Naviu

From Almeopedia

The Naviu language family is part of the Eastern family, and includes most of the southern nomads who have dominated the Barbarian Plain for the last two thousand years, and who have periodically invaded both Eretald and Xengiman.

Modern members of the family include Küronet, Eluyet, Makši, Mixain, Seia, and Obenzayet. The nation of Bešbalic commemorates the name of the Bešbalicu, a Naviu tribe which once lived in that region, but the Bešbalicu language is extinct. Gelyet, the language of the historically most important Naviu, is attested only scantily, due to the tribulations of the Dark Years. Of course, the Gelyet themselves were one of those tribulations.

The best attested Naviu language is Obenzayet, the language of the small country of Obenzaya. It has been written since about 3330; it is the only Naviu language to have a writing system. It’s also the chief Naviu contributor to reconstructions of proto-Eastern— a very important contribution, since Obenzayet is a conservative language which has retained many proto-Eastern features not found in any other Eastern language.

The Naviu languages have been heavily influenced by the Somoyi and Meťelyi languages, due to the shared lifestyle. In lexicon and typology, each Naviu language borrows heavily from its civilized neighbors. The extremes are Obenzayet, which tends to be head-first (like the Central and Karazi languages (and like Somoyi-Meťelyi), and which has borrowed hundreds of lexemes from Caďinor and Verdurian; and Seia, which is head-final like Axunašin and has great numbers of borrowings from the languages of Xengiman.

See also

• Proto-Eastern philology — the page with the most information currently available about Naviu