The History of Nusthèrrùn
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Including a short introduction to the grammar
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 5 May 2023, 04:27.
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This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
NOTE: This article is written from an in-universe perspective. Any and all out of character notes on how I'm constructing the language will be written in quote blocks like this.
Nusthèrrùn is a pidgin/creole (depending on the timeline) created by two immortals, (who, for the sake of this article, will be referred to by their initials, H and F). Similarly to how it is impossible to truly separate most languages from the history and cultural context from which they originate, it is impossible to truly seperate Nusthèrrùn from its creators, their personal histories, and their relationship to one another. Even the name "Nusthèrrùn" is a reflection of this, as, directly translated, it simply means "ours."
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Essentially, the history of the language, as well as the origins of its vocabulary and key features, are easiest to explain through the lens of H and F's relationship and how it developed over time. For the sake of this article, that means that the history of the language is broadly divided into five stages, each delineated by key events in H and F's history.
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H is a demon, and as such his native language is 
Modern Demonic; however, he has been on Earth longer than human civilization, and as a result is fluent in multiple human languages, the most immediately relevant of which, at least to 
Immortal Pidgin HF-A, is Latin, as that is the primary language he speaks in his day to day life at the time he and F meet. Additionally, it is worth noting that that also means that by this point he has a significant amount of experience in learning languages quickly and tailoring his speech so that his accent sounds "normal" for whatever time/place he's in.
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F, in contrast, was originally human, born in 2572 BCE in Egypt, but got turned into a demigod for... slightly complicated and mostly irrelevant reasons, and has spent most of his time living around the same place, so while he has had to adapt to significant linguistic drift in his native language, he doesn't have nearly as much experience learning new languages. It's worth noting that what non-Egyptian languages he does know he likely can read and write in but has very little experience actually speaking in. He's likely familiar with some Old Arabic and some Ancient Greek, primarily to Ionic and Aeolic Dialects. His primary experience with Ancient Greek, especially Ionic, is through mathematics texts, something which has a fairly strong influence on his vocabulary. Prior to becoming a demigod, F was a scribe/architect/engineer of sorts, so he would know how to write in hieroglyphics. He has some familiarity with Latin, but does not, at the time he and H meet, speak it fluently.
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To understand why the most basic elements of Nusthèrrùn are what they are, it's important to understand the circumstances under which H and F met. At the time, H was a fairly major political figure in the Roman Empire, while F was generally doing his best to stay largely under the radar. As such, F was aware of roughly who H was, but H would not know of F prior to their meeting.
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As for why they met, F was not fond of the Roman Empire, to put it lightly, and, for a complex combination of personal and political reasons, he held a particular grudge against H. H, one must remember, was largely unaware of F's existence up until their first meeting in Pompeii in 79 CE, where F essentially attempted to assassinate H but was interrupted by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.
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Because this first meeting was initiated by F, and because F initially knew of H while H hadn't heard of F prior to their meeting, the main language they spoke was Latin. And because H was significantly more familiar with Latin than F was, and additionally had much more practice in picking up a variety of different sound distinctions, the version of Latin that makes up the base of Immortal Pidgin HF-A is essentially just Latin, the way F spoke it.
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Latin, the way F spoke it, is derived from Vulgar Latin, with a few sound changes to make it easier for him to pronounce. One of the more notable of these changes was unvoiced stops being aspirated and voiced stops becoming unvoiced, as all versions of Egyptian I could find distinguished aspirated and unaspirated stops as opposed to voiced and unvoiced. Additionally, as Egyptian doesn't seem to have many, if any, dipthongs, and F likely learned at least partially from reading, all dipthongs became two distinct qualities separated by a glottal stop. Likewise, the vowels themselves were slightly reshuffled to more closely resemble the vowel inventories of the versions of Egyptian F would be familiar with.
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Grammatically, the main changes involve simplification of verb conjugation, mostly axing any forms that Ancient Egyptian doesn't seem to have, as well as the removal of the neuter gender all together. (Neuter nouns became the gender of their closest Egyptian equivalent, as did a number of other nouns).
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