Ancient Nheam

article

Singular indefinite article in the nominative and accusative cases.

Glosses: a, an (art, Indefinite (singular) article.)

Ancient Raunic

pronoun

Second person plural pronoun, you, y'all.

Glosses: you, 2p (prn, Plural second person pronoun.)

Inflection: Ancient Raunic pronouns (click to expand)

		Absolutive	Ergative	Accusative	Genitive	Dative	Vocative
1s, I, me		alyə	alyaə	əlyəi	lyi	alyuh	alyauh
2s, you (sg)		tyə	tyaə	tyəi	tyi	tyu	tyau
3s, he/she/it		uh	au	uəh	əuh'i	au	uh
Honorific	Honorific (sg)	ra	raə	əri	ri	ruh	rauh
1p.INC	Honorific (pl)	rai	raəi	rai	rih	rəuh	rəih
1p.EXC	1p, we, us	ata	ataə	atəi	ati	atuh	tauh
2p, you (pl)		i	yai	ih		yuh	yəih
3p, they		iətyə	ityaə	iətyih	ityaih	ityuh	iətyəih

Notes: While i was the most common pronoun for second person plural (you), the honorific pronoun ra (or rai in some later dialects) was used instead when addressing people of a very high status.

Gorgian

Etymology: Cf. Tuscan ire. The conjugation largely follows the model of Italian andare.

verb

To go. Also used as an auxiliary verb for future tense.

Glosses: FUT, future (p, Future tense marker, will.) to go (v, To move from one place to another.)

Inflection: Irregular verb i (click to expand)

Infinitive			i
Gerund			dã
Imperative			va		dat, it
	1s, I	2s, you	3s, he/she/it	1p.INC	1p.EXC	2p, you	3p, they
Present	vo	ve	va	ba	dġã, vã	da, dat, vat	vã
Imperfect	ìva	ìsi	ìva	ìva	ìvã	ivat	ìvã
Future	m'vo i	t've i	va i	s'ba i	dġã i	da i	vã i
	Participle (agrees with intransitive subjects and transitive objects)
	Singular			Plural
Masculine	iz, dauz			iz, deiz
Feminine	iz, daz			iz, dez

Kpau

Notes: Alternates with e in spoken Kpau, although the particle is always spelled as i in Kpau native writing.

particle

Present-tense marker for realis verbs.

Glosses: PRS (p, Present tense marker.)

Modern Latin

Etymology: From Latin hic as a singular article (which alternates with ic) and from Latin hi as a plural article. Spelled as i and ī respectively.

article

Singular masculine definite article, the.

Glosses: the (art, Definite article.)

Inflection: Modern Latin definite articles (click to expand)

Pronunciation
	Singular			Plural
	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Nominative	i / ic	e / ec	o / oc	i	e	e
Accusative	in	an		os	as
Oblique	is
Spelling
	Singular			Plural
	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Nominative	i / ic	ae / aec	o / oc	ī	ae	ae
Accusative	yn	an		os	as
Oblique	ois			īs

Notes: The nominative form i becomes ic before vowel-initial words.

article

Plural masculine definite article, the.

Glosses: the (art, Definite article.)

Inflection: Modern Latin definite articles (click to expand)

Pronunciation
	Singular			Plural
	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Nominative	i / ic	e / ec	o / oc	i	e	e
Accusative	in	an		os	as
Oblique	is
Spelling
	Singular			Plural
	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Nominative	i / ic	ae / aec	o / oc	ī	ae	ae
Accusative	yn	an		os	as
Oblique	ois			īs

Sample usage:

E fimíne íðin os máxos?

Do the women see the men?

Older Kraliy

Notes: See also j.

particle

Irrealis mood marker.

Glosses: INT (p, Interrogative, marks a sentence as a question (especially a polar 'yes/no' question).) IRR, irrealis (p, Irrealis mood marker.)

