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Minidun has more speakers than any other language in Bergonia.  88 million Bergonians, 46% of the total population speak Minidun, compared to 37% that speak Nacateca.

In antiquity Minidun was a strictly analytical language, comprised totally of free morphemes and completely devoid of inflections whatsoever.   In this era Minidun resembled Chinese, in which all grammatical functions were achieved by the implications of the order of words in sentences. 

But after the fall of the Second Ceiolaian Empire the language underwent a significant transformation.   Minidun speakers developed a penchant for compounding new words from two or more existing ones.  This compounding in time produced contractions (e.g.  "do" and "not' yield "don't").  Out of this practice grew a limited number of inflections, particularly with nouns.  Undoubtedly, with the rise and domination of the Shufrantei religion, Minidun speakers experienced a thousand years of direct exposure to the Nacateca language that used inflections heavily.   Undoubtedly the exposure to inflections in the one language influenced the speakers of the other language.  Grammarians of the Tan Age commented on this historical trend.  However, after the arrival of Europeans, the trend reversed, and Minidun dropped inflections and reverted back to its prior analytical characteristics, though in an all new form.  With the drastic population reduction of the Plagues (1560-1650), Minidun (and all other Bergonian languages) experienced considerable flux.  However, in the early 1700s, when atrei populations began growing at a steady rate, Minidun stabilized into various dialects, some almost mutually unintelligible.  But as Minidun reemerged as a literary language in the late 1700s, the Dura dialect of Ceiolai became the standard for Minidun, just as Tuscan served as a norm for Italian.  With the advent of broadcast media, the sharp differences between the dialects have eroded, as the Dura dialect dominates.  (See language map, which shows dialects)

Phonology:

Minidun uses few diphthongs and many hard consonants (e.g. B, D and V), in contrast with Nacateca.

All multi-syllable words have the stress placed on the first syllable.

Words in the predominant Dura (spoken in Ceiolai) and Amota-Corifon dialects end in either a vowel, or a liquid (i.e. N, L, sometimes M, and rarely R) or either C or T.  Except in dialect, words never end in any other sound.  Thus, notwithstanding that Minidun employs many hard consonants, Minidun words never end with hard consonants.

Syntax:

Here are the general rules of syntax:

In a transitive sentence the verb comes at the end of a sentence, much like Japanese.The next thing to know is that the subject usually precedes the object (S + O + V).  This sentence order conveys active, transitive meaning, where a subject acts or causes motion that affects, moves or changes something else.  Grammarians sometimes call this the “dynamic” voice, as well as the “transitive.” 

Sometimes stylized writing permits an inversion of the subject and object (O + S + V), to provide emphasis and nuanced meaning.  But this inversion of the subject and object must somehow be marked, so as to avoid the presumption of S+O+V.There are two ways of doing this. One way has the subject followed by kla, a verb generally meaning “do,” “act,” or “make.”  This verb precedes the main verb and all its modifiers.  The second way uses a postposition (or two) to mark the objective phrases.  

A second syntax is called the "reposing" syntax.  Its sentences convey meanings that in English manifest variously as (a) the passive voice, (b) intransitive sentences, (c) transitive verbs of sense (“see, gave, scrutinize, smell, whiff, feel”), or (d) verbs of emotion and mental state (think, dream, am sad, feel elated, believe, recall).  The basic structure is S+V+O.

ð “I depend on you.”

ð “I am bitten by the dog.”  (A sentence construction that literally translates as “I bite by dog,” since the verb takes no

ð “I dreamed last night of goblins.”

ð This syntax can take as a dependant clause a whole sentence written in the dynamic syntax:  “I dreamed last night that the goblins ate all my corn.” 

With just a few, very well delineated exceptions, modifiers and conditioning words always precede the solid nouns and verbs they modify.   However clauses and indirect objects are marked and conditioned by postpositions. 

The Locus:

It is a very important part of Minidun communication to indicate the location or direction of an action.  This is done with a "locus" word or phrase (e.g. “upward,” “toward the north,” “in the forest,” “upon the rock” and “toward the shore”).   It usually precedes the verb.  Sometimes if the object is compound, it will precede the indirect object, even if the direct object comes between it and the verb at the end of the sentence.   

The locus involves a special class of word, similar to some of the prepositions of English that refer to location (e.g. “in,” “up,” “above,” “within,” “to-the-left-of”) or direction movement (e.g. “inside,” “into” “toward”), as well as a generalized sense of “this/here,” and “that/over there” and “meanwhile” (which means “at-the-same-time-but-in-another-place”).  These locus words work as postpositions.  The postpositions indicating place or position (e.g. up, inside) can combine with -me, a suffixing particle to mark a destination of travel or direction of movement; it translate into English as “to” or “toward.”  Thus, with -me, the word “in” becomes “into,” and “up” becomes “upward.”

The locus in this sentence order always refers to the subject, generally to locate the subject or identify the subject's perspective from:

  Locus words likewise indicate the location or spatial orientation of the action that the sentence describes.  It usually refers to the location or movement of the subject, either in terms of direction (up, north, away) or relationship to an object.  The locus word always follows the object with which it connects.  If there is no object, then the locus word precedes the verb. 

The locus need not have an object.  In such cases the locus before the verb and after the subject.

One shouldn't confuse the locus with an indirect object.  What in English is the indirect object may or may not be a locus.  “I hit the ball with the bat,” is a case of an indirect object that is not a locus, since it signifies instrumentality.  In English, instrumentality is often marked with the prepositions “with” and “by.”  The indirect object usually come after the direct object phrase, and is sometimes bound to the verb by the locus.  Thus: S + DO + IO + V.  

Compound Sentences: 

The independent clause is usually at the back end of the sentence, and the dependant clauses in front, with post-positions connecting the dependant to the independent:

*In this sentence, there is no need for locus in the second clause.  The word escape connotes the direction and locus, relative to the jail, so no explicit locus word is needed.