Elvarri
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| Elvarri | |
|---|---|
| elvariu / elvarriu | |
| Pronunciation | [elˈvarju] |
| Created by | Jukethatbox |
| Date | 2026 |
| Setting | Hamanna |
| Native to | Elvod |
| Ethnicity | Elvars |
Luxelvic
| |
Early forms | Proto-Luxelvic
|
| Nagri | |
Elvarri (elvariu or elvarriu [elˈvarju]), also called Levarian, is a classical language of the Luxelvic family. Elvarri was originally spoken by the Elvars, a tribe of Fairelves native to Elvod, a region at the mouth of the Separ river on the island of Haparod. It then became a dominant language of Haparod through the short-lived empire of Nagripon, who also oversaw the invention of Nagri script. After the death of Nagripon, his empire fractured into the Nagripu city-states, which then spread Elvarri as a dominant trade language across the Inner Waters as these city-states developed into seafaring trade empires. It was the most spoken language in Hamanna in the Age of Stone, and has a large influence on most modern languages, especially the various elf languages. It also still has considerable use as a liturgical language of the Sun Temple (Vasnadom) and the Great Bay Nation (Duvargamiod).
Similarly to Latin in the real world, Elvarri did not undergo language death, but rather evolved into regional dialects and then distinct languages, including Hoklevar, Hespadrin, Whitereed, Tasparin, Macatranese, Amtarese, Moonhind and various isolated Inner Water island languages collectively called Insular Levarian. However, it remained a significantly used common language long after it was no longer spoken as a native language, due to its large influence on scientific, economic, military, horological and naval vocabulary; this dominance remained till the 12th century, when modern languages largely supplanted its traditional use.
Elvarri is a synthetic, strictly SOV, adjective-noun and informally pro-drop language with a complex system of case inflections, verb inflections, and a twoway animacy distinction of animate and inanimate.
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɳ | ɲ | ŋ | |||||||
| Stop | p | b | t | d | k | g | (ʔ) | |||||
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ʂ | x | (ɣ) | (h) | ||||
| Rhotic | r | ɽ | ||||||||||
| Liquid | l | ɭ | ||||||||||
| Semivowel | j | w | ||||||||||
The retroflex consonants (/ɳ ʂ ɽ ɭ/) were originally marked with an underdot as ⟨ṇ ṣ ṛ ḷ⟩. However, these were rarely used, and by the Age of Stone most inscriptions did not mark the retroflexes at all, save for /ɽ/, which was often written ⟨r⟩ while trill /r/ was written ⟨rr⟩.
Various consonants were also prone to mutation after /r/, a process called hurdaski ([xr̩ˈðaski] "r-changing") or hurhassi ([xr̩ˈxaʂi] "r-morphing"):
| Process | Resultant phoneme |
Examples |
|---|---|---|
| /r/ + /g/ | /ɣ/ | arga "also, other" meiurge "garbage, trash" |
| /r/ + /k/ | /x/ | urkamo "to split, to cut" murkambet "aqueduct" |
| /r/ + /t/ | /ʔ/ > /∅/ | gort "container" ennart "within" |
| /θ/ or /ts/ | ennarto "to insert" vertuk "healer" | |
| /r/ + /d/ | /ð/ or /dz/ | tordaski "helm-changing; (figuratively) a boring but necessary task" murdo "to water" |
| /r/ + /f/ | /h/ | farfa "flatbread" ollerfa "onlooker" |
| /r/ + /z/ | /s/ > /ʂ/ | irzevet "period between winter and spring" asmurzu "religious offering" |
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i | u | |
| Mid | ɛ | ɔ | |
| Open | a |
/ɛ ɔ/ become /e o/ in unstressed syllables. /u/ was also often dropped between a velar consonant and any other consonant, rendering the latter consonant syllabic, as in kuruk "tailor" [ˈkr̩uk].
Grammar
Grammatically, Elvarri is a synthetic, mostly fusional nominative-accusative language. Nouns (malor), adjectives (hemerei) and pronouns (yomalor) are inflected on animacy, number and case. Personal pronouns are also often dropped in spoken or colloquial speech, though only if the subject could be inferred; this is discouraged in standardised literary language. Verbs are inflected on tense, mood, and (to an extent) person.
