Sel Appan language

Sel Appan is an ancient language used more than two millenia ago in what is now Sel Appa. It was spoken by the early settlers near modern Nemnenait.

Sel Appan was the main language spoken in the area until the Sel Appan Empire grew significantly. An ancient variety of modern English overtook the upper-class and soon replaced Sel Appan fully. An inflectional language, Sel Appan relies little on word order, conveying syntax through a system of subwords attached to word stems. The Sel Appan alphabet, was created during the reign of Herbert the Great. It slowly evolved from pictographs to a more recognizable alphabet. Today, the alphabet is based on that used in English, but this is not historical.

Although Sel Appan is now widely considered to be a dead language, with very few fluent speakers and no native ones, it has exerted a major influence on many other languages that are still thriving. Descendants of the language now are believed to exist, notably the Natives, who are believed to speak one of the descendant languages.

Sel Appan is studied mainly in universities today as part of the history of Sel Appa. There are several movements to revive the language fully, but a proposal brought up in Parliament in early 2006 was defeated 339-12.

History

Phonology

Sel Appan has fewer characters than most languages. It is made up of 18 letters: 6 vowels and 12 consonants. The Sel Appan alphabet has the following letters: A, E, F, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, S, T, U, W, X, Y, θ(or Þ). Pronounciations are in IPA.

Vowels

• a = /a/
• e = /e/
• i = /i/
• o = /o/
• u = /u/
• y = /ɪ/

Consonants

• f = /f/
• j = /j/
• k = /k/
• l = /l/
• m = /m/
• n = /n/
• p = /p/
• s = /s/
• t = /t/
• w = /w/
• x = /ʃ/
• θ(or Þ) = /θ/

Grammar

Sel Appan grammar was remarkably simple for most of its life. The first users lived mainly on subsistence, with a few villages forming. Little advanced communication was needed beyond basic words to describe surroundings and for the barter that was done. Thus, there were only four types of words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and modifiers.

Nouns

The nouns in Sel Appan make up the majority of words in the language.

Verbs

Only a few verbs were necessary because of the simple lives of early Sel Appans.

Adjectives

Adjectives consist mainly of simplistic descriptive words of the environment that ancient Sel Appans lived in.

Modifiers

Modifiers were the least numerous and were used only to describe relations, time, space, etc.