Ašu

Introduction

General information

Heritage

While the language is not spoken on a daily basis, it did survive in some ritual texts and stories, both in written and spoken form.

King Sturgeon and the Farmers

One of the best preserved and the most often retold stories from the ancient days is the King Sturgeon and the Farmers. The text tells a story of a greedy king who summoned the farmers to satisfy his cravings. The story was written on several clay tablets, some of them badly damaged and indecipherable.

Ǔrùndě baděša' dē šūgamū (King Sturgeon and the Farmers) story. Tablet 1 by Angantyr

The slow death

It was noted that at one point in history the climate began to shift towards drier and hotter summers, depleting the frozen water reservoirs in the mountain regions. Consequently, the once stable and invariable ecosystem suffered a critical blow, forcing many species to extinction; and with them the many logograms standing for their meanings. At first the Ašu tried to mitigate the problem. Many words were borrowed from neighbouring languages in hopes to fill in the hole. It did not help, though, and most tribes saw the decrease in quality and quantity of goods provided by Ašu; and agriculture was the cornerstone of their economy. The Ašu was in decline.

The event started one of the largest migrations. With the influx of inhabitants from the central plain spread the knowledge of agriculture and writing. As the tribe moved away from their mother land, new words replaced the old ones. The original signs and speech adjusted to the local language pattern and traditions; the original Ašu became a language of tradition and memory. Ašu script was adjusted and tens if not hundreds of variations were created over the course of a generation. The death of one language gave birth to the many.

As the stories are told, the greatest migration followed the rivers upstream and circled the mountain ranges from the west. Instead of water they found the desert. It decimated their numbers and provided new meanings. For the day and the night, for the warmth and the cold. With new green lands discovered many exotic species were found. The sand desolation made people hungry for words to describe their day to day thoughts and feelings. Throughout the years, the language began to change rapidly to incorporate new meanings, many of them very abstract, never before seen in the Ancient Ašu. Slowly, but steadily, the script grew more and more flexible. Syllables were replaced with an abjad-like alphabet. Symbols were replaced with roots, which now represented the very concept, e.g. eye, see, color would be built from sight.

Such the Ašu died, or as Aškari say, gave birth to the culture they know today.

Characteristic features

General

Writing system

Reading

Symbols

There but two rules that govern the reading of symbols:

1. Simple is single - simple logographs are always assigned a single syllable
2. Top to bottom, left to right - compound logographs' reading is constructed from the simple logographs read top to bottom and left to right

Food logograph decomposed into simple logographs by Angantyr

For example, a compound symbol for food (šū-ga-mū) consists of three simple logographs: wheat (grain), fruit (grapes) and ox (meat).

Tones