Bantazi Arazi

Bantazi Arazi is an Asatic language spoken primarily in Aradór and some of its colonies. It has been the official language of Aradór for several centuries.

Etymology
The name (metsa) bantazi arazi is derived from Classical Arazi's banta, meaning "between", alluding to the origin of the language in Between-Rivers (Classical Arazi: Bantatyöstis). However, the name "Bantazi" or "Bantazi Arazi" are only used when emphasizing the differences between this language and its predecessors. The usual term for the language in Bantazi itself is "Heràz" [əˈræz] (of the Aras), a direct descendant of Cl. Arazi's (metsa) arazi.

Orthography
Bantazi Arazi is written using a version of the Asatic alphabet.

The romanisation of the language's orthography uses the Latin alphabet, supplemented by a few diacritic marks: * the grapheme ł is frequently substituted by y, as the palatal lateral approximant [ʎ] has now merged with [j].
 * the acute, used to denote long vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú) and palatalised consonants (ń, ŕ, ś, ź, ł*),
 * the grave, used to mark stressed syllables where they wouldn't otherwise be expected (à, è, ì, ò, ù) and
 * the trema, used in ü and ö to denote the front rounded vowels.

History
Main article: Arazi language.


 * See also: Classical Arazi.

Bantazi Arazi gradually evolved from Classical Arazi via a set of phonological and grammatical changes after the fall of Asàel and during the following centuries. The specific dialect / language originated in the southern Between-Rivers province of Aradór, in the region east of Üfari, and then spread first to Araero and then through much of Eastern and Central Aradór. Aradór's colonial expansion brought the language to Sephir.

The expansion of the language to the area adjacent to the capital and the larger south Bantatyösti cities, such as Scallaba, Prifero, Cubrili and others was facilitated mostly by the cultural influence of Üfari, but the further spread of the language was largely a function of Bantatyösti industrialisation and rapid economic and population growth.

Linguistic changes
The changes that the language underwent brought Bantazi more in line with other Gondalan languages, simplifying the rich noun declension systems and substituting previously inflected verb forms with analytic forms created with auxiliary and modal verbs.

Phonology
The phonological shifts were comparatively minor, mostly effecting the language's long vowels and fricatives.
 * Classical Arazi's long vowels shift in quality and / or diphthongise;
 * long / o: / and / u: / diphthongise to /au/ and /iu/;
 * long / a: / shift to / o: /, while long / e: / shift to long / a: /;
 * unstressed vowels are reduced and often elided, long unstressed vowels are pronounced short but retain quality;
 * unstressed front rounded vowels / y ø / lose their rounding;
 * the series of Arazi's fricatives is simplified, merging / ʃ ɬ ç / vs / ʒ ʝ j / to / ʃ / vs / ʒ j /;
 * the palatal stops / c / and / ɟ / merge with the post-alveolar fricatives / tʃ / and /dʒ/;
 * a series of other changes affect vowel qualities in specific contexts and some sporadic changes affect consonants, too.

Grammar
The shift to Classical to Bantazi Arazi is marked by a trend towards analytic constructions. Bantazi Arazi is still moderately inflecting and fusional language, but lost a number of previously productive inflections.
 * Simplification of noun declensions and cases: Bantazi Arazi has four noun cases (Nominative, Genitive, Accusative and Ablative) as opposed to the seven cases of Classical Arazi (Nom, Gen, Acc, Dat, Locative, Ablative and Allative), and the remaining cases often coincide with other cases, depending on the declension paradigm.
 * most of the now defunct cases are supplanted with prepositional phrases;
 * the genitive construction used the preposition fan has fallen out of favour; bare genitive nouns are used instead.
 * A large number of nouns previously belonging to the 2. masculine declension (thematic vowel -e) have been reanalysed as belonging to 3. masculine declension (thematic vowel -i).
 * Adjective declension is likewise simplified to the four core cases, although these cases are identical to one another more frequently than in nouns (the noun - adjective inflections are not always identical).
 * Loss of inflected past imperfect, which is replaced by a construction employing an auxiliary verb;
 * Complex TAM forms, incorporating several auxiliary verbs, have become much more common.

