Middle Olgish language
Middle Olgish, also Middle Cëlacian or Middle Eastern Olgish (Olg. Olgenam), is a historical stage of the Eastern (Cëlacian) Olgish language, spoken in the late Iron Age and into the first centuries of the Lécaronian Empire. It is closely related to, but in both grammar and lexicon distinct from, Liturgical Middle Olgish.
History and classification
Etymology
The term Olgenam, earlier Olginam derives from the Ortûlékian ethnonym Olgi ‘the skilful ones’ + nam ‘custom, way, language’, from an original root *olg- ‘skilful, artful, deft’. The name was applied to one of the Three Peoples of Ortûlék, ostensibly the ancestors of the Olgs, beside the Géni and the Auli, traditionally considered the ancestors of the Aribelians and Iiles, respectively. It is used endonymically by all speakers of non-differentiated Cëlacian dialects (that being, those other than Corbian and Wertian) for their language.
Dating and historical scope
Middle Olgish is considered to progress from Old Olgish from the middle of the ninth century E.B. The first three centuries of this development, characterized by multiple waves of rapid sound change, the Middle Olgish Unrest, fall under the term Early Middle Olgish. It is during this phase that Fádin updates the language of the Lonsorigi, and his Liturgical Middle Olgish is a variety of this early Middle Olgish; under the prominence of Fádin’s Tongue, this stage of Middle Olgish is often as a whole grouped under the umbrella of Liturgical Middle Olgish, even though only a very particular idiom is in fact used by the Olgish church and, thereafter, the Lécaronian bureaucracy.
From the mid-twelfth century, the Middle Olgish Unrest begins to diminish, although it will not fully subside for another four hundred years. This second, more stable and consistent, stage of the language is considered Middle Olgish proper and the idiom generally referred to by the term Middle Olgish alone. It shows significant divergences from Liturgical Middle Olgish, from which it is over a century removed, but remains intelligible with the holy language, especially to those intimately familiar with Fádin’s Lonsorigi and their, from the Middle Olgish perspective, rather peculiar vocabulary.
While official religious texts themselves are always kept in their Liturgical Middle Olgish form, many prayers, formulas, and other turns of phrase popularized in Fádin’s formal register are eventually ‘colloquialized’ into a form closer to spoken Middle Olgish, often retaining the original wording and structure but adjusting pronunciation and sometimes grammar to more closely resemble the vernacular.
After more than three centuries of relative stability, the final waves of the Unrest begin to emerge in the early third century L.R. (the 16th century E.B.), as the number of everyday Olgish speakers rapidly dwindles in an increasingly cosmopolitan Lécaron. The ensuing sound changes again are significant, and Middle Olgish transitions into New Olgish around the mid-third century. In Seligon, the dialect of the Olgish-speaking but linguistically fairly isolated Northern Feldin diverges independently from Middle Olgish around 200 years later and is considered an independent language, Northern Feldic.
Phonology
Note that the below refer specifically to post-twelfth century Middle Olgish; the structure of Early Middle Olgish is discussed in the separate article.
Phoneme inventory
| bilabial | labiodental | alveolar | post-alveolar | velar | labiovelar | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plosive | /p~pʰ/ /b/ | /t~tʰ/ /d/ | /k~kʰ/ /g/ | ||||
| fricative | /f/ /v/ | /s/ | /h/ | ||||
| nasal | /m/ | /n/ | |||||
| tap | /ɾ~r/ | ||||||
| lateral | /l/ | ||||||
| approximant | /j/ | /w/ |
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | /iː/ /ɪ/ | /uː/ /ʊ/ |
| Mid | /eː/ /ɛ/ | /oː/ /ɔ/ |
| Low | (/a/) | /ɑː~aː/ /ɑ~a/ |
Significant sound changes
Vowels
The Old Olgish vowel system, already seeing reduction in Fádin’s writings, is significantly simplified, collapsing quantity with tense--lax distinctions. The separate tense and lax lengthening diacritics of Old Olgish are preserved in writing, as they were in Fádin’s Lonsorigi, making this shift hard to trace, but irregularities in their application suggest vowel quality and quantity are fully conflated by the late twelfth century. The low front unrounded vowel /a/, while still fully distinct in Liturgical Middle Olgish, disappears in writing around the same time, although it is likely to have be preserved by at least some speakers until the Early Imperial Era. The low back rounded vowel /ɒ/, which Fádin only preserved in select historical spellings, has fully disappeared.
