Dear Vector Prime, what can you tell us about the Cybertronian Languages?
Dear Linguistic Learner,
There are as wide a variety of languages on Cybertron as there are on Earth. In fact, we have many more because our species has existed for a longer period of time.
The earliest languages of Cybertron were data transfer protocols, not unlike the HTTP that allows your machines to communicate over the Internet. When transforming, some Cybertronians emit a sound that may be rendered as "TSCHE-CHU-CHU-CHU-TSCHE". This is in fact a very ancient example of a protocol in Old Cybex; perhaps you have heard this before?
Like Earth languages, we have nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I'm afraid that is where the similarities end. I would very much like to give you a tutorial in how to speak a modern Cybertronian language, but human beings can neither produce all of our sounds nor hear all of our sounds properly.
The two most commonly-spoken languages today are Neocybex, which is approximately 9 million years old, and Cybertronix, only half a million years old. Most Cybertronians effortlessly switch between the two. One feature you may recognize from Neocybex is the suffix "-ix", as "shanix" or "Stanix". "-ix" is a plural marker, similar to "-s" or "-es" in English. A variation of "-ix" is "-ex", which at first meant "many" but later meant "many robots" and eventually "cities". Now you understand why so many of our cities end in "-ex", like Protihex, Helex, and so on. The language "Cybex" itself (meaning roughly "city of Primus") is named after the mythical founding city of Cybertron ("Primus, Made of Metal").
You also may have noticed names beginning wih "X-", meaning "great" or "deep", such as the god Xal ("Great Hunter") and sagely Xaaron ("Deep Wisdom"). Some historians wonder if the name of our world itself was once "Xybertron" ("Great Land of Metal"). If only I could replace your ears with audio circuits to continue the lesson!
