Historical Development of Draványa

The following is an excerpt from the in-development article on the Draványa language. It should be regarded as a draft pending revision and possible expansion. It is from the introductory section; the next segment, on Phonetics, is mostly done in draft but what remains of it (dealing with phonological rules,) will take considerable work to finish, since it will require me to break down the several hundred extant Draványa words and put them back together, codifying the underlying patterns as I go. But I expect to produce either a pronunciation guide or the draft of the rest of the section before that.

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Dravanya is a member of the Laghá language family, a descendant of the speech of the nomadic peoples who came from the northwest to settle in the lands now called Arál Draván (in its historical sense) around six centuries before the founding of Dravá. As this people spread throughout this area, four primary Laghá language groups evolved: Dherúya (spoken in the Dhéruhir,) Zherúya (spoken between the Zemún and Álnetha rivers,) Urúthu (spoken in the lands drained by the mighty river Ján,) and Teráya (spoken in the coastal lands south of the Shoulders of Belrévesh, which were settled later than the previous regions.) With the rise of Dravá as the dominant power in the region, its dialect of the Dherúya branch came to assimilate the Zherúya and Urúthu types over the first millennium of the Imperial period, and later, as Arál Draván expanded to the south by both military and socio-economic force, the Teráya branch as well. The dialects of this latter region retain some unique features to this day because of the later accretion of those peoples into the Imperium, but it should not be thought that these linguistic shifts point in a single direction; later forms of Draványa contain fetaures clearly borrowed even from Zherúya and Urúthu dialects but not found in the dialect of Dherúya that began to be known as Draványa in the last century BF.

The people indigenous to the region now called Arál Draván were the Vádzh. Nothing is known for certain of them save the alien form of their name, but it is thought that they were a settled people of widely scattered small communities and practicing primitive methods of agriculture at the time of the Laghá migrations. Their impact on the migratory Laghá must have been very significant, for within a few ceturies of the migrations small cities emerged and writing and more advanced agricultural and metallurgical techniques developed. So while the synthesis must have been a fruitful one, culturally the narrative is one-sided; scraps of even the ancient Laghá language are extant from around the fourth and fifth ceturies BF, when the Vádzh tongues also must have yet been widely spoken in the region, yet nothing is recorded of them. Nevertheless, many words thought to be of Vádzh origin were borrowed into Laghá, and their decendants can be found in the Draványa of today.

In the last two centuries BF the Laghá tongues began to be called for the now-dominant polities in the region, and thus the dialect of Dherúya spoken in Dravá came to be called Draványa, called in this period Archaic Draványa, or the hamúlka vurésh, the “Founder’s Speech.” It is the oldest form of the language in which records of any substance remain, though glimpses of the earlier language can be seen in hymns retaining still more ancient forms but recorded in writing in this and later periods.

Rather arbitrarily, this period is considered to endure until around the time of the First Interregnum in the 10th cenury IR. After that the language, now dominant throughout the region, passed into a phase now called terrútor kefúthu, the “tongue of ages past,” or Old Imperial. Despite undergoing many linguistic changes during this and other periods, the language continues to evolve until a period between 32nd and 36th centuries IR, now known as the Age of the Grammarians to some modern scholars of that bent. It was during this time that Draványa (and other languages to an extent not as well-remembered,) began to analyze the structure of the language and develop formal rules for it. Those prescriptions have remained largely static ever since, and are by and large reflected in the description of Draványa presented here.

Nevertheless, all language continue to change over time regardless of the wishes of grammarians, so while the most literate and educated classes learn a formal speech based on the prescriptive grammars developed during this period, the informal speech has devloped independently of such strictures, such that today there exist two variant dialects, a formal and an informal, which are different enough to be only mutually intelligible to a certain extent. The formal dialect has changed much more slowly over the following centuries, and documents of that antiquity (1600 years) remain intelligible to the learned today.

 

All Things in Motion

As an update to progress, I plan completion of Draványa phonetics some time later this week. Vowels are done in draft but require revision, and consonants are mapped out but not yet written up. One consequence of this effort will be that Ytherra itself will finally be restored to its original home in Draványa.

I’m also re-reading The Lord of the Rings, in bits and pieces, this time in an attempt to dissect certain aspects of Tolkien’s approach to presenting his world. Along with that is a bit of light research on the subject of mythopoeia, which is one aspect of Ytherra as an ongoing project. However, the framework around which Ytherra is built is primarily naturalistic, rather than mythological as was Tolkien’s. One might draw a closer comparison with M. A. R. Barker’s Tékumel, but again, I have striven to present a more familiar and less alien environment than that brilliant creation.

