Old Elvish

Old Elvish, as it is now known, was a language spoken by the nomadic Green Elves during the period of 005 OA - 340 OA (Old Age, or approximately one millenium before the crowning of Queen Tarista) between the rules of Queen Ava of the Wooded Elves and King Aristeus of the Landburrow Elves. Queen Ava was known to be the one who promoted the speaking of Old Elvish, and during the Abstergens Days this language was the only spoken, until a few decades after Aristeus's death, where Early Elvish began to appear amongst the Water Elves. In fact, written on Ava's tree-tomb is such: Iso Avam'banetas a ekem'ildo îyechein, meaning "Thus is an inscription of Ava's language over her grave." A simple "A" was deeply etched above Aristeus's tomb.

The first few dialects of Old Elvish appeared around 7 or 8 OA, where the nouns had three genders: masculine, feminine, and non-living, or as it is known now, the neuter. All three genders were declined heavily in what is thought to be six declensions, but over time, Prince Asfar of the Landburrow Elves pushed into being a new dialect, which is the largely-surviving one, where the nouns do not have any gender and do not decline as heavily. However, most of the verbs have the same conjugations, and almost all irregularities have been stripped away, leaving only a few incredibly irregular verbs.

Phonology
All letters in Old Elvish are pronounced exactly as their English counterparts. There are, however, less "z"s than there are "a"s, less "x"s than there are "s"s, and so on.

==== There are no unacceptable consonant clusters, but "harsh"-sounding syllables, such as "zt" or "zf", etc., are never found in Old Elvish. Aelfen, a distant relative to Old Elvish, has many of these harsher sounds, most of which too have died away into a soft, smooth flow of words that can be spoken both rapidly and in a slow, lilting tone.

Grammar
Old Elvish grammar is not too hard to learn, but it does have some noun declensions and a unique system of verb conjugations because it has been proven to actually be a branch of Ancient Elven.

Nouns decline, and there are two separate sets of declensions, though they do not have a name. The first set of noun declensions is those concerning nouns ending in a vowel. The second set is those concerning nouns ending with a consonant.

First declension nouns can end in any vowel, thus the blank in "Nominative-Singular". The genitive case shows possession; "the dog's ears": "dog" is in the genitive case. '''In Old Elvish, the genitive case always goes before the noun and is attached to it with an apostrophe ('). '''The dative case shows objectivity. "The dog has ears": "Ears" is in the dative case-plural. The locative place shows the position of an object at rest, most commonly used in English as "in", "on", "at", etc.

The same thing goes for the second declension, which is shown above.

Adjectives do not decline, and they do not agree in number with the nouns they modify. It has been widely reputed by well-known scholars the position of adjectives in Old Elvish, because the Tenesur Prophecies, a saga written by the renowned Azar of the Ice Elves, places its adjectives in front of the noun it modifies. Likewise the Amaron Chronicles, written by a distance cousin of Azar's, placed the adjectives directly behind its governing noun. Perhaps most controversial is the Quaem Cerod, which written in what the English call "iambic pentameter", has the adjectives either at the beginning or at the end of the sentence, making it unclear which noun they modify.


 * However, scholars comparing many works of Old Elven priests and sorcerers agree that adjectives almost always come after their governing nouns. In poetry, they conveniently come before the nouns they modify to help stress rythmn patterns or end-rhymes.

Adverbs come directly after their verbs, no matter what the situation, and take on the ablative case: +æ.

All propositions come directly after their objects, which take on the dative case.

Verbs are the most important parts of Old Elvish. They take precedence over all other parts of speech. All verbs end in "-en".

In order to conjugate a verb, one must take what the elves call the "precedent" - the prefix - and attach it to the beginning of the verb. The "successor" - suffix - of the verb changes according to the tense.