Sintsiran

Sintsiran
dánnta sínsireka
Created by	User:RoTM94
Language family	Indo-European Sintsiric Sintsiran

The Sintsiran language (Sintsiran: dánnta sínsireka) is a language spoken by the Sintsiran people, a nationless people living on the Baltics, Eastern and Central Scandinavia, and parts of Central Europe. It is the sole surviving language of the Sintsiric branch of the Indo-European family. The language has a vocabulary that is inherited from Proto-Indo-European, along with words borrowed from Proto-Slavic, Proto-Germanic, Latin, and Koine Greek. This language can be written using the Sintsiran script or the Latin script.

Sintsiran retains many features of Proto-Indo-European, thus there are some similarities between this language and Latin, Ancient Greek, Lithuanian, and Sanskrit.

Vocabulary linked here

Etymology

The word "Sintsiran" comes from the name of the lands of the Sintsiran people in Russian, Синцира (Sincira), which comes from the word in Sintsiran, Sínsirā, which in turn is comprised of three words: se (self), ins- (people, tribe), and íra (land).

History

The Sintsiran language evolved from Proto-Indo-European through the Sintsiric branch. Its sister language became extinct from the 16th to the 20th century, making Sintsiran the sole surviving language of this branch. It is a satem language, like the Slavic languages, but the resulting sibilants became palatalized and then approximated: (ǵ, ḱ > /ʒ/, /ʃ/ > /j/) and (ǵʰ > /ʒʰ/ > /hj/). For example, hîdat evolved from P.I.E ǵʰewdeti.

Sintsiran is conservative compared to most other Indo-European languages, retaining more features and having a slower evolution.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

		Labial	Dental	Velar / Palatal
Nasal		m	n	ŋ*
Plosive	voiceless	p	t	k
	voiced	b	d	g
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	ç*, x
	voiced	v	z
Other		w	l, r	j

• /ŋ/ is an allophone of /n/ when followed by a velar consonant.
• /ç/ is an allophone of /x/ when followed by "e" or "i".

Vowels

The Sintsiran language has the basic five vowels: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/. There are long and short vowels.

Orthography

Long vowels are marked with a macron (ā). Stressed short vowels are marked with an acute accent (á). Stressed long vowels are marked with a circumflex (â).

The sounds /j/ and /w/ are represented by "i" and "u" respectfully, making both letters semivowels.

Because the sound /ʃ/ is not native to Sintsiran, loanwords originally containing this sound get borrowed as as "si" or "s". For example, German Schärpe became siérpa, and French douche became dúsia.

Like Greek, any word with two or more syllable must indicate stress in the orthography.

Grammar

Nominals

Sintsiran nouns have four cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative. It also retained all three genders from Proto-Indo-European: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives are declined by case and gender. There are six different declensions, or broad patterns to decline a noun or adjective.

First Declension

The first declension is only applicable to nouns of the feminine gender. This declension has short-stem declension (where the final vowel is short) and long-stem declension (where the final vowel is long). The difference between the two occurs in the singular inflection, and the plural inflection remains the same.

short-stem

Case	singular	plural
nominative	-a, -e	-ēs
accusative	-am, -em	-ēs
genitive	-as, -es	-ēm
dative	-ī	-ōs

Examples:

• úga (river)
• fláne (fur)

long-stem

Case	singular	plural
nominative	-ē, -ō	-ēs, -ōs
accusative	-ām, -uām	-ēs, -ōs
genitive	-ās, -uās	-ēm, -ōs
dative	-ēi, -ōi	-ōs, -ūs

Examples:

• téllē (girl)
• iûnō (cheek)

Verbs

Verb conjugation has a higher degree of complexity than nominal declension. There are many things that influence the conjugation of a verb:

• Voice: active, passive
• Tense: present, perfect, pluperfect (only in passive), imperfect, future
• Mood: indicative, subjunctive, imperative
• Person: I, you (singular), he/she/it, we, you (plural), they

This does not include auxiliary conjugations, with an auxiliary verb. The infinitve form of verbs is -ne. Similarly, vowel mutations exist in almost every verb. There are 41 different vowel mutation patterns classes, which arise from the different grades of vowels in Proto-Indo-European.

Examples of mutation classes

P.I.E grade	(e)	(ē), (ō)	(o)	(∅)	Example verb
Class 8	ā	ā	ū	i	nâine
Class 22	i	ē	ō	o	díkne
Class 30	o	ō	o	o	póvne

Furthermore, there are 6 different conjugation patterns based on the thematicity and aspect the Proto-Indo-European root verb the conjugation is based on. Like Latin and German, verbs usually come at the end of sentences.

Prepositions

Prepositions are commonly attached to verbs through corresponding prefixes. Examples include:

• ā (to) + vêtene (glow, shine) → āvêtene (illuminate)
• iom (with) + pêsne (split) → iompêsne (share)
• ān (on) + kénne (precede, prevail) → ānkénne (begin, start)

The prefixes change depending on the starting letter of the root verb:

Changes in prefix depending on start of root.

Preposition	b, p	d, g, k, t	Vowels	f, v	h	l	m	n	r	s, z
ā	ās-	ās-	ād-	ā-	ā-	ā-	ā-	ā-	ā-	ā-
ān	ām-	ān-	ān-	ān-	ān-*	al-	ān-	an-	ar-	ān-
dôpi	dō-	dō-	dōp-	dō-	dōp-*	dōp-	dō-	dō-	dōp-	dōp-
dúka	du-	du-	duk-	du-	du-	du-	du-	du-	du-	du-
fro	fro-	fro-	fr-	fro-	fro-	fro-	fro-	fro-	fro-	fro-
his	his-	his-	his-	hi(s)¹-	his-*	hi-	his-	his-	hi-	hi-
in	im-	in-	in-	in-	ī-	il-	im-	in-	ir-	ī-
iom	iom-	ion-	iom-	iō-	iō-	iō-	iō-	iom-	iō-	iō-
náti	na-	na-	nat-	na-	nat-*	nal-	na-	na-	nar-	na-
pas	pas-	pas-	pas-	pā-	pas-*	pā-	pas-	pas-	pā-	pā-
pári	pri-	pri-	par-	pri-	par-*	pri-	pri-	pri-	pri-	pri-
úpar	ū-	ū-	up-	ū-	up-*	uf-	uf-	uf-	uf-	uf-

* The initial "h" in the root is removed.

¹ The (s) is included if the root word does not start with a consonant cluster.

MORE TO COME!