Notes: The irrealis mood is used for suppositions and hypotheses, in order to mark a sentence as a polar (yes-or-no) question and to issue polite commands. Irrealis is marked with the particle i for consonant-initial verb stems or the prefix /j/ (written as an independent particle j) for vowel-initial verbs.

Sample usage:

i pjənɐˈrɐː ˈtˢəːnɨ ˈtuːju mə?

Do the women see the men?

Spaele

particle

That, relative particle.

Glosses: that, REL (p, Introduces a relative or subordinate clause.)

Notes: Precedes the subclause. Uses the gap strategy.

Sample usage:

Supi brine, iun ovixe i ne havage' uelne vidageþ cevalei:

On a hill, a sheep that had no wool saw horses,

Wajj

preposition

Nominative particle. See notes.

Glosses: NOM (p, Nominative.)

Notes: Precedes the subject of a verb if not incorporated to it. Pronouns occurring immediately after the verb (as it is usually the case) are always deemed to be incorporated, and thus lack this preposition. The same applies to any arguments appearing right after a form of the copula ɥ. The preposition i is used for nouns appearing as the subjects of other verbs or for nouns and pronouns alike if they appear in a position other than immediately after the verb (including if the subject follows an auxiliary like future-tense marker ʎoʌ).

Sample usage:

ɐqnə jədɐ ɥoo i wepa bə heʍa

A man and a woman were walking.

Alpitalic

A posteriori - Indo-European - Italic

An a posteriori constructed language based on proto-Italic that would have been spoken near the Alpine region in ancient time. The language would have interacted with Ancient Alpin, an a priori conlang playing the role of a pre-Indoeuropean language. As a result from this interaction, Alpitalic may include a number of actually a priori words while Alpin languages incorporate Italic wordstock.

Although Alpitalic can be more conservative than Latin in some regards, it is a highly innovative Italic language in others. For instance, while the language does not display the rhotacism found in Latin, Alpitalic merges most vowels into añ /ʌ̃/ when nasalized.

The language is written in a variant of the Alpin script, based on the Etruscan alphabet.

See more: Alpitalic wordlist (33 words).

Ancient Alpin

A priori - Alpin

An a priori constructed language that would have been spoken in the Alpine region in ancient times, not unlike historical Rhaetic. Although Alpin is a pre-Indoeuropean language, its lexicon includes a number of early Italic borrowings.

Ancient Alpin verbs are marked for their duration through punctual (short), durative (medium) and perdurative (long) aspects.

The language is written in the Alpin script, based on the Etruscan alphabet.

See more: Ancient Alpin wordlist (37 words).

Ancient Iyau

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Iyau languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the north-western region of the fictional island of Rauna during ancient times.

Ancient Iyau features a somewhat unusual consonant inventory with only 9 base consonantal phonemes but also contrasting velarized and non-velarized consonants, similar to the 'broad' versus 'slender' contrast found in Irish Gaelic. Vowels are realized differently depending on whether they are preceded by a velarized consonant or not and certain affixes change form to match the consonantal class of neighbouring syllables. Ancient Iyau was a polysynthetic language and featured noun incorporation for direct objects. Late Ancient Iyau also allowed subjects to be incorporated, a feature that would later become commonplace in Middle Iyau.

The Iyau were under the protection of the Ancient Raunan empire. Much of their culture was borrowed from their suzerains including their writing system, the Raunan alphabet. Ancient Iyau was often written in the Old Western variant of this script, either vertically or horizontally.

See more: Ancient Iyau wordlist (20 words).

Ancient Nheam

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Nheam languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken during ancient times in Mewha Inhum, an island east of the fictional land of Rauna.

Ancient Nheam is a fusional language which declines nouns for 4 cases and 3 numbers (singular, dual or plural) and conjugates verbs for tense, aspect and mood. Certain combinations of case and number result in identical noun forms which are only distinguished by articles (which agree with their nouns in both categories). Ancient Nheam features a split-S alignment where intransitive verbs may either accept an argument in nominative case (like transitive subjects) or in accusative case (like transitive objects) depending on the particular verb.

