Etzeá

Etzeá
etzeá
Pronunciation	[ed͡zeɑ]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2023
Native to	Etzeán Island
Language family	Yeldhic Etzeic(?) Etzeá
Early forms	Proto-Yeldhic Proto-Etzeic(?)
Standard form	Etzeá Standard
Dialects	Duzuyel-Nyimörs dialects Southern Sunyr dialects Tisli dialect Ntifi dialect
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Moshurian Empire
Etzeán Island. Most Etzeá speakers live on the western side of the island, past the Tûzogyâud Range.

Etzeá(etzeá; [ed͡zeɑ]) is the secondary language spoken on the island of Etzeán within the Moshurian Empire. Due to its early geographic isolation from mainland Yeldhic languages, Etzeá became the closest modern living relative to Proto-Yeldhic in the Yeldhic language family, making the language a key contributor in modern reconstructions of Early Proto-Yeldhic. Since the arrival of the Taskaric Néekh people in the Tûznam Basin around 1350 UH, various Néekh loanwords and Taskaric language loanwords in general have seeped into the Etzeá lexicon, such as ungesku [uŋesku] "long spear", from Néekh unghêsgu [uŋɣejsgu] "Izhkut spear", from Izhkut khungëskue [xuŋˈɛskuɨ̯] "spear with twisted blade".

History

Etymology

The name etzeá's etymology is heavily debated, though one theory is that it developed agglutinatively by the combination of one word and a case marker: Proto-Yeldhic *eðu, "land" and ablative case marker *-ē, or in other words, *eðʷē, "away from the mainland".

Formation

The first Etzeic peoples were a Proto-Yeldhic people who probably inhabited Kokiso Point, the closest coastal landmark on Talkoch to Etzeán Island. They probably arrived on Etzeán Island around 2400 UH, just in time before the development of the Paleoyeldhic languages on the mainland in 2370 UH. On Etzeán Island, the Etzeic peoples spread all the way to the Tûzogyâud Range(Etzeá: [tuːzoɡjaːud]) by 1750 UH. The areas around Mount Ogoñi was settled later, around 1600 UH.

Arrival of the Néekh

Around 880 UH, the Taskaric Néekh people first arrived by boat on the eastern side of the Tûzogyâud Range(Néekh: tzêgoz Tîkhgudd [tɪxɡud̪]), rapidly settling much of the Tûznam Basin. According to Etzeá legend, the first contact between the two peoples occurred in 700 UH, when the king of the Gótyaz(Etzeá: [ɡɔcaz]) people decided to follow the Sunyr(Etzeá and Néekh: sunîr) river to its source, crossing the treacherous Tûzogyâud for the first time in doing so. Soon after finally reaching flatter land on the other side of the mountains, he saw pastures of a "strange crop" across the landscape, indicating the existence of a "strange people" that would be able to cultivate this crop.

Phonology

Consonants

		Labial	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Plosive		p b	t d		c ⟨ty⟩ ɟ ⟨dy⟩	k g
Nasal		m	n		ɲ ⟨ñ⟩	ŋ ⟨ng⟩
Tap/trill			ɾ ⟨r⟩ · r
Lateral approximants			l		ʎ ⟨ll⟩
Fricatives	pulmonic		s z	ʃ ⟨c⟩ ʒ ⟨j⟩	ç ⟨ch⟩	x ⟨h⟩
	palatalised		sʲ ⟨ss⟩ zʲ ⟨zz⟩
Affricates		pfʷ ⟨ŵ⟩	t͡s ⟨ts⟩ d͡z ⟨tz⟩		(t͡ɕ) (d͡ʑ)
Semivowel		w			j ⟨y⟩

⟨th⟩ is a digraph that was once used to represent Moshurian /ð/. Modern speakers pronounce ⟨th⟩ as /s/.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i iː		u uː
Close-mid	e eː		o oː
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a aː	ɑ

/ɑ/, /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are shown by the letters ⟨á⟩, ⟨é⟩ and ⟨ó⟩ respectively. Long vowels are represented by circumflexes, as in ⟨â, ê, î, ô, û⟩ for /aː eː iː oː uː/ respectively. All Proto-Yeldhic vowels, including long vowels, are preserved in Etzeá, except *é which merged with /e/.