Old Etrandish

Old Etrandish was the stage of the Etrandish language between 800 BEKE and 0 BEKE/AEKE. 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 /z/ became silent.
 * Rhotacism of Proto-Human /z/ to [ɹ] or [r̝].
 * Deaffication of Proto-Human /t͡s/ and /d͡z/ to /s/ and /z/
 * Palatalization of /k ɣ g/ to [t͡ʃ ʝ d͡ʒ] before and after front vowels. This also blocked the word-initial hardening of /ɣe/ and /ɣi/ to [ge] and [gi], which became [ʝe] and [ʝi] instead. /nɣi/ and /nɣe/ (previously pronunced as [ŋgi] and [ŋge]) were palatalized to [nd͡ʒi] and [nd͡ʒe]. Word-initial /dʒ/ later also apeared from Wood Elven loanwords.
 * The voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ hardened to [g] word-initially, unless it was preceeding a front vowel, when it became a palatal fricative [ʝ] instead.
 * Complete shift of /sk/ to /ʃ/ in all environments, except in some compound words
 * Shift of /x/ to /h/, /xʷ/ to /ʍ/
 * Shift of /ɸ/ and /β/ to /f/
 * Epenthetic insertion of stops after nasals before /r l/ (even if they are sllyabic)
 * /mr ml/ became /mbr mbl/
 * /nr nl/ became /ndr ndl/
 * Epenthetic insertion of stops after nasals before other syllabic consonants:
 * /nm̩/ became /ndm̩/
 * /mn̩/ became /mbn̩/

Vowels

 * Monophthongization:
 * /ɑi̯/ -> /ɑː/
 * /ɑu̯/ -> /oː/
 * /eu̯/ -> /øː/
 * /iu̯ ui̯/ -> /yː/
 * Proto-Human lax vowels [ɪ ʊ] lowered to /e o/ unless the following syllable had a corresponding non-lax vowel in it. For example, [sʊŋg] became /soŋg/, but [sʊngu] became /suŋgu/ (and eventually /suŋg/, because of the loss of word-final short vowels mentioned below)
 * Proto-Human /ɔː ɛː/ shifted to /oː æː/.
 * I-Umlaut: /o oː u uː/ fronted to /ø øː y yː/ if the following syllable had /i/ in it. The /i/ was then deleted.
 * U-umlaut: /e eː i iː/ rounded to /ø øː y yː/ if the following syllable had /u/ in it. The /u/ was then deleted.
 * A-Umlaut: /i iː y yː u uː/ lowered to /e eː ø øː o oː/ if the following syllable had /ɑ/. The /ɑ/ was then deleted.
 * A-fronting: /ɑ ɑː/ universally fronts to /æ æː/, unless it was /ɑː/ originating from Proto-Human /ɑi̯/, or the following syllable has a back vowel (/ɑ/ 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 /lʲ~ʎ/ and palatal rhotic /rʲ/ is questionable, and if they existed, they most likely existed only in the syllabic position (see below).
 * The Proto-Human /z/ was rhotacized in Old Etrandish. We do not know how the successor of /z/ was pronunced - either as an alveolar approximant [ɹ] or fricative trill [r̝] - but we do know that it was kept distinct from /r/ until 550 BEKE, when it finally merged with /r/.
 * The phoneme /h/ had a wide range of allophones - voiceless glottal approximant [h] word-initially, voiced glottal approximant [ɦ] between vowels, velar fricative [x] in syllable coda after back vowels, palatal fricative [ç] in syllable coda after front vowels.
 * The voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ had the palatal approximant [ʝ] early on before and after front vowels. Around 400 BEKE, [ʝ] merged with /j/ and [ɣ] with /w/, reintroducing diphthongs to native Etrandish vocabulary.
 * The voiced [v ð] were the medial allophones of /f θ/. /z/ was different, considering how it came from the deaffrication of the proto-Human /d͡z/ (the original proto-Human /z/ rhotacised to [ɹ] or [r̝], and eventually merged with /r/).
 * The voiceless sonorants [m̥ n̥ l̥ r̥ ʍ] were the allophones of /m n l r w/ after /h/. The Old Etrandish /hm hn hl hr hw/ clusters originated from the proto-Human /xm xn xl xr xʷ/.
 * The consonants /l r/ had velarized allophones [ɫ ɹ] before other consonants, but not word-finally or next to each other :the /rl lr/ clusters were realized as [rl lr], not as [ɹl ɫ]. Syllabic /l̩ r̩/ were never velarized, in fact, they may have been even palatalized [l̩ʲ r̩ʲ] or [ʎ̩ r̩ʲ], evidenced by their word-initial dissimilation to /li ri/ in Middle Etrandish.

Syllabic Consonants
With the phonemization of umlauts - caused by the lost vowels - and the rhotacism of proto-Human /z/ to /r/, Old Etrandish acquired syllabic consonants, namely /m̩ n̩ l̩ r̩/ and later /ŋ̩/ too (Late Old Etrandish was already in the process of coalscing /ng/ into /ŋ/, /n̩g/ to /ŋ̩/).

The syllabic /l̩ r̩/ may or may not have been palatalized [l̩ʲ r̩ʲ] or [ʎ̩ r̩ʲ], speculated because of their word-initial dissimilation to /li ri/ in Middle Etrandish. Some linguists believe that syllabic /n̩/ was also a palatalized [n̩ʲ] or [ɲ̩], based on the fact that it dissimilated to /ɛn/ in Middle Etrandish, as opposed to the /um ɔŋ/ from /m̩ ŋ̩/. Other linguists believe that the syllabic /n̩/ originally dissimilated to /ən/, then /ə/ became /ɛ/ everywhere except before /r/, leaving /ɛn/ as the final result.

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

Diphthongs
Around 400 BEKE, the early Old Etrandish voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ and its palatal allophone [ʝ] vocalized to /j/ or /w/, reintroducing diphthongs to native Etrandish vocabulary (previously Early Old Etrandish only had /ɑi̯/, /oi̯/ and /ui̯/ 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"

The locative case was not carried over from Proto-Elven. Instead, it was replaced by using nominative together with locative prepositions.

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/something 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

Vocabulary
Work under progress