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 lingua franca of Talkoch, 3,000 UH–1 BH — As a liturgical language, 10 BH–
Language family	Yeldhic Ancient Yeldha
Early form	Proto-Yeldhic
Standard forms	Common Sabhoc Moshurian
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.

Classification

Although Ancient Yeldha is almost certainly a Yeldhic language, how it is categorised beyond this is heavily debated. This is mostly due to the many features of Ancient Yeldha that are rare for most Yeldhic languages, but also other features that can be found widely in many Yeldhic languages.

Usage

Ancient Yeldha is primarily used through various standardised varieties depending on the context.

Sabhoc

Ancient Yeldha is the sacred language of the Sabhoc /sawək/ faith. According to Sabhoc tradition, Láchdiunn(né Mili Kuttudån) was enlightened by Ó(God) in Ancient Yeldha, hence all Sabhoc scripture is written in the language. It is also mandatory for Sabhoc laiety to speak Ancient Yeldha in Sabhoc temples(néach'n).

However, because the Sabhoc fundamentally disagree with the work of historical linguists(those who try to reconstruct Ancient Yeldha as it was originally spoken), Sabhoc speakers' variety of Ancient Yeldha has diverged from scientific consensus on what Ancient Yeldha actually sounded like; thus, Sabhoc Yeldha sounds very similar to earlier phonological reconstructions of Ancient Yeldha at the time of Láchdiunn.

The Sabhoc variety of Ancient Yeldha is officially called Sciogh /skɪj/ in the faith and is increasingly referred to as such in linguistic research as well. Unlike Standard Ancient Yeldha, which is technically only defined by the long-gone Caeghdiúll, Sciogh is actually actively regulated by an internal branch of the Sabhoc organisation called the Lá Ó Sciogh(lit. "Organisation of God's Language"). As of 400 BH, it has around 50,000 members alone, making it the largest linguistic regulatory body in Radael, larger than even those of nation-states such as the Moshurian Ministry of Linguistic Regulation.

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(o)-
Past	-ia(gh)-	-áe(gh)-	-io(gh)-
Future	-o(bh)-	-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		-	mó
2nd	nominative	í	eair
	vocative	n'í	l'éair
3rd	common	o	ioc
	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