Old Medeean

"Stay clear of the forest, kids, or the moonshiner will come for your souls..."

Old Medeean is an archaic dialect of Medeean that was born before the Age of Conquest. Initially, it was simply the official language of Medeean people; it was spoken only inside the small, but quickly growing country known as simply 'Medeea'. As the country became an empire and its borders expanded, a new decree made illegal speaking any language other than Medeean. The countryfolk were forced to quickly adapt to the sudden change in regime and to the cultural and linguistic washing; during these formative years, the language morphed into a less rigid dialect that combined features from all the languages.

Many idioms were created in this period. As the commoners learnt how to speak the new language, they quickly 'translated' their expressions into the new language. These 'translations' were usually incorrect, since they were made based on phonology (and not vocabulary).

The best example of mistranslation is 'coffee eyes', which is an expression that hints at having coitus. In the original form, 'eyes with the intensity of coffee' was used to describe people who looked angry and who frowned, but because the Shivili word for 'lust' has a similar pronunciation, the population of the region slowly mixed the meanings of the idioms. Nowadays, the idioms that are still used have largely uncommon origins. Not many people even know who is capable of speaking the old tongue; soon enough, there will be no speakers left alive, and the already nebulous origin of those expressions will be forever lost to time.