Proto-Merethic

Proto-Merethic is the protolang of the Merethic language family, of which the most midely-spoken languages in Tamriel belong. It was spoken by the Aldmer in the Mythic period of Tamrielic history.

Classification and Dialects
Proto-Merethic is currently extinct, and dialectic variation was considered minor. All knowledge of proto-Merethic comes from reconstruction of extant languages in the Merethic family.

Phonotactics
Onset

Writing System
Proto-Merethic is believed to have been an unwritten language, as no written records of it exist. For linguistic purposes, the following orthography is used:

Grammar
Proto-Merethic had highly inflectional, mostly suffixing grammar. There were no articles or strict syntax, since inflection provided sufficient context.

Nouns
Proto-Merethic nouns inflect for 8 cases, 3 genders, 3 grammatical numbers, and 2 states of definiteness. Case, gender, and number were indicated by a noun suffix, while definiteness was indicated by aspirating the beginning of the word. For definite nouns: if the beginning sound is a vowel, an H is prepended to the noun, if it is a plosive, the plosive is affricatized, if it is a nasal or an approximate, it is devoiced.

Verbs
Proto-Merethic verbs are even more elaborate than nouns, posessing prefixes for mood and voice, suffixes for person, number, and aspect, and ablaut for tense.

Syntax
Proto-Merethic was not believed to have had a strict syntax due to its highly-inflectional nature, but it was believed to have mostly been spoken in SOV syntax.