User:Chrysophylax/amaits

Amessian
amaits
amaitsen tann
Pronunciation	[[ˈaˌmai̯t͡s]]
Created by	Chrysophylax
Setting	EIF
Ethnicity	Dalans
Native speakers	? ({{{date}}})
Language family	Indo-European Gelonian? Amessian
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Ukraine
Language codes
ISO 639-3	none

Amessian (amaits [ˈaˌmai̯t͡s] or amaitsen tann [ˈaˌmai̯t͡sn̩ tæ̃ɲ], Ukr. мацкая мова) is an Indo-European language spoken by the Dalans along the Vorskla river in Sumy Oblast, Ukraine.

The language was only attested in the early 20th century and is an extreme late-comer in the field of Indo-European linguistics. First scientifically studied by Soviet linguists and cartographers in the mid 1920s, the language almost went extinct when its community was forcefully resettled and scattered across the Soviet Union as part of pro-Russianization policies.

Having been largely forgotten throughout history, the exact placement of the language in the Indo-European language remains heavily debated to this day. It is occasionally identified on historical and geographical reasons to be either a descendant of the language of Gelonians or of the nearby nomadic Budini, two tribes described by Herodotus in the 5th century BC. Not enough is known about either of these ancient languages to draw any conclusions regarding the ancestry of Amessian.

The language is moribund and spoken only by older speakers with newer generations having completely switched to either Russian or Ukrainian. There is a small diaspora of speakers present in Siberia, Russia and there are various efforts to catalogue and study the possible varieties of Amessian spoken.

Geographic distribution

A long and unfortunate existence in what once was referred to as the Wild Fields led to Amessian being distributed rather sporadically in pockets along the Vorskla river, on the Pontic steppe in the territory of present-day Ukraine.

Classification

The Amessian language is an independent branch of the Indo-European language tree. It has been compared to Balto-Slavic, Iranian, Germanic, Latin and Armenian but no definite links have been proven.

History

Linguistic affinities

Amessian is considered an isolate within the Indo-European language family; the only other languages that are sole surviving members of a branch of Indo-European are Albanian, Armenian and Greek.

Writing system

Alphabet

A Latin version of the alphabet was introduced in 1931 but was officially replaced in 1938 by Cyrillic. The Latin alphabet has seen a resurgence with the rise of information technology.