Authoranian Language

The Authoranian Language is a Morthelic language that was developed in Authorania where it is the official language. Authoranian has developed over the course of Authorania's history to becoming one of the most widely spoken languages in the Mortal World.

Authoranian was developed out of an ancient Morthanian dialects and the language's writing system was developed to increase literacy.

History
Authoranian gets its roots from the Morthanian language spoken in Ancient Morthania.

Due to Morthania's size, many different dialects of the Morthanian Language were spoken by people who lived in different parts of Morthania. This became an issue when Morthania fell and the refugees who established Authorania would be speaking different dialects of Modern Morthanian.

When Authorania was established, high ranking Morthanian politicians took charge of the new government and thus Modern Morthanian became the official language of the new nation. This created a class divide since the upper class primarily spoke Modern Morthanian while the peasants primarily spoke East Morthanian.

The act of making Modern Morthanian the official language of Authorania barred many peasants from obtaining jobs or even knowing what was going on in their government. This is because books, lectures and laws were written in Modern Morthanian while very little was written in the primarily peasant language of East Morthanian.

Early Authoranian
A great debate began in the country as peasants began to rally for a change of the official language. Although some politicians strictly were against a language reformation, many politicians agreed that a common language known by everyone should be developed. Thus, Early Authoranian was established.Early Authoranian was a mix of the Modern Morthanian and East Morthanian dialects and it was developed in order to ease the learning of the language by the Modern Morthanian speaking upper class and the East Morthanian speaking peasants. Although this dialect was the birth of Authoranian and became the first language in Authorania to be universally taught in schools, Early Authoranian was still a hard language to master and literacy was low in the peasant population.

However, Early Authoranian remained the known language in Authorania for years until natural evolution of the language ended Early Authoranian and established Premodern Authoranian.

Premodern Authoranian
Premodern Authoranian was the result of natural progression of Early Authoranian throughout the years. Premodern Authoranian was established as the new dialect of Authoranian when a grammar shift occurred. It is unknown what caused this grammar shift but it is speculated that the marrying of peasant slang and proper Authoranian lead to the shift.

Along with the grammar shift, a new lettering system was introduced. Early Authoranian used the Morthanian lettering system which was hard to learn, especially for uneducated peasants. This lead to a high illiteracy rate within the nation and government officials wanted to combat this. They came up with a new writing system, based on East Morthanian, called the Nilapotin Alphabet which is still used today. Since Premodern Authoranian used letters instead of symbols that represented words and sounds, it was easier for peasants to read and write thus the illiteracy rate fell.

Modern Authoranian
Modern Authoranian saw a vowel shift which changed the vowel sounds to AH, EH, IH, OH, OO.

When speaking informally, people began to change the grammar structure at will.

Some letters and accents of Premodern Authorania began to phase out. Letters that disappeared while transitioning to Modern Authoranian were the letters for GEE, QUH and EX. In Modern Authoranian, these sounds morphed into JUH for GUH, HEH for QUH and ZAMA for EX.

Grammar
Authoranian is structured SVO (Subject Verb Object) and this structure is used most of the time when speaking or reading. Occasionally Authoranians will use the SOV structure. The SVO structure is used mainly in literature and is seen as the most formal way of speaking while SOV structure is used mainly when talking and is considered informal.

Formal Sentences
An example of a formal Authoranian sentence:

"I want to hike a mountain"

"Me nal-la hilk tinullu"

This translates to: "Me want (future tense marker) hike mountain"

Authoranian does not have the word “I” to represent yourself it only has the word “me”.

In this example, “la” is used to show future tense, meaning that the person wants to hike the mountain in the future. These tense markers are always placed after the verb in order to show whether the subject is occurring in the past (de), present (wa) or future (la).

If this example was to be spoken informally, it could be structured in an SOV (I mountain want to hike) or even an OSV (mountain I want to hike) structure, although this is completely up to the speaker.

Informal Sentences
When speaking informally in Authoranian, the speaker can cut out some words in a sentence, leaving a minimal amount of words that could be understood by the recipient. The speaker can also use slang words while structuring the sentence in a formal way, this is called “informal-formal sentence structure”.

An example of this:

"Hey how are you doing?"

“Heh, wen alru finu-wa?”

This is an example of an “informal-formal” sentence. These types of sentences are informal due to their use of “slang” words ("alru" is slang for “are you”, the formal being “al ruus”) but use formal sentence structure, specifically the use of a tense marker. Speakers usually use these informal-formal sentences with acquaintances, however, sometimes speakers have to use this sentence structure in order to convey the meaning of a word, especially words that rely on tense markers. In this example, the word “doing/do” (Finu-wa) only exists because of the tense marker. “Finu” by itself means “there” but when attached with a tense marker it changes to “doing/do” (-wa) “did” (-de) or “will do” (-la).

Another example:

"I am reading a book."

"Rena buk" In this informal sentence, there are a lot less words, translating to “read book”. It also does not include a tense marker. This type of informality is only used between best friends, family or to people you don't respect as it is considered rude to speak in this manner to someone you don't know or are not friends with.

Dialects
The Authoranian Language is home to a few dialects that range from mostly intelligible to an Authoranian speaker to almost completely unintelligible. These dialects stem from a separation from the source language through terrestrial obstacles or enforced revisions.

Antillian
The Antillian Language is an Authoranian dialect spoken in the village of Antillia. The village was founded by Authoranians during the Andurrillio Testament Era, when Premodern Authoranian was spoken. Due to Antillia being self-governed and having no Authoranian influence, the language never advanced to Modern Authoranian. Thus Antillian is seen as a “relic language” to Authoranians, a look into how their language used to be spoken.

However, the Antillian Language is mostly Premodern Authoranian but differs slightly in grammar but mostly in words. As the Authoranians slowly evolved Premodern Authoranian into Modern Authoranian, the same happened to the Premodern Authoranian spoken in Antillia, only on another branch. While Antillian did go through its own revisions, it still is basically Premodern Authoranian.

To Authoranians, Antillians are barely understandable. Their accents are very thick due to their Premodern Authoranian pronunciation of vowels along with some words being different. The Antillian Language also has the extra letters and accents that were phased out in Modern Authoranian, this makes reading Antillian quite difficult for an Authoranian.

Despite the differences, Antillian is one of the easiest languages to learn for an Authoranian speaker. Antillian is a very close relative of Authoranian so the learning curve is not very steep and the two languages share a lot of words. Most Authoranians can pick up on context clues when being spoken to in Antillian and most Antillian merchants can speak Authoranian.