Pamedarian Language Family
The Pamedarians were the native peoples who first settled the Altojowa plains about 8000 years before present. They were a primarily agrarian people who formed tightly knit clan structures that resolved issues and made decisions by debate so that everyone can come to a consensus rather than through a simple majority vote. This system of governance among the small tribes still remains in the name of their people, for in Proto-Pamedarian, they are called Phametaroa /pʰamɛtaˈrˤa/, or “we who convene”.
However, due to migration from the Proto-Dartminic people about 5000 years before present, the Pamedarian people have been gradually displaced from their urheimat and have retreated into the Jowa mountains, assimilated with the Dartminic peoples or migrated to other areas. As a result, speakers of Pamedarian languages are dispersed over a wide geographical region and this isolation has created huge divergence in most of them. In the present era, the state of the Pamedarian languages range from vulnerable all the way to extinct, as children would rather learn the more useful Tersamic languages than deal with their own native tongue.
The Pamedarian family can be split into 2 main groups, Upper Pamedarian and Lower Pamedarian. The Upper Pamedarian languages typically have ejectives and other non-pulmonic consonants in their inventories while Lower Pamedarian languages have large vowel inventories and vowel harmony reminiscent of the Tersamian languages.