Etymology under glass · 08
Two daughter languages
First recorded · year 0
watana
flowing water
Coastal language · year 1200
vadan
a boundary
The dialects separated around year 800.
Every step leaves a trace
The word's journey
Each law applies to every eligible sound, not to words chosen at random. Dim steps are changes that happened elsewhere in the language.
The family tree
One becomes two
watanaAncestor · year 0
vadanCoast
wadenHighlands
A common ancestor survives in two different forms.
Different forms across dialects0
A curious accident
Two meanings, one sound
Sometimes unrelated words become indistinguishable when a sound change erases the difference between them.
The laws of this world
Rewrite history
Turn a law off. You haven't changed one word—you've changed every word it would have touched.
A surviving four-word inscription · Coastal, year 1200
lum · vadan · nehag · manar
moon · river · night · home
This is a fictional language, not a reconstruction of a real one. The sound laws mimic a genuine principle of historical linguistics—regular changes can reshape whole vocabularies. The shifts in meaning are invented for storytelling.