Etrandish language

The Etrandish language is a Human language first spoken in the territories that would become the Kingdom of Etrand by 0 BEKE/AEKE. It reached it's currently recognizable and intelligible form roughly around 600 AEKE, but changes are still ongoing.

At this point, Etrandish has became the lingua franca of global trade, turning from a borrowing language into a loaning language, extending the language beyond the boundaries of the Kingdom of Etrand

Phonology

 * The voiceless stops and affricates became aspirated
 * Modally voiced stops and affricates partially lost their voicing word-initially and word-finally, becoming slack-voiced (completely devoiced in northern dialects)
 * In uneducated speech, coda-position nasals merged into a new phoneme  at the ends of words
 * In all dialects but Standard Etrandish, the voiceless merges with the voiced
 * The laxing of short to  has become fully accepted as standard and spread to diphthongs too.
 * ,, , and  shifted to , , ,  and.
 * and merged as
 * Diphthongization of long close-mid vowels:
 * and diphthongized to  and
 * and merged as
 * The long open-mid vowels remained unchanged
 * Shift of to
 * The cluster became
 * also became before the consonants.
 * Shift of to, eliminating historical distinction with  (which shifted to  400 years before)
 * remained unchanged
 * Merger of to  in all except the Northern dialects

Grammar

 * The dative case for nouns and pronouns alike completely falls out of use.
 * For regular nouns (not pronouns), the genitive case also falls out of use - replaced by the preposition "ven" -, except in formal speech and certain phrases, like "Etranden Réct" (Kingdom of Etrand).

Grammar
Middle Etrandish was a subject-verb-object and synthetic language, although now with analytical elements.

Nouns
The various cases had the following functions:
 * The nominative case historically marked the subject of the sentence, but now that cases have fallen out of use, it is safer to assume that nominative can mark anything, if the correct preposition is used before the said word.
 * The genitive case - which has largerly fallen out of use, replaced by the preposition "ven" - marks ownership. For example, "Etranden Réct" means "(the) Kingdom of Etrand". "Réct ven Etrand" also means "Kingdom of Etrand".

The dative case of Middle Etrandish has completely fallen out of use, even in formal speech. The genitive case - for regular nouns, that is - is preserved only in formal speech, especially written documents.

Pronouns

 * While the genitive case has largely fallen out of use for regular nouns, it is still preferred and mandatory for pronouns. For example, "Réct ven Ai" is not valid. Only "mae Réct" (my Kingdom).

Verbs

 * The infinitive is marked by -ir, just like Present Simple.
 * Adding an extra -(e)r at the end turns the verb perfect. An example:
 * "seffir" means "to make someone / something beautiful". It is in Present Simple.
 * "seffei" is the same verb, but in Future Simple instead. For example, "you will make her beautiful".
 * "seffeier" is the same verb, but in Future Perfect instead. For example, "you will have made her beautiful".
 * For passive voice, the prefix "á" is added to the beginning of a verb. For example, "wisenghir" means "to sacrifice" - "áwisenghir" means "to be sacrificed".

Adjectives
Adjectives have three forms in Etrandish:
 * Normal adjective: -en
 * Comparitive adjective: -ener
 * Superlative adjective: -enei

Adverbs
Adverbs have three forms in Etrandish:
 * Normal adverb: -eten
 * Comparitive adverb: -arten
 * Superlative adverb: -eng

Inclusive or vs Exclusive or
Etrandish distinguishes 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

In casual speech, the distinction between the inclusive or and exclusive or has grown blurred, with the majority of speakers using the two interchangeably in informal speech. In formal speech - and written text - however, it becomes mandatory to make a distinction and use them correctly.

Prepositions

 * ves: that
 * vaer: this
 * vit: the (definite article)
 * kyl: for

Registers
As the Etrandish society is a highly stratified one with clear-cut divisions between clergy, nobility, merchant-patricians, (urban) plebians and peasants: this naturally means, that the language too suffers similar segmentation along class lines. At one end of the spectrum is the lower-class speech of peasants (local dialects) and the slang of the urban proletariat, to a large extent unintelligible to upper-class speakers. At the other end of the spectrum is High Etrandish, an artificially constructed variety used only in poetry and official documents. Somewhere in the middle is the (native) language of the nobility and urban bourgeoisie, with right below being the local mesolects.