World Ancient Wynnic Language Rework

EDIT FROM THE FUTURE: Many images in the thread have been breaking over time. A PDF file of the full documentation has been attatched to the post.

DISCLAIMER: We are not members of the CT. This is a project made by lore and language enthusiasts in an attempt to hopefully improve Ancient Wynnic, as we feel the current implementation of the language leaves a lot to be desired. Should this rework or its ideas enter the game, it doesn't have to be exactly as it appears below.​

Nyalhn, leete! Welcome to our sixth Wynntheory Lore Rework Project! (You can find the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth here.)

For a fantasy game, Wynn seems to have a profound lack of fantasy languages, doesn't it? Sure, you might bring up Ancient Wynnic and High Gavellian, but they're not real languages, yes? They're more ciphers for the Latin Script.

So in this project, we've taken Ancient Wynnic and turned it into a fully-featured language, with its own sound system, grammar, and vocabulary.

This was a massive, months-long task, but we're not planning to stop here.

Wynnlangs has become a beast of its own, and there are quite a few in-game languages still on the block that we can tackle. If you're interested in helping out, or even just checking out the workshop, don't hesitate to shoot myself or @TrapinchO a DM for an invite to the Wynntheory sever! With that out of the way,


Overview​

Olmic was a language isolate primarily spoken by the Olm. It is a dead language, but like Latin it has had a massive influence on Modern Wynnic dialects and continues to see use in magical education.

Structurally, it is an agglutinative language with a fair number of analytic constructions. It is mora-timed, somewhat head-final, has SOV sentence structure, and has a mostly active-static morphosyntactic alignment.

Preface: On the Name of the Language
​

This document will mostly use the name Olmic to describe the language known to its speakers as Wynnic and to academics and mages in the modern day as Ancient Wynnic.

Unless they are steeped in knowledge, the similar phonology, massive vocabulary influence, and identical name of “Wynnic” leads most to assume that this tongue (Ancient Wynnic) is the ancestor language of Modern Wynnic.

This is not the case.

Though the language shares a name with Modern Wynnic, and was as, if not more influential on it than French was English, it is not the modern tongue's ancestor.

Ancient Wynnic is a language isolate that acted as an extremely influential substrate language for eastern Frumic languages. Still, it is those Fruman languages, descended from Proto-Wynno-Fruman, that coalesced and developed into Modern Wynnic.

Their shared name is only because both languages were during their time the dominant language of Wynn and were so named accordingly. Again, what we're about to describe is absolutely the language known in-game as Ancient Wynnic, but for clarity's sake we’ll be calling it “Olmic” for the remainder of this documentation.

Let’s begin.

________________________________

I - PHONOLOGY​

A language’s sounds: What it uses, how it represents them, and the rules for how the sounds can go together.

Spoiler: Phoneme Inventory

Before we begin doing languagey things with the sounds, we have to define the sounds that we’re going to be using.

We made a chart below with our vowel and consonant sounds using International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) notation, which can often be seen in dictionaries and at the start of wikipedia articles.

Simply put, the IPA is a system to unambiguously write down sounds without having to hear them (for more information see this video). On this page you can see most of the IPA, and if you click on one of the letters you can hear the sounds for yourself. It's not the entire thing, though, and there are a few symbols we used that either aren't on the site or might otherwise be unclear. Here's a rundown:

• ʔ is a glottal stop, made deep down in your throat. It’s the little hic that you make between the “uh” and the “oh” in “uh-oh!”
• r̝ is a mix between a trilled “r” and the “zh” sound. It’s rather rare in world languages, here’s what it sounds like.
• The little superscript “h” indicates Aspiration, which is when you add a little burst of air after saying the consonant.
• The letters <in angle brackets> aren’t part of the pronunciation, they’re just different ways that the sound can be written down in the language, like how the /s/ sound can show up in English as <s, c>, or how /f/ can show up as <gh> in “cough.”
• Putting sounds /in slashes/ indicates a rougher, more abstract transcription, where you're not writing down as many details of the exact pronunciation of a letter. For exact phonetic transcription, [square brackets] are used instead.

Common Allophones
Allophones are when a sound in a language mutates to something else: For instance, an American will not make the [t] sound when saying “water,” but the sound that they make instead will be understood to be different pronunciation of the “same” underlying sound.

Other than the first bullet on this list, which is always present in Olmic speech, the others are common but not universal. Even the first bullet point is often dropped by non-native speakers.

• The first vowel of a word must be unrounded, the second vowel rounded, the third unrounded, and so on, until the end of the word.
  
  
• Intrusive /h/ after word-final vowels if the next word begins with a consonant.
  
  
• The tap rhotic /ɾ/ can also be a [r] or [ʁ] depending on dialect, and most consonant clusters tend towards [ʁ] in rapid speech.
  
  
• /k/ is often pronounced [x], especially at the end of a syllable.
  
  
• When followed by an /r/, /t/ and /d/ often shift to [θ] and [ð] (the <th> in "thing"and "the," respectively)
  
  
• If followed by a consonant, unaspirated stops are unreleased at the end of a syllable, often losing voiced/voiceless distinction. Aspirated stops, though released, tend to lose aspiration in response.
  
