Dictionary:About Middle Airananwe
This page documents the dictionary's practice for Middle Airananwe (code YAR-AI), the medieval stage of Airananwe, descended from Gaillean. It is the bridge between the ancient language and the modern trade language: its forms are reconstructed from the two attested stages, and carry no asterisk.
Middle Airananwe has no recorded native name.
Development from Gaillean
The medieval stage carries the regular half of the distance to the modern language: the vowels and the endings. The consonants remain conservative — bh, gh, th, zh all survive, as they do into the modern language.
- Monophthongisation. The diphthongs became long vowels, written with a circumflex: ae > ê, oe > ô, ao, au > â, oi > o (ghaelleas > ghêleas; kubhoewne > kubhôune).
- The verb ending -ei is respelt -ê — a spelling change rather than a sound change, as Gaillean -ei was already /eː/ word-finally (zumei > zumê).
- Depalatalisation. Gaillean ll /ʎ/ became plain l (illa > ila, ghalla > ghala). The modern language's lh is a separate, later development.
- Degemination. The true geminates mm, pp, tt reduced; nn, ss, ff and rr held, and still stand today (emmora > emora, peramme > perame).
- The glide vocalised: w > u (awbhientuz > aubhientus). The digraph zw is untouched.
- Loss of initial prenasalisation: mb-, mp- > b-, p- (mbila > bila, mporonat > poronat).
- r was lost before the velar fricative: rgh > gh.
- The ending -uz devoiced to -us; its loss belongs to the modern stage (artuz > artus > modern art).
- Adpositions cliticised. Gaillean's free adpositions began to univerbate with their nouns; all 27 that survive are bound forms in the modern language.
Of 512 Gaillean entries, 288 change shape at this stage.
Orthography
Middle Airananwe keeps Gaillean's consonant digraphs (bh gh ph th zh zw) and adds the circumflex vowels ê ô â. It has no acute accents: those mark the modern language's eroded endings and belong to the stage after this one.
Gender
Gaillean's classes are stem-classes — F in -a, M1 in -e, M2 in -t, N1 in -z, N2 in -u, with the X classes being those words that fit no pattern. Middle Airananwe reduces three genders to two and nine classes to four:
| Gaillean | Middle | stem |
|---|---|---|
| F, FX | F1 | -a |
| N2 | F2 | -u |
| M1, MX, NX | M1 | -e |
| M2, N1 | M2 | -t, -us |
The neuter split by stem, as Latin's did: consonant-stem neuters joined the masculine, vowel-stem neuters went feminine. The modern language has since lost gender altogether.
See also
- Dictionary:About Besoh — the same practice, for the Andusian family
- Gaillean language, Airananwe language