User:Ceige/Ancient

Inspirations

The languages serving as inspiration are as follows:

• Hurrian (Hurro-Urartian, as spoken by the Khurrites and Mitanni circa 2300–1000 BC - now Armenians)
• Urartian (Hurro-Urartian, spoken later by the peoples of Urartu around Lake Van circa 900-500 BC - now Armenians)
• Hattic (Language isolate, as spoken by the Hatti around 3000-1500 BC?)
• Elamite (Language isolate, as spoken by the Elamites and Persians circa 2800–300 BC)
• Sumerian (Language isolate, as spoken by the Sumerians circa 3000-1800 BC and used as a classical language until 100 AD)

(Essentially, those isolate languages from the fertile Crescent area during the Bronze Age)

Other poorly attested languages like Hattic may also be used as inspiration, e.g. Kassite.

Some examples of the kind of geography those speakers might be familiar with (note that Mesopotamia has been exposed to environmental disaster thanks to continual farming and deliberate destruction by Mongol armies): coming soon

Some later artistic depictions from multiple eras depicting the culture of the relevant peoples and their successors: coming soon

Phonology

A Comparison of Language Phonologies

Hurrian

Hurrian appears to have a voicing alternation in word-medial positions for consonants (excluding ts/z). Hurrian distinguishes consonant gemination and vowel length through doubling (in the case of consonants: an-na = anna) or adding in extra vowels (ka-a-an = kān). P/F distinctions are hard to determine from spelling variation in poorly attested words. Final -f alternates with -u after -a-.

Consonants	Labial	Dental	Dorsal
Plosives	p	t	k
Affricates		ts/z
Fricatives	f	s	x
Sonorants	m w	n l	y

Vowels	Front	Central	Back
Close	i ī		u ū
Mid	e ē		o ō
Open		a ā

Urartian

Urartian appears to a complex consonant system compared to its older relative Hurrian, but it may have been even more complex than what is possible to discern from the orthography. There is a class of consonants that use the same symbols as Akkadian's Semitic emphatic consonants, but their value cannot be discerned. Any distinction between affricates and fricatives is lost in writing. Vowel length distinctions are also not well attested.

Consonants	Labial	Dental	Dorsal	Guttural
Plosives	p b	t d ṭ	k g q	ʔ
Fricatives*		s z ṣ	š	h
Sonorants	m w	n l r	y

Vowels	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e	ə (~i)	(o)
Open		a

Hattic

Hattic is poorly attested, but based on the known Hattic word list on Wikipedia and the article's sources, the following phonemes probably existed in some form:

Consonants	Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar
Plosives	p	t	č	k
Fricatives*	f	s z	š	h
Sonorants	m w	n l r	y

Vowels	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e
Open		a

Elamite

Elamite's sound system is not well understood due to the orthography. /h/ was lost by Neo-Elamite, and /e/'s existence is uncertain. There may have been a voicing distinction for plosives, and fricative values are general guesses. Elamite roots at maximum are CVCCVC, but that is normally even then CVNCVC.

Consonants	Labial	Dental	Dorsal	Guttural
Plosives	p (b?)	t (d?)	k (g?)
Fricatives*		s z [z]	š [ʃ]	h
Sonorants	m w	n l r	y

Vowels	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	(e?)
Open		a

Sumerian

Sumerian phonology is also not a closed book, with some claiming the language had a 3-way plosive phonation distinction. The existence of /w/ and /y/ is unknown.

Consonants	Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar
Plosives	p pʰ	t tʰ		k kʰ
Affricates		ts tsʰ
Fricatives		s	š	h
Sonorants	m	n l r		g̃

Vowels	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	(e?)
Open		a

Comparing with hypothetically contemporary languages

Proto-Indo-European

Proto-Indo-European proper was already splitting up, or had split up by the time of the younger languages being compared here.

Consonants	Labial	Dental	Dorsal	"Velar"	Labialised Back-Velar	Glottal
Plosives	p (b) bʰ	t d dʰ	ḱ ǵ ǵʰ	k g gʰ	kʷ gʷ gʷʰ	(h₁)
Fricatives		s		h₂	h₃	(h₁)
Sonorants	m w	n l r	y

Vowels	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid		ə
Open	e		o

Timucua

According to the Wikipedia article on this language, it goes back to 2000 BC. I'm not exactly sure how they figured that out, but hey, might as well include a North-American language for a fun long-range comparison. Note the similarities in phonology to many of the languages above.

Consonants	Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar	Labiovelar	Glottal
Plosives	p	t	č	k	kw
Fricatives	b f	s				h
Sonorants	m	n l r	y

Vowels	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	e		o
Open	e	a	o