Priserian (Priserian: پ یثحات Phae Etha'at) is a Priseric language that is native to Priseria. Having around 100 million speakers, it is the most common language in Priseria and a minority language in Crepetown.
Priserian is part of the landwards group of Priseric languages, characterised by its native speakers mainly living on the mainland of Priseria. The other languages in this group include Tiradom and Paerisa, the latter of which was also known as North Priserian for a long time, and is where English gets the name "Priseria" from. The other group of Priseric languages, known as the Seawards languages, comprise of Tyrranese, Atlantean and Kathrinian, characterised by its native speakers either being mer-people or people living on smaller islands.
Around 80% of Priserian vocabulary is derived from Old Priserian, with the other 20% being loanwords from mostly Krepian and Swahili. The loanwords mostly date from the 14th to 15th century when Priseria was actively involved with trade with its neighbours.
Priserian is not a tonal language, however due to its high number of consonants, it has a steep learning consonants for speakers of other languages. It is written in the Priserian abjad, which is a pure abjad written right to left based on the Arabic script. Vowels are derived solely by context. In recent years, vowel marks in the form of dots have been introduced to aid schoolchildren and foreign learners in learning the language, but such vowel marks have not been standardised and vary between publishers.
Phonology
Unlike other languages written in the Arabic script, Priserian orthography is not phonological, that is to say, each letter may not represent the sound it usually represents. As such, learning commonly-occurring combinations of letters will get you further in learning Priserian pronunciation than to learn the base pronunciations.
Vowels
Priserian has eight distinct vowels, and 26 distinct consonant phonemes.
| Front | Back, Central | |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i /i/ | u /ɯ~u/ |
| Close-mid | e /e/ | o /o/ |
| Open-mid | ae /ɛ/ | oe /ɔ/ |
| Open | a /a/ | oa /ɑ~ɒ/ |
Priserian has no diphthongs, all possible diphthongs have already evolved into monophthongs (Proto-priseric /ai/ -> /e/ and Proto-priseric /au/ -> /o/). However, recent studies comparing Tyrranese and Priserian propose that Priserian did not have diphthongs to begin with, instead all /ai/ or /aj/ and /au/ or /aw/ in loanwords were instantly Priserised to /e/ and /o/ respectively. There are no distinctions in rounding.
Consonants
Priserian has a wide consonant inventory, reflected in its use of a total of 27 consonant letters, each representing a unique consonant.
| Priserian script | Name | IPA value | Romanisation | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ا | halif | - | (vowel) | Represents an /ɛ/, /a/, or /ɑ/. |
| ٮ | be | /b/ | b | |
| ب | pe | /p/ | p | |
| پ | phe | /pʰ/ | ph | |
| ت | te | /t/ | t | |
| ث | the | /tʰ/ | th | |
| ج | jim | /d͡ʒ/ | j | Rarely used in modern Priserian |
| ح | ha | /ʔ/ | h | Priserian dropped their h's |
| خ | xa | /x/ | x | |
| د | dal | /d/ | d | |
| ر | re | /r/ | r | |
| ز | zen | /z/ | z | |
| س | syin | /ʂ/ | sy | |
| ش | syhin | /ʂʰ/ | syh | |
| ص | sad | /s/ | s | |
| ڝ | shad | /sʰ/ | sh | |
| ظ | zya | /ʐ/ | zy | |
| گ | gaf | /g/ | g | |
| ک | kaf | /k/ | k | |
| ػ, ق | khaf | /kʰ/ | kh | ق only used in loanwords |
| ف | fa | /f/ | f | |
| ڤ | va | /v/ | v | |
| ل | lam | /l/ | l | |
| م | mim | /m/ | m | |
| ن | nun | /n/ | n | |
| ی | ya | /j/ | y | Doubles as a vowel placeholder. |
| و | waw | /w/ | w | Doubles as a vowel placeholder. |
Romanisation
Priserian has an official romanisation system known as the Priserian Latin Alphabet, or Phae Latine Tha'at. It was created by Catholic missionaries during the 1600s as a way to transcribe the then widely-used Traditional Priserian Abjad, the original writing system of Priseria. Like the Priserian Abjad, the Traditional Priserian Abjad is not phonological, which made the Priserian Latin Alphabet non-phonological as well. While this Wiki article uses Phae Latine Tha'at, a phonological transcription will be written in brackets as well. Do note that since all scripts used to write Priserian do not include vowels, the vowels in Phae Latine Tha'at are phonological.
Writing System
Priserian is written in the Priserian abjad, an abjad developed from Persian and Arabic. However, Priserian spelling is not phonetic, instead using a complicated system involving letters placed before and after a certain letter to derive its pronunciation. Vowels are completely not written in Priserian as well, and the letters ا, ی and و have special rules regarding their use as a vowel placeholder.
Grammar
Priserian is a strict SVO/V2 language, the same order used in German. It has 3 noun genders, masculine, feminine and neuter, which affects pronunciation of words that come either before or after the noun. Since Priserian is also an agglunative language, highly inflected words can become very long, which makes