Vilkrészt is a fusional language common throughout the Nariyása continents. About two billion people speak Vilkrészt. Those who don't speak it natively, but have a Native understanding of Vilrán can automatically understand it at Broken level.
History[]
The modern mainstream form of Vilkrészt has evolved from the many languages and dialects of the peoples of Nariyása flatlands. In coastal areas and other travel hubs, Vilkrészt was largely displaced by the spread of Uskír. And over the course of the last couple centuries, many of the more heavily industrialised joined the association of language reformers responsible for the creation and spread of Vilrán. Thus, currently Vilkrészt is most commonly encountered in the more rural areas away from port cities.
Over the years, Vilkrészt has shed some of the phonemic distinctions it used to have, making two or more related sounds (e.g. ([ɣ] vs. [g]) interchangeable. In the modern form, such groups of related sounds are all covered by a single letter, while the pronunciation varies by dialect. There are also many phonetic drifts that have not been accompanied by a change of spelling at all.
Structure[]
Alphabet[]
The Vilkrészt alphabet is mostly-phonetic (with some exceptions), cursive with very few sharp corners, right-to-left top-to-bottom. The language does contain some orthographic depth, stemming from spellings that were kept while pronunciations drift.
Phonology[]
The language has a moderately rich phonetic inventory, but has shed many consonant distinctions that used to be sharply divided in older forms of the language. A notable characteristic of the language is the use of large clusters of consonants.
Morphology[]
Being a fusional language, Vilkrészt words involve a lot of inflexion. In nouns and verbs, plurality and tenses are coded in endings, gender in suffixes (or lack thereof), cases and various other markers in prefixes. Adjectives and other parts of speech tend to have little flexion by comparison.
Nouns and verbs (but not adjectives) belong to one of three genders, but can be modified into another one by adding a proper suffix. Depending on whether emphasis is meant to be on the subject or the predicate, the less important of the two words will add a suffix to conform to the stronger one's gender if necessary. The genders are:
- Feminine. Used for women, as well as words related to money, math, logistics, civilian vehicles. Also applies to many words outside the listed pattern (e.g. 'ant', 'a pen', 'to conclude').
- Masculine. Used for men, as well as words related to diplomacy and persuasion, warfare, favours, military vehicles, weapons, language. Also applies to many words outside the listed pattern (e.g. 'dog', 'to unload', 'to pen').
- Elder. Used for natural phenomena that have outlasted generations of people (sun, wind, big trees etc.), for grandparents, for senior citizens, for people working certain respected professions for five or more years (teachers, guildmasters, military officers, politicians etc.) and similar. There are relatively few words that default to this gender, especially among verbs.
There are 8 cases (all except the first denoted by prefixes): nominative, vocative, accusative (to some extent serving as instrumental), genitive, dative, partitive, locative, and ablative.
Syntax[]
Vilkrészt defaults to subject-object-verb word order, but affords some flexibility with it. Breaking the noun-adjective order, on the other hand, is usually not considered acceptable.