The Castellan Language: Barád Kestelál

Castellans Grand Castell-Llozhar Second Kingdom of Grand Castell Third Kingdom of Grand Castell Castellan Heartlands

Kodikus Gramátai Kesteláli: Manual of Castellan Grammar
Elegiou Valési subadaróz

Written by Elegius of Valles

Introduction
Although of unclear origin, Castellan or Kestelál is known to be an ancient language predating the Great Migrations into Rathnir or Gabáldas (the Old Shore), as the newcomers called it. It was spoken by the native castellans (kestélas, meaning "people of the forts"). During said migrations it suffered the effects of the castellan diaspora and the loss of a unified polity, making it diminish in number of speakers and consistency of vocabulary and grammar. It experienced a gerat revival during the establishment and and apogee of the Crown of Grand Castell-Llozhar in the continent of Sparwood, with funding for new dictionaries, academies and the recuperation of its use in the administration of castellan lnds and by the castellan nobility.

The present text intends to continue the standarisation and good use of the language, and to make this language stand on equal footing with other imperial and royal languages of our surroundings. With that purpose in mind, we will focus on Modern Castellan, although we wil make some references to introduce some Classical or Noble Castellan spoken mostly before the new cultural revivals mentioned above.

Feel free to consult the Castellan-Common Dictionary with more than 700 entries at any point during the reading of this manual.

And now:

Apár os...

... let us begin!

The Castellan sentence and case system
Castellan sentence structure revolves around its grammatical case system, which alters nouns, pronouns and adjectives with different ending inflexions or suffixes to indicate the function they perform inside the sentence.

In castellan there are two declensions and four grammatical cases. The First or Irregular Declension is for nouns that put the stress the last syllable or that end with a consonant other than S (sarád, galás). The Second or Regular Declension on the other hand, is used for nouns that put the stress on the penultimate or (rarely) the antepenultimate syllable (Eskabíres, kotos, ekias,...). Notice that to tell the differnce between declensions, it's very useful knowing where the stressed syllable is in a word. To make that easier castellan uses accent markers on the vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú).

As for the Grammatical cases, these are the following:

Nominative
Marks the Subject of the sentence and the Direct Object when it’s indefinite.

Accusative
The Accusative in castellan mainly marks the Direct Object (DO) if it’s definite and the Indirect Objectc (IO).

The Direct Object is the thing that is being done or directly affected by the verb (I bake a cake).

The Indirect object is the thing or person to whom the action done by the verb is directed at (I passed the ball to you). Notice that in english we use prepositions (to you) to mark this different meaning inside the sentence, but there are remenants of grmmatical cases in english too. For example, we don't say  'He gave I the keys, we say He gave me the keys'.

The Accusative case in Castellan can also act in a Locative sense through the use of prepositions. This means it expresses where the subject of the sentence is, whre the action is taking place or the direction it's going toward. Sometimes the prepositions aren’t needed and the meaning can be inferred by the case used, the context or the order of the words inside the sentence. It’s also used to refer to specific moments in time. Example 1 (Accusative DO and IO)