Appendix:World/Old Ardian language

Old Ardian is the earliest attested stage of the Ardian language.

Developments from Proto-Radic

• Geminate consonants were lost, but vowel length remained.

Phonology

The phonology of Old Ardian has been reconstructed based on modern correspondences. The reconstruction of the vowel system faces the following problems:

• Written Old Ardian vowels differed for height and roundness, but not frontness or vowel length.
  • <ⲁ> could represent /ɑ(ː)/ or /æ(ː)/ (the latter distinguished as <ⲁ̣́> in modern marking)
  • <ⲉ> could represent /e(ː)/ or /ɤ(ː)/ (the latter distinguished as <ⲉ̀> in modern marking)
  • <ⲓ> could represent /i(ː) j/ or /ɯ(ː)/ (the latter distinguished as <ⲓ̀> in modern marking)
  • <ⲟ> could represent /o(ː)/ or /ø(ː)/ (the latter distinguished as <ⲟ́> in modern marking)
  • <ⲩ> could represent /u(ː) w/ or /y(ː)/ (the latter distinguished as <ⲩ́> in modern marking)
  • It is thus uncertain whether Old Ardian had retained vowel length, but the distinction's only legacy in the modern language is the mobile stress system, as in Lusetian. No written form of Ardian has ever alluded to length being distinctive, so it is thought to have at least been lost early on.
    • Many argue that the mobile stress system developed alongside Lusetian's, thus making vowel length still distinctive in Old Ardian as it was in Old Lusetian.
  • Apart from the case of /ɑ æ/, which is reconstructed primarily based on ancient loanwords and parallels in Old Radestrian, the front-back pairs are internally reconstructed based on the various reflexes in Modern Ardian:
    • <ⲉ> /e/ yields modern /e/, whereas <ⲉ> /ɤ/ yields modern /ə/, for example.