Old Shax

General Information
This is the long lost North African romance language. It manifested in the Maghreb: specifically in modern-day Morocco, the Roman Empire's Mauritania. Shax's country is of the same name, Mauritania, in Shax, Morráni ([mɐrˈrani]). The East Roman Empire's side of North Africa was influenced by Greek and gave birth to coptic and other such languages. Though, influence from Western Romance languages, namely Iberian, have made it closer to those such languages phonetically. It's sister language, Vandalic, followed a much different path, though is still highly respected among the inhabitants of Mauritania.

( wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed <- for collapsible tables)

In the photo, Morrania (Shax's constate) is in blue taking the place of modern day Morocco and parts of western Algeria. The Vandal Kingdom (Vandalic's constate) in purple is taking the place of Tunisia, coastal Algeria, Sicily, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, and Sardinia. Xarràña (Xarrano's constate) is in yellow taking the place of a conland around a volcano called Ezgo. Cirtania (Cirtanian's constate) is in dark blue next to Greece and is a fictional island that had been heavily influenced by Greece and Italy.

Consonant
​All phonemes except [w], [j], [ʍ], and [ŋ] can be geminate

Sound Changes
Can be found here

Stress
Stress falls on primarily on the closed syllable (except if it's ultimate) or a pre-rhotic syllable; if there isn't one of those conditions, the stress falls on the penultimate. Note that stress on the ultimate syllable is on an open syllable followed by a closed syllable in a two syllable word.

Alphabet

 * (*) Ų looks more like a ɥ written (U with descender). Basically the written Armenian Z, զ.
 * I and U are [j] and [w] respectially before and after another vowel except with an acute on it.
 * Stressed A and O are [a] and [ɔ] respectivally
 * N is [ŋ] before C, K, Q, and X

Multigraphs

 * NG is [ng] intervocallically

Diacritics

 * Very important to note that the acute is used on every word to mark stress except those with only one vowel since the stress is obvious :) ; Also, in cursive and unofficial works, the stress mark is usually left out unless it could be confused

Noun Declension
Noun cases simplified very quickly: the first remained seperate; the 2nd and 4th merged; and the 3rd and 4th merged. There are two cases: nominative and obliqe. The nominative is used in the nominative and most prepositional cases, and oblique in most other cases. Sometimes a certain preposition will require the oblique case.

Adjective Declension
Adjectives have been heavily simplified. Feminine adjectives follow the first declension nouns. Masculine nouns follow the structure of stem for singular and stem-s for plural. Though, there are a relatively good amount of irregulars. The basic declension:

Suffixes

 * -ins: demonym
 * -ans: makes an adjective from latin and greek nouns
 * -(ù)s: makes an adjective from the gerund of a verb; makes a gerundive
 * -i: makes an adjective from Arabic nouns
 * -phon: identifies a language or area/people that speak[s] the specific language
 * -tor: makes a "doer" noun

Personal
Emphatic corralates to the Latin vocative, the English marked-nominative, and the French stressed pronouns

Possessive
The top is what's being owner and the left is what is owning.

Verbs
In the indicative, the past tense was formed from the Latin perfect tense. The future, as most Romance Languages, was formed from the indicative + HABĒRE construction.

The subjunctive in Shax is used in hypothetical situations, if statements, that clauses (that are subordinant to must, shall, can, wish, want, and occasionally need), and various other phrases. The future is made through a paraphrastic phrase. The optative was formed in a similar way to the future. The subjunctive was growing to be less "optative" semantically, therefore the requirement for copér, to wish, to go before the main verb in the 3rd singular person (the main verb is still conjugated) was developed. Eventually, they mixed semantically and syntactually and like the future in Shax, became a new conjugation. This developed into two prefixes: co- before consonants where the consonant in geminate, and cop- before vowels. Note that these prefixes can never be stressed.

The imperitive is identified by how it does not use a pronoun (where the other moods do). The subjunctive imperitive, or jussive, came about by the conjugating divér, must, in the subjunctive present and the imperitive.

The origininal Latin 3rd conjugation merged into the 2nd, 4th, or Irregular Class depending of the verb. Note that arabic loan verbs will use the Class II conjugation usually.

Paraphrastic Phrases

The subjunctive and optative futures are formed by to go in the present of either subjunctive or optative and the future participle. The passive is formed by a paraphrastic phrase of to be in the desired tense and the present participle.

T-V Distinction

 * T: use the singular form without the pronoun
 * V –
 * ​Respectful: use the singular form with the pronoun (note that emphasis of the pronoun is pejorative)
 * Professional: use the plural form without the pronoun
 * Formal: use the plural form with the pronoun (this is also used to those of higher social rank and by children to adults)
 * Very Formal: use the plural form with the pronoun and the honorific before the pronoun (this may be sir or ma'am to your highness or even Mr./Mrs. President anything that mentions the rank or social status of the adressee)

Postpositional
Being a head initial language, Shax puts its prepositions before the noun. Usually, the nominative case will be taken, but some prepositions use the oblique case historically.

Nouns with adjectives
A nominal phrase has the noun at the head (which is the first word) with adjective following it. Adjectives follow it in a logical order of which descibes the noun best or which is the most important quality. Therefore, a change in the adjective can also change the semantic of the noun. Though in colloquial speech, the order is irrelevant and one would simply list to their whim.

Genitive Nouns
The owner takes the genitive case and turns into a modifier, but it is placed before the owned noun. (mus  pats lops - "my father's wolf" )

Verbial
Personal pronouns are rarely used in the nominative with verbs because the conjugation reveils this information already. As mentioned in T-V Distinction above, the emphasis of a pronoun in any T-V form is pejorative. This gets more and more pejorative as you get father from the particular T-V form: for example, using the basic T form to a king would be the ultimate pejorative in terms of morphology while using the Very Formal V form in a sarcastic tone to one of the same or lower social status would represent the same kind of offense.

Negation
The general negation marker is a non before the main verb and after the main pronoun. Though, specific types of negation may be placed by using non as a prefix (i.e.: nobody, never, nobody ever, no where).

Other

 * Supine: ųer + gerund (ex: I went down to the pool to swim = «Cemav ad al piscín ųer natáns»)

Conditional Clauses
Conditional clauses where there is a requirement clause then a condition clause (like If I went to Japan, I would eat a lot of sushi) require the indicative then a subjunctive. But, sentences where there is only a condition (like I'd do that) require the verb in the subjunctive.

Subordinate Clauses
These are introduced with either ųi (if it's a conjunction) or hod (if it's a pronoun)'''. 'The introductory words are necessary and almost never omitted except in very ''informal or uneducated speech. Subordinate clauses go after independent clauses and are separated by a comma before ųi or hod. The verb conjugates to the person taking the nominative in the independent clause.

Copula
There are two auxillary verbs used for a copula: to be and to have. These generally work in the same way as French.

Lexicon
Standard Shax/Lexicon

The Tower of Babel
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