User:Chrysophylax/Phaselic
Background
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I'm thinking of making the origin story of my consemites as colonialists from Ugarit who settled in what is historically the city of Phaselis in Lycia, Southeastern Anatolia. From NUWP, I gather that Phaselis was founded by colonists from Rhodes in 700 BCE. I was thinking of Ugarit colonising the area by Phaselis ca 1390 BCE, building a harbour town to facilitate maritime trade between Ugarit, Crete, Alashiya.
By mixing in some Lycians and Hittites I could add some fun loans. It would also open up for some of the ships which Ammurapi, the last king of Ugarit, mentions having sent to Lycia to fight of the Sea People invasion, reinforcing my con-Phaselis with people from Ugarit either by defection or by retreat once news of the collapse of Ugarit had spread. In the end, I can imagine the Ugaritic Phaselis ending up under the influence of the Dorian hexapolis and having the language die out as Rhodians take-over ~ 700 BCE. This would give me ~ 690 years to develop the colony, of which ~200 years would be shared with Ugarit at its golden age.—Chrysophylax, Constructed Languages @ Facebook
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The foundation of the city
The location of the future city was traditionally scouted by three captain-sailors who in 1628 BCE took refuge from a particularly fierce storm. They named the peninsula 𐎌𐎒𐎋𐎐𐎁𐎓𐎍 šskn.bʔl /šaskana baʕlu/ “Ba‘al has prepared” for the natural harbours providing shelter. The area became a favourite rest stop for many sailors and ultimately a refuge for pirates. An expedition from Ugarit in 1397 BCE destroyed the pirate base and construction of some sort appears to have taken place. No permanent settlement is recorded until seven years later when the 𐎖𐎗𐎚 𐎗𐎈𐎁𐎚 qrt rḥbt /qarītu raḥabāti/ “City of Amphorae” is mentioned as having been founded on the šskn.bʕl to “prevent disruption, to provide rest, to prosper trade”.
Writing system
The Phaselic native script is a cuneiform abjad derived from the Ugaritic alphabet. Although at first probably the exact same, various changes in the letter forms have occurred throughout the evolution of Phaselic. One major difference is that several of the more exotic graphemes of Ugaritic such as 𐎝 SU do not occur at all.
Note however that the Phaselic writing system is for reasons of convenience represented electronically as being exactly the same as the Ugaritic cuneiform abjad. Thus any typeface supporting Ugaritic will serve to display Phaselic.
Phaselic is written left-to-right and traditionally only has three letters for vowels, whose use is rather restricted 𐎀 𐎛 𐎜 a͗ i͗ u͗. Additionally, the letter 𐎊 is sometimes used as a mater lectionis for i and ī.
Vowel and consonant length is not indicated in the native orthography (thus 𐎁𐎚 bt /bittu/ ‘daughter’) but will be represented by macrons for the vowels and repetition of the consonant in the Latin transcription.
𐎀 a͗ 𐎁 b 𐎂 g 𐎃 ḫ 𐎄 d 𐎅 h 𐎆 w 𐎇 z
𐎈 ḥ 𐎉 ṭ 𐎊 y 𐎋 k 𐎌 š 𐎍 l
𐎎 m 𐎏 ḏ 𐎐 n 𐎑 ẓ 𐎒 s 𐎓 ‘
𐎔 p 𐎕 ṣ 𐎖 q 𐎗 r 𐎘 ṯ 𐎙 ǵ
𐎚 t 𐎛 i͗ 𐎜 u͗
Phonology
Consonants
Havings its origins as a dialect of Ugaritic, Phaselic broadly shares the same phonological system.
| Bilabial | Interdental | Dental/alveolar | Sibilant | Palatal | Velar | Pharyngeal | Laryngeal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ||||||||
| Plosive | p b | t d tˤ (ṭ) | k g kˤ (q) | |||||||
| Fricative | θ (ṯ) ð (ḏ) ðˤ (ẓ) | s̱ (s) z sˤ (ṣ) | x (ḫ) ɣ (ǵ) | ħ (ḥ) ʕ (‘) | h ʔ (’) | |||||
| Lateral fricative | ɬ (š) | |||||||||
| Tap | ɾ | |||||||||
| Approximant | w | j (y) | ||||||||
The alveolar nasal n wholly assimilates to the following consonant. E.g. *ʔanta → /ʔatta/, *gintu → /gittu/. This does however not occur across the boundary of verb + suffix, e.g. ytnt /jatanta/ ‘thou hast given (m.)’ not *yatatta.
-later stage-
- ʕ is lost V_C with compensatory lengthening, baʕlu → bālu, e.g. Šaskanabaʕlu → Šaskanabāl(u)
Vowels
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“Phaselic” inherited the Ugaritic vowel system of the three short vowels a, i, u, and their long counterparts, augmented with ē and ō derived from the PSem. diphthongs *ay and *aw.
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| Front | Near-front | Central | Near-back | Back | ||
| Close | 
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| Near‑close | ||||||
| Close‑mid | ||||||
| Mid | ||||||
| Open‑mid | ||||||
| Near‑open | ||||||
| Open | ||||||