Old Shax

General Information
This is the long lost North African romance language. It manifested in the Maghreb: specifically in modern-day Morocco, the Roman Empire's Mauritania. Shax's country is of the same name, Mauritania, in Shax, Morráni ([mɐrˈrani]). The East Roman Empire's side of North Africa was influenced by Greek and gave birth to coptic and other such languages. Though, influence from Western Romance languages, namely Iberian, have made it closer to those such languages phonetically. It's sister language, Vandalic, followed a much different path, though is still highly respected among the inhabitants of Mauritania.

(*) Look at  Word Order  under  Verbial  in Syntax

In the photo, Morráni (Shax's constate) is in blue taking the place of modern day Morocco and parts of western Algeria. The Vandal Kingdom (Vandalic's constate) in purple is taking the place of Tunisia, coastal Algeria, Sicily, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, and Sardinia. Xarràña (Xarrano's constate) is in yellow taking the place of a conland around a volcano called Ezgo. Cirtania (Cirtanian's constate) is in dark blue next to Greece and is a fictional island that had been heavily influenced by Greece and Italy.

Sound Changes for Shax are here.

The lexicon is found here.

Consonant
​All phonemes except [w], [j], and [ʍ] can be geminate. [ŋ] is only geminate as an allophone to [n] [wː] > [βː], [jː] > [jz], [ʍː] > [ɸʍ] Note that [β], [ɸ], and [ʍ] are very unstable. [β] may also be [b] or [w] allophonically (usuallly [b] starting a word or before another consonant and [w] elsewhere). [ɸ] and [ʍ] also occasionally turn into [h] allophonically. Remember that these allophone are not considard standard and are phonemically their original/standard phoneme.

Stress
Stress falls on primarily on the closed syllable (except if it's ultimate) or a pre-rhotic syllable; if there isn't one of those conditions, the stress falls on the penultimate. Note that stress on the ultimate syllable is on an open syllable followed by a closed syllable in a two syllable word.

Alphabet

 * (*) Ų looks more like a ɥ written (U with descender). Basically the written Armenian Z, զ.
 * I and U are [j] and [w] respectially before and after another vowel except with an acute on it.
 * Stressed A and O are [a] and [ɔ] respectivally
 * N is [ŋ] before C, K, Q, and X
 * K, Q, and W are purely etymological (W isn't considard part of the alphabet but a foreign letter; to type it on a keyboard in Shax, one would press control+shift+grave V. Q is replaced by Ų on the keyboard; to write Q, one would press control+shift+grave Ų).

Multigraphs

 * NG is [ng] intervocallically
 * QÛ is used for etymological purposes

Diacritics

 * Very important to note that the acute is used on every word to mark stress except those with only one vowel since the stress is obvious :) ; Also, in cursive and unofficial works, the stress mark is usually left out unless it could be confused

Noun Declension
Noun cases simplified very quickly: they were standardized quickly based gender where the feminine 1st and 5th merged and the masculine 3st, 2nd, and 4th merged. There are two cases: base and obliqe. The base case is used in the nominative, most prepositional cases, and accusative, and oblique in most other cases. Sometimes a certain preposition will require the oblique case.

Masculine

V - vowel base. The vowel base can be (base-oblique): e-o, i-a, o-u, u-a, i-u, a-o. The vowel base comes from the original latin forms in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th declensions. There is no standard way of knowing the vowel base just from the word itself, but most will follow the i-u structure. The stem and vowel are seperated by either h or j (j for after e or i, and h elsewhere) if the stem already ends in a vowel.

A common irregularity is nouns that end in -s: in the oblique, the consonant that preceeds the S becomes geminite, or the S becomes geminite if it stands alone (e.g., pats, father, in the singular oblique becomes patts). Another irregularity is with L which, before a consonant, becomes u (as a /w/). Because it happened before certain vowel combinations merged, it may appear as a U, O, or AU, as the old sound change was /ɛw > u/, /ɔw > aw/, and /aw > ɔ/ (e.g., cel, sky, in the singular oblique becomes cus).

Masculine Feminine

V - vowel base. The seperation of stem vowel to affix vowel is the same as in the masculine.

Adjective Declension
Adjectives have been heavily simplified. Feminine adjectives follow the first declension nouns. Masculine nouns follow the structure of stem for singular and stem-s for plural. Though, there are a relatively good amount of irregulars. The basic declension:

Suffixes

 * -ins: demonym
 * -ans: makes an adjective from latin and greek nouns
 * -(û)s: makes an adjective from the gerund of a verb; makes a gerundive
 * -í: makes an adjective from Arabic nouns
 * -phón: identifies a language or area/people that speak[s] the specific language
 * -tór: makes a "doer" noun
 * See others in the lexicon

Pronouns
Pronouns are unique in Shax as they take the nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, emphatic, and possessive cases. They are placed before the verb rather than after.

Personal
Emphatic corralates to the Latin vocative, the English marked-nominative, and the French stressed pronouns

Verbs
In the indicative, the past tense was formed from the Latin perfect tense. The future, as most Romance Languages, was formed from the indicative + HABĒRE construction.

The subjunctive in Shax is used in hypothetical situations, if statements, that clauses (that are subordinant to must, shall, can, wish, want, and occasionally need), and various other phrases. The future is made through a paraphrastic phrase. The optative was formed in a similar way to the future. The subjunctive was growing to be less "optative" semantically, therefore the requirement for copér, to wish, to go before the main verb in the 3rd singular person (the main verb is still conjugated) was developed. Eventually, they mixed semantically and syntactually and like the future in Shax, became a new conjugation. This developed into two prefixes: co- before consonants where the consonant in geminate, and cop- before vowels. Note that these prefixes can never be stressed.