The language was written in the Ancient Nheam script, an alphabet related to the Ancient Raunan script.

See more: Ancient Nheam wordlist (31 words).

Ancient Raunic

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Raunic languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the fictional island of Rauna during ancient times. Initially it would have been limited to a small region in eastern Rauna but as the Ancient Raunic people expanded the language came to be spoken in over half of the island.

The classical language of an ancient Rauanan empire, the Ancient Raunic language is a fusional language featuring tripartite alignment (arguments of intransitive verbs use different case markings than subjects or objects of transitive verbs), a subject-object-verb word order and a contrast between plain and labialized consonants for most consonantal phonemes.

The Ancient Raunic language was written in an abugida known as the Ancient Raunan script which was written vertically from top to bottom in columns read from left to right. By the end of the Ancient Period, the script had evolved three different variants (Old Eastern, Old Western and Old Southern) which, in addition to being written vertically, could also be written horizontally from left to right. The sample sentences use the earliest vertical variant.

See more: Ancient Raunic wordlist (36 words).

Ancient Smia

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Smia languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the southern region of the fictional island of Rauna during ancient times.

Ancient Smia words often have a sesquisyllabic structure composed of a minor syllable with a reduced and often voiceless vowel followed by a 'full syllable'. The language also features breathy-voiced vowels contrasting with regular (modal) voiced vowels. Ancient Smia grammar is mostly isolating and allows both topic-comment and subject-predicate sentence structures, with the former being more common when establishing a new topic (with the latter being used thereafter).

The language may be written in the Ancient Raunan alphabet as used by the allies of the Ancient Smia peoples, the Raunan Empire. However, Ancient Smia was usually written in a rather-divergent variant of that script known as Old Southern. This writing system was often written horizontally but stacking characters in the same word or sesquisyllable vertically.

See more: Ancient Smia wordlist (33 words).

Ancient Voh

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Voh languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the northern region of the fictional island of Rauna during ancient times.

Ancient Voh features a complex consonantal inventory which includes up to 32 click sounds although many seem to have been merged early in the language's history. The Ancient Voh language is supposed to be scarcely attested which leads to uncertainties regarding grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. The conlang is supposed to reflect an intrafictional effort to reconstruct the language out of the available evidence and its better-known descendant Middle Voh.

Ancient Voh's writing system, known as the Old Northern script (or Old Northern Raunan script) is not particularly helpful when it comes to reconstructing the language as it is partially logographic supplemented with alphabetic writing which is, nonetheless, also defective and which allows for vowels to be left unmarked. Orthography is anything but consistent, with inscriptions varying from purely logographic and with little grammatical markings to nearly fully-alphabetic inscriptions.

See more: Ancient Voh wordlist (13 words).

Eastern Smia

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Smia languages

Eastern Smia or 'Mewha Inhum Smia' is an a priori language that would be spoken in the southern regions of Mewha Inhum, an island east of the fictional land of Rauna.

The language descends from Middle Smia, although influenced to some extent by the Nheam languages (including Xân) spoken in the rest of its home island. Unlike its ancestor, Eastern Smia does not feature tone and it is unique among the modern Smia languages in its prominent usage of the topic-comment structure.

Eastern Smia may be written either in the Xân script or in the Southern Raunan script depending on whether speakers follow the usage of the more populous Xân or Nheam peoples living in the rest of the island or the other Smia peoples living in southern Rauna.

See more: Eastern Smia wordlist (21 words).

Gorgian

A posteriori - Indo-European - Italic - Romance

Gorgian (natively known as Gorġãu, /gɔɾˈʒãʊ/) is an a posteriori language based on Tuscan and thus closely related to standard Italian. The language builds upon the gorgia toscana, a feature of Tuscan dialects which causes stop consonants to be pronounced as fricatives in some phonetic contexts. Gorgian extends this to create a set of Welsh-like consonant mutations.

