Old Grekelin

Proto-Grekelin
Γρεκέλην, Grekélin
Created by	Aggelos Tselios
Date	2023
Native to	Hungary, Serbia, Austria
Language family	Indo-European Hellenic Urlogrok (?) Proto-Grekelin
Early form	Proto-Grekelin
Standard form	Urlogreckae ('Υρλόγρέκέλινιν')
Dialects	Northern Danubian Slavic Western-Germanic
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Regulated by	Grekelin Language Administration

Proto-Grekelin refers to the ancestral language of Grekelin which appears to have been spoken in the 13th to 16th centuries, before eventually evolving into Grekelin. Proto-Grekelin is mutually intelligible with both Greek and Grekelin but also maintains strong influence from Hungarian. Proto-Grekelin is made up by a series of slightly different dialects, with the most influencial one being Western-Germanic as it gave the language personal pronouns (Ίχ from German ich, Σίχ from German sich, etc). Proto-Grekelin was written with the Latin alphabet officially, but on some villages the local boards were using Greek as the majority of Proto-Grekelin speakers were Greeks.

Orthography

The Proto-Grekelin alphabet was not standardized; The speakers either used the Greek or the Latin script and often borrowed more letters when one was already used for a sound. Below is the Latin version, which was used in Austria and some parts of Vojvodina.

Letters of the Proto-Grekelin (Latin) alphabet
Aa	Bb	Gg	Dd	Ee	Zz	Θθ	Ii	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Xx	Oo	Pp	Rr	Ss	Tt	Ff	Jj	Vv

Very often, the additional letters c, ψ, η were used for some sounds such as (Respectively) s, ps, ae.

Due to the lack of standardization and multiple attempts by ruling nations to assimilate the Grekelin language, it was very often that Grekelin texts were using the orthography of German and Hungarian, hence changing multiple words over the years due to different digraphs (eg. /ɣ/ was written like "gh" in German speaking parts and "j" in Hungarian ones, hence Grekelin may be found as either Ghreckelin or even Jreckely on some texts)

Stress

Being a Hellenic language, Proto-Grekelin kept the stress at one of the last three syllables, and does not have the freedom of Grekelin. Borrowed words were forced to be stressed in the second from last syllable, as part of a wider assimilation of phonemes. Agglutination, hence, was not yet present in the language, but came later on along with extended Magyarization).

Dialects

Proto-Grekelin had been spoken across different parts of Central Europe, usually with no connection between the populations speaking Proto-Grekelin, evolving completely differently from one another. The 4 known dialects so far are:

- Northern Dialect, which was directly derived from Urlogrok and the main ancestor to Grekelin.

- The Danubian dialect, which went extinct fast. It was spoken primarily in Buda-Pest (Before the cities unified).

- The Slavic dialect which also involved into the Slavic dialect of Grekelin. It was probably the only dialect in contact with another (Northern).

- Western-Germanic, which was spoken in Eastern Austria (Mostly Burgenland). Eventually it went extinct after giving Grekelin some Germanic influence.

The differences between dialects were huge in their last documented stage (15th century):

- Northern: Tilo egy percho vizo.

- Danubian: *A egy vissi percho thήlo.

- Slavic: Tilo egy ckasta vodae.

- Western-Germanic: Ich thilo eni preg vazzer.

- Modern Grekelin (Latinized): Ich thilo eghy perchi viza.

Despite Grekelin now being one language with two variants, some consider the Slavic dialect a seperate language, since it derives from another Proto-Grekelin dialect (Compare the Slavic and Northern dialects from above) and was not in contact with the rest of the Proto-Grekelin dialects for over 500 years.