Afansevan

Afansevan is a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by about 10 million people inside our world's California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and Western Mexico, and has a diaspora population across the Americas, that takes place in the same universe as American Turkic and has no official status within the Kyrgyz Khaganate, although it is an official language alongside American Turkic in the provinces that formerly constituted the Californian Empire (which can be shown in the map below). This article will be of Imperial Afansevan, which was spoken during the times of the Californian Empire by the higher classes, known only from a few religious texts and poetry in this ATL, while the vulgar forms spoken by the lower classes were the ancestors of all modern Afansevan varieties (Kinda how like Latin diverged into the Romance languages). This language is primarily based on Russian and English, but draws influences from German, Italian, Sahaptin, Chinese, Inupiaq, Chumash (Not to be confused with Chuvash, an Oghur Turkic language spoken in the Russian federal subject of Chuvashia!), and some conlangs made by other people as well.

History
The Afansevans are the descendants of Indo-European speaking slaves brought to the New World during the Great Migration, themselves descended from the Afanasievo culture, which survived later than in OTL. By the turn of the 10th century, the Afansevans broke free, migrated southwards, and settled in OTL's Los Angeles, forming the Californian Empire. The Californian Empire then quickly conquered and subjugated all of California under one banner, later expanding into OTLL's Nevada, Arizona, and the Baja California peninsula. Later expansions occurred along the Gulf of California and the Western coast of Mexico. The Californian Empire also formed an alliance with the Kyrgyz Khaganate during the latter expansion, eventually helping the southern warlord state win the Kyrgyz Civil War.

In 1508, the Californian Emperor married a Kyrgyz princess, having a son together. He held the Kyrgyz throne first in 1526 after the reigning Khagan died without any children, followed by the Californian throne in 1531 following the death of his father, ruling the two monarchies under a personal union. He wanted to unify the two countries as one state rather than keep the personal union to counter Vinland's reign of terror across the Canadian Shield, and to expand trade with China via the Pacific Rim, so he started integrating the two countries into a Pacific superstate.

By 1539, the Californian Empire was no more, and its former territory was used as a strategic point for Kyrgyzia to colonize Hawaii and other Polynesian islands, which exponentially expanded the trade with the Old World via the Pacific Ocean. It, along with the discovery of gold in the ashes of the Californian Empire in the turn of the 16th century, which attracted Turkic-speaking settlers to move to California at the expense of the Afansevans, paves the way for Kyrgyzia becoming an economic powerhouse (and having 3x the GDP of all of Europe combined by the 18th century). Despite numerous revolts seeking to reestablish the Californian Empire, Kyrgyzia still holds on to the majority of Afansevan-speaking regions to this day. In 1602, the Kyrgyz Khagan passed a law granting the Afansevans autonomy in exchange for stability, which exponentially decreased the frequency of revolts.



Pre-Proto-Afansevan (3000 BCE)

 * Laryngeals disappear:
 * /h1/ assimilates the following or preceding vowel towards the schwa, then disappears in certain ways:
 * If /h1/ occurs in the syllable coda, then it becomes /k/.
 * Otherwise, it disappears.
 * /h2/ assimilates the following or preceding vowel towards /a/, then disappears. If there is a preceding vowel, lenghtens the vowel.
 * /h3/ merges with /w/.
 * /H/ became /k/.
 * /w/ rounds the preceding vowel, then disappears, if it occurs in the syllable coda. /ew/ > /ø/, /iw/ > /y/, /əw/ > /ə/.
 * Syllabic consonants have an /a/ inserted before them.
 * Aspirated stops become voiceless.
 * Aspirated stops become voiceless.

Proto Afansevan (1500 BCE)

 * Aspirated plosives (but not aspirated palatals) become fricatives.
 * /pʰ/ > /ɸ/
 * /tʰ/ > /θ/
 * /kʰ/ > /x/
 * A sound shift similar to Verner's Law takes place in fricatives.
 * Satemization happens.
 * /c/ > /ɕ/
 * /ɟ/ > /ʑ/
 * /cʰ/ > /kj/
 * /kʷʰ/ > /x/
 * /kʷ/ > /k/
 * /gʷ/ > /g/
 * Exceptions to satemization occur when the palatal consonants occur after nasal consonants, where centumization happens instead.
 * Stress shifts to the first syllable, making the law mentioned above phonemic.