See more: Gorgian wordlist (50 words).

Lower Sairean

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Saire languages

An a priori language that would be spoken in the south-eastern region of the fictional island of Rauna.

Lower Sairean descends from the Middle Saire language but was also strongly influenced by the Middle Xhuei language. Its morphology is considerably simpler than that of its ancestor although it incorporates nominal classifiers, borrowed from the Xhuei languages. As in Middle Saire, sentences are required to have an argument marked as their focal point which in Lower Sairean is indicated by the clitic 't.

Lower Saire is written in the Southern Raunan script, an abugida it shares with other languages in the southern region of the island.

See more: Lower Sairean wordlist (30 words).

Middle Akkum

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Akkum languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the north-western region of the fictional island of Rauna during the Middle Period.

Middle Akkum is unusual among Raunan languages for allowing syllabic consonants. Extrafictionally, the phonology of the language was inspired by the historical Etruscan language. Its purely a priori grammar is head-initial but requires case endings to be moved to the end of a phrase. As a result, a direct object followed by a possessor will have an accusative suffix on the possessor instead. Different verbal paradigms are used depending on whether an action transforms its object or whether it leaves it mostly unchanged.

The language is written in the North-Western Raunan script, an alphabet that also came to be borrowed by the Lealea, an ethnic group from the northerly Lealea islands who interacted frequently with the Akkum. The extrafictional romanization uses the Greek letters theta and chi for aspirate stops and the Germanic letter Þ for the sound 'sh' of the similar-looking ancient Bactrian letter sho.

See more: Middle Akkum wordlist (13 words).

Middle Aune

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Raunic languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken during the Middle Period in Engwe, a small island south-west of the fictional land of Rauna. Some efforts to revive the language in the Modern Period also aim to revitalize Middle Aune while others intend to bring back a later form, Early Modern Aune.

The ancestors of the Aune people arrived to their island fleeing the wars and disarray that engulfed much of mainland Rauna after the fall of the Raunan Empire at the end of the Ancient Era. They brought to the island much of the imperial Raunan culture including the Ancient Raunic language which, after centuries of isolation, evolved to become the rather distinct Middle Aune language. Phonological changes include the loss of initial r (which leads to the Raunan demonym Raunah'i evolving to Aunae) and the development of an ergative-absolutive alignment out of the original tripartite alignment of Ancient Raunic.

The language was written in the Western Raunan alphabet, a descendant of the Old Western variant of the Ancient Raunan script. This writing system was also used by the Iyau peoples, the main political and commercial partners of the Aune.

See more: Middle Aune wordlist (4 words).

Middle Irona

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Raunic languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the central region of the fictional island of Rauna during the Middle Period.

Middle Irona was one of the few surviving descendants of the Ancient Raunic language after the fall of the Raunan Empire. The language contrasts a relatively large number of places of articulation (labial, dental, alveolar, retroflex, palatal and velar). Nouns decline for case and number, this inflection is fusional and often involves shifts in the location of prosodic stress as well as in pitch (with the language contrasting between two tonal levels: high and low pitch).

The language was usually written in the Eastern Raunan alphabet, descended from the Old Eastern variety of the Ancient Raunan script. Middle Irona may be written either vertically (from top to bottom in columns read left to right) or horizontally (left to right), both styles are common although horizontal seems to prevail. This contrasts with the nearby Middle Saire language which also uses the same Eastern Raunan script in both directions but shows a clear preference for vertical writing.

See more: Middle Irona wordlist (27 words).

Middle Iyau

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Iyau languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in a relatively small area in the north-western region of the fictional island of Rauna during the Middle Period.

