Beltonian

Beltonian (Fh́miusiawdh, /bemøʃouri/, New Academy scheme Bémešawri, Bacha scheme: Bémẽsìawði) is a Beltonic language which is the official and predominant language of Beltonia and New Constantinia, as well a secondary official language in Wistaria, where it is primarily spoken in the region of Euchesia. Beltonian is estimated to have 59 million native speakers and 11 million second language speakers. The Beltonian-speaking areas are referred to as the Beltonosphere.

The language has multiple spoken dialects, not all of which are mutually intelligible. An official form of the language, known as Modern Standard Beltonian (Fh́miusiawdh kaøiεpwέno moutέpuo, Bémešawri kačewénu modérno), is the predominant written form and is regulated by the Academy of the Beltonian Language. Wistaria is the only place with major differences in the written languages, and has a separate official form which is regulated by the Euchesian Language Academy. Beltonian is written with the Beltonian alphabet, which is descended from the Greek alphabet with substantial Latin influence; in Wistaria it is sometimes also written with the Euchesian Arabic script.

Together with Wistarian and Lennodese, Beltonian is descended from a common ancestor, referred to by linguists as Proto-Beltonic. The Beltonic languages have no other known relatives; it has been hypothesized that the proto-language was a Paleo-European language. The proto-language was spoken in the south of what is now Beltonia until the 4th century, when it was spread more widely through the Beltonic Migrations and evolved into Old Beltonian. Its northern dialects gave rise to Classical Beltonian, which was the official and literary language of the Beltonian Empire, was the language of a wide body of literature during the Beltonian Golden Age and influenced the language of later centuries. Central dialects gave rise to Middle High Beltonian, which became the basis for Early Modern Beltonian and subsequently most modern dialects. Low Beltonian is an umbrella term for the more recent northern dialects which have sometimes been considered a separate language. They retain many differences, but have converged with the other dialects since the 19th century.

In common with the other Beltonic languages, Beltonian is a fusional and relatively inflected language with a large number of moods expressed with verbs, in addition to three tenses and two aspects. Sentences like "I want to see it" and "It would be good for us to see it" are expressed through moods of the verb "to see". It also has a system of four noun cases, usually simplified in casual speech, free word order and elements of the nonconcatenative morphology of the proto-language in irregular and semi-regular inflections. Although the core vocabulary mainly comes from Proto-Beltonic, most Beltonian words come from other European languages, with Greek being important in the Early Middle Ages. A substantial proportion of Beltonian words come from Latin, usually imported through whichever language was influential at the time. The language has also imported words from other languages, particularly Arabic in the Early Middle Ages and Turkish in the Ottoman period.