protoLetharese

ProtoLetharese is a hypothesized ancestral language that scholars associate with the Letharic language family, which is attested only in isolated inscriptions and later medieval texts from the central plateau region of the ancient Kingdom of Thaal. The language is believed to have existed between the 6th and 1st centuries BCE. Linguists reconstruct ProtoLetharese based on shared phonological and morphological features found in descendant languages such as Letharese, Karamat, and the now extinct Seemish. Key features include a consonant inventory that contains ejective stops and a pitch accent system that likely functioned to differentiate lexical meaning.

Reconstruction efforts rely mainly on comparative analysis of the three surviving descendant languages and a limited corpus of carved stone tablets discovered in the ruins of the capital city of Kharas. Early researchers noted that many lexical roots in ProtoLetharese appear to be related to the Indo-European root *ter- “to melt, mix,” suggesting a possible external influence. The grammar of ProtoLetharese is considered agglutinative, with a complex case system that included nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, and instrumental cases. Verb morphology indicates a strong presence of aspectual distinctions, such as a perfective versus imperfective usage that may have been marked by affixation rather than auxiliary verbs.

The exact chronology of ProtoLetharese's evolution and its eventual split into distinct branches remains subject to debate. Some scholars argue that the language was influenced by neighboring Cushitic tongues, fueling speculative reconstructions of phonological shifts. A 1978 publication by linguist Dr. Eliana Bale proposed a novel theory that ProtoLetharese may have absorbed loanwords from early Semitic settlers, a claim that has since been both supported and contested in subsequent comparative studies. Overall, ProtoLetharese occupies a minor but intriguing place in the linguistic history of the region, offering insight into the development of areal linguistic features in ancient plateau societies.