Middle Iyau, much like the Ancient Iyau language it descended from, was a polysynthetic language with complex words often standing for full sentences in English. Verbs commonly incorporate subjects, direct objects, indirect objects and even tools; key sentence elements typically are only found as standalone nouns if the speaker intends to emphasize them. The language features two groups of consonants (coronal vs peripheral, the latter including both labial and velar consonants) with some amount of consonant-harmony between them as affixes will change to suit the consonant group of a nearby stem.

The Middle Iyau language was written in the Western Raunan alphabet, a descendant of the Old Western variant of the Ancient Raunan script. This writing system was also used by the Aune people, the main political and commercial partners of the Iyau.

See more: Middle Iyau wordlist (22 words).

Middle Lealea

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Lealea languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken during the Middle Period in the Lealea islands, north of the fictional land of Rauna.

The Lealea language features a strict verb-subject-object order. Nouns belong to semantic-driven nominal classes which are marked through a mandatory suffix. In addition to that, a Middle Lealea noun may be marked with prefixes, prepositions and postpositions to indicate number, definiteness and case. Although verbs generally are not conjugated for person, some feature a lexical variation depending on the number of their subject: 'to give' translates as sah if the subject is singular or ahsae if the subject is plural. This variation is irregular and unpredictable but only affects a limited number of verbs.

During most of the Middle Period, the Lealea language was written in the North-Western Raunan script, an alphabet they adapted from the neighbouring Akkum people in northern Rauna. However, by the end of the period Lealea speakers began to use the North-Eastern Raunan script instead, due to Mulasah influence.

See more: Middle Lealea wordlist (20 words).

Middle Mulasah

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Mulasah languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the northern region of the fictional island of Rauna during the Middle Period.

Although Middle Mulasah did not have a phonemic vowel length contrast, the rhythm of the language was characterised by a noticeable lengthening of all stress vowels. Middle Mulasah grammar was fusional and its nouns declined for six cases and three numbers: singular, paucal and plural, the latter of which was formed by reduplication except for a limited number of nouns with a suppletive plural form. Verbs are required to agree with their subject in number although not by person: all singular pronouns share the same verbforms as do all their plural equivalents.

The language was written in the North-Eastern Raunan script, an alphabet the Mulasah people borrowed from the Voh. Traditionally, this script was written in boustrophedon style (alternating writing direction) but by the end of the Middle Period writing exclusively from left to right became the norm, a trend that seems to have started with Middle Mulasah and later extended to Middle Voh. The Middle Lealea language was also written in this script late into the Middle Period due to Mulasah influence.

See more: Middle Mulasah wordlist (32 words).

Middle Nau

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Nau languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the eastern region of the fictional island of Rauna during the Middle Period. Due to the fertile plains along the Selauhi river in Nau territory, the Nau grew to be the most populous people in Rauna and, as such, their Middle Nau language bacame the main language in the region by number of speakers.

The language features implosives (also found in the Middle Smia language from southern Rauna) and pitch accent, usually alternating high and low-pitched syllables within a word. Middle Nau verbs often conjugate through vowel alternations (as in bhai, bhie, bhii for 'to see', 'saw' and 'seeing') and often require auxiliary verbs to indicate aspect or to form negatives. Unlike other Raunan languages that typically allow pronoun-dropping, the Middle Nau language uses pronouns extensively. Although the language is not related to Ancient Raunic, a significant part of its vocabulary can be tracked to the language of the Raunan Empire, particularly when it comes to toponyms such as the name of the Selauhi river, from Ancient Raunan Səlwah'hya.

The Middle Nau language was written in the Central Raunan alphabet or 'Ru script' which the Nau adopted under the influence of the nearby Ru Kingdom.

See more: Middle Nau wordlist (16 words).

Middle Nheam

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Nheam languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken during the Middle Period in the islands of Mewha Inhum and Rumundea, located east of the fictional land of Rauna.