  
• If a syllable ends with a velar other than /kh/ and the next begins with an /n/, the /n/ will generally shift to [ŋ].
  
  
• If a syllable ends with an /n/ and the next begins with a velar stop, said /n/ will also shift to [ŋ]
  
  
• The language is mora-timed, and to stress a word is to hold its first mora at double length. The mora-timing mostly comes across as syllable timing, and the boundaries between morphemes are mostly conveyed via memory and the lip-rounding allophones.
  
  
• /sr/ and /zr/ are realized as [ʃ] and [ʒ], respectively.

Spoiler: Phonotactics

Or “The rules for how sounds can go together.” For example, “Jlfroo” technically uses English sounds, but disobeys its Phonotactics, while “Elbonist” does obey them and so sounds Englishy despite me making it up just now.

Syllable Structure
(CCC)V(CC)

A syllable can start with up to 3 consonants, must have a vowel, and can end with up to 2 consonants. There’s only a single 3-consonant cluster in the entire language, though, so most syllables are limited to starting with only 2 consonants.

General Rules:

• /h/ can be either a vowel (syllabic) or a consonant, but it cannot appear as both vowel and consonant in the same syllable, nor can syllabic /h/ appear after an aspirated consonant.
  
  
• Aspirated stops (superscript is broken on the forums) may never appear within a consonant cluster.
  
  
• /b, d, g/ may not appear at the beginning of a syllable.
  
  
• In case of a syllable beginning with a vowel, the final consonant of the last syllable (if applicable) is pronounced as the initial consonant of that one.

Consonant Lengthening (Gemnation):

• /ph, th, kh, r̝, ʔ, ʔh/ cannot be geminated.
  
  
• All other consonants can be geminated if two (or a voiced and voiceless version) appear in sequence across a syllable boundary. In the latter case, the geminated consonant takes on the voicing of the latter consonant. (e.g. adtero /attero/ but atdero /addero/)
  
  
• If a word has inherent gemination (i.e, “Wynn” or “Kker”) then said gemnation is not pronounced if it is the beginning or end of a clause.

Legal Consonant Clusters:
/st/-
/stʔ/- *
-/pt/
-/kt/
*uncommonly realized as ejective /st’/

• All other consonant clusters must include /r/ or /l/. Those two letters must always be the closer to the center of the syllable, and the cluster can be no more than two consonants. In the case of a cluster consisting of both /r, l/, free phoneme order is allowed. Vowel clusters are permitted only across syllables, though they can run together in rapid speech.

Spoiler: Orthography

The Writing System.

The final living stage of Olmic was written in the Ancient Wynnic Script. Seeing as the Ancient Wynnic script is mostly a 1:1 cipher with the Latin Script, we’ll be representing the language in this document with the latter.

The orthography is mostly aligned with the sound inventory, and the places where the letters may differ from the IPA are given in the phonemic chart all the way back at the start. Here are the orthography’s quirks:

• /k/ is represented as <k> word initially and as <c> everywhere else, with the sole exception of the word “Che,” which appears in the “Articles” section under “Nouns.”
  
  
• You know how you (if American) were taught that y is sometimes a vowel, sometimes a consonant? If <y> appears after a consonant, it's the vowel /i/, but if it appears after a vowel then it's the consonant /j/.

________________________________

II - NOUNS​

As you may well know, some languages (such as French and Arabic) separate their nouns into Grammatical Genders, such as Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter. Over the course of human history, this has made many language-learners quite angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move. Instead of separating our language's nouns into 2-3 different groups for no good reason, we've separated them into a much more sensible arrangement of ten.

Most nouns can be used in multiple of these different categories, with the grammatical gender that the writer/speaker chooses to use altering the word’s precise meaning. In cases like those, the noun is perceived to have an “underlying definition,” and the chosen gender of expression adds contextual connotations to the word’s meaning.

Proper nouns do not usually take gender. If a gender-dependent particle is demanded, animates take Fire and inanimates take Earth. The grammatical genders can be organized in two different ways.

Spoiler: Gender Organization Systems

Deep/Clear Gender Dichotomy (Grammatical)
Mainly distinctions observed in former grammars of the language, the Deep/Clear dichotomy is a method of organizing the Grammatical Genders by the mutation effects that they have on verbs and some noun particles.

Deep Genders
Dark
Earth
Corruption
Water
Void

Clear Genders
Light
Air
Thunder
Fire
Cosmic

Physical/Influential Gender Dichotomy (Lexical)
Note: The category definitions given below are tendencies, not rules, and nouns in irregular categories are normal and expected.


Physical Genders

Earth - Physical Structures (House, Chair)
Thunder - Temporary Existences (Rain, Queue)
Water - Uncountable Nouns (i.e. Food, Money)
Fire - Animate Nouns (Person, Kantyr)
Air - Detached Nouns (Corpse, Lost Item, Observer)


Influential Genders

Light - Abstract Structures (i.e: Family)
Dark - Unstable/Temporary Abstract Nouns (i.e: Sorrow, Exhaustion, Luck)
Cosmic - Nouns up to Interpretation (i.e. Justice, Politics, Honor)
Corruption - Incomplete/Degraded/Continuous Nouns (i.e Incomplete Project, Agenda, Vice)
Void - States of being/Inalienable attributes (i.e. Inner Demons, Ambition, Kindness)


The standard ordering of the genders is:

Light - Dark - Cosmic - Corruption - Void - Earth - Thunder - Water - Fire - Air

Noun Assembly
We'll touch more on which particles are mandatory or not down in Section VI, but the quick notes are that in casual speech any particle that can be dropped without making the meaning unclear will be dropped.​

Spoiler: Step 1: Articles

Equivalent to "The" and "A" in English, and work exactly the same way. Just stick the word you need in front of your noun.

