Ancient Yeldha

Ancient Yeldha
Common Yeldha, Common Ancient Yeldha, Old Yeldhic, Common, Sciogh
chláenn, sciogh chláenn, yeldhagh'n, Sciogh
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2022
Era	As a native language, 3,000 UH–1,000 UH — As a liturgical language and otherwise, 10 BH onwards
Language family	Yeldhic Ancient Yeldha
Early form	Proto-Yeldhic
Standard forms	Common Sabhoc Moshurian Tiragii
Writing system	Yeldhic script
Official status
Regulated by	Caeghdiúll (historical) Lá Ó Sciogh(Sabhoc)

Ancient Yeldha is a classical and liturgical language belonging to the Yeldhic language family. Vigorously documented by a mysterious group of monks known only as the Caeghdiúll /kəjdjuːɫ/ around 2,000 UH, Ancient Yeldha was the lingua franca of Talkoch for several thousand years despite a seeming lack of a significant native speaker group. Its falling out of use in favour of Moshurian as a lingua franca marked the beginning of the BH era, though it remains to this day a significantly used language in Talkoch science alongside Ilda and Moshurian.

Ancient Yeldha is considered sacred in the Sabhoc religion and has been in liturgical use since 10 BH; Sabhoc speakers have since developed their own regulated variety of the language mostly outside of Caeghdiúll influence.

Grammar

Verbs

Common verbs

Common verbs(éagam chláere) are always placed at the beginning of a sentence. Tense and mood are conjugated through vocalic infixes while aspect & the interrogative mood are shown through postpositional particles.

Tense & mood

	Indicative	Conditional	Potential	Imperative
Present	-	-ei(gh)-	-á(gh)-	-ú-
Past	-ia(gh)-	-áe(gh)-	-o(bh)-
Future	-io(gh)-	-er-	-au(bh)-

The inclusion of the flex consonants ⟨gh, bh⟩ is irregular and often depends on the verb. For example, the verb n-thioch "to pour" is inflected without flexes, so theich, thách, thoch, etc. However, the verb n-sciodh "to speak", is inflected with flexes, with apostrophes separating them from coda consonants, as in sceigh'dh, scágh'dh, scobh'dh, etc. There is some phonological differentiation between flexed and non-flexed inflections according to the Caeghdiúll; to take the previous example, thoch may have been pronounced /θux/ while scobh'dh, of the same tense, may have been pronounced /skuwð/.

Aspect

Perfective	Imperfective	Perfect	Imperfect
-	dá	nó	nabh

Interrogative mood

The interrogative mood is shown by the postpositional particle ó.

Example text

Present tense:

Sciodh chláenn.

"[I] speak Ancient Yeldha."

Past tense:

Sciagh'dh lá chláenn.

"He spoke Ancient Yeldha."

Future tense:

Chrobh'm lá ísthogh.

"He will be born tomorrow."

Conditional & interrogative:

Bhleigh'n ó mrug?

"Would [you] like a drink?"

Conditional & potential; as two infixes cant be used at once, the flexed potential infix is placed on its own and the combined infinitive and conditional second verb is placed after.

Ea, eigh dhageir tam.

"Yes, I would be able to organise that."

Personal pronouns

This table only shows the personal pronouns attested by the Caeghdiúll.

		Singular	Plural
1st		-	mós
2nd	nominative	í	eair
	vocative	n'í	l'éair
3rd	common	ogh	iogh
	neuter	lá	lagh

"Common" third-person pronouns refer to objects, akin to the use of English "it", while "neuter" third-person pronouns refer to people, akin to the use of English singular and plural "they". Ancient Yeldha has no attested singular first-person pronoun; these are always inferred from the inflection of the verb.

Demonstratives

Ancient Yeldha demonstratives are inflected on number(singular, plural) proximity(proximal, distal) and connectivity(conjunctive, disjunctive). Only conjunctive forms can be used as determiners; they are placed postpositionally.

		Singular	Plural
Proximal	conjunctive	na	ná
	disjunctive	nam	naigh
Distal	conjunctive	ta	tá
	disjunctive	tam	tagh