Arazi Calthi

Arazi Calthi (literal meaning: Arazi [language] of the Book), also called Book Arazi, Holy Arazi (surma metsa arazi) or, in discourse outside of the universe, Biblical Arazi, was an Asatic language from southern / central provinces of Aradór in the Asatic Empire. The language started as a mixture of two or more very closely related dialects spoken around Torłeśe and Araero, and later spread through most of modern Aradór, eventually displacing several local native languages.

Arazi Calthi served as the unofficial standard language of the later Asatic Empire and early Asàel. The language was primarily a literary and lithurgic language with relatively few native ''speakers. ''As the language became more and more often used for spoken communication and acquired a significant number of native speakers, it gradually evolved into Classical Arazi both through internal processes and influences from other related languages spoken in Aradór.

History
Main article: Arazi language

Arazi Calthi developed from a group of closely related Eastern Arazi languages / dialects spoken around the city of Nuvöto, particularly in Torłeśe, and was influenced by varieties spoken in southern Between-Rivers and around Araero. As such, the language is a very typical Eastern Arazi language, having undergone the expected consonant and vowel shifts for its group, and exhibits a typical grammatical structure for a South Asatic language, such as three genders, adjective and noun agreements, as well as vowel ablaut and subject gender agreement in verbs.

The language was codified in large part by Oben Uvenna, the founder of Obenism, who was a native speaker of the Torłeśe dialect that served as the basis of Arazi Calthi, and expanded by his followers. The language was popularised by the spread of Obenism, as the sacred texts of the religion where written in it, hence the names Arazi Calthi (Arazi [language] of the Book), Surma Metsa (the Sacred Language) and the externally applied Biblical Arazi, all refering to Surma Caltha, the central holy text of Obenism.

Phonology
The phonology of Arazi Calthi is characterised by the large number of consonants, particularly fricatives, and a fairly unstable vowel inventory.

Consonants
The consonant system of the language preserves a snapshot of the very last phases of the chain shifted that has affected all South Asatic languages, the fricativisation of the voiceless stop series, as the stops turned first to affricates and then to fricatives. This second step was almost complete by early Arazi Calthi for the p>f and k>h shifts, with fricatives dominating in all positions but word-initially and some coda positions, and was eventually completely finished.
 * the palatal series, except for /j/, were almost cetainly pronounced as consonant clusters, not true palatals;
 * africates /pf/ and /kx/ are occasionally found word initially and in coda positions, but have lenited to /f/ and /x/ between vowels, sometimes in front of vowels, and in general are not separate phonemes from the respective fricatives;
 * the palato-alveolar fricatives and affricates may have been pronounced post-alveolarly;
 * [w] and [v] are in complementary distribution, [w] being the original pronunciation that then was fortified word-initially and occasionally in other instances, but never intervocally;
 * /h/ may have been pronounced in the earlier forms of the language but very quickly was elided, lengthening the preceding vowel if postvocally or without a trace in other environments (this applies both to /h/ inherited from Proto-Asatic and [h] the product of debuccalisation of /s/ in specific conditions);
 * [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ before velars;
 * the voiceless lateral and rhotic may still have been pronounced as clusters /lh rh/ or /hl hr/ at least during the earlier stages of the language.

Vowels
By late 21st century the vowel system had stabilised as:
 * Vowel length was phonemic in Arazi Calthi, so all vowels apart from /æ/ can be found either long or short.
 * /æ/ is a marginal phoneme found in a couple of words, e.g. nære "bay", ábulyænu "Ocean, Western Sea", and eventually merged with /e/, as /æ/ moved upwards and /e/ downwards towards [ɛ].
 * /o/ varies widely in its realization, from a pretty straightforward [o] for some speakers to the much more common diphthong realizations, such as [ou̯], [ɵu̯] or [eo̯]. The diphthongs were particularly common in the earliest forms of the language, while later forms use [o]. Eventually, by the time of Classical Arazi, the phoneme was realised as [u].

Grammar
Arazi Calthi, like all other South Asatic languages spoken at the time, is a highly inflecting language with primarily fusional morphology, though it does demonstrate a degree of agglutination, too. It prefers suffixes to denote grammatical functions and prefixes for word derivation, and features infixation to a limited degree in verb morphology.

Nouns and adjectives
Nouns have three genders - masculine, feminine and neuter - and fall into seven declension classes. They are inflected for seven cases, two numbers (singular and plural) and a vestigial dual number, and may be modified by prefixed prepositions that govern specific cases.

Gender and agreement
All Arazi nouns fall in one of the three grammatical genders. The genders are usually easily identifiable by the ending of the noun in question. All adjectives modifying a noun must agree with it in gender, number and case, and the vast majority of adjectives follow the nouns they modify.

Declension
Arazi nouns are devided in four declension paradigms, paradigm I (masculine and feminine), paradigm II (masculine and feminine), paradigm III (masculine and neuter) and paradigm IV (masculine).

The endings and thematic vowels of the respective paradigms are: Arazi adjectives agree with the gender of their head, but not necessarily the paradigm, i.e. all masculine and feminine adjectives are declined as paradigm I and neuter adjectives as the neuter paradigm III.
 * -a: masculine I nouns, e.g. metsa (language), metsas (languages), tsalha langa (an empty house);
 * -e: masculine II nouns, e.g. fyéde (crown), fyédes (crowns), laudre dzuma (a white dog);
 * -o: feminine I nouns, e.g. löimo (daughter), löimos (daughters), beno lúmo (a great tree);
 * -u: feminine II nouns, e.g. ríbu (war), ríbus (wars), pelu pilo (sweet honey);
 * -i: neuter III nouns, e.g. otli (twig), otlis (twigs), löimi tsuyi (a small child);
 * - (i): masculine III nouns, e.g. thrig (ship), thrigis (ships) ufanc sawela (a bright spark);
 * - (ü): masculine IV nouns, e.g. cót (a period between a solstice and equinox, apr. 45 days, a "solar month"), cótüs (plural form), cót iræna (the dark month, between autumn crossquarter and winter solstice, see Asatic Calendar).

Both nouns and adjectives are declined in seven cases, four of them syntactic and three - locative cases. The cases are: The genitive, at least when indicating ownership and descent from a particular place or family, is almost universally accompanied by the preposition fan, but not in other functions, whence:
 * nominative: the syntactic subjects of verbs;
 * accusative: the direct objects of verbs and a few prepositions;
 * dative: the indirect object of verbs;
 * genitive: the possessor, source, descriptor etc of another noun, very often together with the preposition fan;
 * illative/locative: indicating static location, the concepts of "in, at, on", as well as after prepositions;
 * allative: indicating motion towards something, the concepts of "to, towards" and occasional "into" and after prepositions;
 * ablative: indicating motion away from something, a source and point of origin, the concepts of "from, off", as well as after most prepositions.
 * metsa arazi: language of the Aras - no direct ownership and no fan;
 * durn fan sórí: a woman's home - direct ownership, with fan.

Prepositions
The vast majority of Arazi "prepositions" are actually clitics/prefixes that are attached in from of the noun they modify. "Fan" is a major exception to this, acting like a normal preposition. All prepositions, prefixed or not, govern a specific case, most commonly ablative.

The prefixed preposition comes directly before the noun they modify, preceding any demonstrative pronouns, numerals, adjectives or anything else that modifies the head. Some prefixed prepositions and example phrases: