User:Soap/EPSL

The Eastern Play substratum languages are to the east of the Play substratum languages, and so called for convenience, but Play speakers did not overrun their territory until much later.

Sound changes

1. final closed syllables become long
2. final high tones become long (it may be that closed syllables were always high, so this rule is moot)
3. possibly prenasals become nasals in some conditions
4. tʷ ndʷ nʷ > pʷ mbʷ mʷ.
5. o > ʷo (but spelled o).
6. g > Ø.
7. New vowel sequences become diphthongs, but probably not right away.
8. All short schwas are deleted. Long schwas then become short. There may also have been some syllabic consonants created, perhaps from both short and long schwas. It is also possible that some schwa becomes /e/, and that this family has a greater proportion of /e/ than all of the other MRCA families.

Ideas for culture

These ideas are not mutually compatible.

Switch places

It is possible that PSL and EPSL will switch places on the map. Since even the original PSL was in eastern Play territory, the name EPSL could stay with this family, and the original PSL would take on a geographic name unrelated to its relation with Play.

Pro-Andanese alignment

This language may have cultural ties to Andanic languages that keep them friendly, even though EPSL are much more culturally and genetically related to PSL than to Andanic, and even though EPSL and Andanic share little if any territory whereas PSL and Andanic overlap greatly. This is essentially a political alliance where the Andanese see the EPSL's as friendly allies and repay them by NOT settling in their territory, allowing the struggling EPSL's to focus on settling the coast. One thing in common between the Andanese and the EPSL's was that they were both settling in many nations at once rather than trying to build a single nation of their own; thus they were both minorities in their own territories. But the EPSL's were settling in aboriginal communities while the Andanese were settling in PSL territories that had already defeated or assimilated their aboriginals.

PSL tribes saw this as proof that the Andanese knew they were unwelcome in PSL territory. Most likely the Andanese would have explained their lack of interest in moving to EPSL by saying that EPSL was already part of a shared EPSL-Andanic cultural sphere, and thus was already Andanese, and did not need to be "re-settled". It is unclear how long this cultural alliance would survive, as the rise of Play led to more territorial and less tribal conflicts, meaning that the Andanese living in PSL territory would think of themselves as PSL's instead of looking outside their nation to identify foreign tribes as "theirs".

Pushed inland

The EPSL's may have been pushed inland by the PSL's and by others, leading them to become very poor. They may have built "web nations" in the mountains, as did the Galà tribe, where their territory overlapped with other tribes, but the EPSL's built towns only at certain altitudes whereas the other tribes built towns only at others. This was peaceful because they needed to pass through each other's territory; they did this because they held to different lifestyles which were climate-dependent.

Bé

This could be Bé if Thaoa remains part of the PSL territory. Bé was a single language, but it could be that only one of the EPSL languages borders Thaoa.