Ampābru, pejoratively known by the exonym Indobarbaric, is a naturalistic constructed Southern Romance language set in an alternate timeline wherein a large group of people emigrated from what once was the Roman province of Africa at some time around the 8^th century C.E. due to religious persecution by the ruling Umayyads, who conquered the region around 709.

After leaving Roman Africa, the emigrating group ventured through Persia and ultimately settled into what is now southern Gujarat and northern Maharastra near the Gulf of Khambat. They were known amongst themselves as the Cannit (from Latin candidus) (modern pronunciation: /kəɳit/; pre-1500: /kaˈnid/) people, although the term "Indobarbarum" was used by many Eastern Romans, the territory of whom was being passed through amid the migration. "Indobarbarum" is the term that ultimately stuck; a corrupted form thereof is whence the modern term "Ampābru" arose. Under colonial British rule, the Latinate term "Indobarbaric" was used to refer to the language and its speakers, and it is not until very recently that the official name has been changed back to Ampābru.

Various elements of Ampābru's phonology, lexicon, and grammar show great influence from the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in the area where the Ampābru settled. A great resemblance to Sardinian is borne by Ampābru's Romance substrate, as would be typical of a Southern Romance language. Due to proximity to speakers of it, there is also profound Tamazight influence, as was present in African Romance.

Indeed, far more noun declension has been preserved in Ampābru than in any other living Romance tongue, perhaps due to the extensive influence of Indo-Aryan languages' grammars thereupon. Gujarati influence also brang the development of a clusivity distinction in the first-person plural, which applies not only to pronouns but also to first-person plural imperative verb conjugations. For verbs, the infinitive + habere construction oft found in Romance languages did not stick around; there is no morphological future tense, albeit there still is a very rich verb conjugation paradigm inherited from Latin. Verbs also conjugate for grammatical gender.

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Phonology

Sound Changes from African Romance The following sound changes were loosely applied to the African Romance lexicon, although they are by far inexact and do not reflect the full spectrum of narrow consonant and vowel shifts.

Miniscule v denotes voicing. "Aspiration" (asp) here denotes aspiration for voiceless recipients or murmuring for voiced recipients. Majiscule V denotes a vowel. L denotes a liquid consonant. Tilde denotes inconsistent sound change application by the speakers or inconsistent application towards some category. Capital C denotes any consonant. # denotes a morpheme boundary, whereas σ denotes a syllable boundary. B, D, R, V, and U denote labial, dental, retroflex, velar, and uvular consonants respectively

Modern Phonemic Inventory Ultimately, the following modern phonemic inventory took shape. Therein one may recognise the presence of various distinctively Indo-Aryan-influenced phonemes. Interestingly, rather than adopt the affricates t͡ʃ and d͡ʒ in loanwords, ʈ͡ʂˤ and ɖ͡ʐˤ have assumed their place instead; there is a distinct lack of stop palatalisation unakin to many Romance languages, but very typical of a Southern Romance tongue like Ampābru is. However, the sheer pertingence betwixt the phonemic inventories of many Indo-Aryan languages and Ampābru shows how much Ampābru has diverged from its African Romance roots.

Phonemes marked with parentheses in the table represent marginal phonemes.

Stress Stress is phonemic, typically being on the penultimate syllable in native and Tamazight-deriven vocabulary and the first syllable in Persian and Indo-Aryan loanwords.

Hiatus Vowel hiatus is allowed.

Phonotactics Syllable structure is overwhelmingly (C)(C)V(C), although three-consonant onsets are occasionally found. /ŋ/ and voiceless nasals are not allowed as an onset, nor are retroflex sonorants and retroflex taps.

Loanword-Exclusive Phonemes The phonemes /ʈ͡ʂʱˤ/, /ɖ͡ʐˤ/, /ɖ͡ʐʱˤ/, and /ɲ/ are largely exclusive to loanwords from Indic languages and correspond to Indic palatals. /ɲ/ always corresponds to the Sanskrit cluster /d͡ʒɲ/, as in Ampābru yaǧna /jəɲə/ meaning "yagna".

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Orthography

Ampābru has four mostly-phonemic orthographies: one with the Latin script, one with the Devanagari script, one with the Gujarati script, and one with the Perso-Arabic script. The Devanagari orthography, the Gujarati orthography, and the Perso-Arabic orthographies are largely identical and merely substitute graphemes. Hence, I shall only cover the Latin script and Devanagari script orthographies herein.

Orthography The following table tables the consonant- and vowel-representing graphemes. Most orthographical conventions are the same between Devanagari and Latin script, hence it is in one table. The first line is Devanagari, the second line Latin, and the third line IPA.

In Latin script, ǹ represents either the nasalisation of the preceding vowel (thereby silencing the n) iff the preceding vowel is two graphemes, or the nasalisation the preceding monographemic vowel and silencing the n in all places except for in elisions, when the n is again pronounced and the vowel nasalised no more; the latter case might also produce m̀ for elidable /m/ and very rarely ǹǹ for elidable /ɳ/. An anusvāra is used for this purpose in Devanagari, although older texts use the anusvāra for only the latter situation and the chandrabindu for the former situation, although this convention was later abolished in favour of using the anusvāra and only the anusvāra.

* Matches Latin-script orthography's <c>.•**Matches Latin-script orthography's <qu>.

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Declension

Pronouns Retained by pronouns is a slightly-more-than-nouns amount of case distinction as well as less syncretism than found in nouns' declension. Additionally, the first person plural's clusivity distinction and second person singular's formality distinction are notable development, with the second-person agentive formal singular ultimately being derived from Latin tuum, which was tuus's accusative form in the masculine and in the neuter.

Genitives have three forms: one for masculine possessum, one for feminine possessum, and one for superior/epicene/formal/androgynous/plural possessum, hence the tube characters between forms there: masc. | fem. | pl.

Outside of pronouns, there exists no distinction between the genitive and the Locative. Sometimes the Locative also has locative use, possibly from Gujarati influence, although interestingly, the Latin locative has not only survived but indeed become fully productive.

Nouns Nouns are declined for gender, case, and number. There are 3 masculine noun declensions and 3 feminine noun declensions.

Declension III primarily consists of Indic loanwords as well as words (especially in scientific literature) ending in -am that were loaned from English words loaned from Latin -um.

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Conjugation

The presumptive mood conjugations are derived from Late African Latin infinitive + conjugations of its descendant of Latin habeō, the same thing that yielded future tense conjugations in many other Romance languages. The -rr- in the presumptive is precisely the remnant of this -r- in the Latin infinitive, which may or may not have surviven into present-day Ampābru as the -r- in the infinitve.

In the below table, a form $a/$b indicates that the former is for a masculine subject and the latter for a feminine subject.

There are four verb conjugations: the -(r)a verbs largely descended from Latin -ere, the -(r)ā verbs largely descended from Latin -are, the -(r)i verbs largely descended from Latin -ire, and the -eùr verbs largely descended from Latin -uere; conjugation of the lattermost is basically identical to conjugating a -(r)a verb apart from the infinitive, participles, and the present indicative plural forms in the first and third persons.

The formal second person conjugations evolved from stressed versions of the third person conjugations; this is since Latin "tuus", whose accusative was "tuum" (whence the 2^nd person formal singular pronoun) is in the third person unlike Latin "tu" by itself. Usually, the masculine form of gender-conjugated forms is the original form, and the feminine forms arose through analogy with nouns (the effect of feminine nouns ending in -i).