The Middle Nheam language differs in many ways from its ancestor, the Ancient Nheam language. Innovations include some of Middle Nheam's more notorious features such as the development of voiceless nasals (as found in the word ñheam itself) and the usage of consonant mutation and vowel ablaut, in the morphology of the language, responsible for alternations such as funda (the present-tense stem for the verb 'to give') to fean ('gave', the past-tense stem for the same verb) or for the change of the initial f in either stem to wh if affected by a negative particle. Nouns decline through prefixes and prepositions descended from Ancient Nheam articles.

The language was written in the Middle Nheam script, also used by the unrelated Nimbe language from northern Rumundea and northeastern Rauna. This writing system is cursive and often requires letters to change form depending on their context.

See more: Middle Nheam wordlist (19 words).

Middle Nimbe

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Nimbe languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the north-eastern region of the fictional island of Rauna as well as the northern half of the nearby Rumundea island during the Middle Period.

The language features nasal harmony both on its consonants and vowels. Middle Nimbe has an agglutinative morphology which allows noun incorporation of direct objects. Verbs are conjugated for tense, aspect, evidentiality (distinguishing between directly experienced knowledge and indirect knowledge or hearsay) and person. The latter is marked through polypersonal agreement, requiring a transitive verb to agree both with its subject and its object in person and number. Intransitive verbs on the other hand are required to have a 'dummy' person marking for one of those categories while reflecting their theme (subject) in the other. Intransitive themes might be treated as subjects or objects depending on whether the action was intentional or not. Thus, Middle Nimbe can be said to have had a Fluid S syntactical alignment.

The language was typically written in the script of the Middle Nheam language. The North-Eastern script typically used for the Middle Voh language might be used as well.

See more: Middle Nimbe wordlist (11 words).

Middle Ru

A priori - Undersky languages - Ru-Hulam languages - Ru languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the western region of the fictional island of Rauna during the Middle Period.

Middle Ru features a rather complex phonology distinguishing 37 consonants and 8 vowels. Nouns belong to one of four nominal classes or genders. Although the class of a given noun is not fully predictable from neither its form or meaning; the classes mostly correspond to human beings and human groups (I), resources including edible plants and animals, fuels and materials such as wool (II), non-edible soft or non-solid materials (III) and non-edible hard materials and man-made tools (IV). While number marking is optional, nouns must be declined for case using suffix which depend on the nominal class and on the final vowel of the nominal stem due to a front-vs-back vowel harmony. Verbs are polysynthetic and feature polypersonal agreement and noun incorporation for tools or generic direct objects.

The language was written in the Central Raunan script, also known as Ru script. This writing system would later be adopted by other cultures such as the Nau due to the prominence of the Ru-speaking Cadarmeni Kingdom early in Middle Period Rauna.

See more: Middle Ru wordlist (156 words).

Middle Saire

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Saire languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the south-eastern region of the fictional island of Rauna during the Middle Period.

Middle Saire is an agglutinative language. Many of its consonants feature a fortis-lenis contrast which, aside from providing a very subtle aspiration to fortis stops and fricatives, may affect the length of a preceding vowel. This, combined with Middle Saire distinguishing between short and long vowel, results in a fourfold vowel length distinction contrasting extra-short vowels (if short and followed by a fortis consonant), regular short vowels, mid-long vowels (long but reduced by a following fortis consonant) and regular long consonants. Middle Saire grammar was unique among Raunan languages in marking verbs for telicity. Although the language cannot be classified as having a topic-comment structure, all sentences are required to have a marked focal element.

The language was usually written in the Eastern Raunan alphabet, descended from the Old Eastern variety of the Ancient Raunan script. While the neighbouring Middle Irona language used the same script both horizontally (left to right) or vertically (from top to bottom in columns read left to right), the Middle Saire language was mostly written vertically.

See more: Middle Saire wordlist (22 words).

Middle Smia

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Smia languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the southern region of the fictional island of Rauna and in the neighbouring Mewha Inhum island during the Middle Period.

