Hick

    The Hick language family is a group of related languages spoken in Senera. By the time of the Fall of the Kalassarian Empire, the Hick languages were supplanted by Classical Kalassarian. However, even during this time, local speakers of Hick languages continued to use their languages in everyday life.

    Hick Sub-Families

    Seneran Hick

    Seneran Hick considered the typifying language of the Hick family. The languages of the Seneran Hick family are spoken in the main Seneran Island, and are the substrates of the modern Seneran language.

    Maritime/Straits Hick

    This sub-family are a variety of languages spoken in the islands of the Princely Straits. They include Palman, the language of Racos Palma, Sentimental Island and Shagnery, and Moreaux.

    As the prehistoric Hickic people expanded westward, their relative distance from the Apgarian mainland began to affect their language. These island-bound cultures still maintained a close linguistic relationship with each other, but had started to diverge from those mainland languages. Languages that are said to derive from Proto-Maritime Hick are the extinct Raibonian, Sentimental, and Palman.

    Some proposed sound changes from Proto-Hick to Proto-Maritime Hick are:

    1. Deletion of a liquid in proximity to a glottal fricative:

      h [liquid] => h \*/ \_
- [liquid] h => \* h /\_

    2. Reanalysis of initial ha to match changes with sacred terminology:

      ha => θə / $ _ {[stop !glottal], [fricative], [liquid], [glide]}

      This change may explain why Kalassarian sources sometimes transcribe Hausi as "Mausi/Mauri" - the heavily aspirated initial /h/ in Maritime Hick dialects likely had strong nasalization, leading Kalassarian speakers to perceive it as /m/. This is particularly evident in coastal varieties where contact was most frequent.

    Apgarian Hick

    It is widely debated whether or not the Apgarian Hick languages have diverged directly from a hypothetical Proto-Hick, or whether they are instead a descendant of one of the variants of Straits Hick. The fact that modern descendants of Apgarian Hick are heavily influenced by Kalassarian, and have continuous contact with Straits Hick languages as well as the surrounding Apgarian languages, makes it difficult to determine the historical relationship between the two groups.