Dhannuá

Dhannuá (dhannuá bhlóar [ˈdʱannuaː ˈbʱloaːr] or dhannua aurónar [ˈdʱannuaː ˈauroːnar]), also known as Aurónian is a Lúsanic language, itself a branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in the archipelago of Aurónar. It is a continuation of Middle Dhannuá, the official language used by courts during the Lúreian kingdom, which in turn descends from the insular Dánair dialect of Old Dhannuá, spoken during the Lúsan Empire.

Dhannuá
Dhannuá Aurónar
Pronunciation	[[Help:IPA|[[[User:Chrysophylax/Sandbox/IPA_for_Dhannuá|[ˈdʱannuaː ˈauroːnar]]]]]]
Created by	–
Native to	The Island States of Aurónar
Native speakers	3.2 million (2011)
Language family	Indo-European Lúsanic Finio-Dhannic Dhannic Dhannuá
Early forms	Old Dhannuá (Insular) Middle Dhannuá
Official status
Official language in	The Island States of Aurónar
Regulated by	Cósseneir Dhannuáor Aurónar (Council of The Language of Aurónar)
Language codes
ISO 639-1	dh
ISO 639-2	dha
ISO 639-3	qdh

Background

Dhannuá was conceived in my mind when I decided to properly experiment with an Indo-European lexical and grammatical root stock. I draw inspiration from the Celtic family, the Italic and personal linguaesthetic preferences. It is an attempt to create a naturalistic, modern language of the Indo-European language family.

Classification

Descending from a central Proto-Indo-European dialect spoken thousands of years ago Dhannuá is the sole extant member of the Dhannic group in the Lúsanic branch of Indo-European. Various attempts to classify it as Celtic, Italic or even as a variant of Scythian have proven unsuccessful. Having performed the merger of palatal/plain stops, Dhannuá is categorised as a centum language.

History

Early History

The oldest preserved text in a language that can be ascribed with certainty to an early form of Dhannuá is the Samarkand stele, 300 BCE. The somewhat damaged stele was "rediscovered" in museum inventory, after being donated in 1878 from a private collector and having collected dust for 133 years until its discovery 2011. The somewhat illegible text on the stele reads:

DOMAN•SEWANT•EWEN•REIDA•DEPOT•SEPTA•KLUNIWAD•KAPTOD

doman sewant(i) ewen(s) reida(nti) depot(es) septa(n) klu(sa)ni(a)wad kaptod

'Home they seek, horses they ride, lords seven, Klusaniawa taken.'

The name Klusaniawa (tentatively traced to *ḱlewos-ni-akwa) has been deemed most probable to correspond to the city Lúsania from Old Dhannic myths. If this is true, this would mean that at least one motif of Dhannic story-telling is over 2300 years old. The actual place name might even be older and in fact it might even be a compound dating back to the Proto-Indo-European era, which would shift the time frame to ca 3700 BCE. The name has been analysed as a compound word of *ḱlewos and *ni-akwa. Thus literally carrying the meaning 'Fame-place-of-water'.

One thing that is certain from analysing the sample of Early Dhannua given by the Samarkand stele is that already at this stage the accusative marker had become -n, PIE *septḿ̥ has become septan and a coda-final voicing of the dative –ōt > -ōd. The third person plural is still present in its entirety. There is also a formation of a verbal adjective with -to as seen in kaptod.

Phonology

Main article: Dhannuán phonology

Dhannúa has 22-24 distinctive consonants.

Consonants

		Bilabial		Labiode.		Dental		Alveol.		Postalve.		Retrofl.		Palatal		Velar		Uvular		Pharyn.		Epiglot.		Glottal
Nasals		m				n
Plosives		p pʰ	b bʱ			t tʰ			d dʱ							k kʰ	g gʱ
Affricates
Fricatives				[f]	[v]			s	z	ʃ															h
Lateral Fricatives
Lateral Affricates
Trills						r
Flaps / taps
Glides	Approxim.
	Lateral Appr.									l
	Co-art. approx.															w

The pronunciation of /f/ and its voiced counterpart /v/ is considered a dialectal variation on /pʰ/ and /bʱ/. Although they occur in a few standard words as borrowings from these dialects they are often not considered to belong in Dhannuá proper.

Grammar

Main article: Dhannúan grammar

Like many other Lúsanic languages Dhannúa has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflectional structure. Although there has been considerable change, certain words remain relatively unchanged from their theorised ancestor, such as the word for flower bhlór (reconstructed PIE:*Bʰleh³-os).

Morphology

Dhannúa has six noun cases – nominative, genitive, accusative, dative, essive, comitative - of which the first four are inherited from Indo-European. The remaining two, the essive and comitative are innovations common to the Finio-Dhannic languages. Certain words appear to preserve a seventh case - the instrumental - but it is extremely rare to encounter this form in modern literature. There are two numbers - singular and plural - although certain words are only encountered in one of these. Grammatical gender appears to be in process of disappearing from the language, Dhannuá originally having had three - masculine, feminine, neuter - but now tendencies to merge the first two are becoming increasingly prevalent in certain forms of the spoken language.