Middle Smia descends from the Ancient Smia language and preserves many of its features such as sesquisyllabic words (although these are far less frequent than in the ancient language) and relatively complicated phonotactics. Middle Smia differs from its ancestor in the development of a tonal system, contrasting two pitches for short vowels and four contour tones for long vowels and diphthongs. Its grammar remains mostly isolating and, although topic-comment sentence structure is still permitted, it was far less frequent than subject-predicate structures in most Smia-speaking regions during the Middle Period (with the exception of the Smia colony in Mewha Inhum).

The language was written in the Southern Raunan alphabet, a script also used by the Middle Xhuei language which was influenced both by the Ru script (used by the Ru and Nau languages) and from the Old Southern variant of the Ancient Raunan script typically found in Ancient Smia texts.

See more: Middle Smia wordlist (30 words).

Middle Voh

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Voh languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the north-eastern region of the fictional island of Rauna during the Middle Period.

Middle Voh might be considering the most challenging language in its region when it comes to pronunciation due to its heavy use of click consonants (featuring 15 such phonemes), ejectives and its contrast between five different tone contours, not unlike those of real-world Mandarin. The language has an ergative-absolutive alignment and features a topic-comment structure, sentences always begin with a focal element. Number marking is optional even in personal pronouns, although those do distinguish other categories such as formality and animation.

The language was written in the North-Eastern Raunan script, an alphabet derived from the Old Northern script used to write Ancient Voh. Although the Middle Period script is no longer logographic, Ancient Voh logograms see some extra-linguistic use as symbols. The North-Eastern Raunan alphabet was also adopted for the Mulasah and Lealea languages. The script was traditionally written in boustrophedon style although writing left-to-right became standard by the end of the Middle Period under the influence of other languages and scripts.

See more: Middle Voh wordlist (13 words).

Middle Xhuei

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Xhuei languages

An a priori language that would have been spoken in the south-western region of the fictional island of Rauna during the Middle Period.

Middle Xhuei is a topic-comment language. Its phonology features six ejectives, including an ejective fricative s' and an ejective affricate ts'. One unusual feature of the language is that all Middle Xhuei nouns have an associated noun-class particle which usually can be predicted from their meaning. This particle is used as a suffix on nouns to form their plural form and also as a mandatory clitic on verbs to mark their theme (mostly corresponding to their direct object).

The language was written in the Southern Raunan alphabet, a script also used by the Middle Smia language which was influenced both by the Ru script (used by the Ru and Nau languages) and from the Old Southern variant of the Ancient Raunan script typically found in Ancient Smia texts. Some Middle Xhuei speakers were also known to use other scripts such as the Central Raunan script from their northern Ru-speaking neighbours or the Eastern Raunan script from their northern neighbours the Saire.

See more: Middle Xhuei wordlist (11 words).

Modern Latin

A posteriori - Indo-European - Italic - Romance

Modern Latin is an a posteriori language based on Classical Latin, although inspired by Modern Greek. It would be spoken in an alternate history world were Greek-based 'Romanic' languages replace the actual Latin-based Romance languages, leaving Modern Latin as the only national language based on historical Latin, much like how Modern Greek is the only major language that descends from Ancient Greek in our world.

The conlang is intended to resemble Modern Greek in its phonology, sound changes and, to some extent, its grammar. For instance, Latin /u/ and /eː/ are merged with /i/, much like how Ancient Greek ypsilon/upsilon and eta merged with iota.

The language would be natively written in a version of the Latin alphabet that would have evolved differently than in our world. Lowercase glyphs are supposed to resemble Modern Greek lowercase (as found in our world), although letters also draw inspiration on Old Roman Cursive. Much as in real-life Modern Greek, Modern Latin orthography is a hyper-conservative nightmare. A phonetic romanization (in our version of the Latin alphabet) is used instead in the dictionary.