Consonants
Relatively little change is seen in the consonantal system. The loss of interdental fricatives is complete, after Early Middle Olgish drops voiceless /θ/ but retains voiced /ð/. The Olgish fricative inventory experiences additional reduction in the loss of the voiceless velar fricative /x/, which merges with the voiced velar plosive /ɡ/. The voiceless post-alveolar fricative /ʃ/, already disappearing in Early Middle Olgish, is dropped fully, merging with /h/ between vowels and /s/ elsewhere. The voiced alveolar fricative /z/ is likewise lost in all positions.
Morphology
Middle Olgish preserves most of the innovations seen in Early/Liturgical Middle Olgish morphology, with most changes appearing in the verbal paradigms. As common across the Ortûlékian family, affixes attach fairly freely to hosts of various syntactic categories, their exact function varying with host category.
Verbal morphology
| Indicative | Subjunctive | Imperative/Optative | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SG | PL | SG | PL | SG | PL | |
| 1 | -e | -a | -ek | -ak | — | -am |
| 2 | -o | -o | -ek | -ak | -em | -om |
| 3 | -e | -a | -ek | -ak | -em | -em |
Middle Olgish mostly preserves the paradigms of its Liturgical counterpart, albeit with greater degrees of syncretism, in particular in the subjunctive. The bare imperative of Old and Liturgical Olgish is merged with the old optative, extending its -m suffix to all forms in the paradigm; while these new endings become the norm in informal spoken language and are used even more widely in New Olgish, the older bare forms are preferred in more formal contexts, particularly prayers adapted directly from Fádin’s Lonsorigi. Person/number coding is subject to considerable underspecification; traditionally, the -e ending is glossed to express singularity and the -a ending plurality, while the -o ending is thought to represent the second person in particular.
Adjectival morphology
Adjectives do not agree with the nouns they modify, like in most Olgish dialects. While they commonly appear as (pseudo-)predicates bearing verbal suffixes, the adjective-specific morphology is limited to comparison; the comparative is coded with -ár and the superlative with -ún. These are among the most commonly ‘host-travelling’ affixes and frequently appear a qualifiers in nominal and verbal constructions.
Nominal morphology
Similar to adjectives, Middle Olgish nouns display very limited morphological coding. With morphological case already lost in later Old Olgish, the only feature overtly coded for on nominals is number; Middle Olgish largely continues the highly irregular plural forms of Old Olgish but already shows some tendency towards regularization, in particular in replacing non-concatenative elements with suffixes. The already common plural suffixes -im, -in, and -a, along with the ethnonymic suffix -i are increasingly preferred, eventually leading to the nearly complete regularization of plural suffixes in New Olgish.
Syntax
Syntax in Middle Olgish matrix clauses follows a verb-second pattern, with the additional limitation that only subjects and topicalized prepositional phrases and adverbial modifier phrases can appear in C /spec, with subjects being by far the most common. Base-generated word order seems to be SVO, and the vast majority of clauses also follow this pattern on the surface, including all subordinate clauses.
Determiner phrases follow the general pattern [Determiner [Numeral [Noun Adjective]]]. Possession can be coded for in two ways, i) by forming a possessive adjective from the possessor noun with the suffix -in (heavily preferred by Fádin and the only possessive permitted in Liturgical Middle Olgish) or ii) by forming a possessive compound wherein the possessor precedes the possession (common in Old Olgish and informal Middle Olgish, but moribund already in Fádin’s time and practically out of use by the end of the Middle Olgish period).
Serial IP constructions
A hallmark feature of the Olgish family are serial IP constructions, also present in Middle Olgish, albeit somewhat rarer than in Old and Liturgical Olgish. The subject of an Olgish sentence can in theory take an arbitrary number of IPs (including objects and modifiers) as its complement without the need for conjunctions or other overt function coding; this is most commonly used to either list simultaneous or subsequent actions (and then equivalent to a coordination with dropped subject pronouns) or to add information on the subject itself (then equivalent to a relative clause with a null-marker).
This rule broadly extends to all syntactically independent nouns in Olgish, although for most non-subjects the possible applications of this construction are largely limited to that of a quasi-relative clause. In this context, such a construction may also (and possibly more usefully) analysed as a nominalized clause as a whole, rather than an IP nested in an NP.
