Ancient Nivarese
| Ancient Nivarese | |
|---|---|
| Nīvaʼōnīs | |
| Pronunciation | [niːvaˈɁoːniːθ] |
| Created by | Lili21 |
| Date | Oct 2017 |
| Setting | Calémere |
| Native to | Nivaren |
| Ethnicity | Nivarenians |
| Extinct | ca. 500 |
Evandorian languages
| |
| Nivarese script | |
Ancient Nivarese (Nīvaʼōnīs or os khipserē os Nīvaʼōnīs [oθ xipθeˈreː oθ niːvaˈɁoːniːθ]; in Modern Nivarese: o khišrí o urdá o Niveóni) is an Evandorian language of Calémere, the earliest attested of the whole family and one of the Calemerian languages with the most ancient attestations.
Ancient Nivarese was the language of present-day Nivaren (Nīvaren [ˈniːvaren]) in ancient times, the ancestor of Modern Nivarese, and - together with Íscégon - was the cultural language of Evandorian civilizations during classical antiquity. Due to this importance, Ancient Nivarese words have entered the common vocabulary of all Evandorian languages and, in more modern times, learned vocabulary of most languages of the planet.
Ancient Nivarese is a Southern Evandorian language, and thus related to Auralian, Gazimyük, and the Agrôkian languages. It shares features common to all early attested Evandorian languages, thus there are still many visible similarities with Íscégon, but it also has the typical traits of Southern Evandorian languages, like its development of a construct state.
External History
Ancient Nivarese is a language I blatantly made as a Calemerian analogue to Ancient Greek. Nivaren's location in Evandor and its geography aren't even that different to what Greece in Europe is, and overall Ancient Nivarese's history of contacts with the Íscégon world is pretty similar to the Latin-Ancient Greek one. Partially this was because I transposed to Calémere the alt-Earth setting I had been using before, and I simply mapped Nivaren to Greece. My earlier version of Ancient Nivarese was, accordingly, mostly inspired by Greek even if still different; the current one I am developing only marginally keeps that, while I decided for an aesthetic more inspired by Hebrew and Aramaic (even if the language itself is completely different).
Phonology
Orthography
Consonants
| → PoA ↓ Manner |
Labial Labiodental |
Dento-alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasals | m /m/ | n /n/ | |||||
| Plosives | p /p/ b /b/ |
t /t/ d /d/ |
k /k/ g /ɡ/ |
q /q/ | ˈ /Ɂ/ | ||
| Fricatives | f /f/ v /v/ |
s /θ/ ś /ɬ/ |
kh /x/ | ḥ /ħ/ ʻ /ʕ/ |
h /h/ | ||
| Trill | r /r/ | ||||||
| Lateral | l /l/ | ||||||
| Approximants | w /w/ | y /j/ |
The letter x represents the /kθ/ cluster.
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | i ī /i iː/ | u ū /u uː/ | |
| Mid | e ē /e eː/ | o ō /o oː/ | |
| Low | a ā /a aː/ |