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'''Hesperic''' is a language family proposed by [[User:WeepingElf|Jörg Rhiemeier]], who speculates that some geographical names of central and western Europe, most notably, the [[Old European hydronymy]], come from a group of languages related to, but not part of, the  [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] language family.  Both families, and perhaps a few others, form the larger [[Europic]] language family.
'''This document describes an obsolete version of the Hesperic family which is currently undergoing a major revision.''' --[[User:WeepingElf|WeepingElf]] ([[User talk:WeepingElf|talk]]) 12:14, 15 January 2024 (PST)


==The Hesperic hypothesis==
{|border=1 cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0 width=50% class="bordertable" style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em; background: #f9f9f9; font-size: 95%; float: right;"
|colspan="2" bgcolor="#CCFF00" align="center" |'''Hesperic'''
|-
|valign="top"|Spoken in:
||Europe
|-
|valign="top"|[[Conworld]]:
||[[Atla]]
|-
|valign="top"|Total speakers:
||ca. 50,000
|-
|valign="top"|Genealogical classification:
||[[Indo-European]]
: '''Hesperic'''
:: see below
|-
|valign="top"|[[Basic word order]]:
||varies
|-
|valign="top"|[[Morphological type]]:
||varies
|-
|valign="top"|[[Morphosyntactic alignment]]:
||varies
|-
|colspan="2" bgcolor="#CCFF00" align="center" |'''Created by:'''
|-
||[[User:WeepingElf|Jörg Rhiemeier]] || 2000-
|}
 
 
'''Hesperic''' is a [[language family|family]] of [[diachronic conlang]]s by [[User:WeepingElf|Jörg Rhiemeier]] spoken in the world of [[Atla]]. This family forms an early diverging branch of the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] family, even more archaic than [[Wikipedia:Anatolian languages|Anatolian]]. So far, [[Old Albic]] is the best-elaborated language of the family.
 
==Sources==
 
The Hesperic language family was originally built on an internal reconstruction (by the author himself, but drawing on the ideas of various scholars such as [[Wikipedia:Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze|T. V. Gamkrelidze]], [[Wikipedia:Vyacheslav Ivanov (philologist)|V. V. Ivanov]] and the late, lamented [[Wikipedia:Jens Elmegård Rasmussen|J. E. Rasmussen]]) of an early stage of [[Proto-Indo-European]]; a part of the vocabulary is based on words in Celtic and Germanic languages without good PIE etymologies which may be loanwords from a substratum language. Further inspiration for the building of the family came from the [[Uralic]] and [[Wikipedia:Kartvelian languages|Kartvelian]] language families.


The idea behind the Hesperic hypothesis is that the spread of agriculture in Neolithic central Europe was connected with the spread of a language family related to [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]].  Most archaeologists assume that the spead of agriculture in Central Europe was ''demic'', i. e. connected with substantial migrations of farming people into areas previously occupied by hunter-gatherer populations which were absorbed into the new society.  This would also mean that new languages arrived in the area.  The Proto-Hesperic language would have been the language of the [[Wikipedia:Linear Pottery culture|Linear Pottery culture]].
Since then, the author has changed his view concerning the degree of relationship between Hesperic and Indo-European, from a sister group of IE as a whole to a branch that forked off at about the same time as Anatolian, and he is currently reworking the fictional history of the family in order to make it fit the new assumptions regarding its origin.


===The Black Sea Flood===
Conlangs of inspirational value are chiefly the [[Quendian]] ([[J. R. R. Tolkien]]), [[Eastern languages (Almea)|Eastern]] ([[Mark Rosenfelder]]) and [[Sunovian]] (Geoff Eddy) families which inspired me to build a large, diverse language family.


