User:Billyjb/Shelved/Dhannuá

Early History
Descending from a central Proto-Indo-European dialect spoken thousands of years ago Dhannuá is the sole member of the Dhannuá sub-group. Various attempts to classify it as Celtic, Italic or even as a variant of Scythian have proven unsuccessful. Having performed the palatal/plain merger Dhannuá is usually categorised as a Centum language.

In-universe, the oldest example of Early Dhannuá is a scribble on a stone reading DOMAN•SEWANTI•EWENS•REIDANTI•DEPOTES•SEPTAN•KLUSANIAWAD•KAPTOD tentatively interpreted as "The seven lords, riding horses, seek a home/house, Kleusaniawa taken." with Kleusaniawād analysed as the dative form (in an absolutive dative construction) of *Kleus-a-ni-awa, a settlement name. Probably from IE: *ḱlewos-ni-akwa, with ni- being a local place suffix. Carefully translated to something along the lines of "Where the water of fame (is)"

Already the change from -m > -n for the accusative marker is notable, the nasal of *SEPTM realised as /N/ producing -AN, the labiovelars weakening to /w <-> u/, palatal/plain merger and the voicing of the dative -V̄t > -V̄d can be noticed. Fully preserving the -nti ending for the third person plural with any preceding vowel reduced to /a/. The formation of the verbal adjective with -tó seen in KAPTŌD. Still no noticeable rhotacism (kleus, not kleur).

Obviously, Dhannuá was never spoken and is in fact based on experimenting with different sound changes and grammatical innovations from a PIE base based on personal whims.

Ortography
Aspirated consonants are written as a digraph consisting of the non-aspirated consonant + h.

The acute accent is used to mark long vowels, obligatory in all instances.

Phonotactics
An aspirated voiced consonant will devoice when followed by a liquid in speech.

Cases
Like many other Indo-European languages Dhannuá inherited a rich amount of conjugations, and declensions from PIE. Dhannuá retains the nominative, accusative, dative, genitive cases and the rare instrumental.

Simplified, the nominative case marker is usually -r, -a, -s, -o (appearing in that order)

(Bʰleh³-os, bʰleh³-m, bʰleh³-os/-as, bʰleh³-ōt), 0-stem derivation from bHel- 

Gloss : Flower, cf. flos, floris, phullon, blomma, blatha

Nominative: Bhlór

Accusative: Bhlónn

Genitive: Bhlóar

Dative: Bhlód

Gloss : Language, cf. teanga, tunga, tongue, lingua, dingua

Nominative : Dhannuá

Accusative : Dhannuánn

Genitive : Dhannuáor

Dative : Dhannuód

Gloss : Apple, cf. apple, äppel-, apfel, eoubol-, ablo-

Nominative : Abhlo

Accusative : Abhlonn

Genitive : Abhloar

Dative' : Abhlód

Copula
The copula derives from the old PIE copula h1es- and inflects accordingly. It's use corresponds mostly to the English copula, e.g. Sei suess sanad - They are six.

1st person (iom, uéi) : ísan, samas

2nd person (dhú, iéh) : íssi, isdi

3rd person (so, sei) : ís/ísdh, sanad

Comparisons with other Indo-European languages.

PGmc: immi, izi, isti, izum, izud, 'sindi'

Latv: esmu, esi, ir, esam, esat, ir

Se-Cr (acc) : jesam, jesi, jeste, jesmo, jeste, jesu

Sa: asmi, asi, ?, ?, ? , ?

La: sum, es, est, sumus, estis, 'sunt'