Old Anhic language

Old Anhic (anhāqa langva [ɐn.hɐ̠ː.qɐ̠ lɐŋg.vɐ]) was a Mallo-Brausian language spoken around modern-day southern Sunteria, Cysteia and Threonia. Old Anhic is in its own branch of Mallo-Brausian, but it seems to be closest to Elukka (this can be removed at any time if wanted).

Name of the language

The name of the language, Anhāqa, is an adjective meaning 'anhic (relating to the Anrhic people or language)'. Etymologically, it is from the Proto-Mallo-Brausian word *h₂enh₁-ǵʰ-os, meaning 'person' or literally 'breather'. (this can be removed at any time if wanted).

The language may also be referred to as Glangva 'The Language'.

Phonology

The phonemic inventory of Old Anhic is notable for its presence of uvular consonants, a rarity amongst most Mallo-Brausian languages.

Consonants

Consonants of Old Anhic

		Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	-V	p	t		k	q
	+V	b	d		g	ɢ gq
Fricative	-V		s			χ ħ	h
	+V	v	z
Approximant			l	j y
Rhotic			r

This table shows the base consonantal phonemes. There are additional consonants: All plosives and the fricative /s/ have geminated variants that appear in certain contexts.

Whenever an approximant is after a uvular consonant, that approximant becomes uvularized and causes vowel retraction.

• A sequence like /qsɐ/ is pronounced as [qsɐ].
• However, a sequence like /qjɐ/ is pronounced as [qjʶɐ̠].

Vowels

Vowels of Old Anhic

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e
Low		ɐ a

This table shows the base vowel phonemes. There are additional vowels: All vowels except /e/ have long variants. These are romanized with a macron diacritic on top of the base vowel.

Uvular realizations

Uvular consonants (/q/, /ɢ/, and /χ/) cause vowels before and after them to be retracted.

Vowel realizations

Plain	Retracted	Long	Long + Retracted
/i/	[ɨ]	/iː/	[ɨː]
/u/	[u̠]	/uː/	[u̠ː]
/e/	[ɘ]	/ɐː/	[ɐ̠ː] ~ [ɑː]
/ɐ/	[ɐ̠]

Syllables

In Old Anhic, syllables are generally (C)V(C), but clusters of two consonants are also common. If three consonants were to cluster, an epenthetic /ɐ/ is inserted between the 2nd and 3rd consonant.

Grammar and morphology

Old Anhic can be classified as a highly fusional language, as singular affixes are used to indicate multiple different features. The language does not employ many auxiliary verbs and also does not distinguish between certain aspects. For example, there is no grammatical distinction between 'I do' and 'I am doing' in Old Anhic. Many cases that were present in Proto-Mallo-Brausian have been lost and certain adpositions are used instead.

Nominals

Old Anhic has no grammatical gender, although vestiges of a gender system remain in some personal pronouns. To distinguish between male and female in certain words, an affixed form of the word vina 'woman', -ina is used. For example, kaqyārta 'student' becomes kaqyārtina 'female student'. These words with the -ina suffix decline like the word vina itself. All nouns and adjectives are declined for five cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, ablative, and dative), and two numbers (singular and plural), and there are multiple different declensions.

Pronouns also decline for the same five cases, but the genitive is called the possessive. The third-person pronouns have a three-way gender distinction of masculine, feminine, and neuter. The masculine and feminine genders are generally only used for animate referents, and the neuter for inanimates.

Example of a noun being declined

anha 'person'

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	anha	anhā
Accusative	anham	anhaz
Genitive	anhasya	anhām
Ablative	anhād	anhāva
Dative	anhā

Kappatic and sigmatic forms

A system of kappatic and sigmatic forms is commonly used with nouns and adjectives. Kappatic and sigmatic both refer to the addition of a consonant at the start of a nominal, k- and s-, respectively. These forms are used as a way to indicate both spatial deixis and/or definiteness. The more common of the two is the kappatic. Adjectives can also be nominalized using these forms to have the meaning of 'the [adjective] one'. They are derived from the demonstratives ka 'this' and sa 'that'.

There are some phonological conditions that must be met in order for a word to have kappatic and sigmatic forms. Some rules only apply to the kappatic, and some to the sigmatic.

The rules are:

• The word must not start with more than one consonant.
• The word must start with a plosive. (only applies to kappatic)
• The word must start with /s/ or /z/. (only applies to sigmatic)

Another rule is that if a word starts with h- or ħ-, then they will be deleted and the k- or s- will replace them. For example, the word hirta 'way', has kappatic and sigmatic forms kirta 'this, the way' and sirta 'that, the way'. But the word varman 'ash' has the forms gvarman and zvarman. Note that if a word begins in a voiced consonant, the k- and s- are voiced to g- and z-. Due to the rules, some words may only have one special form. Like gāza 'hand', which only has a valid sigmatic form zgāza.