Yuese
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Yuese (English pronunciation: ˈyoo-ees; Yuese: talcores ievires,) is an Italic language originally spoken as the language of the Kyceir Nomads, and after their integration into Roman Society, the Later Roman Empire in sects of the Nomads and again subsequently, Iievius. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Yuese and its sister Latin, along with Latin’s daughter Romance languages are the only surviving branch of the Italic language family. Other branches of the Italic languages are attested in documents surviving from early Italy, but were assimilated during the Roman Republic.
The extensive use of elements from vernacular speech by the earliest authors and inscriptions of the Roman Republic make it clear that the original, unwritten language of the Kyceir Nomads before they were integrated was an only partially deducible colloquial form, the predecessor to Vulgar Yuese. By the early Iievian Monarchy, a standard, literate form had arisen from the speech of the educated, now referred to as Classical Yuese. Vulgar Yuese, by contrast, is the name given to the more rapidly changing colloquial language which was spoken throughout the kingdom. With the Davinian conquest, Yuese spread to many Farieran regions, and the dialects spoken in these areas, mixed to various degrees with the autochthonous languages, developed into the Tordite Tongues, including Joubur-Tordite(All-Tordite), Extan Yuese, Havairan Yuese, Choveierite Yuese, Doverite Yuese, Lovindres Tordite and Foukrand Tordite. Classical Yuese slowly changed with the Green Tunic Rebellions and the Gariol Dynasty, as education and wealth became ever scarcer. The consequent Medieval Yuese, influenced by various Davatric and Tau languages, was used as the language of communication, scholarship and science in the Farier Region until well into the 14th century, when it began to be supplanted by Imperial.
Yuese is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders, seven noun cases, four verb conjugations, six tenses, six persons, three moods, two voices, two aspects and two numbers. Each of these corresponds to a similar case in Classical Latin, which is known as the twin sister language of Yuese. One of the rarer of the seven cases is the locative, only used with nouns that signify a location. The vocative, used in direct discourse, is identical to the nominative except for words of the second declension. There are only five fully productive cases. Adjectives and adverbs are compared, and the former are inflected according to case, gender, and number. Modern Yuese, along with Classical Yuese does not have articles but replaces these with demonstrative pronouns; <color=>e.g., uhmres, uhmret, uhmre.
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Overview
Yuese is the official language of Iievius and its empire; as such, over 92% of the population speaks Yuese fluently and of the remaining 8%, half are learning and/or have a basic grasp of the language. As a relatively old language, continuing to evolve since 200BC when the first evidence of Kyceir Nomads speaking Yuese was found, and subsequent isolation in Iievius, after which it spread, Yuese has many dialects and is yet at the same time one of the most ancient languages around in terms of vocabulary and grammar. Without contact to the outside world, the vocabulary has remained largely similar to the original Nomadic Kyceir’s Ancient Yuese. However, dialects within the more modern areas do include newer terms borrowed from English, Imperial, Fishian, and other modern languages.
Etymology
Many people are surprised that the name of the language is Yuese, rather than ‘Iievian’ in English-speaking countries, and indeed, most of the world, despite the Yuese name for the language literally stating the Iievir talk/language. The name first arose as a nickname for the language that the Tordites spoke when they traded with the people of the continent, coming from their word for money, which is yues. Later they discovered that the Tordites learned their language from trading with Iievius, which at the time was isolated apart from contact with the Tordites. However, the name for the language stuck despite the dialectal difference between Joubur-Tordite and True Yuese. The international community now refers to all Farieran languages as Yuese or as Tordite.
Education
Modern Yuese is a mandatory subject for all Iievians up through to twelfth grade, and is one of two mandatory courses for students of all years. Rather than teaching a grasp of the language, late primary-school and secondary-school Yuese courses might be more closely compared to English classes in native-English countries, where, rather than the actual grammar and structure of the language, literacy techniques, essay writing, analysis of a text, poem composition, and other facets of higher literature are taught. On the Lyceum Academy level, teaching might be compared with Journalism, Poetry, Writing, Literature, and Grammar courses on a Harvard-Level University.
Outside of Iievius
Due to the isolation of Iievius, Yuese as a modern language is considered minor on an international scale. However, within the small region of the E.H, Yuese is considered one of the most well-known and distributed languages, with 38% of the regional population knowing Yuese on an intermediate level; considering Iievius’ status as maintaining less than 16% of the regional population, this is immense. Perhaps this is due to Yuese’s popularity as a secondary language in high-school courses within the continent, as well as its existence as two separate languages, each of which is popular as an area of study. Classical Yuese is taught in many continental schools as an ancient language similar to Latin or Ancient Greek, and Modern Yuese is taught in non-Iievian schools as a regular foreign language. Davatric schools especially have a high Yuese fluency rate, with many students learning it as their second language.
