Azrán Historical Linguistics
In the world of the TV series Into the Badlands, the Azrán language is descended from contemporary Mexican Spanish, having evolved over the course of more than 500 years. No constraints on the language's recognizability were imposed by production, allowing for some striking changes in phonology and grammar. However, David J. Peterson still considers the language more conservative than it could have been designed to be, considering the timeframe.
Sound changes
The ordered sound changes in the Azrán language leading back to Spanish are as follows:
- s became h before consonants and at the end of a word.
- Voiced fricatives disappeared between vowels and at the word's end.
- Voiced fricatives hardened (ɣ > ɡ, β > b, ð > d).
- Voiceless sounds became voiced after vowels, even at the end of the word.
- All glottal fricatives were lost.
- Vowels were lost at the end of words.
Following these changes, stress patterns began to shift, leading to the emergence of high and low tones. Vowel coalescence occurred, resulting in the merging of high and low tones, ultimately giving rise to falling tones. While there are instances of low-high melody, they do not occur on a single vowel, exemplified by the transformation of nadar to naá [na˩.a˥].