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Vohrran

Vohrran is the language spoken in the south, the language of what remains of the Great Kandar empire. It's speakers consider themselves superior to others, who they consider to speak corrupted, rustic versions of the true Kandar tongue. Northerners return the compliment, describing Vohrran speakers as arrogant, foppish and affected.

Phonology

Consonants

Like it's sister language, Filgan, Vohhran distinguishes between voiced and unvoiced consonants. Unlike it's sister language, it retains the affricates of it's parent, Old Kandar.

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Stop	p, b	t, d	ty, dy	k, g
Fricative	f, v	s, z	sy, zy	kh
Affricative	pf, bv	ts, dz
Nasals	m	n	ny
Approximants	w	r, l, rh	ly	y

Relatively few old kandar sounds have disappeared completely, the most noticable being h and g (which was pronounced ng)

Vowels

Vohrran retains the 5 basic vowels of Old Kandar, althouth the vowels have shifted in many words.

	High	Mid	Low
Front	i		u
Mid	e		o
Back		a

Phonological Constraints

The syllable structure is more complex than it's ancestor. Syllables are (C)(r,l,w,y)V(r,l,w,y)(C). The second syllable is stressed, unless of course the word has only one.

Sound Changes from Old Kandar

Vohrran, like other modern kandar languages, is descended from Old Kandar. These are the principal sound changes:

• Nasal g (ng) becomes y.
• r and l are reversed.
• Consonants become voiced before an unstressed vowel
• c (sh) becomes y
• h becomes kh
• Weakest vowel disappears when an approximate occurs between two vowels
• Unstressed beginning and final vowels disappear
• Some stressed vowels shift; a becomes e, e becomes i, o becomes u
• w at beginning or end becomes u
• Affricate at beginning of word gains a or o
• Double r becomes hr

Grammar

Vohrran has lost most of the agglutinative affixes, and has become a mostly isolating language. Word order has become fixed. Verbs are inflected, not by person or by tense, but by relative status.

Verb status

The baroque verb inflextions based on relative social status of the speaker and the subject of the sentence

-s	Neutral, derived from the Old Kandar infinitive
-ya	Used when subject is of lower status than the speaker - derived from the Old Kandar imperative case.
-tsen	Used when the subject is of equivalent status to that of the speaker - Derived from the Old Kandar third person plural.
-ydz	Used when the subject is of equal status - derived from the Old Kandar word for 'sibling'.
-wkh	Higher status - derived from the Old Kandar word for 'master'.
-nalkh	Much higher status - derived from ??