Dhannuá/History

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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•SEVANT•EVEN•REIDA•DEPOT•SEPTA•KLUNIVAD•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. There is also a formation of a verbal adjective with -to as seen in kaptod.

Lúsan Empire

The early form of Dhannuá, sometimes known as Old Dhannuá later gave way to its slightly more known descendant Classical Dhannuá (dhānnwa lūsana) during the Lúsan Empire. Several hundreds of fragments have been preserved from north-eastern Europe, mostly consisting of votive inscriptions, imperial records and various business contracts.

LANASSO·TREIES·PORCOS·RO·PENVE·LAANOS·AN·STAUROVE

La(n)nassō treies porcos rō(d) penve lān(os) an stāuro(n)we

'I will exchange tree pigs for five ?hens or a bull'

The Golden age Classical stage appears to have diverged quite quickly (200-300 years) into a continental and an insular division. The continental dialects appear to have become the norm during the latter half of the Empire - the Silver age - during which the majority of recovered texts hail from. The Leidic and Sían languages/dialects are extinct descendants of this group. Little is known of the insular group as a whole, there appears to have been little writing activity in the isles during the Lúsan Empire. Interestingly enough,a small insular variety - Dánair - known from records in Classical Dhannuá as dānaizā dhānnwa was to become the ancestor of Middle Dhannuá.

Dánair

In imperial records, this variety of Dhannuá, this “island-speak” was considered "another sister" (a way of describing what we today would call a dialect) to Classical Dhannuá as evidenced by this inscription dating to the reign of the scholar-king Lúthais concerning the composition of the Empire.

Bhōzōiōm Lūdhas peri sar sa dānaizā dhānnwa ta bhōzānd sann i āuzir nissīr sei ta izd sa aliūzella swēsor dhānnwar Lūsanar. Lannarīzānd sēseid R rōd Z ca aliūzella aljūza sei

'I Lúthais, say of that, that dánaizian tongue that they speak in the eastern isles, that it is another sister of the tongue of Lúsan. They have changed for themselves r for z and other strange things.'

In truth the Dánair dialect appears to have been highly conservative as many Middle Dhannuán forms appear to be closer to the reconstructed and encountered words of Early Classical Dhannuá/Old Dhannuá than mainland silver-age Dhannuá.