Consonants

 * Before front vowels, /ʃ ʒ/ are realized as alveolo-palatal [ɕ ʑ].
 * Syllable final /l/ are almost always vocalised to [w].
 * Sequence [r + dentals] produce reflexive sounds: yurta ['juʈːə], durn [duɳː].
 * The glottal fricative is a rare sound, found only is some dialects; the sound is silent in others.
 * Voiceless stops are voiced after nasals: vanta [vɒndə]; stampa [stɒmbə].
 * [w] appears as an allophone of /v/ in certain environments, such as between a consonant and a vowel (e.g. tvagamut [twəˈgæmʊt], to empower) and between two vowels for some speakers (avanta [əˈwɑndə], defense)

Vowels

 * Near-close vowels only appear in unstressed syllables; close vowels can appear both in stressed and unstressed syllables.
 * Long, unstressed vowels are realized as short vowels in unstressed, closed syllables, long vowels in stressed and unstressed open syllables (even if subsequent elision of schwas make the syllable appear to be closed).
 * [æ] is an allophone of /a/ in open, stressed syllables. [ɒ] is an allophone of /a/ before nasals (an found in a few other environments, typically before /s/ and /r/ in closed syllables for many speakers):
 * vanta (guard) [ˈvɑndə]
 * sasna (matter) [ˈsɑsnə]
 * entśargut (to complete) [ənˈdʒɑrgʊt]
 * /a ɛ/ are reduced to [ə] in unstressed syllables (if short); further reduced to [ɪ] if after a palatal or palato-alveolar consonant.
 * [ə] is frequently elided if followed by a full, stressed syllable.

Grammar
Bantazi grammar is in many ways very similar to the grammatical systems of its precursors; in other ways, it offers drastically different solutions, both as a result of internal developments and external influences (particularly because of the Gondalan Sprachbund).

Articles
Unlike it's predecessors, Bantazi has developed a set of definite articles. These articles are descendent from distal demonstratives and still may function as such. In contrast, there are no indefinite article.

The definite article agrees with the nouns gender (masculine, feminine or neuter), number (singular or plural) and case (nominative, genitive, accusative, ablative). Since the articles are almost always unstressed, "haz / has" and "hoz / hos" are pronounced identically, as /əs/ and /əz/. In common practice, these articles are often written as "hez / hes" to reflect the unstressed pronunciation in contrast to the same morphemes serving as demonstrative, where the vowels are usually not reduced.

Pronouns, nouns and adjectives
Pronouns, nouns and adjectives all (can) have the three genders, two numbers and four cases outlines above in the "Articles" section.

Pronouns
Bantazi pronouns are directly descendent from Classical Arazi pronouns, though some of the pronouns have undergone prominent changes, apart from the regular and expected sound changes. All the pronouns are declined like nouns, with all masculine pronouns following 3.m paradigm and the feminine pronoun ur following 2.f paradigm, despite lacking the nominative ending -u. The third person masculine plural pronoun cunis is notable for having changing stress, rather than fixed as would be expected, and can as a consequence, said to be declined following the 3.n paradigm, at least in the plural.

Bantazi pronouns have some characteristics that are usually typical of nouns, rather than pronouns:
 * can be modified by an adjective:
 * Cun turha humu calthu - the *handsome he reads a book;
 * can be modified by an article / demonstrative pronoun, often in concordance with an adjective:
 * Hos nus melens - Those (over there) are singing;
 * Hos nus vicros lacens  - Those *many *them walk;
 * can be modified by a numeral, both ordinal and cardinal, usually without an article:
 * Cám cis berden- The three of them are looking.

Nouns
Bantazi nouns are divided in three declensions:
 * First paradigm: masculine nouns with the thematic vowel -a and female nouns with the thematic vowel -o;
 * inflections:
 * Second paradigm: masculine nouns in -e and female nouns in -u;
 * inflections:
 * Third paradigm: masculine and neuter nouns with the thematic vowel i;
 * inflections:
 * * may as well be written "-wi" in some contexts, usually for a pseudo-archaic spelling or as a stylistic choice;
 * ** the palatal approximant merges with coronals to produce ś (<sy), tś (<ty), ź (<z), dź (<dy), ń (<ny), ł (<ly); ł is pronounced [j] and, as a consequence, is usually written as y.

The Ablative is mostly used as a prepositional; its use without a preposition has largely fallen out of use.

Examples of singular declension:

All nouns are pluralised with the same suffixes, attached to the thematic vowel of the respective noun. The plural inflections for male 1. paradigm are: N as      G -àz        Ac -às           Ab -às. This means that stress switches to the last syllable for genitive, accusative and ablative suffixes. This holds largely true for all paradigms except for 3. masculine paradigm, which largely retains the original stress (sng nom), although exceptions exist (such as the person pronouns cun (he) and its plural form cunis, which follows the typical non-3.m pattern for stress changes: cunis - cunìz - cunìs - cunìs).

Adjectives
Bantazi adjectives agree with the noun they modify in gender, case and number, and almost always follow the noun, e.g. há vanta calpa [aˈvɑndə ˈkaʊpə] (the strong guard), hoz benòz calpòz [əzbəˈnɔz kəuˈpɔz] (of the strong trees), has del ròsis calpàs [əzdəʊˈrɔsɪs kəʊˈpæs] (because of the strong wines), his sal balìs calpìs [̩ɪsəʊbᵊˈlis kəʊˈpis] (out of the strong seeds).

