Rigini Language Family

The Rigini language family is a diverse set of languages derived from an ancestral language of the indigenous peoples of the region now known as Carasala. Despite speaking languages of common origin these peoples had no sense of common ethnicity or culture and did not have a name for themselves as a people or for the group of languages they spoke. The name Rigini derives from the Haraklika word for slave (*rigi*) and local Rigini word for language (*gnee*). The Haraklina enslaved numerous peoples from the region and referred to the languages they spoke collectively as slave languages. They recognized that the languages were similar in some ways but lacked a concept of language families and did not intend to describe these languages as such.

## History and demography

The ancestral language originated with the indigenous peoples of Falea, who spoke the ancestral form of the language and called themselves the *Pitria* (lit. "people"). Their language spread across grasslands throughout the Carasala region in two waves. The first wave traveled from Falea along the Doucusa River valleys starting in the 10th century BNE. This was driven by spread of the Faleic culture of mounted hunting and warfare that proliferated after the domestication of the horse in Falea in that century, sometimes referred to as the Rigini culture. The second wave followed an invasion of Dersialdara by Faleic raiders who crossed the Doucusa in the 7th century BNE. These waves gave rise to the divergent Old Western and Old Eastern Rigini dialects.

By the time the Haraklina coined term Rigini, there were already three major mutually unintelligible branches of the family: The Old Western Rigini group that included Phleignee and Pheetulagnee dialects, the Ousilia Valley group that included the Bidriani and proto-Ialini dialects, and the Lasucsala Group that included Peethrianee and other dialects spoken in the upper Doucusa valley and Nadaric regions. Most of these dialects were lost after the Noulaenic invasion of Carasala. The only surviving relic of the Rigini languages in their ancestral homeland is in place names, which often persist in Noulaenicized forms. All modern Rigini languages are spoken by peoples who migrated from the Carasala region either before or during the Noulaenic invasion.

Three surviving Rigini dialects are spoken today. Two are of the Ousilia Valley branch: Ialini is spoken in Ializa, Imariani, a derivative of Bidriani, is spoken in Imaria. Ialini was brought to the high mountainous region of Ializa by migrants driven from the Ousilia Valley in the 3nd century NE. Imarini was brought to Imaria by migrants fleeing the Noulaenic invasion of the Ousilia and Nadaria in the 5th century NE. The final surviving dialect is of Pheetulagnee origin; Malagni, spoken by a small enclave on Anatha formed by escaped slaves from Karichaka. Malagni has been heavily influenced by contact with Noulaenic speaking peoples and is the least conservative of older phonetic features and grammatical structures.

Modern scholars are unaware of most relationships between these languages. Ialini and Imariani are very similar and are known to be related, and of Carasalic origins, and are referred to as the Eastern languages. Their relationship to various dead Carasalic tongues is not known as nearly no information on pre-Noulaenic Carasalic languages has survived into present times. Malagni, meanwhile, is little known of outside of Anatha and is incorrectly viewed as an isolate with no relationship to any known language.

## Phonology

The phonology of the broad language family is varied but still shares some common features with the ancestral language. All variants lack final consonants and most lack vowel clusters, with the exception of Malagni. The ancestral language and most variants possess consonant clusters, but both Ialini and Malagni have independently lost them.

## Grammar

The ancestral language was completely uninflected, followed a subject-object-verb sentence structure, and made use of many participles to indicate the relationships of words within sentences. Many words could be used for multiple parts of speech, with some words used as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and the part of speech being indicated by either word order or participles. No differentiation was made between adjectives and adverbs. The language had two sets of conjuctions, one for nouns and the other for other words such as adjectives. Subjects could never be omitted from sentences and pronouns were differentiated by speaker and number but not by part of speech. Word compounding was common and often done creatively to describe new concepts. The language lacked the concept of demonyms and the names for places, peoples, and there languages were separate and frequently unrelated.

Most of the extinct Carasalic dialects retained these features, although the Ousilic dialect dropped the secondary set of conjunctions. Modern Ialini is the most conservative of grammatical features and maintains all of the above mentioned grammatical features aside from the differentiated conjunctions. Imariani also retains many of these features but it has adopted a form of inflection, using syllables that previously served as participles as suffixes to differentiate parts of speech for words that were ambiguous in the ancient language. Imariani has also adopted demonyms, as Imariani (which would have originally only referred to the language itself) is now used to describe the people and culture of Imaria as well.

Malagni is extremely divergent grammatically and has laterally adopted many grammatical features from Noulaenic. This includes the subject-verb-object structure being used for most sentences, the use of inflection to indicate verb person and tense, and inflection to indicate parts of speech, differentiated adjectives and adverbs, and separate pronouns for subject and objects. Because of verb inflection, the subject is often dropped in Malagni provided it is clear from context. Malagni has dropped many of the participles used in older languages as well.

As an example of these grammatical shifts, the sentence "I love you and you love me" in Ialiani would be *ki tia dova lia tia ki dova*("I you love and you I love") whereas in Malagni it would be *cee deaufusi daera chuli dae deauli dusi* ("I love you and you love me") or alternately just *deaufusi daera chuli deauli dusi* ("(I) love you and (you) love me"), provided the number of speakers is apparent from context.

## Loan words

All three extant Rigini languages contain many loanwords beyond their Rigini core and the differing sources of these loanwords has led to considerable variation in vocabulary between the three. Malagni possesses many loans from Noulaenic and Haraklina, Ialini possesses loanwords from native Ializa languages, and Imariani possesses loanwords from Haraklina and various indigenous Eastern languages. Malagni, in particular, has dropped many Rigini forms entirely from common use.