Seligonian Languages
The name taken on its own reveals what part of the world this family is from and hints at its importance. Indeed, the Seligonian Languages are the most prominent and by far the most widespread of Seligon’s three ancient language families (the others being Avalian and Iliatarian). And yet, it is one of the ancient language families, and, not unlike Avalian, it saw its heyday before Lécaronian times, in the empires and civilizations of the Bronze Age. All great literary language of Seligon, save for Classical Shaharic, came from this family, and before the Olgish conquest, most of Seligon spoke languages that were members of this family.
The external history of the Seligonian Languages is, especially relative to their size as a family, perhaps the most curious and of all of my language families, and with certainty the most consequential after the inciting construction of Olgish and Aribelian. Their construction began with a single language, what would later become the High Dialect of ‘Iru Ni‘i, created over a fairly short period of time during end-of-semester boredom in high school in June 2016. A blend of Polynesian phonotactics and a particle-based grammar inspired in part by that of Japanese, it was originally meant to have been an isolate, remnant only as a substrate explaining some of the alien names of southern Seligon. Only one and half years late, I decided that more indigenous languages were required in Seligon and that I should begin work on a third major language family. Working backwards in time, I first created a Macro-Proto-Language, then moving forward to a Proto-Language shared by all of the family except for ‘Iru Ni‘I (to explain a number of grammatical innovations I was planning) and further into its first branch, Armundic, thus constructing a Latinate pastiche from a Polynesian base (possibly one of my more extravagant phonotactic projects). Not as thoroughly sketched out as most of my other language families, it has for most of its existence been a creation on-the-go, with languages and entire branches added whenever needed or convenient.
Branches and Languages
- Early Proto-Seligonian
Notes
History
The history of the Seligonian languages reaches further back in time than that of their neighbouring families, except perhaps for that of Avalian. It can be presumed that the ancestors of the later Seligonians already inhabited an area central to Seligon, the Armundic Valley east of the Ruah Mountains. The language tentatively called Early Proto-Seligonian, or alternatively Primitive Proto-Seligonian or Proto-Macro-Seligonian, was spoken in the late Neolithic; it is the direct ancestor to only one sub-branch of Seligonian, the languages of the ‘Iru Ni‘i, who seem to have left the Armundic Valley around 4000 B. E. B. and migrated southward where they established several chiefdoms on the Great Islands of Jallan, Ancarion, Edessa, and Asarok, and finally a kingdom spanning them all. Their languages remained in fairly stable use for almost four millennia, until they culture was first diminished under the Fenedic Empire and finally destroyed after the Olgish Conquest of Seligon. As with the majority of Seligon’s languages, many ‘Iru words and phrases remain in everyday use as substrate in the local dialect of Soskish. One and a half millennia after the separation of ‘Iru Ni‘i, three more subfamilies branched off what had now become Proto-Seligonian; first the Ruldôrians, who migrated east, founding the cities of Urukash and Olksûr, defeating the Nokimi and conquering their states, and establishing some of the greater empires of the Middle Bronze Age; second the Hyatti, who were known to be the most mystic of all peoples of Elondor and dwelled in relative peace in
third the Armundians, who migrated south, founding Serdon and Tinaris and becoming the most