User:Billyjb/Shelved/Dhannuá

Early History
Descending from a central Proto-Indo-European dialect spoken thousands of years ago Dhannuá is the sole member of the Dhannuá sub-group. Various attempts to classify it as Celtic, Italic or even as a variant of Scythian have proven unsuccessful. Having performed the palatal/plain merger Dhannuá is usually categorised as a Centum language.

In-universe, the oldest example of Early Dhannuá is a scribble on a stone reading DOMAN•SEWANTI•EWENS•REIDANTI•DEPOTES•SEPTAN•KLUSANIAWAD•KAPTOD tentatively interpreted as "The seven lords, riding horses, seek a home/house, Kleusaniawa taken." with Kleusaniawād analysed as the dative form (in an absolutive dative construction) of *Kleus-a-ni-awa, a settlement name. Probably from IE: *ḱlewos-ni-akwa, with ni- being a local place suffix. Carefully translated to something along the lines of "Where the water of fame (is)"

Already the change from -m > -n for the accusative marker is notable, the nasal of *SEPTM realised as /N/ producing -AN, the labiovelars weakening to /w <-> u/, palatal/plain merger and the voicing of the dative -V̄t > -V̄d can be noticed. Fully preserving the -nti ending for the third person plural with any preceding vowel reduced to /a/. The formation of the verbal adjective with -tó seen in KAPTŌD. Still no noticeable rhotacism (kleus, not kleur).

Obviously, Dhannuá was never spoken and is in fact based on experimenting with different sound changes and grammatical innovations from a PIE base based on personal whims.

Ortography
Aspirated consonants are written as a digraph consisting of the non-aspirated consonant + h.

The acute accent is used to mark long vowels, obligatory in all instances.

Phonotactics
An aspirated voiced consonant will devoice when followed by a liquid in speech.

Pronouns
The personal pronouns in the nominative case are listed in the following table.

Cases
Like many other Indo-European languages Dhannuá inherits a rich amount of conjugations and declensions from Proto-Indo-European. Dhannuá retains the nominative, accusative, dative, genitive cases and the rare instrumental. Grammatical innovations are the essive case and the comitative case (from the old -kwe enclitic particle).

Simplified, the nominative case marker is usually -r, -a, -s, -o (appearing in that order)

(Bʰleh³-os, bʰleh³-m, bʰleh³-os/-as, bʰleh³-ōt), 0-stem derivation from bHel- 

Gloss : Flower, cf. flos, floris, phullon, blomma, blatha

Nominative: Bhlór

Accusative: Bhlónn

Genitive: Bhlóar

Dative: Bhlód

Essive: Bhlóta

Comitative: Bhlórúe

Gloss : Language, cf. teanga, tunga, tongue, lingua, dingua

Nominative : Dhannuá

Accusative : Dhannuánn

Genitive : Dhannuáor

Dative : Dhannuód

Gloss : Apple, cf. apple, äppel-, apfel, eoubol-, ablo-

Nominative : Abhlo

Accusative : Abhlonn

Genitive : Abhloar

Dative' : Abhlód

Copula
The copula derives from the old PIE copula h1es- and inflects accordingly. It's use corresponds mostly to the English copula, e.g. Sei suess sanad - They are six.

1st person (iom, uéi) : ísan, samas

2nd person (dhú, iéh) : íssi, isdi

3rd person (so, sei) : ís/ísdh, sanad

Comparisons with other Indo-European languages.

PGmc: immi, izi, isti, izum, izud, 'sindi'

Latv: esmu, esi, ir, esam, esat, ir

Se-Cr (acc) : jesam, jesi, jeste, jesmo, jeste, jesu

Sa: asmi, asi, ?, ?, ? , ?

La: sum, es, est, sumus, estis, 'sunt'

Dictionary
A T T E R I A Dictionary of English -> Dhannuá

Example text
Original Text: Fabian @ Conlang Mailing list.

Father, what are those lights?

Ada, úid sanad sei leúkeir?

That is the city of the Goyanim.

Ísdh so pell Goyanimor.

They are a strange people.

Sanad sei alióreld leiúdhor.

They light their cities at night, as if the stars weren't sufficient for their needs.

Lúcanad nóssann pelha suir sei, ib ástera ansanad dhóna seid.

They fight and kill eachother, not realising the greater danger beyond their small world.

Henan ué cadhan suir sei, anueúan neica megair sei tero seir lendhór mín.

And they do not hunt eachother with bows and arrows.

Ué anseúan suir sei arúi ué aíci.

No, they have strange devices that kill from far away without arrows.

Né, aihan aliórelda aissa sei so cadhan abhaú anó aíci.

And take care near their strange iron horses they use to travel.

Ué, habhai dhú pekendan áp seir alióreldi eúi arióri so reidhan sei.

They travel faster than any natural beast ought to, and ignore the strength of the bow and arrow.

Sei reidhan aicuir sareld huéro ahdhe ué anúidan belann arúor ué aícor.

Best if you avoid their cities, my son.

Doniss ib anaissi áp seir pelha dhú, súnús amo.

Father, what's a city?

Ada, úid ísdh pell?