Any nominal can further take on an IP containing its referent as a non-subject argument or modifier in the same manner. In this case, a pronoun coreferential with the noun in question will appear immediately following the verb, bare if it is a direct object or in a Prepositional Phrase if it is a modifier or indirect object. This special case is the only instance where the Olgish languages permit VOS order; this can be modelled as the lower V projection as a whole being raised to the I head while the subject remains in its base position in vP /spec (assuming the serialized/noun-dependent IP does not generate beyond the I head/the governing noun sits in a virtual IP /spec).
As there is no overt relative construction in the Olgish languages, serial IPs are the most widely used form of clausal apposition.
The definite article
Middle Olgish shares the universal definite article, terg, with Liturgical Middle Olgish. Unlike in the latter, this is used rarely and somewhat irregularly in colloquial Middle Olgish, comparable to the similar development in Biblical Greek. Most nouns appear without an article, whether definite or indefinite; terg is used only to denote very particular topical items, somewhere between the specificity of a definite and a demonstrative, and to form periphrastic possessives with pronouns. Notably, the article is often elided to a clitic t’= attaching either to the following noun or, most commonly, to a preceding preposition.
While the definite article is often preserved in colloquialized prayers and turns of phrase to a degree not seen in authentic spoken Middle Olgish, elision is usually applied where it would be in the spoken register, oftentimes creating the most notable distinctions between a prayer’s formal and colloquial variants.
Writing system
Developed specifically for his early form of Middle Olgish and popularized through his translation of the Lonsorigi, Fádin’s Calligraphy is the script most commonly used in writing formal Middle Olgish, while the simplified Lécaronian alphabet based thereof is the most widely seen in informal and utility writing. Both systems retain many Early Middle and even Old Olgish contrast eliminated in spoken Middle Olgish, leaving many written Middle Olgish forms unpredictable from their spoken counterparts and leading to a great variety in spellings, particularly among lesser-educated writers.
Prior to Fádin’s day, the most widely used writing system is the Old Olgish alphabet, which more directly corresponds to the Old Olgish runes. Considered a mere style variant rather than an independent script, it is used alongside Lécaronian writing for centuries, only gradually falling in disfavour for its more cumbersome letter shapes. It remains in sporadic use until the Late Imperial Era, particularly in the context of inscriptions, dedications, and other short texts meant to evoke the age of Olgish heroes.
Language Samples
The Hunter’s Plea, example of a formal prayer colloquialized into Middle Olgish:
Käronin, Awolin, Delgorin! T’detúnor hwénir tapa kálara närm dwa t’detáram dérita i dikara. Hínas tú náma darek i ‘ekos dimórino. Ílgarin, Elgekan, Noldáran! T’detúnor hwénir tapa jána närm dírika i nioma. Hínas tú náma darek i ‘ekos dimórino. Dúrita i ‘ébeka dem dérinem!
‘I call upon the powers of Käron, Awol, and Delgor! Bestow your protection upon our journey so that on your land we be successful and remain unharmed. We will take only according to our needs and nothing you cannot spare. I call upon the powers of Ílgar, Elgeka, and Noldára! Bestow your protection upon our hunting so that we accomplish great feats and keep our way. We will take only according to our needs and nothing you cannot spare. This is the oath for our hunt!’
The LCC11 Conscript Relay torch in Middle Olgish:
Ním ilisek kéla ahandärnek nauko. Dua té lárnur halne gelnau ráne dí kassa duat’ hern, nert elikún hárár. Binne eta wiss, eta Sosk, eta hína tér dua ilon. Duat’ lárnur kórek lár muin dé ilgib gissún kase gissún ieris gissún denwis närt bess ieskílár. Kondre nauko: Mort kínek idro dua Sosk. Gimmortik ilínare terg túrada bernet kassa eldírik nauda. Kéla ilínare kóris nau énos lár kassa ilis.
‘If all were well, I would be polite with you. Sometimes in the evening, I wonder why I work so hard preparing food at home despite so many other, more relaxing options; options like the inn, a Sosk, or all the things at the market. Tonight, the prospect of food with much salt and oil and sugar would make me happy, despite the greater cost. Let me tell you: It would be good if you went to the Sosk. A wise person remembers when their mother cooked the best food for them; and so also what pleasure good food is for the family.’
Trivia
Middle Olgish, along with the Lécaronian Alphabet, was used for the LCC11 Conscript Relay in 2025.