Arêndron

NOTICE

I am making a full-scale revision of Arêndron at the moment. The existing (old) version will not appear on this site. (Maybe I'll use some of the discarded ideas in other languages or dialects, but that's my own business.) What will appear will be the new material, as I make decisions on what to change and what to keep. I hope that my fans will be patient; I expect this to be a long process.

What is Arêndron?

Arêndron was the language of the kingdom of Arêndros, a small land in the south of what is now Urŋundra. (The name derives from Endros, the capital city, which in turn comes from Endar, the name of the hero claimed in legend to have founded the city.) The kingdom rose to prominence after the Argundran war, when the king, Masra, had himself crowned Emperor, and declared that year to be 1 OA (Olnom Arêndron), the first year of the Arêndron Empire.

The Empire, at its height, ruled the northern half of Atragam from Vardeu in the east to Ghadœsa and Xœlin in the far west. In all of these lands, Arêndron verb conjugations are still drummed into thousands of unwilling schoolchildren, and the language is learnt fluently by merchants, diplomats, scholars, priests, and anyone else whose job requires either international travel or frequent contact with classical literature and philosophy.

I mention international travel because Arêndron continues to be the lingua franca of trade and diplomacy; travellers much prefer to learn the one language (especially when it is one they have started to learn at school anyway) than a new language for each country they want to travel to. Even outside the lands of the former Empire, Arêndron is learned by all those wanting to conduct business with the Imperial kingdoms. It is therefore an essential starting-point for anyone wishing to immerse themselves in the culture and literature of Atragam.

Arêndron, being a dead language, does not now have dialects in the usual sense. The form considered "standard" and taught in schools is the dialect of the Laurêan plains, traditionally considered the "purest" and most beautiful form of the language. I will, nonetheless, include information on the dialects it had when it was spoken as a living language, as several of these are of historic importance, being transitional stages between Arêndron and its descendant languages.

History

Arêndron belongs to the Ileuran family of languages, descended from Proto-Ileuran, a language spoken by a group of tribes who gave up their previous nomadic existence to settle the land around the Ileura River in the third millennium BE. Over time the Ileurans divided into many separate kingdoms, and their language diverged into separate languages; Arêndron belongs, with Shôraucan, Darpêtha and Tœnôri, to the Urŋundran branch of the family, named from its location to the west (urn) of the Gundra river.

Note: ignore what follows; this is all old stuff that needs to be reworked

some groups of the nomads who roamed the Uschœran Plain between approximately 4000 and 2000 BE. Over time, various groups of these nomads moved south and settled the more fertile lands bordering the Great Inland Sea, thus dividing the Ileuran family into its different branches.

Between around 2000 and 1600 BE, the Fælînhan branch, from Sulêa in the west, was in the ascendancy, but after the Fælînhan empire crumbled, a new civilisation developed in Ærûdha further east. Ærûdha was, however, at constant war with the northern barbarians, and after the fall of their great capital, Bômabir, their boundary was pushed further and further back, until they were left with Urŋundra, which they redivided into the kingdoms of Arêndros, Shôrauca, Darpæth and Tœnôra.

Arêndron is thus a descendant of the old Ærûdhan language, although it has also taken many words and influences from the other peoples its speakers have been in contact with – from the barbarians, from the kingdoms they conquered in Ileura, and from many more places besides.