Early Afansevan (1000 BCE)

 * The dental fricatives become alveolar sibilants.
 * /w/ > /β/.
 * Vowel shifts:
 * /ə/ > /a/.
 * /e/ and /o/ tend toward low-mid.
 * /tj/, /dj/, /sj/, /zj/ > /tɕ/, /dʑ/, /ts/, and /dz/
 * Alveolo-palatal fricatives and affricates become retroflex.

Old Afansevan (1 CE)

 * /Nk/, /Ng/, /gN/, /kN/ > /ŋ/
 * The long vowels disappear.

Imperial Afansevan (1000 CE)

 * A six-tone system develops (see below)
 * The rhotic becomes uvular.

Consonants
* /w/ only occurs in foreign loanwords. ** The dental fricatives are allophones of the alveolar sibilants, but both sounds can be pronounced whatever you want them to be when or  occur.

Tone
Afansevan has developed a six-tone system following the loss of plosives in coda position (other than when there are two plosives in the coda, where the first one is lost, which makes tone phonemic). Note that the vowel in this example is , and that the tone occurs at the end of the syllable.

Phonotactics
Afansevan's syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C)(C), where C is any consonant, and V is any vowel, , or . Consonant clusters made of two plosives are not allowed in the coda. All permitted consonant clusters in the onset are any obstruent (other than ) followed by  or , or a sibilant followed by an obstruent.  and  can serve as the nucleus of a syllable, in that case they are pronounced as syllabic consonants. Voiced and voiceless obstruents (other than ) are not allowed to go together in coda-onset clusters, in that case, the last one assimilates the other ones in voicing (e.g. /pzf/>/psf/). Also, voiced obstruents (other than ) are not allowed to end a word, as they become voiceless in that environment.

Writing System
Afansevan uses a varient of the Mayan rebus characters as its writing system. Initially, there were two forms of the script. One became the standard, and one became the ancestor to the American Turkic traditional script. Image will be shown later.

Nouns
Unlike other Indo-European languages, Afansevan has lost the case system of Proto-Indo-European. Definiteness is formed by adding an article before the noun, which declines for the gender of the noun. Afansevan has retained grammatical gender, and pronouns consist of the only traces of PIE's case system (but don't decline for gender, much like what's happening in English right now with the word "they" as the LGBT community is becoming more accepted), declining for four cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative. The reflexive forms descend from PIE enclitic forms, and the third person pronouns are descended from PIE second person plural pronouns. The informal speech retains the genitive for possession.

Verbs
Afansevan has two basic tenses: past and non-past. The past is represented by ablauting the vowels in the verb, while the non-past is unmarked. Tense can also be created by using the copula's declinations, followed by marking the specific tense in the verb.

Verbs (other than "to be") don't conjugate for person nor mood. This is retained in the vulgar Afansevan dialects, which later evolves into the American Turkic class system for person. This makes the pronoun mandatory in Imperial Afansevan, like in English. The non-future copula root, , descends from PIE e-grade*h1es "to be", and is a cognate with English is, Irish is, Latin est, Sanskrit asti, Persian ast, Old Church Slavonic jest. The future copula root, , descends from PIE *bʰuH "to grow, to become" and is cognate with English be, Latin futura ( > English future), Greek phúō ( > English physics, physical).

Syntax
Afansevan has a strict VOS word order. The word order got more verb-initial as most of the case system was lost, only being retained in pronouns. Adjectives and adverbs always come before the parts of speech they modify. The copula always preceeds the verb.

Numbers
Afansevan uses a pure vigesimal system with a sub-base of five. It has a cardinal suffix <-ynch>, which was derived from American Turkic. Numbers greater than 10 (except for 20 and numbers that were loaned from Mayan and American Turkic alike) don't recieve their own cardinal suffix: it's just the individual numbers they are made out of plus cardinal suffixes.

Use for reconstructing PIE
In the ATL that Imperial Afansevan was spoken in, there is very little mutual intelligibilty between other Indo-European languages and it. However, the Afansevan language largely kept the original vowel system of PIE without change (except for the laryngeals), so it is really useful for reconstructing PIE vowels. Also, in this ATL, the laryngeal theory was proven earlier than in OTL due to discreptencies in vowels and consonants alike. For example, Afansevan  "you (singular nominative)" was derived from earlier, itself from PIE *tuH, which makes it a cognate with English thou (which is obsolete today). If the *H never existed, then Afansevan would be left with * without a high tone, and "one" would become * . There is also living evidence in the Afansevan languages (the languages that diverged from Vulgar Imperial Afansevan following the absorption of California into the Kyrgyz Khaganate), and so this ATL has the laryngeal theory being accepted about thirty years earlier than in OTL.