The subject of literary and historical “influences” on Ytherra is a subject that it worth exploring, in fact. And I’ll probably do it at greater length once I’m able to present it in a less inchoate form. It’s fair to say, though, that Ytherra did not arise in a vacuum, and so many works and events have made their mark on it. One can see, for example, a certain Roman Empire influence in Arál Draván, although there’s really just as much from pre-industrial China and ancient Egypt, along with a healthy dose of various fantasy empires. Too, many themes explored after Ytherra’s inception have never been properly stated in print.

Arál Draván is the last, and also the oldest, of the three great empires of Ytherra’s history. One, the Selurean Kingdom, fell to plague, war and perhaps unnameable forces, while the other, Imperial Mánthezar, was cast down in a cataclysm of its own making. Shreds remain of both, but their glories are gone – only Arál Draván, seemingly eternal, remains. One theme, thus, is the facade of immortality found in every culture by those who are in it. Yet another is that of progress, and how it cannot be stopped, only delayed.

Ytherra’s history is long, and much of it is preserved in at least fragmentary writings from the earliest times, for Man is not native to Ytherra and was introduced by external forces that gave it a technological boost here and there. But with ten millennia of human history one might assume a certain cultural conservatism… which would be accurate for a variety of reasons. Even so, there is progress and evolution, and no time in which those things stood utterly still. Arál Draván did not spring forth ex nihilo, and so too the modern nation little resembles the union of cities under Zhómach the Founder. What has endured is the Dravánin cultural identity, and this is where Arál Draván resembles China far more than it does Imperial Rome. Dravánin culture changes, yes, sometimes only slowly but occasionally in spasms of evolution and even in violence, but Dravánin identity endures through Emperors that are autocrats or figureheads, despite temples and faiths that wax and wane in power, or even vanish entirely into the mists of history, and in the face of the technological vicissitudes of four millennia.

A major part of Ytherra’s development, then, is to chart and map those changes. There is no stasis. All is in motion… and as we join the story, some forces have been in motion longer than man’s reign on that world.

 

Draványa: Basic Clause Structure

In continuing grammar work, I’d like to talk a little bit about forming basic clauses and sentences in Draványa. Much of this work is new, either in the sense that it’s very recent (i. e. from the last few weeks) work or having replaced outdated material.

One point I should mention, though, is that the form of Draványa currently in development is Classical Draványa, which is not the everyday speech of the man on the street, but rather the long-codified language spoken by the educated and used in official communication or formal proceedings. The modern language has evolved a great deal since then, and a comparison between Republican Roman Latin and modern Italian would not be inapt. So bear in mind as we go that what you’re reading about isn’t the modern tongue but an ancestor language kept alive in certain contexts, and which in many respects is highly stylized.

Also, I intend to leave the accent marks (which repersent vowel stress,) out of the final orthography as much as possible. However, it’s important to have them there now, because they can change by inflection and I have to keep the pattern of such changes in mind.

I may as well make one final note: the formal and ancient name of the language, from the earliest time in which Classical Draványa was spoken, is the Vurésh Draványa, literally the “speech of the cities.” Another ancient from is Angách Dravá, the “Dravánu language.” Neither are much used anymore, and even in archaic documents the tongue is called merely Draványa.

So with that out of the way, let’s get to it.

Basic Structures
Verbs are words denoting action. In Draványa, tense, mood and voice specify the action of the verb, while its person will give more information about the subject doing the acting. The forms of verbs (unlike nouns) are not modified for number, although there are various verbal particles that are.

So, to take a few elementary examples. We’ll start with the present tense (indicating action happening right now,) the indicative mood, which is used for statements of fact, and the active voice, which indicates that the subject of the verb is performing the action.

The verb maché means “to kill.” We might recognize this as something called the Infinitive form of the verb. As in English, in Draványa the infinitive is the standard form in which a verb is presented, with or without the accompanying particle “to.” In Draványa, however, this is built right into the form of the word itself instead of being indicated by an accompanying word.

The verb’s tense, mood and voice act similarly, changing the form of the verb. The person of the verb also modifies it. So we thus have:

maché, “to kill” (Present, Indicative, Active)

• 1st Person: (singular) é machéler “I kill”

(plural) éu machéler “we kill”

• 2nd Person: (singular) gé machélu “you kill”

(plural) gén machélu “you (pl.) kill”

• 3rd Person: (singular) té machelé “he/she/it kills”

(plural) tés machelé “they kill”

Notice that, as mentioned, the number of the noun (singular or plural) performing the action is not indicated by the verb form; instead, it is noted by the number of the noun employed as the verb’s subject. In this case, the subject of maché is the personal pronoun é, in its (masculine) first, second and third-person forms. Sometimes the pronoun is dropped; the person can be implied from the form of the verb, but the number must be determined from context. This generally occurs when the subject is singular.