Other Iievian Languages
Yuese remains the most popular by far, but with Iievius’ Roman roots, Latin is also a major language with 63% of Iievians fluent. English is, by comparison, much lower with a 23% fluency rate, though this is rising. Many Iievians are bilingual with Yuese and Latin, though a large percentage is trilingual as well.
History
Yuese has been divided into historical phases, each of which is distinguished by subtle differences in vocabulary, usage, spelling, morphology and syntax. In addition to the historical phases, Modern Yuese refers to the Yuese in common use around the nation.
Ancient Yuese
The earliest known form is Ancient Yuese, which was spoken from ancient times by the Kyceir Nomads up to around the time of Havanius, and attested in several inscriptions, as well as some of the earliest extant literary works. During this period, the Latin alphabet was first introduced to the Kyceir Nomads by the Romans. The writing style later changed from an initial right-to-left or wikipedia:boustrophedon to a left-to-right script. Ancient Yuese is attested through thousands of inscriptions from the Early Iievian Monarchy, and through the writings of early authors such as Bodaten, whose plays are the earliest known substantial works written in Yuese.
Classical Yuese
During the late monarchy and into the first years of the empire, a new Classical Yuese arose, a conscious creation of the politicians, poets, historians, nobles and other literate men, who wrote the great works of literature, which were taught in grammar schools and universities. Today's Iievian instructional grammars trace their roots to these, which served as a sort of informal language academy dedicated to maintaining and perpetuating educated speech to the people of Iievius.
Vulgar Yuese
Philological analysis of Ancient Yuese works, such as, Bodaten, which contain snippets of everyday speech, indicates that a spoken language, which has from ancient times been called Vulgar Yuese, existed alongside the literate Classical Yuese. Since this language, by virtue of its informality, was rarely written, philologists have been left with individual words and phrases cited by Classical authors, as well as those found as graffiti in Aescol Old Town.
As vernacular Yuese was free to develop on its own, there is no reason to expect that the speech was uniform either diachronically or geographically. Just the opposite must have been true, as Iievian Farier populations developed their own dialects of the language.
The expansion of the Iievian Empire in the time of Davinius spread Yuese throughout the northern Holy Empire via trade originating from the recently conquered Tordites. Vulgar Yuese already began to diverge into distinct languages when in other nations by the 9th century at the very latest, when the earliest extant Tordite writings begin to appear. They were, throughout the medieval age, confined to everyday speech, as the current Iievian Yuese, which we call Medieval Yuese, was used for writing.
Medieval Yuese
The term Medieval Yuese refers to the Yuese in use within the nation of Iievius during that portion of the post-classical period. The language had developed into the various incipient Tordite Languages; however, in the educated and official world Yuese continued as Iievian Yuese while the other language dialects were classed as barbaric and uneducated. All of these dialects and separate languages still utilized Iievian Yuese as their written form. Moreover, this Yuese, used by the Iievian Empire, spread into lands that had never spoken Yuese, such as the Davatric nations, with trade and commerce. It became useful as a means of international communication between the Empire and its allies.
Grammar
Yuese is a synthetic, fusional language: affixes (often suffixes, which usually encode more than one grammatical category) are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns—a process called declension. Affixes are attached to fixed stems of verbs, as well, to denote person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect—a process called conjugation.
Nouns
There are seven Yuese noun cases. These mark a noun's syntactic role in the sentence, so word order is not as important in Yuese as it is in some other languages, such as English. Words can typically be moved around in a sentence without significantly altering its meaning, although the emphasis may have been altered.
The "True" Order of Nouns is, in following, the:
1. NOMINATIVE: Used when the noun is the subject or a predicate nominative. The thing or person acting; e.g., the girl ran: gabrines rastil, or rastil gabrines
2. GENITIVE: Used when the noun is the possessor of an object (e.g., "the horse of the man", or "the man's horse"—in both of these instances, the word man would be in the genitive case when translated into Yuese). Also indicates material of which something greater is made (e.g., "a group of people"; "a number of gifts"—people and gifts would be in the genitive case).
3. DATIVE: Used when the noun is the indirect object of the sentence, with special verbs, with certain prepositions, and if used as agent, reference, or even possessor. (e.g., The merchant hands over the duremes to the woman. sellet gabranes duremes hantel.)
4. ACCUSATIVE: Used when the noun is the direct object of the sentence/phrase, with certain prepositions, or as the subject of an infinitive. The thing or person having something done to them. (e.g., The woman carries the wine. gabranes durancet verrel.) In addition, there are certain constructions where the accusative can be used for the subject of a clause, one being the indirect statement.
5. VOCATIVE: Used when the noun is used in a direct address. The vocative form of a noun is the same as the nominative except for second declension nouns ending in -et. The et becomes an -e or if it ends in -iet (such as haliet) then the ending is just -i (hali) (as distinct from the plural nominative (halii)). (e.g., "Father!" shouted the boy. "Tirane!" stevet criocol.)