Nouns
Nouns are primarily infected on case, which then differentiates based on the animacy (broadly, whether the noun is living or not living) and the grammatical number (singular, paucal or plural) of the noun.
Case
There are, traditionally, eight noun cases in Elvarri: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental, perlative and vocative.
| Nominative | Accusative | Genitive | Dative | Locative | Instrumental | Perlative | Vocative | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | inanimate | — | -i | -os | -ta | -si | -es | -as | -to |
| animate | -a | -u | -i | -ea | -si | -se | -va | ||
| Paucal | inanimate | -ur | -ir | -sro | -tra | -sia | -sur | -sra | -tor |
| animate | -om | -am | -nem | -nis | -nye | -ams | -ems | -va | |
| Plural | inanimate | -or | -er | -ro | -tar | -sa | -sor | -srat | -tor |
| animate | -i | -e | -iu | -im | -ses | -is | -ise | -vai / -ve* | |
*The plural animate vocative -vai was written as -ve in the Book of Whitereed and other literary works and inscriptions. This practice expanded in use across most literary societies during the Age of Twilight due to the dominance of Whitereed literature, the sole Elvarri literary institution still sponsored by the state in the Twilight.
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Animacy
Nouns in Elvarri are categorised into either animate or inanimate nouns, with their case endings differing based on this animacy. Generally, living things such as dud "tree", tokis "child" or vanu "mother" are inflected as animate, while objects are inflected as inanimate, as in rukum "bread", farfa "flatbread" and gort "container, bottle". However, there are many exceptions to this rule, with many nouns that are ostensibly animate taking on inanimate inflections and vice versa. For example, vard, meaning "meeting spot, meeting place" or by extension "city, ward, town, seaport", is animate, despite referring to a location, which would logically be inanimate (as in kin "field"). These exceptions are usually because the words already imply people are involved; a vard, for example, could not feasibly exist without people to build it or decide on its location.
Additionally, some words can be inflected as either animate or inanimate, though the meaning changes; for example, teps "leaf" can be inflected as animate, tepsi, to refer to living, typically green leaves, or as inanimate, tepsor, to refer to dead, typically brown or yellow leaves (the latter form itself became a euphemism for autumn, hurdet, and became the basis for the word "autumn" in many descendant Elvarno languages). These types of nouns are called animate or inanimate by sense.
Number
Elvarri nouns are conventionally either singular, paucal or plural. 'Paucal' is equivalent to the construction "some [noun]s" in English, so dudom would translate to "some trees". Some cases don't have unique inflections for the paucal, in particular the vocative, which takes on the singular declension (-va) among animate nouns and the plural (-tor) among inanimate nouns.
Numerals
| n. | Numeral | |
|---|---|---|
| cardinal | ordinal | |
| 1 | hond | honder |
| 2 | nei | neidet |
| 3 | sis | siser |
| 4 | kev | kevet |
| 5 | hum | humer |
| 6 | ves | vest |
| 7 | nart | naher |
| 8 | skov | skovet |
| 9 | kiam | kier |
| 10 | poz | pozoi |
Ordinal numbers are derived from cardinal numbers and are generally inflected with -er if odd and -et if even. However, all multiples of 10 are inflected to be ordinal with a separate suffix, -oi.
Verbs
Personal pronouns
Unlike regular nouns, personal pronouns are inflected on only five of the eight noun cases, with the exception of the inanimate third-person pronouns which are inflected on seven.
| Nominative | Accusative | Genitive | Dative | Locative | Instrumental | Perlative | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First person |
singular | bo | ba | bu | bes | abo | ||
| plural | vo | va | vu | ves | avo | |||
| Second person |
singular | ne | nya | nu | nes | ans | ||
| plural | glei | gla | glau | glaves | aglei | |||
| Inanimate third person |
singular | i | un | hea | ier | aier | eris | eras |
| plural | ovo | ova | ou | oves | auvo | averis | averas | |
| Animate third person |
singular | tad | tar | tor | ter | ater | teris | teras |
| plural | evo | eva | ou | eves | aivo | leris | leras | |
Example texts
Swadesh