Spoiler: Step 2: Distance Markers

(Unlike Step 1, which are separate words, this and everything that follows are prefixes attached to the word.)

For saying how far away something is. Distance marker particle vowels are never rounded. Particles can be temporal as well as spatial, depending on context.

Spoiler: Step 3: Possession Markers

Saying Lih iser "The My Family" isn't just allowed, it's actually important information due to the whole "ten grammatical genders" thing. Since words can belong to more than one gender, you can often only tell meanings apart from the article back in step one. Eryt iser is "the my house" instead.

*Either a null marker for mandatory usage in formal contexts, a poetic device used to imply being a part of reality, or attached to te to form the e te neuter pronoun (“it”).
** Addressee inclusive and exclusive respectively
*** Addressee inclusive and exclusive as well. The former is rare, used when singling someone out from a group (i.e. “You and them…”)

Formal pronouns are created by using one of these prefixes on the word te, which in this case translates to the word "self." There's no difference like between the English "I" and "Me", both Olmic iste, or between "She" and "her," both Olmic adte.

te is, in speech, often contracted to t. It can be dropped entirely, but this is a highly-marked informality.

Spoiler: Step 4: THE NOUN ITSELF

It looked sort of odd to have this one non-spoiler in the middle, but this is where the root noun goes. Unless otherwise marked, everything before this is a prefix and everything after a suffix.

Spoiler: Step 5: Plural Markers

Singular is unmarked.

The initial consonant of a suffix is dropped if the noun already ends with a consonant, and an initial vowel receives the same treatment if the noun already ends with a vowel as well.
Paucal means “a few (of something)”. Superplural is the exact opposite, it means “many (of something)”

Spoiler: Step 6: Other Modifiers

If you wanted to change the meaning of the entire noun real quick at the end. A useful and grammatically correct way of deriving new words on the spot.

Also, the difference between negation and inversion is the difference between, say, a non-house and an anti-house, or the lack of cruelty vs the active presence of justice. For a lot of words, however, these meanings can overlap, in which case the negation (re) form is preferred.

Also also, "reduplication" is saying a word twice, aka what I did at the start of this sentence.

Spoiler: Step 7: Honorific Markers

Honorifics should be something recognizable for anyone familiar with Japanese. These particles you attach to the end of words to denote level of respect for or familiarity with other people, though Olmic allows you to do so with improper nouns as well.

Well, mostly. By Late Wynnic a few of them had slightly different additional roles in casual talk:

• -ul was a marker of baby-talk, diminutives, and mockery, whether friendly or not.
• -al and -el, respectively, found a use as casual and formal “please” markers in question clauses (more under “Other Constructions and Particles” in the final section)

Spoiler: Step 8: Case Markers

Have you ever taken Hungarian or Latin? Congrats on escaping if you haven't, and if you did you'll be glad to know that there are only two cases that a noun can be in here. The "Agent" case is for the entity doing the verb of the sentence, while the "Patient" is for the receiver.

Hence, in the sentence "The man pets the dog," the man is the agent while the dog is the patient. That's a transitive clause, though, and as noted above these suffixes aren't used often in transitive clauses.

An "Intransitive" clause is one where there's only a single entity invovlved: "The man blinked" or "I sleep." While English always prefers to use the agent version (see the correct I sleep vs. the ungrammatical me sleep), Olmic forces the speaker to make a decision on which one to use.

Typically, the line is drawn by how intentional the action was: If "I tripped" because I was acting out a gag as part of a play, the agent suffix ("or") would be used, but if "I tripped" because I wasn't paying attention, then it's more like reality tripped me, yes? The patient suffix ("poc") would get used instead.

________________________________​

III - VERBS

​

Spoiler: The Copula (To Be)

Similarly to Arabic or Russian, Olmic has no word for "to be" (a situation technically termed "zero-copula"). "To be" and its conjugations are implied by the lack of a verb in the sentence.

“I am hasty” ⇒ Iste ker yt kuo. ⇒ “I with a haste (am).”

“They are close” ⇒ Leadte erev ⇒ “They close (are).”

The tense/aspect/mood system does not require a verb specifically corresponding to “To Be”, and though Idra (“to exist”) is a verb, Olmic uses it in a much more strict context than English does - hence why it's translated as "to exist" instead of "to be."

What happens if you want to say "I was close," or "I will have been there?" Well, for copula in more complex inflections, a null verb phrase is created - all of the prefixes and suffixes normally around the verb are there, but the glued-together word still lacks a specific verb.

