Elvarri

Elvarri
elvariu / elvarriu
Pronunciation	[elˈvarju]
Created by	Jukethatbox
Date	2026
Setting	Hamanna
Native to	Elvod
Ethnicity	Elvars
Language family	Luxelvic North Luxelvic Elvarri
Early forms	Proto-Luxelvic Proto-North Luxelvic
Writing system	Nagri

Elvarri (elvariu or elvarriu [elˈvarju]), also called Levarian, is a classical language of the Luxelvic family. Elvarri was originally spoken by the Elvars, a tribe of Fairelves native to Elvod, a region at the mouth of the Separ river on the island of Haparod. It then became a dominant language of Haparod through the short-lived empire of Nagripon, who also oversaw the invention of Nagri script. After the death of Nagripon, his empire fractured into the Nagripu city-states, which then spread Elvarri as a dominant trade language across the Inner Waters as these city-states developed into seafaring trade empires. It was the most spoken language in Hamanna in the Age of Stone, and has a large influence on most modern languages, especially the various elf languages. It also still has considerable use as a liturgical language of the Sun Temple (Vasnadom) and the Great Bay Nation (Duvargamiod).

Similarly to Latin in the real world, Elvarri did not undergo language death, but rather evolved into regional dialects and then distinct languages, including Hoklevar, Hespadrin, Whitereed, Tasparin, Macatranese, Amtarese, Moonhind and various isolated Inner Water island languages collectively called Insular Levarian. However, it remained a significantly used common language long after it was no longer spoken as a native language, due to its large influence on scientific, economic, military, horological and naval vocabulary; this dominance remained till the 12th century, when modern languages largely supplanted its traditional use.

Elvarri is a synthetic, strictly SOV, adjective-noun and informally pro-drop language with a complex system of case inflections, verb inflections, and a twoway animacy distinction of animate and inanimate.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial		Labiodental		Alveolar		Retroflex	Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal	m				n		ɳ	ɲ		ŋ
Stop	p	b			t	d				k	g	(ʔ)
Fricative			f	v	s	z	ʂ			x	(ɣ)	(h)
Rhotic					r		ɽ
Liquid					l		ɭ
Semivowel								j		w

The retroflex consonants (/ɳ ʂ ɽ ɭ/) were originally marked with an underdot as ⟨ṇ ṣ ṛ ḷ⟩. However, these were rarely used, and by the Age of Stone most inscriptions did not mark the retroflexes at all, save for /ɽ/, which was often written ⟨r⟩ while trill /r/ was written ⟨rr⟩.

Various consonants were also prone to mutation after /r/, a process called hurdaski ([xr̩ˈðaski] "r-changing") or hurhassi ([xr̩ˈxaʂi] "r-morphing"):

Process	Resultant phoneme	Examples
/r/ + /g/	/ɣ/	arga "also, other" meiurge "garbage, trash"
/r/ + /k/	/x/	urkamo "to split, to cut" murkambet "aqueduct"
/r/ + /t/	/ʔ/ > /∅/	gort "container" ennart "within"
	/θ/ or /ts/	ennarto "to insert" vertuk "healer"
/r/ + /d/	/ð/ or /dz/	tordaski "helm-changing; (figuratively) a boring but necessary task" murdo "to water"
/r/ + /f/	/h/	farfa "flatbread" ollerfa "onlooker"
/r/ + /z/	/s/ > /ʂ/	irzevet "period between winter and spring" asmurzu "religious offering"

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

/ɛ ɔ/ become /e o/ in unstressed syllables. /u/ was also often dropped between a velar consonant and any other consonant, rendering the latter consonant syllabic, as in kuruk "tailor" [ˈkr̩uk].

Grammar

Grammatically, Elvarri is a synthetic, mostly fusional nominative-accusative language. Nouns (malor), adjectives (hemerei) and pronouns (yomalor) are inflected on animacy, number and case. Personal pronouns are also often dropped in spoken or colloquial speech, though only if the subject could be inferred; this is discouraged in standardised literary language. Verbs are inflected on tense, mood, and (to an extent) person.

Nouns

Nouns are primarily infected on case, which then differentiates based on the animacy (broadly, whether the noun is living or not living) and the grammatical number (singular, paucal or plural) of the noun.

Case

There are, traditionally, eight noun cases in Elvarri: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, locative, instrumental, perlative and vocative.

		Nominative	Accusative	Genitive	Dative	Locative	Instrumental	Perlative	Vocative
Singular	inanimate	—	-i	-os	-ta	-si	-es	-ess	-to
	animate		-a	-u	-i	-ea	-si	-se	-va
Paucal	inanimate	-ur	-ir	-sro	-tra	-sia	-sur	-sra	-tor
	animate	-om	-am	-nem	-nis	-nye	-ams	-ems	-va
Plural	inanimate	-or	-er	-ro	-tar	-sa	-sor	-srat	-tor
	animate	-i	-e	-iu	-im	-ses	-is	-ise	-vai / -ve*

*The plural animate vocative -vai was written as -ve in the Book of Whitereed and other literary works and inscriptions. This practice expanded in use across most literary societies during the Age of Twilight due to the dominance of Whitereed literature, the sole Elvarri literary institution still sponsored by the state in the Twilight.

