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. The East Roman Empire's side of North Africa was influenced by Greek and gave birth to coptic and other such languages.

("wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" <- for collapsible tables)

Sound Changes
Here

Vowel
O = rounded

– = unrounded

Stress
Stress always falls on the penultimate syllable.

Sandhi
Words that end in a consonant that come before a word that starts with a consonant can have an optional  placed before the word for ease of pronounciation. (af zieluaf [af θjelwaf] or af r̀-zieluaf [afə.θjelwaf]). Words that end in a vowel that come before a word that starts with another vowel can have an optional    placed before the word for ease of pronounciation.

Alphabet

 * 1)  and  is [ɛ] and [ɔ] respectivally in a closed syllable
 * 2)  is [ə̯] when a consonant follows it and a vowel precedes it
 * 3) [i] and [u] are [j] and [w] respectively before another vowel
 * 4) [u] is [ɥ] before [i] or [e]
 * 5)  is [t͡ʃ] before, , <æ>, <œ>, , and 
 * 6)  is for loans
 * 7)  and  are considered ligatures and part of the alphabet.  is written as either two 's with a combining line through the both or as a straight line, , and one curved as the top, , with a combining line through the both. <jj> is written as a dotless <j> with a curl combing into the second <j>, which may or may not have a curl, and either a bar above the both or two dots.

Multigraphs

 * 1) <dt>is used to denote [d͡ʒ] that became [t͡ʃ] through sound change
 * 2) <ph>,, and <ch> are from Greek loans
 * 3) <ll> is used for words that used to be [ɫ] but became [g] with sound changes

Diacritics

 * 1) <â> and <û> follow the same principle as <e> and <o>

Case
In the vulgar latin dialect Shax descended from, the first declension was kept for feminine nouns, and the third was kept masculine nouns. In the masculine, there are three cases: the nominative, the possessive, and the prepositional: the nominative is from the Latin nominative and vocative (which was replaced with the vocative); the possessive is from the merged Latin genitive and dative; the accusative is from the Latin accusative and ablative. Note that the prepositional case is used in prepositional phrases as well as the accusative.

In the feminine, there are two cases: the nom-acc and dat-gen: the nom-acc case comes from the merged Latin nominative, accusative, and ablative cases (where the nom-acc acts like the masculine prepositional too); the dat-gen comes from the Latin dative and genintive.

Plural
Early on, the plural was standardized to use a <-f> on the singular for indication though there are exceptions. <-f> comes from the old dual number system (where the singular would have the nominative, possessive, and prepositional cases and the plural would have the nom-acc and dat-gen) where the nominative and possessive cases in the singular system merged and became the same.

Gender
There are two genders: masculine and feminine. Masculine can end in any vowel other than [a] and [e]. Feminine nouns always end in [a] or [e]. To make a feminine noun, you would convert the ending of the original masculine noun's vowel to one of these: [o, ɔ, ə, ʌ, œ] > [a] and [e, ɛ, ø, u, ɤ] > [i]. There are, of course, exceptions.

Masculine
Uatfreŕ [waθreə̯] - father (formal)

Feminine
Tfielua [θjɛlwa] — forest, woods, wooland, etc

Definite
The definite article is taken from the latin word hīc, for proximal, and ille, for medial-distal.

Indefinite
The indefinite is taken from the latin word ūnus, for proximal, and is, for medial-distal.

Zero
The zero article in Shax corresponds to the partative article.

Adjectives
Adjectives were heavily simplified in Shax: only the stem was kept and declention was removed; there are some exceptions (e.x.: bonus).

Mood
Perfects and Pasts

The perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect conjugations were supplanted by a periphrastic construction. The perfect and imperfect lost their meaning and merged into the preterite in the indicative; the subjunctive perfect merged with the imperfect semantically and became the general past.

Conditional and Interrogative

The conditional mood came from the antique latin future perfect tense. The interrogative tense came from the passive subjunctive tenses (the passive became paraphrastic where to be and the participle of the desired tense).

Paraphrastic Phrases
Classes and Perfect Tenses

Class one verbs are normal verbs; these use to have. Class two verbs are reflexive (class one verbs become class two when they're reflexive), arabic loan verbs, and abstract (ex: to wish vs to run) verbs; these use to be. The perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect are made with paraphrastic phrases using the auxiallary of their respective class and the respective participle (present, past, or future).

Futures of Moods

The future subjunctive is the class respective auxillary in the subjunctive present and the future participle. The future perfect is a tense used only with the 3rd conditional where it has the subjunctive past and the future participle.The future interrogative uses the class respective verb in the subjunctive present and the future participle.

Conditional

The second conditional uses the class respective auxillary in the 1st conditional then the past participle. The third conditional uses the class respecitive auxillary in the interrogative future perfect and the infinitive.

to Have
ber̀ [beə] = to Have

Indicative
Perfect~ class 1/2 aux + tense respective participle

Subjunctive
Subjunctive Future = class 1/2 aux in present subjunctive + future participle Subjunctive Future Perfect = class 1/2 aux in past subjunctive + future participle

Conditional
Conditionals 2nd Conditional = class 1/2 aux in 1st conditional + past participle 3rd Conditional = class 1/2 aux in future perfect subjunctive + infinitive

Interrogative
Interrogative Future = class 1/2 aux in interrogative present + future participle

to Be
Se [se] = to Be

Indicative
Perfect~ class 1/2 aux + tense respective participle

Subjunctive
Subjunctive Future = class 1/2 aux in present subjunctive + future participle Subjunctive Future Perfect = class 1/2 aux in past subjunctive + future participle

Conditional
Conditionals 2nd Conditional = class 1/2 aux in 1st conditional + past participle 3rd Conditional = class 1/2 aux in future perfect subjunctive + infinitive

Interrogative
Interrogative Future = class 1/2 aux in interrogative present + future participle