I was an observer ⇒ Iste yt iesu qira ⇒”I an observer [simple past]”

I have been an observer ⇒ Iste yt iesu wyn ⇒ “I an observer [perfect]”

Verb Assembly
Same as with Nouns, any particles that can be dropped without making the meaning unclear will be in informal speech.​

Spoiler: Step 1: Tense Markers

Distant past = "I ate a while back"
Immediate past = "I just ate"
These divisions aren't absolute, but instead relative to how long ago or in how long a speaker wishes to communicate something happened/will happen.

Spoiler: Step 2: Aspect Markers

More formally, Aspect denotes a verb's completeness and relationship with time. Notice how English doesn't distinguish between the second and third aspects here, but Olmic does.

Spoiler: Step 3: Mood Markers

Mixing aspect, tense, and mood is how you get the really specific sentences like "On Tuesday, I'll probably have been sitting there for half an hour by the time Larry arrives. The dude's always late."

There are more moods located at the very very end of this documentation, but those ones are created by stacking a lot of words like English does above instead of affixes, which is what we're covering here.

Spoiler: Step 4: The Verb Itself

Everything before here is a prefix, everything that follows is a suffix.

Spoiler: Step 4.5: Verb Mutation

Well, except this, which is a change to the Verb stem itself.
Verb endings are mutated to match the gender of the patient of a clause - that which the action is being done to. In an intransitive clause, the verb is mutated to match the sole noun, no matter if agent or patient.

The dictionary verbs are the Clear ones, on the left. If the noun is of Deep gender, change the verb ending to the right column. If the verb is irregular, it's got its own special mutation, so see its definition in the lexicon for that.

Spoiler: Step 5: Other Modifiers

Passive voice in a single suffix, what a dream.
Anya iste aran is "Anya sees me," while Iste Anya aranwarn is "I am seen (by) Anya"

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IV - LEXICON


Nouns
An !exclamation point denotes nouns that are irregular, defective, or otherwise strange.​

Spoiler: Animates

! TE - Thing
{Null} - Self (pronoun marker. though e te can work as a definite noun, indefinitely is defective)
[Dark] - Situation
[Corruption] - Inner Darkness
[Void] - Entity (psuedo-null marker)
[Light] - Soul
[Earth] - Body
[Water] - Mind
[Fire] - Life (Sing.)

O - Entity
[Thunder] - Story
[Corruption] - Something Undesirable / Undesirable state
[Water] - Idea
[Fire] - Person (Olm is both “People” and an uncountable proper noun).
[Air] - Creature

Y’ERO - Elemental Substance
[Light] - Light
[Dark] - Dark
[Corrupt.] - Corruption
[Void] - Nothing
[Cosmic] - Space
[Earth] - Earth (Substance)
[Thunder] - Thunder
[Fire] - Fire
[Air] - Air

AVE
[Air] - Bird


APOT - Mage
[Cosmic] - Magic
[Corruption] - Shaman
[Earth] - Runemaster
[Thunder] - Dark Wizard
[Fire] - Battlemage
[Air] - Researcher

IESU
[Light] - Savior
[Corrupt.] - Corrupter
[Earth] - Creator
[Thunder] - Destroyer
[Air] Monster

ORALM - Wise One
[Earth] - Hermit
[Thunder] - One who curses others/themselves
[Water] - Oracle

THACYEN - Powerful Creatures
[Light] - Light Beast (Orphion)
[Dark] - Dark Beast
[Void] - Power
[Air] - Observer

Spoiler: Inanimates

TENGE - Large Objects
[Light] - Large Artificial Object
[Dark] - Large Natural Object

PHAN - Literature
[Light] - Script
[Corruption] - Remaining Texts
[Earth] - Book
[Thunder] - Note
[Fire] - Orator

MELSET - Arms
[Earth] - Armory
[Thunder] - Attack
[Air] - Weapon

ZRARAC
[Earth] - Wagon

FITHERN - Ancient Objects/Places
[Earth] - Artifact
[Thunder] - Ruin

RERN - Tongue
[Earth] - Mouth
[Fire] - Language

URN - New Object
[Dark] - Novelty
[Earth] - Gift
[Fire] - Newborn
[Air] - Item Gifted

Spoiler: Locations

MISYE - Large Areas
[Light] - Realm
[Dark] - Plane
[Earth] - World
[Fire] - Land/Province

ER - Shelter
[Light] - Family
[Earth] - Home
[Thunder] - Hidden Place
[Air] - Place

ELOT
[Earth] - Tunnel

FIDIS
[Earth] - Tomb

OC
[Void] - North

DEZ
[Void] - East

EPH
[Void] - South

KON
[Void] - West

Spoiler: Adjectives

KUO - Speed
[Earth] - Slowness
[Air] - Haste

HAYZ - Enjoyability
[Dark] - Funness
[Cosmic] - Ease
[Void] - Desirability

OBLURN
[Void] - Identicalness

SIERE - Well-Being
[Cosmic] - Health
[Thunder] - Life

GURE - Unknown
[Cosmic] - Strangeness
[Void] - Unknown

Spoiler: Actions

SIETHE - Ends
[Light] - Death
[Corrupt.] - Fade
[Void] - Conclusion
[Thunder] - Murder
[Fire] - Revenge
[Air] - End

