Mariupol Gothic
Mariupol Gothic is a Germanic language spoken by approximately 15,000 people on the northern coast of the Sea of Azov. It is an East Germanic language, closely related to Biblical Gothic, however the language is not a lineal descendant of Biblical Gothic. Nonetheless the speakers of Mariupol Gothic refer to themselves as "Goths" and their language still shares enough similarities with Gothic to be considered related.
History
Catharine the Great, during her reign, invited the Crimean Goths, as well as the Greeks, to settle recently conquered lands north of the Sea of Azov. Here is where the Crimean Goths meet the Black Sea Germans, and their two languages began influencing one another, with Mariupol Gothic taking many loanwords from German, such as kop in place of oeft for "head", and flesch in place of mens for "meat".
Orthography
Since the 1920s Mariupol Gothic has been written in a Cyrillic alphabet based off of the Ukrainian script. The Biblical Gothic alphabet is also used, but it has been mostly limited to religious situations. However, the Biblical Gothic letter þiuþ <𐌸> was imported to represent the /θ/ sound, it takes a form identical to that of Cyrillic psi.
| Letter | Position | Latin Equivalent | Phoneme |
|---|---|---|---|
| А а | 1 | A a | /ɑ, ɑː/ |
| Б б | 2 | B b | /b/ |
| В в | 3 | V v | /v/ |
| Г г | 4 | Gh gh | /ɣ/ |
| Ґ ґ | 5 | G g | /g/ |
| Д д | 6 | D d | /d/ |
| Е e | 7 | E e | /e, eː/ |
| Є є | 8 | Je je | /je/ |
| Э э | 9 | Ă ă | /ə/ |
| З з | 10 | Z z | /z/ |
| И и | 11 | I i | /i, iː/ |
| Ї ї | 12 | Ji ji | /ji/ |
| К к | 13 | K k | /k/ |
| Л л | 14 | L l | /l/ |
| М м | 15 | M m | /m/ |
| Н н | 16 | N n | /n/ |
| О o | 17 | O o | /o, oː/ |
| П п | 18 | P p | /p/ |
| Р р | 19 | R r | /r/ |
| С с | 20 | S s | /s/ |
| Т т | 21 | T t | /t/ |
| У у | 22 | U u | /u, uː/ |
| Ф ф | 23 | F f | /f/ |
| Ѱ ѱ | 24 | Th th | /θ/ |
| Х х | 25 | Ch ch | /x/ |
| Ш ш | 26 | Sch sch | /ʃ/ |
| Щ щ | 27 | St st | /ʃt/ |
| Ю ю | 28 | Ju ju | /ju/ |
| Я я | 29 | Ja ja | /ja/ |
Phonology
Vowels
Adjectives
The adjectives have been greatly simplified since Proto-Germanic. They are divided into two different forms, strong and weak, and agree with case, number and gender with the noun they modify.
| Strong | Weak | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | |||||||
| SG | PL | SG | PL | SG | PL | SG | PL | SG | PL | SG | PL | |
| NOM | -с | -э | -э | -эс | -этэ - |
-э | -э | -энс | -э | -энс | -э | -энэ |
| OBL | - | -эн | ||||||||||