Proto-Fanezish

Proto-Fanezish (PF) was the common ancestor of the Fanezish language family. It developed in the north-eastern regions of Buvara and northern Eloma. As such, its discourse was heavily influenced by cold weather, mountainous terrain as well as the flora and fauna found in those conditions.

The Old Fanezish Folks were known for their adaptability. They were competent seafarers, although not as remarkable in comparison to the North-Heortish Folks. In terms of arts and culture, they were proficient woodcarvers since wood was far more common than stone. They had a clan-oriented society but they were not isolationist; individuals from other kindred and folks were accepted as long as they learnt the Fanezish way of living, language and did not commit any crimes.

In the matters of science and technology, the Old Fanezish Folks were not as advanced as other folks; however, they had acceptable wood-related technology which allowed them to build long-lasting homes and public spaces as well as boats and basic weapons. In regards of religion, they had their own version of the 12-deity based pantheon worshiped by the Dutronish and Buvaro-Elomish Folks.

Proto-Fanezish was characterised by agglutination, a considerate number of grammatical cases, a system of vowel harmony and an ergative-accusative (tripartite) alignment.

Tongue tree
Proto-Fanezish diverged into many tongues as time went off. Below it is shown the limbs of the Fanezish tongue family in order or divergence.


 * Proto-Sedunish
 * Proto-Sedunish
 * Proto-Zeno-Halkish
 * Proto-Zeno-Balnish
 * Proto-Zenish
 * Proto-Balnish
 * Proto-Halko-Nultamish
 * Proto-Halkish
 * Proto-Nultamish

The first division of happened when voicing of unaspirated consonants arouse in Proto-Zeno-Halkish, what set them apart from Proto-Senudish, which did not underwent consonant voicing. The second important division happened when Proto-Zeno-Balnish lost the long vowels in favor of diphthongs, in contrast to Proto-Halko-Nultamish, which kept the long vowels.

Nowadays, more than half of the Fanezish tongues are endangered, with only three having more than 1 million homely speakers. Below it is shown the modern Fanezish tongues group according to tongue limb and arranged according to the amount of speakers of each tongue.

Halkish limb


 * Mangorish (Hungarian) 1st most spoken
 * Hompish (Khanty)
 * Nemvish (Mansi)

Zenish limb


 * Fanish (Finish) 2nd most spoken
 * Izdish (Estonian) 3rd most spoken
 * Nulish (Mari)
 * Folish (Voro)
 * Neltish (Ingrian)
 * Viksish (Veps)

Balnish limb


 * Ganish (Komi)
 * Demeltish (Udmurt)

Nultamish limb


 * Kunsish (Moksha)
 * Raysish (Erzya)

Senudish limb


 * Mintish (Nenets)
 * Zirtakish (Selkup)

Phonology
Proto-Fanezish had a discrete inventory of phonemes:


 * A set of nasal consonants.
 * Two sets of unvoiced stop consonants, plain and aspirated.
 * One sibilant consonant, plain and aspirated.
 * Two liquid consonants.
 * A literal fricative consonant.
 * Two glottal consonants.
 * A system of vowel harmony with 4 contrasting pairs and a 9th neutral vowel.

Consonants
The consonants of Proto-Fanezish were the following: 1 The nasal [m] was uttered as [ɱ] before [ʋ].

2 The nasal [n] is uttered as [ɴ] before [q] and [qh].

3 These consonants were grouped as liquid consonants.

Vowels
Proto-Fanezish had 9 vowels:

Phonotactics
Proto-Fanezish had easy phonotactics rules. The basic syllable structure was (C1)(Y)V(C2), although there were some restrictions of which sounds occur depending on the place of the syllable:


 * C1 was any consonant, except the glottal stop [ʔ].
 * Y was the palatal approximant [j], which was not allowed after the affricate consonants.
 * V was any vowel, short or long. The vowel [i] was not allowed after the palatal approximant [j].
 * C2 had different rules depending of the place of the syllable. At the end of words only plain (non-aspirated, non-palatalised) consonants were allowed, except glottals, approximants and [ɬ]. Within a word, plain (non-aspirated, non-palatalised) nasals, liquids and [s] were allowed before stops; plain nasals and liquids were allowed before the sibilant [s] be it plain, palatalised or aspirated.
 * Consonant geminates were allowed, except glottals consonants.
 * The glottal stop [ʔ] only occurred between vowels.
 * There were long and short vowels, no diphthongs.
 * Long vowels were not allowed before geminate consonants.