TLYE
[Dark] - (an) Act

VANER
[Dark] - Attempt

Spoiler: Abstractions

ERORE
[Dark] - Number

Spoiler: Numbers

[All Dark]
0 - thelere
1 - thelo
2 - uthe
3 - ne
4 - tol
5 - ico
6 - oco
7 - utho
8 - no
9 - tocol
10 - icthe
11 - icthe io thelo
20 - i uthe - twenty
21 - i uthe io thelo
30 - i ne
100 - sa thelo
110 - sa thelo icthe
200 - sa uthe
999 - sa tocol i tocol io tocol.
1,000 - the thelo
10,000 - ne thelo
100,000 - tol thelo
...
etc etc

arg y’ero thelo ⇒ the one fire

Uthe ird y’ero ⇒ two fires (Explicit pre-article number informally allows dropping of plural markers)

I ne io tol ird y’ero ⇒ thirty-four fires

Ordinal (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc) is suffix “-n” for 0, 1, and 3, “-r” for 2, “-e” for 4 and 9, and “-l” for all other numbers.

Though “sa” began as a hundred marker, it is also frequently used to convey “many.”

Since using ‘sa’ in front of a verb also directly implies plurality, plural markers are generally dropped when using it outside of the most formal contexts.

NEROEN
[Light] - Word

ORYORN
[Thunder] - Iteration

TIRZ - Key
[Light] - (Metaphorical) Key
[Void] - Intensity
[Earth] - (Physical) Key
[Water] - Knowledge

REN - Binding Interaction
[Light] - Agreement
[Cosmic] - Curse
[Void] - Honor
[Earth] - Contract

KHAROM
[Cosmic] - Time

MEC
[Light] - Totality

MORHM - Color
[Light] - White
[Dark] - Black
[Cosmic] - Purple
[Corruption] - Red
[Void] - Transparency
[Earth] - Green
[Thunder] - Yellow
[Water] - Blue
[Fire] - Orange
[Air] - Grey

Spoiler: Nature

SONNANE - Bright
[Light] - Day
[Void] - Brightness
[Fire] - Sun

SUNNIRE - Dark
[Dark] - Month
[Void] - Darkness
[Air] - Moon

SERAT
[Earth] - Season

SYLES
[Earth] - Forest

OBROS
[Earth] - Tree

Spoiler: Situations

FAYA
[Dark] - Last Moment

ONO
[Dark] - Problem

KY’OS - Dogma
[Light] - Religion
[Cosmic] - Fatih
[Corruption] - Ethics
[Earth] - Temple/Church/Shrine
[Thunder] - Personal Shrine
[Fire] - Follower
[Air] - Deity

MALDERN - Chaos
[Light] - Overwhelming, Stifling Order(i.e, Bureaucracy)
[Dark] - Chaos
[Cosmic] - Nonsense
[Void] - Wildness

Spoiler: Relations

AMAZ
[Fire] - Mother

TEMAZ
[Fire] - Grandmother

ABAZ
[Fire] - Father

TEBAZ
[Fire] - Grandfather

LIG
[Earth] - Small Item
[Fire] - Child

DERZ - Distant Relations
[Fire] - Descendants
[Air] - Ancestors

Other Parts of Speech​

Spoiler: Verbs

Almost always end in -a, -r, or -n. Irregular verbs have an !exclamation point, as well as their deep mutation.

[A]
ACHA - to Prepare
ALTHOSA - to Imagine
AMIR - to Love
ARAN - to See

[E]
!EK (K → G) - to Put
EFFA - to Approve

[F]
FURN - to Open

[H]
HANA - to Safeguard/Ward/Protect
HAYZA - to Have Fun

(I)
IDRA - to Exist
INSA - to Want/Desire
IRIZA - to Seek

[K]
KANN - to Value
KAREHA - to Take (transitive) / to Encroach (intransitive)
KER - to Have
KETZA - to Learn
KIZAN - to Do
KOXA - to Be Alike
KOXTRA - to Die

[L]
LA - to Go
LROQR - to Be Able To

[M]
!MALAZ (Z → RZ) - to Say Farewell / Bury
MENA - to Speak / to Say
MERN - to Live/Survive
MIKZAN - to Thank
often shortened to myz for “thanks”

[N]
NOCA - to Depart (intransitive)
NOMA - to Arrest (momentum)
!NOPH (PH → V) - to Prevent
!NORT (T → D) - to Cringe

[O]
OBA - to Hate
!ONBRO (O → U) - to Be Late (intransitive)

[P]
!PENAB (B → SR) - to Hope
PHAN - to Write
PHARAN - to Read
PHET - to Play (a role)

[Q]
!QO (O ⇒ OR) - to Use

[R]
RAID - to Commence
RESALN - to Share
RZOCHA - to Need/Require

(S)
SAN - to Enter
SIETHA - to Kill
SIN - to Bring
ST’YKA - to Find/Locate

[T]
TECA - to Work
!TERID (No Mutation) - to Build/Birth
TIUN - to Create
TRA - to Act Chaotically

[V]
VENRA - to Hear

[Y]
YATIN - to Understand
YERN - to Retrieve
YNN - to Move

[Z]
ZAN - to Manifest
ZERN - to Wait

Spoiler: Prepositions & Prepositional Phrases

Example Test Clauses:
The person entered their home - The person saw god - The person survived - The family heard the person.
Arg o eryt wozer sam - Arg o lih thacyen arannan - Arg opoc mernnan - Lih er arg o venra.


