Eastonian language

Eastonian
Āsthaya
Pronunciation	[ɑːsˈtʰɐjɐ]
Native to	Emnia, Austrasia
Ethnicity	Eastonians
Native speakers	~30 thousand (2020)
Language family	Emnitic
Early forms	Primitive Eastonian
Writing system	Equatoric
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

Eastonian languages are a group of closely related languages spoken by the Eastonian people in northern Calatania — primarily in eastern Emnia. While there exists a considerable degree of variation between the dialects or languages, a standardised form has been developed which is largely mutually intelligible across all varieties.

Classification

The Eastonian languages form a branch of the Emnitic language family. According to the traditional view, Eastonian is within the Emnitic family most closely related to Emnian, but this view has recently been challenged by many scholars who argue that the traditional view of a common Emnian-Eastonian protolanguage is not as strongly supported as had been previously assumed, and that many of the assumed similarities may be simply shared retentions or mutual areal influence.

In terms of internal relationships, the Eastonian languages are divided into two groups: western dialects, which are spoken in the eastern and southern highlands of Emnia, and eastern dialects, which are spoken in the Emnian Far East and Austrasia. Varieties form a dialect continuum throughout their range in which neighbouring varieties are highly mutually intelligible, while more widely separated speakers may not immediately understand each other's speech.

Vocabulary

Substrate hypothesis

Some theories about the origin of the substrate vocabulary in the Eastonian languages link it to an unattested Neocalatanian language. According to Coleman (2004), the speakers of the Proto-Emnitic language arrived in Eastonia and had fully assimilated the local populations by the middle of the 1st century CE. In her opinion, a detailed reconstruction of this language would be impossible.

Eastonian	Proto-Emnitic	Emnian	Sudric
...	...	...	...
...	...	...	...