Sound changes
Proto-Fanezish underwent a series of sound changes in different regions. In the following table are shown the corresponding sounds of the several limbs of the tongue tree. The Proto-Senudish tongue limb is the most conservative of all the Fanezish tongues and served as the cornerstone to reconstruct the Proto-Fanezish tongue. The other tongue limbs acquired voiced consonants and many fricative sounds through different ways. The vowel harmony system has also underwent some changes, with the Proto-Zenish tongue limb holding the original 9 vowels as well as the Proto-Senudish tongue tree, but losing the long vowels in favor of diphthongs.

At the end of words, the unvoiced consonants remained unvoiced,

Rhythm and word-accent
Proto-Fanezish was believed to have a syllable-timed rhythm, which suited its agglutinative morphology. Stress or word-accent fell in the first syllable, as in all the modern Fanezish tongues.

Writing system
By the time Proto-Fanezish was spoken, writing not a widely spread technology. By the time the Fanezish folks had first contact with writing methods, Proto-Fanezish had already split up and evolved into its many limbs. However, there is a version using the Loksish script for teaching purposes.

Grammar
Proto-Fanezish was an agglutinative tongue because of the use of affixes, more frequently suffixes than prefixes, to indicate the grammatical function of a word and to create new words. such as creating a verb or adjectives from a noun, or a noun from a verb or adjective root.

Proto-Fanezish sentences followed an ergative-accusative alignment, also known as tripartite alignment, and had a rather free word order, although the neutral word order was Subject-Verb-Object. It was mostly head-final, but used prepositions and adverbs followed the Place-Manner-Time layout.

Pronouns
Pronouns in Proto-Fanezish were the following:

Nouns
Classification

Nouns in Proto-Fanezish were classified in three categories: heavenly nouns, waterly nouns and groundly nouns.

These noun classes remained in Proto-Senudish and Proto-Zeno-Balnish. In contrast, Proto-Halko-Nultamish classified the nouns in starly and earthly, with starly nouns corresponding to heavenly nouns and earthly nouns grouping both waterly and groundly nouns. Below are shown the corresponding endings of the noun classes across the different limbs of Proto-Fanezish.
 * Heavenly nouns included words for sky, wind and fire. It also included flying animals, abstractions and untouchable nouns like time. These nouns ended in -u/-ü.
 * Waterly nouns, as the name suggests, included words for water, fluids, water-related nouns like boats and aquatic animals and plants. These nouns ended in -e/-ë.
 * Groundly nouns included words for most animals, humans, plants, tools and basically anything that could be touched and was solid. These nouns ended in -o/-ö.

Inflection
The root form of a noun could take up to three kinds of inflectional suffixes in the following order:


 * Number suffix
 * Case suffix
 * Possessive suffix

Number
Proto-Fanezish had four numbers: singular (SING), dual (DU), paucal (PAU) and plural (PLUR). Singular was the base form, dual referred to pairs, paucal referred to a set of three to twelve and plural to sets greater than twelve.


 * The dual number suffix is -s.
 * The paucal suffix is -k.
 * The plural suffix is -t.

Case
Proto-Fanezish had a sizeable system of grammatical cases. Below are shown the reconstructed cases and their corresponding suffixes:

Possession
In Proto-Fanezish there were no possessive pronouns, but the possessive suffixes fulfilled this function. In the table below are shown the reconstructed possessive suffixes:

People and family

 * ëmpo - person, human being
 * wësso - man
 * pänö - woman
 * lyempö - child
 * pëllo - son
 * pyeenö - daughter

Nature and natural phenomena

 * tyastu - star
 * pyööke - river
 * psaapyo - tree

Verbs

 * puuti - to eat
 * sääti - to drink
 * hosti - to cook, to prepare a meal
 * lünti - to see
 * kesti - to hear
 * watti - to speak
 * yesti - to live (to be alive)
 * meti - to dwell, to reside