See more: Modern Latin wordlist (100 words).

Older Kraliy

A priori - Kraliy

An a priori constructed language which would be the ancestor to other Kraliy languages.

The language features three vowels, /ɐ/, /ə/ and /ɨ/, although /i/ and /u/ appear as syllabic allophones of the glides /j/ and /w/, otherwise considered consonants. Verbs agree with their subject but also may agree in number and animacy with their direct object.

The language would have been spoken somewhere in Siberia or Central Asia. Older Kraliy may be transcribed in either Latin (with a mostly IPA-based orthography) or Cyrillic, although those would be modern conventions for an originally unwritten language.

See more: Older Kraliy wordlist (81 words).

Sohosi

A priori - [Other a priori languages]

An a priori language with a very simple phonology and an analytical grammar. Although the language originally had no phonemic tones, Sohosi was later reformed to be tonal in order to expand its very limited root set.

Sohosi's most notable feature is its logographic writing system which comes in two variations: a more complex 'Hieroglyphic' script and a simplified version deemed 'Demotic' (after Egyptian Demotic).

See more: Sohosi wordlist (12 words).

Titanese

A posteriori - Indo-European - Italic - Romance

Titanese is an a posteriori constructed language which would be spoken near real-life San Marino. As most other modern languages in the Italic peninsula, Titanese is a Romance language (descended from Latin). Although it does resemble other southern Romance language like Italian, Titanese stands out for being tremendously conservative in its morphology, preserving four of Latin's six cases.

See more: Titanese wordlist (45 words).

Upper Iyau

A priori - Undersky languages - Languages of Rauna - Iyau languages

An a priori language that would be spoken in the north-western region of the fictional island of Rauna. The language is a descendant of Middle Iyau, which in turn descends from Ancient Iyau.

Unlike its ancestors, Upper Iyau is no longer polysynthetic, as the long Middle Iyau verbs with incorporated subjects and objects broke into several constituents. A testament of the polysynthetic past of the Upper Iyau language can be found in the use of particles that provide information about the main verb of the sentence but which may be separated from it by other sentence elements.

The language is written in the Iyau script which it shares with the Iyau-Ru language (which Upper Iyau speakers might controversially call 'Lower Iyau').

See more: Upper Iyau wordlist (42 words).

Ushima

A priori - Undersky languages - [Other Undersky languages]

An a priori language that would be spoken in Upenga, an island located near the southernmost regions of Drysia, one of the continents in the Undersky world. Although Ushima doesn't have any living relatives, the related Koyok languages once spanned a much broader area in southern Drysia.

Ushima words are characterized by their simple phonotactics. Nouns tend to be vowel-initial and will often repeat a thematic vowel as in acamba (fruit), isinti (arrow) and usundu (action). The overall aesthetics of the language were inspired by the Bantu languages although Ushima grammar and vocabulary remain strictly a priori.

The language has a native script that is best described as a semi-syllabary.

See more: Ushima wordlist (15 words).

Vetian

A posteriori - Indo-European - Italic - Romance

Vetian is an a posteriori language descended from Latin although it is fairly different from real-life Romance languages. The language preserves Latin nominal inflection and even the distinction between active and passive voice in verbs but it is highly innovative in other regards (for instance, verb conjugation no longer takes the subject into account).

The language would have been spoken in Northern Africa, possibly in Tunisia dating back to the times where those territories had been colonized by the Roman Empire. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, their lands would have been claimed by the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire), leading to an influx of Greek vocabulary and the adoption of a script closer to the Greek alphabet: the Coptic alphabet (in part due to Coptic missionaries coming from Egypt). Vetians would then have lived under Arab and French control, leading to the adoption of borrowings from those languages as well.

Vetian would be ordinarily written in the Coptic alphabet. The Latin-script forms in this dictionary would correspond to a scientific transliteration created by late 20th century linguists.

See more: Vetian wordlist (69 words).