Donat/Old Rusin

**Old Rusin** ( *g(r-msk:* "highlander"), sometimes called **Pale Donatese** or **Islander Donatese**, is a Slavic language spoken by very few people on the Donatese isle of Beli Zem. It is the last surviving linguistic remnant of Old Donatese, the language once spoken in medieval Donat. It is considered to be critically endangered.
Historically, the language was spoken across the entirety of the Rusin Isles. The Donatians that stayed on Beli Zem and Modrina after the exodus from Kanita would ultimately become the Rusins. This event is known as the divergence of Rusins. The Rusins would remain isolated from the rest of Donat up until the 16th century. Despite this, mainland Donat was generally aware of the islanders' existence.

In the 16th century, mercantile expeditions sponsored by trading companies from the Upper Ends would begin scouting the island of Modrina, which led to them coming into contact with the Rusins. Kruhasta would slowly cease its trade with Donat in favor of Kanita in the 17th century, which led to a trade crisis in Donat. Because of this, merchants of the Upper Ends looked towards the Rusin Isles for valuable resources - mainly precious ore, which the highlands of Beli Zem and Modrina greatly contained. Excavation sites and other trade goods to be found in the region soon drew the attention of many Donatians willing to profit off of them. Because of this, permanent settlements, such as Rut and Modro, were founded on coastal areas. Nearly all Rusins in the isle of Modrina assimilated to the Donatese culture, as it was already too similar to theirs. A great number of Rusins in the isle of Beli Zem moved further into the island to avoid Donatese settlers. This led to further cultural and linguistic isolation of the Rusins. Today, the Old Rusin language is spoken by a slim hundred in the Far Rusin cultural group (B3).

## Phonology

The Old Rusin language shares nearly all of its phonemes with modern Donatese, moreso with Old Donatese. However, it only possesses three vowels, which are represented by the symbols [-], [:] and [(], all three of which are unvoiced (whispered). This means there is no tonality in Old Rusin. Old Rusin is commonly called "the language of whispers" because of this exclusive feature. It is often thought that its vowels became unvoiced due to the need to conserve energy wasted through vocalization, because of the harsh environment and weather of the highlands. This does not mean that vocalization is not entirely present within Old Rusin. Voiced vowels were used mainly to notify others of danger, as auditory pointers and other forms of nonstandard communication.

## Script

Traditionally, the Old Rusin language is written vertically downwards in continuous strokes. The reason for such a unique writing system could stem from the fact that it was mostly written on stone and animal hide, where more information could be stored in vertical writing. Some of its graphemes are similar to Cyrillic letters in modern Donatese. It is felimized like Donatese, apart from [-] acting as a stand-in for [a] and [e], [;] for [i] and [(] for [o] and [u]. Sometimes, [:] stands in for [y], in which case it is voiced.

The written script of Old Rusin consists of 22 graphemes. Officially, there is no standardized script in use. As such, there are regional variants of the traditional script.

## Trivia

It is a common misconception that the Rusins were named after the city of Rut, or vice versa. In actuality, both names derive from the word *rutav* ('to be hairy/full of hairs') in Donatese, due to the unkempt appearance of the Rusins. The Rusins historically called themselves *g(r-am:*(simplified: *gorani*) - "highlanders" - and, albeit uncommonly, *bl-dts:*(simplified: *bledtsi*) - "pale ones", from which the demonym 'Pale Donatians' was coined.

The isle of Modrina, meaning "the blue" (noun), is named as such due to its high reserves of kyanite, which was discovered by Donatians in the 16th century.