The [[Wikipedia:Black Sea deluge theory|Black Sea deluge theory]], which was proposed by the geologists Walter Pitman and William Ryan, posits that until about 8,000 years ago, the Black Sea basin was filled by a freshwater lake with a level at least 100 metres lower than  the current sea level, until the ocean burst through the Bosporus in a cataclysmic event dated originally by Pitman and Ryan at 5500 BC, though newer estimates place it up to 1,200 years earlier (around 6700 BC).  Before that catastrophe, the area where now are the Bay of Odessa and the Sea of Azov was fertile land which was probably inhabited by Neolithic farmers who would speak [[Europic|Proto-Europic]], the common ancestor of [[Wikipedia:Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European]] and Proto-Hesperic.  When the flooding happened, many of these farmers survived by fleeing north and west along the great rivers (probably, as the horse was not yet domesticated and the wagon not yet invented, travelling by boat).  With them, these people carried their farming culture and their language.  In the area north of the Black Sea, Proto-Europic evolved into Proto-Indo-European.  In the Danube basin in Central Europe, it evolved into Proto-Hesperic.
==Overview (intrafictional)==


===The Linear Pottery, Funnel Beaker and Bell Beaker cultures===
The Hesperic languages are spoken in various [[residual zone]]s in Central and Western Europe, with a total number of speakers not exceeding 50,000 today, though the family once had many more speakers ([[Old Albic]] alone is estimated to have been spoken by about 2 million people at its apogee about 600 BC).


The first Neolithic farmers of central Europe, the [[Wikipedia:Linear Pottery culture|Linear Pottery culture]], would have been the first speakers of Hesperic languages.  They occupied an area which stretched from eastern France to western Ukraine.  The [[Wikipedia:Funnel Beaker culture|Funnel Beaker]] and [[Wikipedia:Beaker culture|Bell Beaker]] cultures are Late Neolithic cultures which probably emerged from the Linear Pottery culture, spreading into southern Scandinavia and western Europe, respectively.
This family is a branch of Indo-European that separated from the rest of the family early, perhaps around 3500 BC, and is probably associated with the first wave of Indo-European expansion which also resulted in the formation of the Anatolian branch.
The Bell Beaker culture would spread Hesperic languages to the western France, the British Isles, the Iberian peninsula and Italy.  It is likely that the displacement of the Mesolithic languages was not complete but some of those languages survived.  (At any rate, [[Basque]] and probably also [[Wikipedia:Etruscan language|Etruscan]] are not Hesperic.)


===The demise of the Hesperic family===
[[Proto-Hesperic]] would have been spoken about 3000 BC in Central Europe, and thus probably contemporaneous to the Late PIE the standard reconstruction represents (which may have been likewise about 3000 BC, but the dating is controversial). The family also shows similarities to the [[Uralic]] languages, and appears to be something like the "missing link" [[Indo-Uralic|between]] Indo-European and Uralic. Typological similarities also exist to the [[Kartvelian languages]], but this does not appear to reveal a relationship, unless these similarities can be ascribed to a [[Krelian]] substratum.


The Hesperic family reached its climax in the Early Bronze Age, when Hesperic languages were spoken in an area encompassing most of western and central Europe - about 2.5 million square kilometres inhabited by perhaps 5 million people (at that time a great number) - making Hesperic one of the great language families of Earth.  Then, it was gradually obliterated by [[Indo-European languages]] which moved into central Europe from the east.  By the year 500 BC, the whole formerly Hesperic-speaking area was occupied by Indo-European languages, though some isolated pockets of Hesperic languages may have survived longer, but eventually disappeared as well.
Today, however, all Hesperic languages have to be considered endangered, and none has official status in the country or countries where it is spoken.


==The structure of Proto-Hesperic==
==Classification==


Little can be said about the structure of Proto-Hesperic.  The vocalism of the [[Old European hydronymy]] seems to indicate that Proto-Hesperic had three vowels - */a/, */i/ and */u/, of which */a/ was the most frequent.  This is likely to be a continuation of the Proto-Europic state of affairs, as such a system appears to have been in place in the pre-ablaut stage of PIE.  The consonant inventory may have been like that of PIE as reconstructed by the [[Wikipedia:Glottalic theory|glottalic theory]], but the glottalized stops probably already had lost their glottalization, with the voiceless unglottalized stops being aspirated.
'''Hesperic'''
* North Hesperic
:* [[Albic]]
::* [[Old Albic]]†
:::* [[Middle Albic]]†
::* [[South Albic]]
:::* Low Elvish
::::* [[Avalonian]]
::::* [[Sinjenich]]
:::* [[Macaronesian]]
::::* [[Azorese]]
::::* [[Madeirese]]
::::* [[Sea Elvish]]
::* Neck Albic
::* [[Arwinish]]
::* [[Ivernic]]
:* [[Hercynian]]
:* [[Alpianic]]
* South Hesperic
:* [[Puranian]]
:* [[Durian]]
:* [[Padivian]]


