Draft:Poscan

Poscan
Languna Poscan
Ethnicity	Poscans
Era	As a native language, from c.1200 BU to c.250 AU
Language family	Magnan-Hoglian Central Poscan
Early forms	Early Classical Poscan Middle Poscan Old Poscan
Writing system	The Capetian Script. (Latin)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	Pos

Note that this is just for fun, the article is about a fictional language that I created and is never meant to be published.

Poscan (Langūna Poscan Poscan: /lænˈɡuːnə ˈpɔskæn/) is an ancient language belonging to the central branch of the Magnan-Hoglian languages. Poscan is considered to be a dead language as it no longer has any native speakers, nor is it used to produce major texts anymore. Poscan was originally spoken in the Poscan Valley area around Posca City. Around the 13th century BU, Capetian traders made their way to Poscan shores, influencing the language greatly. Through the expansion of the Kingdom of Posca, the language became the dominate language of Northeastern Hogland. However as Posca declined, so did the language. Its former status replaced by Penian, the language spoken by the Pens. However Poscan really fell from prestige after the entirety of the Poscan Region was annexed by the Kingdom of Pen. Eventually the language was assimilated, with only scattering regions speaking it by 250 BU. It was supplanted by Pen-Poscan, a hybrid of the two aforementioned Languages.

Due to the former prestige and importance of the Poscan State, it left behind many inscriptions (some fragmentary) including calendars, pottery accounts, funeral monuments, short dedications to gods, coin inscriptions, statements of ownership, and other texts, possibly curse tablets. We have little idea what Poscan was like before Capetian traders brought their language with them. Our sole surviving accounts are from the merchants who made their way there and wrote about their experience.

Poscan inherited many grammatical institutions from Capetian, such as Verbal Tenses like a past tense, present tense, present continuous etc. A Verbal Conjugation (ete, etes, ete, etos, etis, eten) and its writing system (the Capetian Script). Words were also taken from Capetian like tusk, sugar, gold, silver, salt, timber, tin, iron, copper, ivory, silk, ceramics, cotton, wool, glass, oils, wine, grain, and spices, things that were traded, sold and bought.

History

Old Poscan

Old Poscan was an early form of Poscan spoken around the 13th century BU to the 7th century BU. It is attested both in inscriptions and in some of the earliest extant Poscan literary works, such as comedies. There are little surviving records of this era, as Poscan was only a spoken language until the 11th century BU. At this time the language was carved on stone, meaning that there were no lowercase letters as well.

Middle Poscan

By the 6th Century BU, great changes had occured to the language. For example, the vast majority of diphthongs have been replaced by monophthongs, although they would still be spelled with two vowels until the 3rd Century BU. Scrolls are becoming common and lowercase letters, created across sea by Capetian scribes, became popular. Like orthography during the Old Poscan times, there were no real punctuation except dots between words.

Early Classical Poscan

By the 4th century BU, the Poscan monks and scribes began to discover inconsistencies in the Poscan language. For example, diphthong like oa, ie, ai have long since been pronounced as monophthongs (oa as o, ie as i, ai as I as well). There are also silence letters that have not been pronounced for centuries still written in text. Reforms were carried out, diphthongs like cut down (e.g oa became o, boat became bot) silent letter taken away. The changes were mostly literary, there were no main oral changes.

Classical Poscan

Classical Poscan was spoken from the 3rd/2nd century BU to 200 AU. More major changes happened during this time, for example, a new vowel was add to the alphabet, Ø. It was to represent the /ø/ sound, previous represented by "eu". The letter J, previously pronounced as /h/ became a /dʒ/. Long vowels, the result of the Early Classical Reforms, were marked with macrons. Rules were also set in place that prevented silent letters and made diphthongs illegal. But for the sake of convenience, words that end with a vowel were connected with the immediate following word if it should start with another vowel (e.g done if became donif).

In 98 BU, the Kingdom of Pen captured and sacked the city of Posca, effectively ending Poscan sovereignty. For administrative purposes, Poscan remained in use and with Penian, but over time the latter began to outweigh the former. By 300 AU, Poscan was all but dead.

Phonology

The ancient pronunciation of Poscanhas been reconstructed; among the data used for reconstruction are explicit statements about pronunciation by ancient authors, misspellings, puns, ancient etymologies and the spelling of Poscan loanwords in other languages.