Adjectives have inflected comparative degrees, comparative in -ar (i.e. calpàr, calparo, calpari) and superlative in -es (i.e. calpès, calpeso, calpesi).

Verbs
Bantazi verbs, like those of Classical Arazi, are roughly split into two conjugational paradigms, usually referred to as the 1. and the 2., or o-conjugation and u-conjugation, respectively, parallelling the numbering and thematic vowels of noun declension.

Conjugation
Bantazi verbs agree with their subjects (agents) in person, gender and number. The gender distinction exists in the second (feminine-masculine) and third persons (feminine-neuter-masculine), both singular and plural, but not in the first person. For groups of mixed genders, the verbal conjugation, just like pronouns, default to the masculine forms in the second person and to the neuter in the third person. In cases where two possible forms exist (e.g. -ent / -ont), the difference is purely orthographical, with -e- being the most common spelling, reflecting the reduced pronunciation of the vowel, while the -o- forms are more historically accurate. An exception is the cases marked with *, where the difference exists in pronunciation (melone [ˈməloːnə] vs melòn [ˈməlɔn] and calou [ˈkælʊ] vs calo [ˈkælə]), too, and the choice between these are largely up to personal preference.

All forms that end with -nt are pronounced without the final consonant, unless the verb is directly followed by a word that begins with a vowel, in which case the the final -t is realized as /d/: Verbs of the first paradigm often displays irregularities in their vowel qualities. This primarily affects verbs that had a broken diphthong in Classical Arazi (diphthongs like  that might experience stress changes from the first element to the second and are essentially two separate phonemes, as opposed to fixed diphthongs,  that are always stressed on the first element and are phonemes on their own, see also Classical Arazi diphthongs). For example, the conjugation of śároit:
 * Cis ormònt [ˌkɪsərˈmɔn] - They see
 * Cis ormònt hu tśiunu [ˌkisərˈmɔn‿dʊˌtʃiʊ̯nʊ] - They see the city (the h in hu is mute).

Tense - Aspect - Mood
Bantazi has a TAM system typical for languages in the Gondalan Sprachbund, meaning that the primary distinction tense-wise is between past, present and future, and aspect-wise between perfective and imperfect.

For the present tense, the imperfect and perfective forms are identical. The only indicative present form can also stand for habitual and gnomic aspects. Do distinguish ongoing actions from general truth, adverbs and particles, such as sinha (now, at the moment) can be added. For the past tense, both the imperfect and perfective tenses are formed with the help of auxiliary verbs - soit (i.e. to be) and seboit (to have done) respectively. The imperfect often is used for description of ongoing actions, long actions and to provide a background to perfective verbs, describing actions with a concrete end point, sudden or short and punctual actions, as well as the main narrative and past actions with results in present (perfect aspect). These modals verbs are followed by à + infinitive, and the modal verbs themselves have irregular conjugations. The future tense is likewise split between imperfect and perfective aspects, formed with *roit (also the future form of soit) and seboit à roit à (future form of seboit): In addition to this, öboit is used to construct immediate future / future past: The two modal verbs most commonly used to form tenses - soit and sebut - are also the only verbs that have a still frequently used inflected imperfect form (and, in the case of soit, even future forms). The soit forms are used for general existential constructions: The seboit imperfect is used to form anterior past: Bantazi moods are usually expressed with modal verbs, too. The verbs include: These verbs, as well as other modal verbs such as penut ("can, be able to"), hóvoit ("may, be allowed to") and the evidential verbs berdut ("must", the evidence point that...) and 'śungut' ("is said to...") can freely combine with other auxiliary verbs:
 * Yón trośe bi-tśöstis [jon ˈtrɔʃə bɪˈtʃœstɪs] - I swim in rivers
 * Yón trośe sinha bi-tśösti [jon ˈtrɔʃə sɪˈna bɪˈtʃœstɪ] - I am swimming in a river right now.
 * Yón soi à trocoit ho bi-tśösti - I was swimming in the river.
 * Yón seb à trocoit ho bel-tśösti  - I swam across the river.
 * Yón roi à trocoit - I will swim.
 * Yón seb à roit à trocoit - I will have swum.
 * Yón öb à trocoit - I am going to swim.
 * Yón seb à öboit à trocoit - I was about to swim.
 * Yón soi - I am.
 * Yón sví - I was.
 * Yón roi - I will be.
 * Yón seub à trocoit - I had swam
 * Yón seub à öboit à trocoit - I had been about to swim.
 * śanut - "would", optative, subjunctive, conditional,
 * onoit - "must", debitive, often substituted with hurut onni cay à ("must", strong obligations and necessities) and hurut bertu cay à ("should", for weaker obligations and needs as well as advice).
 * Yón seb à śant à meloit - I would have sung
 * Yón śungi à roit à pent à trocoit - They say that I will be able to swim.

