Languages of Abravost

The moment you get a drop of liquor in that elf down the road, you can't understand a word he says. All p's and w's. D'ya hear him tryna say the name of this city? Powenis. What a riot!

— New Fovenis resident

The continent of Abravost has two major languages spoken on it - Vostan, the language of humans, and Elven, the language of elves.

Vostan

Vostan is the language of humans, and derives from the language spoken by the Vosti people. Its use across Abravost became widespread due to the Vosti Conquest, which took place over the course of a century and saw the Vosti claim all land on the continent. Vostan picked up variety of aspects in the languages it subsumed, and discard for more. Those initial languages are a large source of internal variety, as well as geographical separations.

The major dialect difference is between the western people of Skarhu and the eastern people of Telziad and Vost, with a large difference being that the latter are non-rhotic, and that the former has higher rates of aspiration in consonants.

Elven

Elven is the language of elves, and is more accurately a language family. This is due to the elves having a variety of languages, which were forced together by The Collision, and which have slowly merged and cross-pollinated into the generic 'Elven' language. Due to the mixture of source languages, there is a higher variety of diversity than in Vostan, mostly centered around major towns and cities in Waal Zaimyatl. The form of Elven spoken around the city of Waal Paisheim is considered the 'proper' and academic form of the language.

How The Languages Interact

Vostan and Elven have very different phonologies and morphological structures, causing a lot of confusion when they attempt to speak each others languages. The table above shows some of the most common substitutions speaks will make, with the left showing how Vostan speakers approach Elven sounds, and the right the reverse.

Phonological Substitutions

Of particular note are the sounds /ə/ (Elven) and /f/ (Vostan). In Vostan, /ə/ is not a sound they technically use, but it comes up more and more frequently in its eastern dialects, often in the form of the word 'dan'. This word, often found in surnames and meaning 'child of', is pronounced as |dan| in careful eastern speech and all western speech, but |dən| in freer eastern. As such, using the vowel sound /a/ instead of /ə/ is limited mostly to speakers of the Skarhan form of Vostan.

/f/ is a very interesting sound when it comes to Elven speakers saying Vostan words. As Elven lacks any close equivalent, it approximates, leading to the use of two sounds (p and ʃ, or sh) in its place. Which sound is used varies on where in the word the f is placed. If the f is at the start of a word, as in the name of the city New Fovenis, it will be pronounced with a /p/ sound. If the f is at the end of a word, such as in the old name 'Eruf', it will be pronounced with a /ʃ/ sound, or completely dropped. If it is in the middle of the word, it will depend on whether it is before another consonant (ʃ) or before a vowel (p).

Elven also has no rhotic, which leads to interesting situations. In cases where the r is before a vowel, it will become an /l/. If it is before another consonant, such as in the word 'warzen', the r will be omitted entirely in favour of an elongated vowel sound. It is this which is often credited with the 'non-rhoticism' of the eastern dialects of Vostan, as this is how they handle such sounds as well.

Phonotactic Alterations

For Vostan speakers, Elven phonotactics are not too difficult once they get past the new sounds they have to learn. This is due to Vostan's quite flexible syllabic structure, wherein the only requirement is that a syllable contain a vowel.

The reverse is not true for Elven speakers learning Vostan. Elven syllabic structure requires that all syllables begin with a consonant, and has a very limited amount of sounds (m, tl, ng, and l) which can be used in the coda position. This often results in speakers inserting consonants where there were none previously. An example is the name 'Rien' (ɹi.en), which would be approached by Elven speakers as 'Liyeng' (li.yeŋ) instinctively. It also results in them turning separate vowel sounds into diphthongs, even though Vostan has no phonemic diphthongs.

These difficulties are further compounded by Vostan's use of consonant clusters, such as in the very word 'Vostan' (vost.an). In that case, Elven would separate the two out to create Wostan (wos.tan). Alternatively, the cluster will have a vowel inserted to make it easier to approach, ie Wositan (wo.si.tan). An exception to both is clusters involving /ɹ/, such as the place name 'Robardon'. The r will almost always be deleted completely in favour of an elongated preceding vowel, therefore it becomes 'Lopaaton' (Lɒ.pa:.tɒn).