User:IlL/A Danified analytic Neo-Arabic/Ancient

Druidic Hebrew is the stage of Xnánið after the split from Pre-Exilic Biblical Hebrew ca. 7th-6th century BC and before ca. 5th century CE when great changes began to occur to the spoken language that eventually became modern Xnánið. It continued being used as a literary language during this period and was the liturgical language of Anatolian and Cypriot druidism before the religion was supplanted by Henosis Ousias. It was a Cypriot Celtic-influenced variety of Hebrew.

Phonology

Orthography

Druidic Hebrew was written in an abjad descended from the Proto-Hebrew script. Religious texts were vocalized but not completely, hence it is reconstructed on the basis of Modern Canaanite and Tiberian Hebrew.

Consonants

/m p b f v n t d th θ ð ts dz s tsʰ ʃ ɣ̃ ħ k g kh x ɣ h l w j r/ ⟨m p b f v n t d ᴛ θ δ z s ts' š ȝ ħ k g ᴋ χ γ h l w y r⟩

/l/ allophonically velarized before C.

Mutations

Words can undergo initial mutation but the mutations are different from the begadkefat spirantization in Tiberian Hebrew.

Vowels

Old Knánith had a rather simple vowel system:

a e i o u ø á é í ó ú /a e i o u ə a: e: i: o: u:/

/ə/ was a result of vowel reduction.

Prosody

Stress

Stress was penultimate for most words.

Grammar

Still basically Hebrew (except with penultimate stress), with inflected verbs.

Syntax was retained as VSO under the influence of Celtic.

Nouns

Inflection

The definite article was ʔaC- (from Biblical Hebrew *haC-). It caused gemination of the following consonant; if the following consonant was a guttural and thus could not geminate, it was lengthened to ʔā-.

The Biblical feminine singular ending *-ā́ became unstressed -a (e.g. ʔašḗra 'sacred tree'), and the stress in feminine singular nouns in -a shifted to penultimate (by analogy with masculine singular adjectives and 3fs perfect verbs). The feminine plural ending was unstressed -oδ (e.g. ʔašḗroδ 'sacred trees'), from Biblical Hebrew *-ōt.

The construct state was not as "hard" as Tiberian Hebrew.

Adjectives

The prefix ró- 'very, extreme(ly), great(ly)' was borrowed from Celtic (Proto-Celtic *ɸro-). At first only adjectives could take this prefix, but later it was also used on nouns.

Verbs

All 7 binyanim of Biblical Hebrew were in use.

Verbs inherited the following forms from Biblical Hebrew:

• Past/Perfect/Stative (from the BH perfect)
• Non-past/Imperfect (from the BH imperfect)
  • Energic nun for emphasis or wishes
• Imperative
• Infinitive construct
• Infinitive absolute
• Participle

The Biblical Hebrew waw-consecutive and jussive forms were lost.