Even less can be said about the morphosyntactic structure of Proto-Hesperic; if, as appears likely from [[Wikipedia:Internal reconstruction|internal reconstruction]] in PIE, Proto-Europic was an [[Wikipedia:Active–stative language|active-stative language]], Proto-Hesperic could have been such a language as well, but that is uncertain - after all, PIE ''did'' change into an [[Wikipedia:Nominative–accusative language|accusative language]].


==Hesperic conlangs==
===Influence of Standard Average European===


{|border=1 align=right cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0 width=50% class="bordertable" style="margin: 0 0 1em 1em; background: #f9f9f9; font-size: 95%; float: right;"
The Hesperic languages have been influenced to various degrees by the [[Wikipedia:Standard Average European|Standard Average European]] linguistic area.  The influence of this Sprachbund is strongest in Alpianic and weakest in Albic.
|colspan="2" bgcolor="#CCFF00" align="center" |'''Hesperic'''
 
==Main sound correspondences==
 
{|class="wikitable"
|-
! [[Proto-Hesperic|PH]]
! [[Albic]]
! [[Hercynian|Herc.]]
! [[Alpianic|Alp.]]
! [[Puranian|Pur.]]
! [[Durian]]
! [[Padivian|Pad.]]
! [[Proto-Indo-European|PIE]]
|-
| ph || ph || p/f || pf/f || f || p || f || p
|-
| th || th || t/θ || ts/s || t || t || f || t
|-
| kh || kh || k/x || kx/x || k || k || h || k
|-
| p || p || p || ph || p || p || p || b
|-
| t || t || t || th || t || t || t || d
|-
| k || k || k || kh || k || k || k || g
|-
| b || b || b/v || p || b || b || b || bh
|-
| d || d || d/ð || t || d || d || d || dh
|-
| g || g || g/ɣ || k || g || g || g || gh
|-
| s || s || s || h || s || s || s || s
|-
| x || ʕ/h || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || h || h2/h3
|-
| h || ʕ/h || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || 0 || h1
|-
| m || m || m || m || m || m || m || m
|-
|-
|valign="top"|Spoken in:
| n || n || n || n || n || n || n || n
||Europe {{ #if:  | () | {{ #if:  | () }} }}
|-
|-
|valign="top"|Timeline/Universe:
| l || l || l || l || l || l || l || l
||[[League of Lost Languages]]
|-
|-
|valign="top"|Total speakers:
| r || r || r || r || r || r || r || r
||(number of speakers)
|-
|-
|valign="top"|Genealogical classification:
| w || w || w || f || v || v || v || w
||'''Hesperic'''
:[[Albic]]
:further languages on the continent
|-
|-
|valign="top"|[[Basic word order]]:
| j || j || j || j || j || j || j || y
||
|-
|-
|valign="top"|[[Morphological type]]:
| u || u || u || u || u || u || u || eu/ou/u
||
|-
|-
|valign="top"|[[Morphosyntactic alignment]]:
| i || i || i || i || i || i || i || ei/oi/i
||  
|-
|-
|colspan="2" bgcolor="#CCFF00" align="center" |'''Created by:'''
| a || a || a || a || a || a || a || e/o/0
|-
|-
||[[User:WeepingElf|Jörg Rhiemeier || 2000-
|}
|}


[[User:WeepingElf|Jörg Rhiemeier]]'s interest in the Hesperic family has a second side: he speculatively re-creates some of these languages in the framework of the [[League of Lost Languages]], expanding upon the meagre evidence we have at our disposal, as conlangs.  So far, he concentrates on the [[Albic]] languages, a branch of Hesperic spoken in the British Isles by the [[British Elves]], who form a branch of the Bell Beaker culture.
[[Category:Hesperic|*]]
 
