Every rule is applied.
The random-random-random system is significantly different:
- The rules are selected randomly with replacement. That means that the list of rules is essentially put into a paper bag and drawn out as needed. The same rule can apply more than once as well, and this can be nontrivial.
- The selected rule is probabilistically applied. Every rule has a chance of being applied after being selected. This comes in the form of a probability value from 1 ~ 400. A d400 is rolled for the rule. If the rolled number is greater than the rule’s probability value then it is applied. Else it is ignored.
- Selection continues as desired. The two steps above are repeated for as often or not as the translator likes. Alternatively, the selection can stop on the roll of a die.
Common rules are so called because they are applied almost all the time. The most common rule, and the one that has the greatest reach is:
m → n → q
- Iron Man
- Ajrəqnəq
- Pfer-l-jün
- Òjryqjünyt
- Pfer-l ð’Naqjün
- Or, through MGY Ted Gong Habr: Tèdgoŋqab
- Tþedðgxoŋqabv
- g’Mòdyfäjq of “hello” is “ajcəry”, short for “ajb c’grit”, which comes from “I am to greet”. Similarly “goodbye” is “borko”, short for “aborkoq”, which is in turn short for “ð’koqfərsesəqb g’bork”, which means “the conversation is aborted”.