Prepositions
ES - in/side
ROS - out/side
ANOL - above / before
REN - below / after
KONRO - left / to the left of
FRERO - right / to the right of
EFARE - in front of
REFARE - behind
EREV - close to
YMYR - in the area of
VERGON - from / away from
LE - to / towards
ORZ - alongside/with/simultaneously
PHE KAN - due to / for
OZE - with which

Words of this class are considered to be "inside" clauses, altering phrases. They always preposition the noun that they depend on. They can either attatch to a single noun as a determiner or link multiple nouns into a greater phrase. Special consideration goes to "oze" at the end, which requires an entire clause as dependent and creates a noun phrase.


The Ones That Link Clauses
KRON - then
PHE KAN - due to / for / because
KANRE - despite / even though
KRIN - since
IO - And
STY - Or
STA - Nand (Actually negates both attached clauses. "I'm here sta I want to be" would actually translate to "I'm not here and I don't want to be")
SAYL - Nor (This one does work how you think it does, though)

In the simple case, words of this class link two independent clauses.

Arg o eryt wozer sam kron arg o lih thacyen arannan. (The person entered the house, then the person saw god.)
This can keep chaining forever. Following clauses can also eliminate either agent or patient, should one remain the same. Sole remaining argument must be marked.

Arg o eryt wozer sam phe kan lih thacyenpoc arannan. (The person entered the house because [they] saw god.)

Arg o eryt wozer sam kanre arg opoc mernnan. (The person entered the house even though they survived.) <-- infinite chaining is possible but would get weird quick here.

Alternatively, a clause can be attatched with a new agent marked. In this case, the agent is understood to be acting upon the original clause's agent. All required verbs mutate:

Arg o eryt wozer sam kron lih thacyenor aramnan kron lih eror venra. (The person entered their home, then god saw [them], then the family heard [them]. Def a run-on, though!)

These Ones All Get More Detailed Definitions In The Next Spoiler Section
ORV - genitive marker
KOX - adjective marker (nouns)
OZDO - adjective marker (verbs) / with which one can
KER / KER TEN / KERE / KEDUR - adverb markers.

Place words in this class before their attatched noun or verb. Put any dependent arguments after these, but before the head:

Iste kedur yt kuo mena. (I speak too quickly.)


The Weird Ones
REO - who
WO - which / that

These words are strange and have strange realizations. To start with, they postposition their root noun. Word case with these particles leads to different meanings, both full clauses:

Arg o reo thacyenpoc arannan eryt wozer sam. (The person - who saw god - entered the house.)

Arg o reo thacyenor aramnan eryt wozer sam. (The person - who god saw - entered the house.)

Attatching no word case leads to a third meaning, creating a giant noun phrase:

Arg o reo thacyen arannan eryt wozer sam. (The person who saw [that] god entered the house).

Spoiler: Weird - Yet Very Important - Particles

ORV
Genitive marker - when placed after a noun/phrase, puts it in the genitive case. Functionally equivalent to the "apostrophe-s" in English.
i.e, “The Corrupter of Worlds” ⇒ Eryt miseon orv neth iesu, literally "The World's Corrupter."

KOX
Adjectival marker - Place before a bare indefinite noun or verb to turn it into an adjective. The indefinite article can be dropped if the meaning of the word is inferable by context. Kox itself can sometimes be elided if context is clear.

i.e. “The big dude over there…” ⇒ Arg o kox tho tengeal… more informally Ym o kox tenge…


KER
“To have” as a standalone verb, but also functions as an adverbial marker that begins a subordinate clause. Adveribized nouns, if gender-dropping creates ambiguity, use the indefinite article. Basically, in this context “ker” is the word “with,” though it only applies to adverbs and not nouns.

i.e. Iste mena ker yt kuo ⇒ “I speak quickly,” more literally “I speak with a haste.” A statement like Iste mena ker kuo is technically legal if informal, but in this case ambiguous without context.

KER TEN
“Ker,” but as a comparative.
Iste (neste) mena ker ten yt kuo ⇒ I speak quicker (than you).

KERE
“Ker,” but as a superlative.
Iste mena kere yt kuo ⇒ I speak quickest.

KEDUR
“Ker,” but there’s more of it than is desirable.
Iste mena kedur yt kuo ⇒ I speak too quickly.

OZDO
Roughly corresponds to “With which one can,” this particle in front of a verb grammatically transforms it into an adjective. The verbal equivalent of kox above.

ARE
Question marker, placed at the beginning of a clause. “Are” alone calls a statement into question, but it has permutations for specific questions as well:
Areo “Who?”
Are phe “What?”
Are kron “When?”
Are phe fene “Where?”
Are phe kan “Why?”
Are se ke “How?”

Repeat the clause, sans are, to begin an answer.

