Atlantean

SettingEdit

Atlantean is the primary language of the Empire of Atlantis, ruled from Atlantis city on the Northern coast of Greater Atlantis, an island in the Atlantic Ocean. Proto-Atlantean was an Indo-European language of Anatolian descent. Its original speakers fled from the Eastern Mediterranean after a series of wars and migrated to the island, defeating the native pre-Indo European tribes to create the Empire. Some also went to Greenland and the islands of the Carribean. This language branched into Old Atlantean and Mynuuri. New Atlantean developed from Old between 700 to 1100 AD, with influence from Mynuuri; it absorbed much Mynuuri pronunciation and a couple of grammar constructions. The spoken language is very expressive, with variable pronunciations of the same word depending on the mood of the speaker, to the extent of changing the meaning in some cases, eg 'chyedrie' = 'to be killed', 'cyeidrie' = 'to die', 'xyeðrie' = 'to pass away', although all are properly spelled 'cyeidrie'. The language is extremely rich with synonyms inherited from combining Old Atlantean with Mynuuri and other influences.

PhonologyEdit

ConsonantsEdit

VowelsEdit

PhonotacticsEdit

Basic GrammarEdit

• Atlantean has two cases, normal and genitive (where the possessor precedes the object and agrees with it in case, although not in number). It also has a construction inherited from older languages whereby a phrase containing motion from one place to another has ablative and dative endings for each thing, from x to y respectively.
• It has three noun declensions, one of which takes the genitive singular 'és' and the others 'ü'. Standard Atlantean has singular nouns (with numerous endings) and plural nouns, ending in either 'ei' (declensions one and two) or 'e' (declension three). Some dialects however also have dual endings.
• There is no grammatical gender.
• There are four levels of adjective: normal, comparitive, extreme and superlative (e.g. happy, happier, very happy, happiest), and adjectives can be either prefixed or postfixed to words.
• There are five tenses: Pluperfect, Perfect, Imperfect, Simple Present, Present Continuing and Future.
• There are three voices, Passive, Middle and Active.
• There are four moods: indicative (for statements), subjunctive (for necessities and opinions), imperative (for orders) and optative (for wishes and potentialities).

DictionaryEdit

Example textEdit

se muri turusinyo'eumaxunyā reisaisu;
'rési'uras meni ʒümi'ane iésüje fesasi,
misü'iðanés ŋaperéso nurvasi aly'eʒisu
māva jéisixirgire tüu hasi'éir qachanasi

The leaf was falling to the ground from a tree,
and happy lively children chased small things,
when a bowman's arrows which came suddenly
startled and frightened all the nearby docile beasts.

The dative-ablative case construction is used largely in a poetic context, as it gives a feeling of archaicism.

The word 'erési' ('also'), shortened to 'rési to keep the poetic metre.
The phrase 'iesüje fesie', (from 'iesü' = 'small', 'jis' = 'thing' and 'fesia' = 'chasing' or 'pursuing') is an idiom referring to carefree frollicking, literally running after small animals or insects.