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Revision as of 21:16, 28 August 2021

A-Arabic (al-għarefi; called Arabic in-universe) is a Semitic language inspired by Welsh and Estonian. A-Arabic has a lexicon similar to our Arabic and is the source of "Arabic" loans in English, but it uses a Sami- and Icelandic-inspired phonology.

  • Def. article is al- like in our Arabic
  • Unconditional shifts: PSem p s z ts' tθ' ł tł' > ff s z ts th ŝ tŝ
    • θ δ gh > t d g?
  • initial or geminated l r > ll rh
  • Emphatics and geminates spirantize: t'/tt, k'/kk > th ch
  • soft mutation:
    • m, b > v
    • t > d, d > dd
    • c > g, g > 0
    • ts > z, tŝ > ẑ
    • ll > l, rh > r
  • More Estonian vowels?

Phonology

Welsh + ü ö ä

Morphology

Pronouns

indep. pronouns: naw, ant, hu/hi/hoddo, nan, antyf, hyf/hoddi

Nouns

Modern L-Arabic lost grammatical gender.

The definite article al turns to a before ll and rh.

  • chaff = coffee
  • al-chaff = the coffee

Animate plural nouns usually end in -i or display i-affection:

  • waladd, welydd 'boy'
  • mwddarhys, mydderhis 'teacher'

However, there are many broken plurals:

  • cydof, pl. cwdwf 'book'
  • ħarff, pl. ħyruff 'letter (character)'
  • calf, pl. cylof 'dog'

Some plurals end in −ad, e.g. ai, ajad 'sign'.

Adjectives

Adjectives do not inflect.

Verbs and auxiliaries

A-Arabic lost productive triconsonantal morphology and thus inflected verbs. The combination of auxiliaries and prepositions are used to mark tense, as in Colloquial Welsh.

Prepositions

  • ly = dative
  • by = instrumental
  • ffi = locative
  • magh = comitative
  • ghale = "on"

Conjunctions

Preverbs