Old Etrandish

Old Etrandish was the stage of the Etrandish language between 800 BEKE and 0 BEKE. It is important to note that neither Old Etrandish nor its successor Middle Etrandish were in no way a unified monolithic languages, but both had a variety of dialects.

Consonants

 * Proto-Human word-final became silent.
 * Rhotacism of Proto-Human to  or.
 * Palatalization of to  before and after front vowels. This also blocked the word-initial hardening of  and  to  and, which became  and  instead.  and  (previously pronunced as  and ) were palatalized to  and . Word-initial  later also apeared from Wood Elven loanwords.
 * The voiced velar fricative hardened to  word-initially, unless it was preceeding a front vowel, when it became a palatal fricative  instead.
 * Complete shift of to  in all environments, except in some compound words
 * became
 * Deaffication of Proto-Human and  to  and
 * Shift of to,  to
 * Shift of and  to
 * Epenthetic insertion of stops after nasals before (even if they are sllyabic)
 * became
 * became
 * Epenthetic insertion of stops after nasals before other syllabic consonants:
 * became
 * became

Vowels

 * Monophthongization:
 * Proto-Human lax vowels lowered to  unless the following syllable had a corresponding non-lax vowel in it. For example,  became, but  became  (and eventually , because of the loss of word-final short vowels mentioned below)
 * Proto-Human shifted to.
 * I-Umlaut: fronted to  if the following syllable had  in it. The  was then deleted.
 * U-umlaut: rounded to  if the following syllable had  in it. The  was then deleted.
 * A-Umlaut: lowered to  if the following syllable had . The  was then deleted.
 * A-fronting: universally fronts to, unless it was  originating from Proto-Human , or the following syllable has a back vowel ( excluded). This shift happened after the A-Umlaut took place, as it did not block the umlaut.
 * Loss of word-final short vowels, shortening of word-final long vowels.
 * U-umlaut: rounded to  if the following syllable had  in it. The  was then deleted.
 * A-Umlaut: lowered to  if the following syllable had . The  was then deleted.
 * A-fronting: universally fronts to, unless it was  originating from Proto-Human , or the following syllable has a back vowel ( excluded). This shift happened after the A-Umlaut took place, as it did not block the umlaut.
 * Loss of word-final short vowels, shortening of word-final long vowels.

Grammar

 * Loss of grammatical genders for regular nouns, resulting in a simple singular-plural dichotomy.
 * The distinction between masculine, feminine and neuter is preserved in pronouns.
 * The Proto-Human accusative case falls out of use, only dative remaining.

Consonants

 * The existence of the palatal lateral and palatal rhotic  is questionable, and if they existed, they most likely existed only in the syllabic position (see below).
 * The Proto-Human was rhotacized in Old Etrandish. We do not know how the successor of  was pronunced - either as an alveolar approximant  or fricative trill  - but we do know that it was kept distinct from  until 550 BEKE, when it finally merged with.
 * The phoneme had a wide range of allophones - voiceless glottal approximant  word-initially, voiced glottal approximant  between vowels, velar fricative  in syllable coda after back vowels, palatal fricative  in syllable coda after front vowels.
 * The voiced velar fricative had a palatal allophone  early on before and after front vowels. Around 400 BEKE,  merged with  and  with, reintroducing diphthongs to native Etrandish vocabulary.
 * The voiced were the medial allophones of .  was different, considering how it came from the deaffrication of the proto-Human  (the original proto-Human  rhotacised to  or, and eventually merged with ..
 * The voiceless sonorants were the allophones of  after . The Old Etrandish  clusters originated from the proto-Human.
 * The consonants had velarized allophones  before other consonants, but not word-finally or next to each other :the  clusters were realized as, not as . Syllabic  were never velarized, in fact, they may have been even palatalized  or , evidenced by their word-initial dissimilation to  in Middle Etrandish.

Syllabic Consonants
With the phonemization of umlauts - caused by the lost vowels - and the rhotacism of proto-Human to, Old Etrandish acquired syllabic consonants, namely  and later  too (Late Old Etrandish was already in the process of coalscing  into ,  to ..

The syllabic may or may not have been palatalized  or, speculated because of their word-initial dissimilation to  in Middle Etrandish. Some linguists believe that syllabic was also a palatalized  or, based on the fact that it dissimilated to  in Middle Etrandish, as opposed to the  from. Other linguists believe that the syllabic originally dissimilated to, then  became  everywhere except before , leaving  as the final result.

