Welcome to the website dedicated to the languages of Fertis. This project as originally conceived was to create five language families with histories and interactions to create a fully fleshed out world. As time goes by, it may also grow to include language isolates or even additional families. For an overview of the world of Fertis, you can see my current progress here. A broad description of each of the five language families follows (n.b. most of the names are stand-ins until and appropriate autonym can be devised):
The Dhməħyēn Language Family (so named for from the proto-language autonym) is meant to resemble the Indo-European languages. For the parameters in designing the initial language, I used the grammatical structures and grammatical words reconstructed from Proto-Indo-European, with changes made to fit my personal tastes. The daughter languages will be derived following very nearly the sound changes which occurred in the major branches and languages of the Indo-European family, but the grammatical innovations and lexical changes will not always follow a similar path.
The Southwestern Language Family is meant to resemble the Sinitic languages. This will be an opportunity to delve into working with contour tones, and especially exploring the process of tonogenisis. At this point, I am unsure whether I will try to directly parallel the development of any natural languages, or if I will simply attempt to implement a similar trajectory of language development as is found in South East Asia.
The Elvish Language Family is the language family for the Fae who have returned to the physical realm (better terminology pending). It is intended to be reminiscent of Tolkien’s elvish languages, although with some of my own standards for what makes a beautiful sounding language substituted in. This will be the “oldest” of the language families, and the writing system developed by the early form of the language will either be borrowed to create the writing systems of other families or will provide the inspiration for inventing their own systems.
The Desert Language Family was originally meant to resemble the Semitic languages. This will be an opportunity to delve into creating a non-concatenative language, which has been a fascination of mine ever since I began learning Hebrew. I have since decided to begin with a language meant to resemble Proto-Afro-Asiatic, creating a larger language family with daughter languages similar to those found across Northern Africa and the Middle East, including the non-concatenative Semitic languages.
The Dunleden Language Family is the language family for a species of humanoids that grew up alongside humans in Fertis. They share similarities to the Neanderthal of earth history, but also take inspiration from dwarves of fantasy fiction (although they are not significantly shorter than humans). The Dunleden languages are designed with high number of initial consonants in the language, including many distinctions that are unlikely among human languages – such as a series of three laterals and four rhotics.
Finally, I have begun work on Isolate A, an as yet unnamed Language Isolate. It is intended to have a small phonemic inventory (~16 consonants, 4 vowels before diachronic development), demonstrate vowel harmony, show a large number of cases, and have polypersonal agreements. Basque, Hungarian, and Turkish will provide a model for building the language structure, but the language is more “inspired by” than “based on” any of these three.