A verb’s tense indicates when the action is happening, whether in the present, the past or the future. Four of Draványa’s tenses (the present, past, future and immanent) are indicated by the inflection of the verb, while the remaining two (the anterior and progressive) are indicated by particles that follow the verb.

For now, since we actually want to put a sentence together,, let’s examine the past tense of maché:

maché, “to kill” (Past, Indicative, Active)

• 1st Person: (singular) é machálur “I killed”

(plural) éu machálur “we killed”

• 2nd Person: (singular) gé macháluro “you killed”

(plural) gén macháluro “you (pl.) killed”

• 3rd Person: (singular) té machalúre “he/she/it killed”

(plural) tés machalúre “they killed”

The object of a verb is the thing upon which the verb’s action is being performed. In Draványa, the object typically precedes the verb but follows the subject; that is, Draványa follows SOV word order, like Japanese or Turkish, and unlike English or Chinese which are SVO. There are exceptions, however, and word order in Draványa is generally more flexible than in English, but less so than in Latin.

The noun thách is one of several term for “man.” Employed in this context, the Objective (i. e. used as an object) form of this word is thár. Thus, in order to say “I killed the man”, we would say é thár machálur. Or éu thár machárin, “we killed the men.”

Now, notice something here. Draványa, like Latin or Russian, lacks definite or indefinite articles – words like “the” or “an” in English. Whether a noun used represents one of a general class of nouns (as we would use “a”,) or a particular example of such (when “the” would precede the noun in English,) is left to context.

Let’s go back to the present tense for a moment now. Verbs in the present or past (or future) tenses imply an action which is completed, or “perfect” in the Latin sense. Actions which are, were or will be ongoing take the progressive tense, indicated by the verbal particle dú in the singular. Such particles inflect according to number; duá is the plural form.

So in English, where we might say “we killed the men,” in Draványa we would say éu thár machárin. “We were killing the men” would be rendered as éu thár machárin duá, where duá matches the subject in number.

 

Slower, But More

Well, development of Draványa has taken an interesting detour as of last Friday. I shan’t bore you with the details, but long story short, I’ve decided to take a Linguistics class this quarter. That may (by which I mean ‘almost certainly will’) have an impact on the work I’d been planning to do in the coming few weeks, since I will want to implement that new knowledge into the work. So the overall language development may take longer than I’d planned, but it will almost certainly go farther.

Some of Draványa’s features, of course, like its phonology, are pretty much fixed, so nothing I learn is likely to change it substantively, although there will likely be some added nuance regarding regional dialect variations and so forth. I also have a pretty solid idea of how the syntax works, but that’s a bit more likely to be modified.

In either case I will be posting development updates as I go, so stay tuned.

 

Some Language Babble

Today’s work is in grammar. Draványa is an inflected language, like Latin but not (in its modern form) to the same degree. Thus there are declensions and conjugations of nouns and verbs, respectively. This what I’ve been hammering out. It’s still a work in progress, as I work from the existing lexicon of several hundred established words. I aim to keep the existing names in place, insofar as is possible, and I have a list of “core” names that I will make an effort to not change. Thankfully most of these are from relatively late in the creative process, when my linguistic ignorance was more total than it is now. But there’s a few stragglers.

Ytherra itself is one of these, alas. In recent iterations I’ve resorted to the unlovely step of making it a Selurean word (which I can do very easily since almost nothing has been done to develop the Selurean language.) The problem arises in two places: in the initial y and in the double r, neither of which were to be found in the phonology of Draványa as it was originally conceived after reading J. C. Catford’s wonderful A Practical Introduction to Phonetics

In more recent versions of the language, the y has appeared, corresponding to the sound of i in English lid – recall that the i in the transliteration system that I have adopted for Draványa refers to the ee in English meet. However, the two sounds are not differentiated in Draványa’s syllabic script, and thus the original confusion. The rr remains an issue.

Now, though many names will remain as they are, many descriptive terms will be changing to reflect the new grammar, which is already much more fleshed out than it was when I came up with them. Thus, a term like Arashál Uilíru, once given as the “Emperor’s Glyphs,” will likely change to reflect the new plural genitive value of the root word arásha. Thus in its new form the term would be Arashalúr Uilíru.

Note that genitive forms precede the word they modify, while ablative and lative forms follow. This is similar to the word order used in English to reflect possession, one of the Genitive case’s functions. However, when the genitive case is used to indicate position, in which situation the word order will be the opposite of what an English speaker would expect. Thus “my hammer,” indicating possession, but “the hammer is with me” to indicate position. In Draványa this use of the genitive does not change the word order, and so édh vegérat, the latter being the noun meaning “hammer” and the former the singular, masculine, genitive form of the personal pronoun, might mean either, depending on context.

