Modern Arithide

Arithide (Arithīde)
Pronounced:	'ærɪθi:d (arɯ'θi:de)
Timeline and Universe:	Ilethes
Species:	Human   Areth
Spoken:	Arithia; major auxiliary language in the West
Total speakers:	(tba)
Writing system:	Lazeian alphabet
Genealogy:	Arophanic   Arithidic   North Arithidic
Typology
Morphological type:	Inflecting
Morphosyntactic alignment:	Accusative
Basic word order:	SOV
Credits
Creator:	Eugene Oh
Created:	late 2005

Modern Arithide is the standard tongue of Arithia, and the modern descendant of Classical Arithide through Koine Arithide. It is mostly spoken by the Areth, although significant numbers of people speak it as a second or third language across Arophania and Marcasia.

See also Arithide language for more information

on the language's history and a diachronic analysis.

Name and Genealogy

The name Arithide is from the Arithide arithīde, combining Areth with -īde, the suffix denoting languages.

Writing and Orthography

Romanisation

The romanisation of Arithide is based strictly on the rule of a 1:1 correspondence in orthography between the Roman and Lazeic alphabets, such that any transcript is fully reversible; besides ignoring sound-changes that have occurred since the Arithide Renaissance, this also leads occasionally to pronunciations strange to the Western ear. Alternative romanisations are mainly phonetically-based, and involve less mind-work in pronunciation.

Consonants

Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound
Pp	p~pʰ		Ff	f
Bb	b		Vv	v, f		Mm	m, ɱ
Tt	t~tʰ		THth	θ
Dd	d, ð		DHdh	ð, θ		Nn	n, ŋ
			Ss	s
			Zz	z, dz
TIti, CHch1	ʧ		SJsj, SHsh1	ʃ
DIdi2	ʤ		GIgi1	ʒ
Kk	k~kʰ		Hh	h
Gg3	g, j, w					GNgn, NGng4	ŋ
						Rr5	r, ʁ, s, :
						Ll5	l
						Jj6	j
						Ww6	w

¹

Diphthongal sequences of [ti], [tj] + vowel gave rise to the new phoneme /ʧ/, which received its own letter in the Renaissance period; similarly, from [si], [sj] + vowel developed /ʃ/, which also gained its own letter at the same time. The new letters are used to indicate the /ʧ/ and /ʃ/ sounds where not historically derived, such as in loanwords; or where the conditioning vowel has been lost, especially at the ends of words. Additionally, [ʃ] deriving from a word- or syllable-finally devoiced /ʒ/ is written with <sh> instead of <gi>.

²

The sound /ʤ/ only occurs in syllable-initial position due to historical reasons: it arose from the diphthongal sequence [di], [dj] + vowel. When <di> occurs without a subsequent vowel the value of the digraph is the consonant+vowel combination [di].

³

The post-vocalic [g]-lenition that began in the Renaissance with [g] > [ɣ] proceeded further in the modern era to give [j] after [a], [e], [i] (as well as modifying the vowel qualities) and [w] after [o]. Etymological orthographic rules dictate the preservation of <g> in such cases.

⁴

From the [gn] and [ng] sequences developed the /ŋ/ phoneme, in the former case by nasalising the [g], and in the latter by velarising the [n] and losing the [g]. Whereas historical [ng] has since received its own letter and is written with it unless the [g] was preserved by a succeeding vowel (in which case the orthographical sequence <ng> is retained), historical [gn] has been preserved in spelling due to the strong retentiveness of the latter [n] element, even where the sequence has coalesced to a simple [ŋ].

⁵

In combination with preceding vowels, [r] has been lost, instead giving rise to a host of (mostly) rounded long vowels; the new sounds have retained the traditional orthography using <r>. Analogically, a similar scenario has occurred with [l], albeit without loss of the [l] sound, resulting merely in altered vowel qualities. 

⁶

The devocalisation of pre-vocalic [i] to [j] and [u] to [w] that occurred during the Mediaeval period necessitated two new letters due to syllabification ambiguity and stress shifts.

Vowels

Monographs represent monophthongs; each letter may be read in up to four different ways depending on its surrounding letters

Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound
Aa	a, ɔ, ə		Āā	a:, a
Ee	e, ɛ, ə		Ēē	e:~jɛ, e
Ii	i, ɪ, ɯ		Īī	i:, i
Oo	o, ɔ, œ, ə		Ōō	o:, o, œ:
Uu	u, ʉ, ɯ		Ūū	y:, ʏ
Yy	y, ʏ

Digraphs generally indicate diphthongs. Across the board, spelling fossilisation has occurred, leading to irregular sound-letter correspondences even in the native script, such as <oi>:[ei]. [ja] <ja> is the only sound not to have changed at all; besides it, regularly pronounced digraphs, i.e. <eu>, <jo>, <ju>, <ua>, <we> and non-post-consonantal <je> are the result of recent spelling reforms.

Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound		Letter	Sound
AEae	ai		EAea	a:		JAja	ja		UAua	wa		WAwa	ɔ:
AIai	e		EIei	i:		JEje	je		OEoe	oi		WEwe	we
AOao	au		1			JOjo	jo		OIoi	ei		2
AUau	o		EUeu	eu~eo		JUju	ju		OUou	u:		WOwo	o:

¹

[eo] <eo>merged with [jo] and hence <jo>

²

[ui] <ui> became [y] and never again arose subsequently

See also

• Arithide Sample Text Corpus

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