6. ABLATIVE: Used when the noun demonstrates separation or movement from a source, cause, agent, or instrument, or when the noun is used as the object of certain prepositions; adverbial. (e.g., You walked with the boy. touarone steveto stapocosto.)
7. LOCATIVE: Used to indicate a location and services (corresponding to the English "in" or "at"). This is far less common than the other six cases of Yuese nouns and usually applies to cities, small towns, and islands smaller than Green Flame Island, but not including Green Flame Island, along with a few common nouns. In the first and second declension singular, its form coincides with the genitive (Aescoles becomes Aescolen, "in Rome"). In the plural, and in the other declensions, it coincides with the dative and ablative (' Siraphe becomes Siraphis, "at Siraph").
Verbs
Verbs in Yuese are usually identified by four main conjugations, groups of verbs with similarly inflected forms. The first conjugation is typified by active infinitive forms ending in -āre, the second by active infinitives ending in -ēre, the third by active infinitives ending in -ore, and the fourth by active infinitives ending in -īre. However, there are exceptions to these rules. Further, there is a subset of the 3rd conjugation, the -iō verbs, which behave somewhat like the 4th conjugation. These are known as 3rd/4ths. There are six general tenses in Yuese (present, imperfect, future, perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect), three grammatical moods (indicative, imperative and subjunctive, in addition to the infinitive, participle, gerund, gerundive and supine), three persons (first, second, and third), two numbers (singular and plural), two voices (active and passive), and a few aspects. Verbs are described by four principal parts:
- The first principal part is the first person (or third person for impersonal verbs) singular, present tense, indicative mood, active voice form of the verb (or passive voice for verbs lacking an active voice).
- The second principal part is the present infinitive active (or passive for verbs lacking an active) form.
- The third principal part is the first person (or third person for impersonal verbs) singular, perfect indicative active (or passive when there is no active) form.
- The fourth principal part is the supine form, or alternatively, the nominative singular, perfect passive participle form of the verb. The fourth principal part can show either one gender of the participle, or all three genders (-et for masculine, -es for feminine, and -e for neuter). It can also be the future participle when the verb cannot be made passive. Most modern Yuese dictionaries, if only showing one gender, tend to show the masculine; however, many older dictionaries will instead show the neuter. The fourth principal part is sometimes omitted for intransitive verbs, although strictly in Yuese these can be made passive if used impersonally.
- The fifth principle part is known as the interrogative, and is used as an alternative to the genitive case when showing the stem of the verb. This is created by adding a ne suffix onto the end of the present stem. It shows a question, and which verb is related. E.g. Where are we going, becomes od udere approcene
There are six tenses in the Yuese language; these are present, future, future perfect, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect. They each have a set of endings corresponding to the person and number referred to. The endings assign the verb to these particular person and number to be translated as such even if there is no subject to accompany the verb. For instance, if you wanted to say "he walks in the field" you could (but you wouldn't have to) put in a personal pronoun to justify the pronoun "he" instead, you could write "stapol," the word meaning to walk in the present tense, third person singular. These six tenses are described in greater detail below.
What follows is the six tenses with their six persons for first and second conjugations in active. This is the more common form. For the imperfect, present, and future tenses, the way in which you reach the finished word is by removing the -re ending from the second principal part of the verb being conjugated and placing at the end of the word the most appropriate ending given. For the other three tenses you do the same, except you remove the -i ending from the third principal part of the word being conjugated.
| Tense | 1st singular ending | 2nd singular ending | 3rd singular ending | 1st plural ending | 2nd plural ending | 3rd plural ending | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Future Perfect | -elu | -elos | -elol | -elonos | -elohos | -elont | |
| Future | -bu | -bos | -bot | -bonos | -bohos | -bont | |
| Present | -u | -s | -l | -nos | -hos | -nt | |
| Imperfect | -dam | -das | -dal | -danos | -dahos | -dant | |
| Perfect | -co | -costo | -col | -conos | -coshos | -corunt | |
| Pluperfect | -elam | -elas | -elal | -elanos | -elahos | -elant |
Common Phrases
| English | Yuese | Uses/Explanations |
|---|---|---|
| Hello | Canra | Greeting, lit. Be Greeted |
| Goodbye | Turelare | Farewell, lit. Travel deriv. Travel Safe |
| Thank You | Gratau | Gratitude, lit. I thank [you] |
| You’re Welcome | Naom Anxies | Gratitude Response, lit. No Worries |
| Yes | Raom | Affirmative |
| No | Naom | Negative |
| Do you speak Yuese? | Ievirele rogasne | Question, ne suffix creates interrogative |
| Where are we going? | od udere appronosne | Question, lit. To where are we going? |
| Please | Tence! | Exclamation, lit. Consider this! |
| How much does this cost? | Amones interraune | Question, lit I ask the quantity |
| Very Good! | Quallissire! | Exclamation |
| Home | Famiret | Misc., Noun |
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