Nṛtrāṇya

Background

Nṛtrāṇya is a language that I started seriously working on late last year, though as a concept it dates back maybe fifteen or twenty years (at one time it was formulated under the name Toticcha), and started with the mental question: what would the names of the Æsir be if they had been, in fact, Proto-Indo-European deities who were still worshipped today in India? The concept is simple: to phonologically redesign reconstructed Proto-Germanic as if it were Sanskrit. The motivations are several: first, while the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic (and even more so Proto-Indo-European) is beset by uncertainties, the phonology of Sanskrit is very well known, and is of such a nature as to iron out many dubious points; second, by making a Germanic language that is more Sanskrit-like, it makes structural comparison between Germanic languages and Sanskrit straightforward, avoiding phonological issues; third, it's a somewhat satirical take on the efforts of certain 19th-century popularizers of linguistics to posit Sanskrit as the Ursprache of the Indo-Europeans — or, as the German scholars oddly called them, Indogermanen.

Within its imaginary world, "Artā" (sc. Earth), Nṛtrāṇya (northern (speech)) is an extinct language spoken around 2500-2700 years before the present by the Nṛtramanvānaḥ (north-people), the inhabitants of Nṛtravahaḥ, a large complex of islands situated just below the Arctic circle. It was closely related to languages of the mainland just to the south, and due to the influence of a religious movement originating there, became a liturgical language and language of lore for many people speaking other languages, related and unrelated. The language as described here, however, is of the 'pagan' period immediately before the rise of that movement, when the language was still very unified and spoken almost exclusively in the Nṛtravahaḥ.

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Phonology

The phonological inventory of Nṛtrāṇya is basically identical to that of Sanskrit, as is its phonological history; the major exception is that the consonants /l/ and /r/ were not confused at any point in the development of the language.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n	ɳ	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	p pʰ b bʱ	t tʰ d dʱ	ʈ ʈʰ ɖ ɖʱ		k kʰ ɡ ɡʱ
Fricative		s	ʂ	ɕ		h ɦ
Affricate				ʨ ʨʰ ʥ ʥʱ
Approximant	ʋ		ɻ	j
Lateral fric.		l

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i iː		u uː
Mid	eː		oː
Open		ɐ	ɑː

Orthography

Nṛtrāṇya was originally written in an alphabet carved into stone and wood; paper and parchment were not known until very late. It is transcribed in a conventional orthography based on that used for Sanskrit and other Indic languages. The Nṛtrāṇya "runes" were usually written from left to right, but occasionally boustrophedon (with reversals in direction with each line), in which case the asymmetrical characters would have been reversed when writing right-to-left.

Grammar

Morphology

Nṛtrāṇya is a complex, inflected language, somewhat less so than Sanskrit but more than most living Germanic languages. Pronouns, adjectives, nouns and verbs use a system of suffixes to show their relationships to other words in the sentence.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

First person
	singular	dual	plural
nominative	aja	vat	vayaḥ
accusative	maja	āvaḥ	aḥ / asaḥ
dative	māḥ
genitive	mena	āvara	asara

Second person
	singular	dual	plural
nominative	tū	yut	yūḥ
accusative	tvaja	yūvaḥ	yuṣvaḥ
dative	tvāḥ
genitive	tvena	yūvara	yuṣvara

Third person
	singular			dual & plural			reflexive
	Fem	Mas	Neu	Fem	Mas	Neu	Com
nominative	sī	iḥ	it	iyāḥ	ayaḥ	iyā	—
accusative	iyām	im			īn		saja
dative	asai	asmā		āmiḥ	emiḥ		sāḥ
genitive	asāḥ	asa		āsām	eṣām		sena

Demonstrative pronouns

Śi- "this"
	singular			dual & plural
	Fem	Mas	Neu	Fem	Mas	Neu
nominative	śī	śiḥ	śit	śyāḥ	śayaḥ	śyā
accusative	śyām	śim			śīn
dative	śasai	śasmā		śāmiḥ	śemiḥ
genitive	śasāḥ	śasa		śāsām	śeṣām

Ta- "that"
	singular			dual & plural
	Fem	Mas	Neu	Fem	Mas	Neu
nominative	sā	sa	tat	tāḥ	te	tā
accusative	tām	tam			tān
dative	tasai	tasmā		tāmiḥ	temiḥ
genitive	tasāḥ	tasa		tāsām	teṣām

Interrogative pronouns

Ka- "what?"
	singular			dual & plural
	Fem	Mas	Neu	Fem	Mas	Neu
nominative	kā	kaḥ	kat	kāḥ	ke	kā
accusative	kām	kam			kān
dative	casai	kasmā		kāmiḥ	kemiḥ
genitive	casāḥ	casa		kāsām	keṣām