________________________________

V - ALL OF THE STUFF THAT WASN'T SUBSTANTIAL ENOUGH TO BE PUT IN ITS OWN SECTION

Example Text
Nyalhn! Leyste Wynntheory, io leysteor wynteca le tel o kox urn phe kan resaln le leneste. Lih neroenon orz iste ir maldernre, sayl ird rern es eryt misye egezidro. Ymte ore! Ird rern kox wynn vergon che y’ero wynterid!​

Glossed Text:
Stem - Affix - Adposition​

Etepoc nanzirnynn phe kan etepoc orz neth ol egezsanre, Anyaor qiramena.​

it.OBJ PST.NEC.move for it.OBJ with DEF.wrong_hands IPROG.enter.NEG, Anya.SUBJ PST.speak​

/e.te.pɯk.nan.zirn.inn.phe.kan.e.te.pɯk.or̝.neth.ɯl.eg.ez.san.re, an.ja.ɯr.ʔhi.ra.me.na/​

[e.te.pɯx.nan.ziʁ.ŋinn.phe.ka.ne.te.pɯx.or̝.ne.thɯ.le.gø.ssan.ɹø, anjɶ.ɯɾ.ʔhi.ɾɶ.me.nɶ]​

(It had to be moved for it with the wrong hands entering not, Anya said.)​

It had to be moved to prevent it falling into the wrong hands, Anya said.


Canon Terms
This is everything we had to go on.​

1: Canon Olmic names:
Fromer, Anya, Kaen, Adan, Arna

2: Presumed Olmic words:
Dern, Olm, Wynn

3: The language used the ancient wynnic alphabet, which means that its graphemes (if not the phonemes they represented) mapped 1:1 with the English Latin Alphabet.​

Formal/Informal Grammar​

• Formal register is marked by increased usage of particles in noun/verb phrases.
  
  
• In more informal registers any particle can and will be dropped if inferable by context and/or irrelevant.
  
  
• Informal speech tends to drop as many particles as olmically possible -- even if it introduces ambiguity. As long as it is in any way possible for meaning to be glossed without the particle, said particle is dropped.
  
  
• Even in more formal registers, particle-dropping for the purpose of artistic ambiguity is generally considered grammatical.
  
  
• Though speech tends to stick to the same particle order no matter the level of formality, switching the order of particles is allowed (if stigmatized) as long as the particles don’t jump onto the other side of the phrase’s nucleus.
  • If it does, that’s considered unacceptably ungrammatical.

Other Constructions & Particles​

Spoiler: Polite Request

Requests are made using the are particle and attaching either the -al or -el honorific to the end of the object/requestee, depending on formality of the request.

• The -al request is casual and non-presumptive, roughly equivalent to “Could you hand over the TV remote?”
  
  
• The -el request is the equivalent of saying “please”.
  
  
• Stressed and unrounded “el” /e:l/, appearing on its own, is roughly equivalent to the word “please” on its own.

Spoiler: The Optative

This is a special grammatical mood that indicates hopes, or wishes.

It is made by using the Subjunctive + Kox Laz (desirable) + object + Implied copula.
An object is not required.

mypharan kox laz ym ⇒ It would be nice to read that.
mypharan kox laz ⇒ It would be nice to read.​

Spoiler: The Gerund

Gerunds are special constructions that allow verbs to behave like nouns in a sentence. The English Gerund, for example, is often found as the -ing form of verbs.

It is created by inflecting a verb as normal before postpositioning the word Tlye (Act). The gerund is only used for complex verb cases; simple verb cases are covered by the infinitive.

- (Ungrammatical) Wynteridwas tu urn. - ‘have been born is a gift'
- (Grammatical) Wynteridwas tlye tu urn. - ‘to have been born is a gift,’ more literally “have been born act a gift is.”​

Spoiler: Yes and No

Yes: Formally ete ete ‘it is it,’ though frequently shortened to etete
No: Formally ete etere. Res (an entirely unrelated particle) is a common short realization in speech.

Spoiler: Hello and Goodbye

Nestelhyan Mern! (Literally: You survive!) is the standard greeting, though it is often shortened to “Nyalhn” or even “Ny.”

Goodbye is the future hope version of this phrase, Neste Mymern. This too is often clipped to “Myrn.”

________________________________

AN END.
So that's the language. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Whether here on the thread or on the Wynntheory discord, we'll be available to answer any questions you might have.​

Credits:
@hmtn - Phonology, Syntax, Lexicon
@TrapinchO - Chief Editor, Grammar, Sanest Man (by comparison)
@StinkEyeCookie - Phonology, Lexicon
@Crepel - Editor
@Endistic - Editor
@Magicmakerman - Beta Reader
@DaCorruption - Producer, Moral Support
@Tealy - He knows what he did.​

Spoiler: Blooper Reel

(°u°)～

 

@Tealy You know what you did.

 

thanks wynntheory, very cool!

 

ayy its out lets go
extremely common wynntheory W

 

I provided no moral support. Thank you for including me on this very meticulous project.

In all actuality this is very cool.

 

Awesome thread

________________________________

Got a little spelling error in there

 

Google doesn't support Ancient Wynnic in its language libraries? SMH.