The imperitive is identified by how it does not use a pronoun (where the other moods do). The subjunctive imperitive, or jussive, came about by the conjugating divér, must, in the subjunctive present and the imperitive.

The origininal Latin 3rd conjugation merged into the 2nd, 4th, or Irregular Class depending of the verb. Note that arabic loan verbs will use the Class II conjugation usually.

Paraphrastic Phrases

The subjunctive and optative futures are formed by to go in the present of either subjunctive or optative and the future participle. The passive is formed by a paraphrastic phrase of to be in the desired tense and the present participle.

Extra

 * Gerund

To make the gerund, you take the present participle, and change the -n- to -d- (ex: dommiéns > dommiénd). The gerund declines like any other noun. The vowel stem in gerunds is a-e, e-i, and i-ia for Classes I, II, and III respectivally.


 * Reflexive

Reflexives are made with the corresponding pronoun to the subject of the verb in the accusative. In the third person, there are special reflexive pronouns.

T-V Distinction
Note that when speaking to one's god, one would use the respectful form.
 * T: use the singular form without the pronoun
 * V:
 * ​Respectful: use the singular form with the pronoun (note that emphasis of the pronoun is pejorative)
 * Professional: use the plural form without the pronoun
 * Formal: use the plural form with the pronoun (this is also used to those of higher social rank and by children to adults)
 * Very Formal: use the plural form with the pronoun and the honorific before the pronoun (this may be sir or ma'am to your highness or even Mr./Mrs. President anything that mentions the rank or social status of the adressee)

Prepositional
Being a head initial language, Shax puts its prepositions before the noun. Usually, the nominative case will be taken, but some prepositions use the oblique case historically. In all prepositional phrases however,

Nouns with adjectives
A nominal phrase has the noun at the head with adjectives following it. Adjectives follow it in a logical order of which descibes the noun best or which is the most important quality. Therefore, a change in the adjective can also change the semantic of the noun. Though in colloquial speech, the order is irrelevant and one would simply list to their whim.

Genitive Nouns
The owner takes the oblique case and turns into a modifier, but it is placed before the owned noun. (mus  patts lop - "my father's wolf"). A more uncommon and overall formal way of making genitive phrases is with the preposition di which means "of", coming from Latin DĒ  (lop di mus pats - "the wolf of my father").

Personal Pronouns and Pejorative
Personal pronouns are rarely used in the nominative with verbs because the conjugation reveils this information already. As mentioned in T-V Distinction above, the emphasis of a pronoun in any T-V form is pejorative. This gets more and more pejorative as you get father from the particular T-V form: for example, using the basic T form to a king would be the ultimate pejorative in terms of morphology while using the Very Formal V form in a sarcastic tone to one of the same or lower social status would represent the same kind of offense.

Negation
The general negation marker is a non before the main verb and after the main pronoun. Though, specific types of negation may be placed by using non as a prefix (i.e.: nobody, never, nobody ever, no where).

Word Order
Pronouns and reflexives go before the verb (ex: I'm doing it = « le fáci»).

Other

 * Supine: ųer + gerund (ex: I went down to the pool to swim = «Cemav ad piscín ųer natáns»)

Interrogative
For certain instances, you would make a question different ways: for simple questions with a noun and a verb, invert the noun and verb or change your intonation to a rising tone, [˩˥] (note that most questions like this would simply use the rising tone); for questions requiring an explination (using why, how, what, etc), use the given phrase and the verb normally. More complex questions just use the rising intonation.

Conditional Clauses
There are various conditional clauses (where X = the first verb and Y = the second verb seperated by ~̣̇):
 * if X is true, Y will happen (indicative.present ~̣̇ indicative.future)
 * if X is true, Y would happen (indicative.present ~̣̇ subjunctive.present)
 * if X will be true, Y will also happen (indicative.future ~̣̇ indicative.future)
 * if X was true, Y would happen (indicative.past ~̣̇ subjunctive.present)
 * if X was true, Y would have happended as well (indicative.past ~̣̇ subjunctive.past)
 * if X be true, Y would happen (subjunctive.present ~̣̇ subjunctive.future)
 * if X were true, Y would happen (subjunctive.past ~̣̇ subjunctive.present)
 * if X will be true, Y would also happen (subjunctive.future ~̣̇ subjunctive.future)
 * if X would have been true, Y would have happened (subjunctive.past ~̣̇ subjunctive.past)
 * if X would have been true, Y will have heppended (subjunctvie.past ~̣̇ subjunctive.present)

In sentences where there is only a condition (like I'd do that), the verb would be in the subjunctive.

Note that all conditional phrases begin with if, «si».

Subordinate Clauses
These are introduced with either ųi (if it's a conjunction) or hod (if it's a pronoun)'''. 'The introductory words are necessary and almost never omitted except in very ''informal or uneducated speech. Subordinate clauses go after independent clauses and are separated by a comma before ųi or hod. The verb conjugates to the person taking the nominative in the independent clause. Subjunctives can only happen after these words and si. Note that nouns in a subordinate clause take the base case.

Copula
There are two auxillary verbs used for a copula: to be and to have. These generally work in the same way as French.

The Tower of Babel
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