Monophthongs
Around 150 BEKE, diphthongized to  in the majority of Old Etrandish dialects.

Diphthongs
Around 400 BEKE, the early Old Etrandish voiced velar fricative and its palatal allophone  vocalized to  or, reintroducing diphthongs to native Etrandish vocabulary (previously Early Old Etrandish only had ,  and  from Wood Elven loanwords).

Grammar
Old Etrandish was a subject-verb-object and synthetic language.

Nouns
The various cases had the following functions:
 * The nominative case usually marks the subject of the sentence.
 * The genitive case marks ownership. For example, "Ætrandn Réct" means "(the) Kingdom of Etrand".
 * The dative case usualy marks indirect objects, similar to the use of English "to" and "for"

Verbs

 * The infinitive is marked by -iri, just like Present Simple.
 * Adding an extra -r at the end turns the verb perfect. An example:
 * "seffir" means "to make someone}}.omething beautiful". It is in Present Simple.
 * "seffeg" is the same verb, but in Future Simple instead. For example, "you will make her beautiful".
 * "seffegr" is the same verb, but in Future Perfect instead. For example, "you will have made her beautiful".

Adjectives
Adjectives have three forms in Old Etrandish:
 * Normal adjective: -en
 * Comparitive adjective: -æner
 * Superlative adjective: -æneg

Adverbs
Adverbs have three forms in Old Etrandish:
 * Normal adverb: -ætn
 * Comparitive adverb: -ærtn
 * Superlative adverb: -æng

Inclusive or vs Exclusive or
Old Etrandish distinguished between the "inclusive or" and the "exclusive or". The earlier means, "either A, B, or both of them", while the latter means "either A or B, but not both of them - never both of them".
 * The word for the inclusive or is
 * The word for the exclusive or is

Numerical system
Proto-Human is said to have regressed from Proto-Elven in the numerical sysem. While the octal system was dropped altogether, adopting a purely hexadecimal system, the old and well-functioning postfix system was dropped, and replaced with unique names for all the powers of 16, making for a clumsier, less convenient, and overall more primitive system.

Numbers from 0 to 16

 * 0: mær
 * 1: æn
 * 2: fǽn
 * 3: wen
 * 4: rá
 * 5: sá
 * 6: thá
 * 7: gá
 * 8: step
 * 9: rón
 * 10: rófǽn
 * 11: rówen
 * 12: rórá
 * 13: rósá
 * 14: róthá
 * 15: rógá
 * 16: róstep

Numerical postfixes

 * 16 power 1: -(æ)p
 * Denotes the first power of 16. For example, "ænp-æn" means $$((16^1) * 1)+((16^0)*1)$$, or 0x11, or simply 17 in decimal.
 * Logic would suggest the number 16 - 0x10 in hexadecimal - be said as "anap" - but it is actually "róstep". This is a holdover from Proto-Elven.
 * 16 power 2: -(i)p
 * Denotes the second power of 16. For example, "ænip-æn" means $$((16^2) * 1)+((16^0)*1)$$, or 0x101, or simply 257 in decimal.
 * When used as a noun - especially plural, and especially in casual usage - the word can also be used as an equivalent of "hundreds".
 * 16 power 3: -kwæt
 * Denotes the third power of 16. For example, "ænkwæt-æn" means $$((16^3) * 1)+((16^0)*1)$$, or 0x1001, or simply 4097 in decimal.
 * When used as a noun - especially plural, and especially in casual usage - the word can also be used as an equivalent of "thousands".
 * 16 power 4: -ét
 * Denotes the fourth power of 16. For example, "ænét-æn" means $$((16^4) * 1)+((16^0)*1)$$, or 0x10001, or simply 65537 in decimal.
 * 16 power 5: -kwét
 * Denotes the fifth power of 16. For example, "ænkwét-æn" means $$((16^5) * 1)+((16^0)*1)$$, or 0x100001, or simply 1048577 in decimal.
 * When used as a noun - especially plural, and especially in casual usage - the word can also be used as an equivalent of "millions".
 * negative: -n(i)l
 * Used to postfix a negative number. For example, "æn" means 1, while "ænnl" means -1.
 * Ordinator: -(i)r
 * Turns a cardinal number into an ordinal number. For example, "æn" means "one", while "ænir" means "first".
 * Radix point: fir
 * Literally means "full", it separates the integral part of a number from the fractional part. For example, "æn fir róstep" means 0x1.F, equivalent to the decimal 1.9375.

Vocabulary
Work under progress