Mika Syllables and Words

Let's build some building blocks out of the letters and sounds of Mika.

Here, I use word as a casual way to say wordform, the possible spellings of a word without addressing the meaning. We create words out of letters or sounds.

For Linguists, a Phonological Sketch

Skip this! Hop over! There is weird notation here. You have been warned!

Syllable Canon

σ=(C)V(N), N=/n/
ω=σ+ 

Coda condition: N occurs only in single-syllable function words.

Epenthesis (postlexical, non-contrastive)

∅→[ʔ] / V_V

[ʔ] is not in the phoneme inventory; it carries no contrastive load and is omitted from the orthography. Hiatus may equivalently surface as a brief pause.

Stress

No lexical stress: stress/pitch is non-contrastive.

Allophony

Trivial allophony: each phoneme has a single, context-free realization; the only non-phonemic surface segment is epenthetic [ʔ].

Orthography

Shallow and transparent. (Lightly related to the self description by Cassia of Ally Condie’s dystopian novel Matched, Disney-censored as a movie. She is uncomplicated and easy to read.)

Timing

Words (as sentences) are syllable timed.

For the Rest of Us

Syllables are usually consonant-vowel as in de or ko. However, it is OK to have a single vowel as a syllable as in i or a. These are open syllables. Some everyday single syllable words for sentence building have -n at the end. Examples are an and gon, each consisting of one single closed syllable. A word is a sequence of syllables such as yabadabadu. It might be that yabadabadu becomes a real word in Mika even though it is a sequence of nonsense sounds elsewhere.

This means that vowels can be adjacent within the word as in aaii (which might take on the meaning monkey), ao and beenio. Each vowel stands on its own; a bit of silence is stuck between. This is sometimes a glottal stop, the closing of breath with a motion at the back of the mouth. The word beenio has five syllables; English speakers might say (not quite perfectly) bay-eh-knee-oh—beenio.

In English there are the distinct words "insight" and "incite", completely different in meaning and made up of the same sounds. The difference is which syllable is stressed. This does not occur in Mika. Stress, pitch, rate and lengthening do not contribute to the meaning of the word; they are not needed in the dictionary. If you stress the o in beenio, the meaning does not change.

Sounds and letters are bound, pairs described as a marriage.

The sounds and the exact pronunciation are also one-to-one. The pronunciations of k in ko, ako, bikinoki and kiki are all the same.

Every syllable in a word is important. None are weakened. No vowels are lost or diminished in any way. Each syllable takes the same amount of time. This means that bikinoki takes twice as long to say as kiki. This is similar to how words are said in French.

A final ladida

Sing la la la! Uh-oh, some phrases in songs come to mind when thinking of this.

I am reminded of Scottish puirt à beul as in "sa le ga ma". Check out this mouth music. Parts seem to keep a syllable beat. Not always. If you like it, check out more.

Sarah Vaughan might sing "sodo sobiobi", but "bi bo bu di do i" would be the Mika words of Ella Fitzgerald. Listen to Stacy Kent's Ooh-Shoo-Be-Doo-Bee and and Fitzgerald's subtle background at 2:06 of Into Some Hearts Some Rain Must Fall. Betty Carter heart-renders "lui ui la la la" in singing.

Doo-wop (classical R&B sub-genre) feels like it is being translated into Mika by two background choruses. In the supposedly Mika backgrounds, the bass line runs on nasal closed syllables (function words) as in bon bon bon and don don, while the melodic line floats open syllables (lexical words) such as dua and salala. Perhaps this sounds like the branches and fruit of Mika.

Though not all Japanese sounds are Mika sounds and Mika rules might not apply, these Japanese songs give a bit of the feel:

• Blue Bird Ikimono-gakari (Naruto Shippuden)
• Idol YOASOBI (Oshi no Ko)
• Renai Circulation Kana Hanazawa (Bakemonogatari)
• Zankoku na Tenshi no These (Evangelion OP)
• Cha-La Head-Cha-La (Dragon Ball Z OP)

Maybe you know some French, Korean or Hawaiian songs that illustrate some Mika features.