 

Holy shit, I had no idea how complicated making a language could be. While I absolutely commend such hard work and dedication, you all do realize that you all could've learned an... actual language by now right? /s

In all seriousness, do you mind explaining some of the terms you used? In particular, "mora-timed, generally head-final, has SOV sentence structure, and has a mostly active-static morphosyntactic alignment."

 

Thank you, and thank you for the questions! (I relish any excuse I can get to talk about language more.)

Mora Timing
Timing/Rhythm is an important factor in how a language sounds, and most languages around the world tend to fall into one of three main groups:

Stress-timed languages, like English, tend to make it so that a roughly equal amount of time passes between each main stressed syllable. CON-plete-the-ME-di-cal-QUEST-ion-naire. Stress-timed languages will often squish vowels and do strange things to their other noises in order to make sure this happens.

Syllable-timed languages instead have it so that a roughly equal amount of time passes between every syllable. Since they're not dragging out stressed syllables all the time, these languages tend to sound "faster" than stress-timed ones to non-native speakers - Spanish ia a great example of this.

This leads us to Mora-timed languages. Continuing the pattern, these languages try to make it so that an equal amount of time passes between each Mora. But wth is a Mora?

Think of a Mora like a sub-pixel, because that's the nature of its relationship to syllables. For example, even though "No" and "Strengths" are both a single syllable, the latter is noticeably larger than the former. Going down to the sub-syllable level, the former has one Mora and the latter has three.

Ancient Wynnic was originally syllable-timed, but we eventually made it Mora-timed after we noticed that we were picking up a lot of huge consonant clusters, as well as long vowels and consonants. Mora-timing "sounds" even faster than syllable timing (See: Japanese, a Mora-timed language) and we wanted to preserve that rapid-fire sound in the face of huge syllables.

Head Finality
Whether a language is head-initial or head-final is less an iron-clad category and more of a sliding scale. The "Head" being talked about here is the main part of a noun or verb phrase. For instance, in the sentence:

The man who I'd seen the last time I was here waved at me.

That entire bit in italics functions on a broad level as a single noun, waving at you. The head of that phrase is "man," and everything else is a qualifier that helps you know exactly what kind of man you're talking about. The man, the one who you'd seen the last time you were here.

English is a strongly head-initial language, so the head of that phrase showed up pretty early. Ancient Wynnic, on the other hand, likes sticking the head as close to the end as possible.
"We are able to do that easily" --> Neste ym lroqr ker ir hayz kizan, which word-by-word translates as something like "We that are able to easily do." The head of that verbal phrase, "do," showed up at the very, very end.

Subject-Object-Verb Sentence Structure
Oh, good, this one's easier. We've been using agent/patient terminology in the thread, but in this case that's basically equivalent to subject/object. The subject is the doer of the sentence's action, the object the receiver.

When English has a clause, it does it in Subject-Verb-Object order: "I enter the house." Ancient Wynnic, however, goes about in in Subject-Object-Verb order: Iste eryt er sam, "I the house enter"

Morphosyntactic Alignment
is its own whole can of worms, and was probably the single most complicated part of the project for any of us to wrap our heads around, and I'm still not quite comfortable enough with it to do a write-up. If you want to try and make heads or tails of it, here's the wikipedia page, and here's a dude that can explain it better than I ever could. It's still rather dense, though, this is some high-level stuff.

 

hi
i would like to ask what
i mean
hey
uh
you know what
fuck
there my first swear on the forums

 

10/10 thread, how do you put so much effort into something
I do have some questions about the theory, though, mainly relating to how this ties into the game's lore
1. Did any group (like the eagle and owl tribes) besides the olm use the language as a vernacular?
2. Is the language seen in troubled tribesmen completely unrelated to this language?
3. This is probably me being stupid, but are "Olmic" and "Ancient Wynnic" two names for one language or is the latter descended from the former?

 

1. No, casual use of this language was limited to the Olm. Spellcasters in the modern day make frequent use of it, but not as a vernacular.

2. This is still one of the great unsolved mysteries of Wynn's language situation, but current thoughts are that the language in Troubled Tribesman is still one that originates from Fruma. Ancient Wynnic probably had an even larger amount of influence on it than it had on Modern Wynnic, though.

3. Nah, is cool is cool. It's two names for the same language. Nobody in-universe actually calls it "Olmic," but in our workshop the name "Olmic" makes it easier for us to remember that isn't Modern Wynnic's ancestor. Plus, it's shorter to type.

 

a little note to the explanation from hmtn: languages often have several names - by the speakers themselves (for example "English") and by non-natives (for example "Angličtina" by Czechs)

so "Olmic" can be native name and "Ancient Wynnic" name given centuries later

________________________________

Btw technically this is not even a rework - Ancient Wynnic is a script, not a language

 

I know what I did.

 

Huge props for creating a whole language!

And what is that? Hungarian getting mentioned?! Féljetek a 17 esetünktől!!!

 

So how do I join the wynntheory discord? I’m interested in joining.

 

Started a conversation with you with the invite

 

The forgotten Wynnic glyphs

 

Don't show up in the transcriber, so they got tossed and then set on fire. Which is a shame, but the lack of a "PH" glyph as well as the weird going-ons between "KH/CH" means we'd either 1) have to make two new glyphs anyway or 2) figure out why modern magical scribes decided CH and KH were two different letters at some point.