Preliminary Notes on the Conworld
I had some maps showing bits and pieces of the as-yet (and probably forever) unnamed conworld in which the Yonutian languages live, but I lost those maps ages ago and have yet to get around to making new ones. As soon as I do, I'll add them here for increased clarity. Until then, I hope vague geographical descriptions will suffice. The exact geography isn't super important here, so it shouldn't be too much of a concern. The main thing to keep in mind is that most of the land in this world is concentrated in a single large continent, tentatively dubbed Yā Yen ('All Land' in Classical Yorshorzha), perhaps a bit bigger than Africa and Eurasia taken together. This continent is roughly ┌ shaped, stretching from the northern to the southern hemisphere. Hwatsonichia refers to the region of northwestern Yā Yen around the continent's "elbow", so to speak.
So What's This 'Yonutian'
Yonutian is a language family, one of many originating in Hwatsonichia. In some ways, Yonutian is a bit like this world's equivalent to Indo-European; it's of a similar time depth to IE, with Proto-Yonutian spoken about seven or eight millennia before the time I've (mostly arbitrarily) designated as 'present', and it's of a similar geographical scope. Yonutian includes a number of culturally and historically important languages of the north-central and northwestern regions of Yā Yen, as well as a massive number of smaller languages in a multitude of subfamilies. The earliest attested written language of Yā Yen was Old Halka, a Yonutian language of the Steppe-Yonutian subbranch, found in inscriptions in eastern Hwatsonichia from about the mid sixth millennium BP. Old Halka would later lend its writing system to the unrelated Shorzhic Language, eventually birthing the standardized literary form Classical Yorshorzha, which would become and remain the most influential written language in Hwatsonichia for some four thousand years.
Yonutian itself can be divided into four primary branches: Northern-Yonutian, Western-Yonutian, Steppe-Yonutian, and Tujjo-Yonutian. Northern-Yonutian comprises a number of small families of closely related languages spoken in the extreme northern reaches of the continent, and on the many island chains extending up into the arctic circle. Western-Yonutian is the largest subfamily, comprising most of the languages of present day Hwatsonichia, followed distantly by Steppe-Yonutian. Tujjo-Yonutian, on the other hand, is the most geographically widespread Yonutian subfamily, containing all Yonutian languages spoken to the east of Hwatsonichia, and many spoken to the south. All together, the Yonutian languages are by far the largest family of Yā Yen, and arguably the most influential --though the Shorzhic or Eastern Desert languages are equally contenders for this position.
While some aspects of Yonutian's history and influence may resemble IE, the languages themselves couldn't be more different. Proto-Yonutian was a highly synthetic, agglutinative language, with polypersonal agreement, a split-ergative alignment based on an animacy hierarchy, and a highly developed, morphologized politeness system. The Northern, Western, and Steppe branches of the family maintain, to varying degrees, this synthetic and agglutinative nature, while Tujjo-Yonutian is as a whole highly eroded, with most members being analytic and, at most, mildly fusional.
I will be posting bits and pieces about the Yonutian languages in this thread as I develop them, more or less based on what I find most interesting. I'll begin with the Proto-Yonutian alignment system, in my next post.
