Proto-Besokian language

The Proto-Besokian language (PBs. [Mîlûd] Hârunin) is the common ancestor of the Besokian languages. Spoken between the 4th and 3rd millennium B.E.B. in Nishûnâc and the surrounding areas, it was the primary language of the early Besokian culture before splitting into multiple descendant branches as the Besokian peoples dispersed from their original homeland, most significantly the Soskish languages. As main liturgical language of the Besokian cult it was preserved in writing early on, rendering it one of two potential candidates for the first written language in Elondor (beside Classical Shaharian).

Etymology

The Besokian appellation is exonymic, stemming from its association with the Besokian peoples, a term in turn derived from their original distribution along, and association with, the Besokan river. the endonym Hârnunin more generally refers to the people of the Second Hill (Nishûnâc), serving as the early Besokian’s name for themselves and a broader racial designation separating them from the peoples of Belkondíl and Seligon.

History

Attestation and Classification

Proto-Besokian is sparsely attested in writing in two stone carvings at Nishûnâc, the Hêrûn hâm Hôrenod and the Old Besokian world map, the oldest carvings at the site with a presumed date of origin in the early Bronze Age, around 2000 B.E.B. for the latter but potentially significantly earlier for the former, closer to the first Dasmilian writings in the mid-3rd century. Like the younger Old Besokian carvings at the site, they are written in the Old Besokian abugida, the common ancestor of the Besokian script family.

The variety thus preserved is the oldest tangible Besokian idiom, and although it shows much greater similarity to Old Besokian and the Soskish languages than to its northern descendants, it has generally been accepted as a plausible ancestor for the Besokian family as a whole, and missing lemmas can easily be reconstructed on account of attested daughter languages. Outside of the family, the Proto-Besokian seems to be closest related to the near-contemporary Proto-Andaro-Yenmic, presumed to have been spoken in the northern Besokan valley, forming a hypothetical Macro-Reknayan language family.

Distribution and Speakers

Proto-Besokian was spoken by the early Besokian farming community at Nishûnâc and the surrounding areas subdued in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. The oldest attested form of the language, the idiom used in the Hêrûn hâm Hôrenod, seems to date to around 2400 B.E.B., an early time of Besokian prosperity on the eve of the Besokian explorations. No earlier evidence for a Besokian language exists, but the continuous settlement of Nishûnâc from at least 3500 B.E.B. suggests a continuous language spoken at the site, even if over multiple historical stages.

Its attestation in writing and geographical dispersal into the Besokian family relay that the language was both a vernacular