Waeyirhont Language Family

 

The Waeyirhont family of languages is really just one language that has seen a few major evolutions over the course of millennia. While there have been many different regional dialects and branches over the ages, there are only a few major languages that were widely adopted across most of Waeyron at any given time.

Proto-Waeyirhont (Year -4000 to Year -1100)

This presumed protolanguage is believed to have spread across most of Weayron in the First Epoch. It seems to have no connection to other protolanguages or language families that were emerging around the world at the time.

Old Waeyirhont (Year -1100 to Year 181)

The earliest examples of written Old Waeyirhont were actually found in the port of Yew in Sekhu. They are cargo manifests written in Old Sechumaharan, and pressed in clay, with notes and amendments recorded in Old Waeyirhont. These date from about Year -1100, making the languages of the Waeyirhont family possibly the last to develop a written form. More recent examples indicate that Old Waeyirhont was widely in use across most of Waeyron by the middle of the Third Epoch at the latest.

Middle Waeyrhon (Year 181 to 500)

In Waeyron, there is a one-for-one relationship between correct early calendars and use of the Middle Waeyrhon written language: all discovered pre-Briunidan calendars are written in Old Waeyirhont, and all discovered Briunidan calendars are written in Middle Waeyrhon. This strongly suggests that the language shift from Old Waeyirhont to Middle Waeyrhon happened in the second century. Middle Waeyrhon would become the dominant language in Waeyron until the Orcish Conquests of the end to the Third Epoch put pressure on Waeyron to massively increase their exports in support of world-wide war efforts. This put the previously isolated speakers of Middle Waeyrhon into contact with many speakers of Middle Vercian, causing it to evolve again.

Waeyroni (Year 500 to current)

Through the Orcish Conquests and into early years of the Imperial Era, Middle Waeyrhon began to borrow heavily from Middle Vercian, causing the entire language to go into a state of rapid drift - at the same time as Middle Vercian was drifting. The modern Waeyroni language, then, is very different from Old Waeyirhont and Middle Waeyrhon in that those languages do not appear to have been significantly influenced by other languages, while Waeyroni very much was. Waeyroni seems to have solidified with the peace that began the Imperial Era, and did not continue to drift alongside Middle Vercian as that language transformed into Imperial Comercja. Waeyroni simply hardened into a stable language, while Middle Vercian was slowly replaced by Imperial Comercja, and then Comerta in the port cities. Waeyroni remains the principle language in most of Waeyron into the Fifth Epoch and beyond.