[[Category:Atla]]
[[Category:Historical linguistics]]
[[Category:LLL]]
[[Category:LLL]]
[[Category:Conlangs]]
[[Category:Conlangs]]
[[Category:Diachronic conlangs]]
[[Category:Indo-European conlangs]]
[[Category:Artlangs]]

Latest revision as of 12:14, 15 January 2024

This document describes an obsolete version of the Hesperic family which is currently undergoing a major revision. --WeepingElf (talk) 12:14, 15 January 2024 (PST)

Hesperic
Spoken in: Europe
Conworld: Atla
Total speakers: ca. 50,000
Genealogical classification: Indo-European
Hesperic
see below
Basic word order: varies
Morphological type: varies
Morphosyntactic alignment: varies
Created by:
Jörg Rhiemeier 2000-


Hesperic is a family of diachronic conlangs by Jörg Rhiemeier spoken in the world of Atla. This family forms an early diverging branch of the Indo-European family, even more archaic than Anatolian. So far, Old Albic is the best-elaborated language of the family.

Sources

The Hesperic language family was originally built on an internal reconstruction (by the author himself, but drawing on the ideas of various scholars such as T. V. Gamkrelidze, V. V. Ivanov and the late, lamented J. E. Rasmussen) of an early stage of Proto-Indo-European; a part of the vocabulary is based on words in Celtic and Germanic languages without good PIE etymologies which may be loanwords from a substratum language. Further inspiration for the building of the family came from the Uralic and Kartvelian language families.

Since then, the author has changed his view concerning the degree of relationship between Hesperic and Indo-European, from a sister group of IE as a whole to a branch that forked off at about the same time as Anatolian, and he is currently reworking the fictional history of the family in order to make it fit the new assumptions regarding its origin.

Conlangs of inspirational value are chiefly the Quendian (J. R. R. Tolkien), Eastern (Mark Rosenfelder) and Sunovian (Geoff Eddy) families which inspired me to build a large, diverse language family.

Overview (intrafictional)

The Hesperic languages are spoken in various residual zones in Central and Western Europe, with a total number of speakers not exceeding 50,000 today, though the family once had many more speakers (Old Albic alone is estimated to have been spoken by about 2 million people at its apogee about 600 BC).

This family is a branch of Indo-European that separated from the rest of the family early, perhaps around 3500 BC, and is probably associated with the first wave of Indo-European expansion which also resulted in the formation of the Anatolian branch.

Proto-Hesperic would have been spoken about 3000 BC in Central Europe, and thus probably contemporaneous to the Late PIE the standard reconstruction represents (which may have been likewise about 3000 BC, but the dating is controversial). The family also shows similarities to the Uralic languages, and appears to be something like the "missing link" between Indo-European and Uralic. Typological similarities also exist to the Kartvelian languages, but this does not appear to reveal a relationship, unless these similarities can be ascribed to a Krelian substratum.

Today, however, all Hesperic languages have to be considered endangered, and none has official status in the country or countries where it is spoken.

Classification

Hesperic

  • North Hesperic
  • Low Elvish
  • South Hesperic


Influence of Standard Average European

The Hesperic languages have been influenced to various degrees by the Standard Average European linguistic area. The influence of this Sprachbund is strongest in Alpianic and weakest in Albic.

Main sound correspondences

PH Albic Herc. Alp. Pur. Durian Pad. PIE
ph ph p/f pf/f f p f p
th th t/θ ts/s t t f t
kh kh k/x kx/x k k h k
p p p ph p p p b
t t t th t t t d
k k k kh k k k g
b b b/v p b b b bh
d d d/ð t d d d dh
g g g/ɣ k g g g gh
s s s h s s s s
x ʕ/h 0 0 0 0 h h2/h3
h ʕ/h 0 0 0 0 0 h1
m m m m m m m m
n n n n n n n n
l l l l l l l l
r r r r r r r r
w w w f v v v w
j j j j j j j y
u u u u u u u eu/ou/u
i i i i i i i ei/oi/i
a a a a a a a e/o/0
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