Prepositions
Bantazi Arazi uses a large number of prepositions to express temporal and spatial relationships. However, only two of these prepositions functions as a "typical" preposition - fan - originally used to express ownership, now generally denoting place of origin (essentially meaning "from") and cay, meaning "concerning" or "about", and used in a number of idiomatic phrasal verbs. The rest of the so-called prepositions are come directly before the noun they modify, rather than before the whole noun phrase as is the case with fan. This means that the preposition comes between the definite article, numeral or the few adjectives that can precede a noun and the noun itself: All of these prefixed prepositions govern the ablative case and both the noun following them and the determiners and adjectives preceded them must be declined accordingly.
 * há carda - the chasm
 * fan hi cardi - from the chasm, out of the chasm.
 * cay hi cuńńi - about the horse
 * yón huri onni cay hi cuńńi - I need the horse / I must have the horse.
 * há tśöst - the river
 * ho bi-tśösti - in/at the river
 * ho cám bel-tśöstis (the three across-river)- across the three rivers.

Lexicon
The vast majority of Bantazi lexemes are of native origin, that is, are the continuation of words inherited from Proto-Asatic, through the various stages of the language's life - Archaic Arazi, Arazi Calthi and Classical Arazi. A part from these lexemes, a fair number of borrowed words, having entered the language at various points in time, also exist.

The inherited vocabulary of Bantazi often has corresponding cognates in other languages, particularly other South Asatic languages, but even in Coeric and the Cāvarī languages. These vocabulary items usually denote very basic concepts - body parts, family relationships, common natural phenomena and objects. Some examples of Bantazi lexemes inherited from Proto-Asatic include: Of course, several such items have undergone semantic change and no longer denote such basic concepts, and many other inherited lexemes are compounded and inflected to derive new words.
 * rance - hand;
 * gámi - body;
 * erye - sun;
 * catńi - sibling;
 * beno - tree;
 * agoru - fish.

The Pre-Asatic substrate substrate refers to words borrowed into the language relatively soon after the migration towards to modern day Aradór. While there are not as many such words in Bantazi as they are in Western and Southern Arazi languages, they nevertheless exist. Such words often describe phenomena and objects characteristic for Aradór but not previously encountered by the speakers of the language. Some of such words are: Loanwords from the Moroy language have been a part of Arazi vocabulary for a very long time now. The some of these loanwords refer specifically to the state, such as Amurawn, the name of the country, while the vast majority of them denote more or less exotic trade goods. Some of the Moroy loanwords in Bantazi are: Loanwords from the Coeric language came into the Arazi language through the extensive language and cultural contact the languages had during and after the Asatic Empire and Asàel. These words are numerous are rather hard to codify. Some examples include: Loanwords from the Beringian language, typically younger than the Coeric loans, often concern trade, literature and humanitarian sciences, as well as politics. Some examples for these words are: There are, of course, numerous loanwords from a variety of other languages, such as the northern Asatic languages, Dargadian, Cāvarī and Tao Ai languages. However, these loanwords are comparatively few and rare when compared to the Pre-Asatic substrate or the Moroy or Coeric loans.
 * tsünte - olive;
 * balga - Gondalan tiger;
 * túru - Plain lion;
 * irtśana - plain, savannah, large and vast grassland (Dry Plain).
 * anguri / angurvi - cannon;
 * ayeta - blue;
 * báseta - silk;
 * cóśdara - saffron;
 * hedźada - tea;
 * haśa - (black) pepper.
 * tśamild - breeches, pants;
 * oni - rye;
 * vergell - goose;
 * íńaw - a purple dye;
 * kágawd - modern, contemporary;
 * avawd - council, senate;
 * masmor - parliament.
 * efrud - oyster;
 * feucü - sovereignty;
 * mand - merchandise;
 * gloy - herring;
 * gatsè - noun;
 * suźisè - verb.

Distribution
The Bantazi language is widely spoken in the state of Aradór, being the official language, most spoken native language and most known second language. Bantazi is the dominant languge not only in its original province of Between-Rivers but also in East Plain, Crownlands, Southmarch and Eastmarch, as well as having a firm position in eastern Mörone.

Bantazi is also spoken in the continent of Sephir, most notably in the former Arazi colony of Arantu.

Bantazi is a widely learned second language, perhaps the most well known second language.