Case inflections on regular animate noun dud ("tree")

	Nominative	Accusative	Genitive	Dative	Locative	Instrumental	Perlative	Vocative
Singular	dud	duda	dudu	dudi	dudea	dudsi	dudse	dudva
Paucal	dudom	dudam	dudnem	dudnis	dudnye	dudams	dudems
Plural	dudi	dude	dudiu	dudim	dudses	dudis	dudise	dudvai / dudve

Case inflections on regular inanimate noun rukum ("bread")

	Nominative	Accusative	Genitive	Dative	Locative	Instrumental	Perlative	Vocative
Singular	rukum	rukumi	rukumos	rukumta	rukumsi	rukumes	rukumess	rukumto
Paucal	rukumur	rukumir	rukumsro	rukumtra	rukumsia	rukumsur	rukumsra	rukumtor
Plural	rukumor	rukumer	rukumro	rukumtar	rukumsa	rukumsor	rukumsrat

Animacy

Nouns in Elvarri are categorised into either animate or inanimate nouns, with their case endings differing based on this animacy. Generally, living things such as dud "tree", tokis "child" or vanu "mother" are inflected as animate, while objects are inflected as inanimate, as in rukum "bread", farfa "flatbread" and gort "container, bottle". However, there are many exceptions to this rule, with many nouns that are ostensibly animate taking on inanimate inflections and vice versa. For example, vard, meaning "meeting spot, meeting place" or by extension "city, ward, town, seaport", is animate, despite referring to a location, which would logically be inanimate (as in kin "field"). These exceptions are usually because the words already imply people are involved; a vard, for example, could not feasibly exist without people to build it or decide on its location.

Additionally, some words can be inflected as either animate or inanimate, though the meaning changes; for example, teps "leaf" can be inflected as animate, tepsi, to refer to living, typically green leaves, or as inanimate, tepsor, to refer to dead, typically brown or yellow leaves (the latter form itself became a euphemism for autumn, hurdet, and became the basis for the word "autumn" in many descendant Elvarno languages). These types of nouns are called animate or inanimate by sense.

Number

Elvarri nouns are conventionally either singular, paucal or plural. 'Paucal' is equivalent to the construction "some [noun]s" in English, so dudom would translate to "some trees". Some cases don't have unique inflections for the paucal, in particular the vocative, which takes on the singular declension (-va) among animate nouns and the plural (-tor) among inanimate nouns.

Numerals

n.	Numeral
	cardinal	ordinal
1	hond	honder
2	nei	neidet
3	sis	siser
4	kev	kevet
5	hum	humer
6	ves	vest
7	nart	naher
8	skov	skovet
9	kiam	kier
10	poz	pozoi

Ordinal numbers are derived from cardinal numbers and are generally inflected with -er if odd and -et if even. However, all multiples of 10 are inflected to be ordinal with a separate suffix, -oi.

Personal pronouns

Unlike regular nouns, personal pronouns are inflected on five of the eight noun cases, with the exception of the inanimate third-person pronouns which are inflected on seven.

		Nominative	Accusative	Genitive	Dative	Locative	Instrumental	Perlative
First person	singular	bo	boa	bu	be
	plural
Second person	singular
	plural
Inanimate third person	singular
	plural
Animate third person	singular
	plural

Example texts

Swadesh

No.	English	Elvarri
0	Elvarri	elvarriu
1	I
2	you (singular)
3	he
4	we
5	you (plural)
6	they
7	this
8	that
9	here
10	there
11	who
12	what
13	where
14	when
15	how
16	not
17	all
18	many
19	some	-om
20	few
21	other	arga
22	one	hond
23	two	nei
24	three	sis
25	four	kev
26	five	hum
27	big
28	long
29	wide
30	thick
31	heavy
32	small
33	short
34	narrow
35	thin
36	woman	kav
37	man (adult male)	kap
38	human being	hosep
39	child	tokis
40	wife	vardi
41	husband	pardi
42	mother	vanu
43	father	panu
44	animal
45	fish
46	bird
47	dog
48	louse
49	snake
50	worm
51	tree	dud
52	forest	duid
53	stick
54	fruit
55	seed
56	leaf	teps
57	root
58	bark
59	flower
60	grass
61	rope
62	skin
63	meat
64	blood
65	bone
66	fat
67	egg
68	horn
69	tail
70	feather
71	hair
72	head
73	ear
74	eye
75	nose
76	mouth
77	tooth
78	tongue
79	fingernail
80	foot
81	leg
82	knee
83	hand
84	wing
85	belly
86	guts
87	neck
88	back
89	breast
90	heart
91	liver
92	drink
93	eat
94	bite
95	suck
96	spit
97	vomit
98	blow
99	breathe
100	laugh
101	see
102	hear
103	know
104	think
105	smell
106	fear
107	sleep
108	live
109	die
110	kill
111	fight
112	hunt
113	hit
114	cut
115	split
116	stab
117	scratch
118	dig
119	swim
120	fly
121	walk
122	come
123	lie
124	sit
125	stand
126	turn
127	fall
128	give
129	hold
130	squeeze
131	rub
132	wash
133	wipe
134	pull
135	push
136	throw
137	tie
138	sew
139	count
140	say
141	sing
142	play
143	float
144	flow
145	freeze
146	swell
147	sun
148	moon
149	star
150	water
151	rain
152	river
153	lake
154	sea
155	salt
156	stone
157	sand
158	dust
159	earth
160	cloud
161	fog
162	sky
163	wind
164	snow
165	ice
166	smoke
167	fire
168	ash
169	burn
170	road
171	mountain
172	red
173	green
174	yellow
175	white
176	black
177	night
178	day
179	year
180	warm
181	cold
182	full
183	new
184	old
185	good
186	bad
187	rotten
188	dirty
189	straight
190	round
191	sharp
192	dull
193	smooth
194	wet
195	dry
196	correct
197	near
198	far
199	right
200	left
201	at
202	in
203	with
204	and
205	if
206	because
207	name