Priserian

Priserian (Priserian: Phae Etha'at) is a Priseric language that is native to Priseria. Having around 100 million speakers, it is the most common language in Priseria and a minority language in Crepetown.

Priserian is part of the landwards group of Priseric languages, characterised by its native speakers mainly living on the mainland of Priseria. The other languages in this group include Tiradom and Paerisa, the latter of which was also known as North Priserian for a long time, and is where English gets the name "Priseria" from. The other group of Priseric languages, known as the Seawards languages, comprise of Tyrranese, Atlantean and Kathrinian, characterised by its native speakers either being mer-people or people living on smaller islands.

Around 80% of Priserian vocabulary is derived from Old Priserian, with the other 20% being loanwords from mostly Krepian and Swahili. The loanwords mostly date from the 14th to 15th century when Priseria was actively involved with trade with its neighbours.

Priserian is not a tonal language, however due to its high number of consonants, it has a steep learning consonants for speakers of other languages. It is written in the Priserian abjad, which is a pure abjad written right to left. Vowels are derived solely by context. In recent years, vowel marks in the form of dots have been introduced to aid schoolchildren and foreign learners in learning the language, but such vowel marks have not been standardised and vary between publishers.

Vowels
Priserian has five distinct vowels, and 26 distinct consonant phonemes. Priserian has no diphthongs, all possible diphthongs have already evolved into monophthongs (Proto-priseric /ai/ -> /e/ and Proto-priseric /au/ -> /o/). However, recent studies comparing Tyrranese and Priserian propose that Priserian did not have diphthongs to begin with, instead all /ai/ or /aj/ and /au/ or /aw/ in loanwords were instantly Priserised to /e/ and /o/ respectively.

Consonants
Priserian has a wide consonant inventory, reflected in its use of a total of 26 pairs of consonant letters, each representing a unique consonant.