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Vilrán is a synthetic language common in certain parts of the Nariyása continents, particularly the Western one. It is derived from Vilkrészt through a series of drifts and language reforms. Some number between 1 and 1½ billion people speak Vilrán.

History[]

At the dawn of the industrial era, many central Western Nariyása states and provinces were looking for any edge that would ease the job of increasing the literacy ratio of their populations. Many decided to invest in a language reform, making language easier to teach. Whether or not Vilrán is easier to teach than Vilkrészt is still in dispute, but it certainly succeeded in attaining a reputation of being rational, modern and trendy, at least in the more fast-growing cities at the time. It also has spread, albeit to a lesser extent, to Eastern Nariyása.

Structure[]

Alphabet[]

Vilrán uses a heavily modified version of the Vilkrészt alphabet, replacing curves with straight or broken lines, redefining many letters to more closely match the language's phonetics, and omitting those that no longer have a clean-cut phonetic match. As a result, it's orthographically shallow.

Vilrán was originally meant to be written right-to-left like its predecessor, but some cultures emulate the Wejít writing direction by using mirrored letters. As a result, many speakers can read both the straight and the mirrored version of the alphabet even if they're not used to writing in both directions.

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 (even more so than classic Vilkrészt did). While it doesn't share its predecessor's ubiquity of large clusters of consonants, it still has some.

Morphology[]

Vilrán relies on a mixture of agglutinative and fusional inflexion, leaning towards the former. In nouns and verbs, gender, plurality and tenses are coded postfixes (or lack thereof) the order of which is flexible. Cases and various other markers are coded 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 or replacing the gender postfix. Unlike Vilkrészt, the genders of the subject and predicate need not be in accord. 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/neuter. 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. However, lately there is a trend among the youth to treat any child (named or unnamed, up to the age of majority) as an elder plural word, as if referring to the concept of childhood itself rather than to a specific person; this causes no small amount of outrage among elders, who see it as an undeserved elevation of children to their level. Some do the same with references to pets, with or without irony.

There are only four cases (all except the first denoted by prefixes) - half as many as in the parent language: nominative (which absorbed vocative), accusative (which absorbed genitive and instrumental), dative, and locative (also serving as ablative). The ambiguities of cases are resolved by adding clarifying service words where necessary.

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.

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