The genitive is one of three “positional” cases in Draványa, the others being the ablative and lative. All have other uses as well, but in this sense the ablative is used to denote motion or transition from the noun being modified, while the lative implies similar motion or transition toward. The genitive, then, in its positional function, denotes position with some other object or person. These cases can also represent motion in a particular direction; backward, forward or in place with the ablative, gentive and lative cases respectively.

At any rate, the first noun declension (based on the noun’s controlling vowel, rather than placed rather arbitrarily in a particular declension as it is in Latin,) is done and the second and third are in progress. The present, active forms of the present tense for the first verbal conjugation is also done. These bits represent the most fundamental elements of the Draványa language. Once it’s done the world (of Ytherra, of course,) will be my oyster.

 

A Twitter Feed and More

Just to update, there’s now a Ytherra Twitter Feed, which you should feel free to follow. This’ll give me a place to put minor updates that don’t warrant an actual post here. For those reading this blog on a feedreader, the actual WordPress site has the Twitter feed in the sidebar.

I’m starting, as of tonight, to go through existing documents of varying age. There’s a lot to address, but I’m getting started. Much of this has been untouched for about a year; some documents are over 10 years old.

I’ll also be going through the entries on this blog. This isn’t a high priority, but it needs a reorganization, proper categorizations, application of tags to the various posts, and so on.

Also, ytherra.com is not dead. It is currently “parked,” but I still hold the domain. It will be making a reappearance at some point… possibly not soon, but eventually. When that happens the web home of Ytherra will shift from here to there.

 

And a Little Something Extra…

Oh, I almost forgot. Merry belated Christmases.

Click on it for the full-sized version.

 

Not Dead Here

So my study of Latin has officially concluded, as of about a week ago. I’m glad to be done with it, but at the same time it was a tremendous learning experience. I now have several pages of notes taken at various times during the past year and a half with ideas for how that learning can be applied to Draványa. It’ll take time to work through that an integrate it with existing material.

Some time back (years, now) I wrote up several pages of Draványa “grammar,” only some of which (the historical parts) have ever been seen on the web, because it’s honestly pretty shaky. I now have a much firmer grounding in the subject, so I’ll be revisiting that, with an eye toward keeping as much of the existing naming structures in place as possible – they were, after all, painstakingly constructed. Alas, it also means that one major document, the Arashálinu Enáthaga, long considered finished and used as a scaffold to hang other historical events on, must now also be revisited, and modified to reflect the updated linguistic data. That’s going to be a big pain.

Ytherra.com will be back, but meanwhile I’ll be posting stuff here, so stay tuned. There’s also some system work I’ve been doing that will be along (hopefully) shortly as well.

 

The Hiatus

Some folks have noticed that ytherra.com is currently “parked”. This does not mean that Ytherra is dead… quite the contrary. It is on hiatus for two good and sensible reasons. Firstly, that I had to cut budget corners, and web hosting was one of the things to go. However, I still hold the domain, which I registered for several years at once. So Ytherra will be back.

The other reason is developmental. Part of the foundation of Ytherra is the languages of the place, and I find myself (in real life) actually studying a language. As such, it would be tremendously confusing for me to be studying Latin for school whilst working with Draványa in my spare time. That said, I’m learning a lot about language construction which will be applied to the languages of Ytherra in due time.

So no, Ytherra is not dead. It is, however, sleeping for a while. It’ll wake back up sooner or later.

 

Big Progress

Several items of note.

The first Ytherra article is up over at www.ytherra.com. This one is on timekeeping and calendars, something I felt was necessary to get out of the way early. By all means check it out; feedback is appreciated.

I’ve elected to go with a Hârn-inspired article-based format for the time being. It’s intuitive and modular, and it fits my development style. I may or may not keep it for the long haul, but for the time being everything (save possibly maps,) is going up in this format. The format of the maps will likely be JPEG; that of the articles will certainly be PDF.

I have several articles in the works, but a couple are pending the completion of future maps, so most of my efforts are going into Arál Draván II: The History. A lot of this is already written, but it’s spread across several different documents, so it has to be collated, then the dates changed to conform to the correct calendar, then checked overall to ensure consistency with the most up-to-date version of the timeline. I’m about 3 pages into the draft; I expect it to come in at 12 pages at the very least, maybe double that. Hell, maybe quadruple that; there are substantial gaps in the history as well which have to be addressed, and it’s hard to say, from where I am now, how things will proceed. I do know it’s not going to be a blow-by blow of each Emperor’s reign (that’s a different document, and this one needs to come first.)

I’ve enlisted the help of the immensely talented Joe Freistuhler in the Ytherra mapping project; the first map is not yet done, but the work in progress can be seen HERE, at the Cartographer’s Guild. Do pop over and offer encouragement!