Mannish

Introduction

Real World Setting

Mannish is Germanic conlang created by Kóði Lý Alísuson Antóníusarson (also known as Cody Lee Ervin), and has been killed off and resuscitated several times over the past year and a half, give or take a little. It's main purpose is to provide entertainment to its creator, as well as help its creator learn more about Linguistics as a whole along the way. Although, it goes without saying that it's mostly just created a lot of frustration. A lot.

Typological Description

Mannish is a heavily inflected, conservative Germanic language with five cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, and instrumental. Mannish nouns can have one of three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter, and decline for number and definiteness. Adjectives agree with their head nouns in all of the aforementioned categories, most notably retaining strong and weak declensions mirroring that of a definite-indefinite distinction. Verbs conjugate for 3 tenses (preterite, present, and future), 2 voices (active and passive), 3 moods (indicative, subjunctive, and imperative), person, number, and gender. Periphrastic constructions or adverbs are used for finer nuances.

Pronouns are declined for gender, number, and person. Their usage is not obligatory, however, and as such Mannish is a pro-drop language; a feature that sets it apart from most of its Germanic relatives.

Notable Characteristics

• Simple future tense derived from an infinitive stem followed by a conjugated form of the verb "to be" (Mannish wesn): Hó fiþím "I will find him", from Hó fiþ imi, literally "I am to find him".
• Lack of universal initial syllable stress due to long vowels and diphthongs attracting stress, kwingdóur, [kʋigːəˈdɔʉɐ] "kingdom", from PrG *kuningadōmaz
• Complete lack of Germanic umlaut and (as long vowels are not different in quality and not counting diphthongs) a relatively low vowel inventory in comparison to other Germanic languages.

Phonology

Orthography

Mannish uses a variant of the Latin Alphabet consisting of the following letters:

a á b d e é f g h i í j k l m n o ó p r s t þ u ú v w

The letters c, q, x, y, and z are only used in a small number of recent loanwords. Most older loanwords have been assimilated into the standard orthographical conventions, with younger ones retaining their native orthography to one degree or another.

For example, Mín Notebook "My Notebook" (as in the computer) has yet to be altered due to how recent of a loan it is, while Míné twalette "My toilet" has already been altered due to it being an older loanword from French.

The orthography is largely regular, albeit not completely intuitive to speakers of, say, English. The vowels are fairly straightforward, while the consonants have more ambiguities that are not inherently evident at first glance.

Consonants

The following table presents the consonant phonemes of Mannish.

Consonants	Bilabial	Labio-Dental	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Labio-Velar	Velar
Nasal	/m/			/n/
Plosive	/p/ /b/			/t/ /d/			/k/ /g/
Fricative		/f/	/θ/	/s/	/ç/
Approximant				/l/	/j/	/w/	/ɰ/
Rhotic				/r/

Allophonic Variation

Nasals

The phonemes /m/ and /n/ are both subject to significant allophony before fricatives. Before the fricatives /f θ s ç/ both sounds denasalize and shift place of articulation to assimilate with the appropriate fricative, the resulting affricate is reduced to the base fricative if another consonant follows (or was historically pronounced but no longer is). Before /p b t d k g/ the nasals assimilate completely, resulting in gemination of the original velars, unless before another consonant, in which case the gemination is no longer present. This change is not always reflected in the orthography. Example:

• éksénþe "they beg" [ˈeːˌt͡sæ:t̪͡θe]
• tungé "tongue" [ˈtugːeː]
• þanht "thought" [θɑç]
• þankn "to thank" [ˈθɑkŋ̩]
• þankjn "to think" [ˈθɑçɲ̩]
• sumpa "fungus" [ˈsupːɑ] (contrasts with supa "soup" [ˈsupɑ])
• sumf "swamp" [sup͡f]
• sandn "to send" [ˈsɑdn̩]

Syntax

The default word order is SOV, with VSO used for questions. Due to the rich case system and conjugation, speakers can and do stray from this word order, and there is no trace of a V2 requirement.

Noun phrase

Adjectives can come before or after their head nouns, with A-N being the default order and N-A frequently being used to emphasize the adjective.

• Ruþaú vánar seó - "I see a red car"; vs Vánar ruþaú seó - "I see a car that's red", or "I see a red car".

The former simply states that the speaker sees a car and that they decided to describe the color of said car, while the latter states that the speaker sees a red car and that the color has significance. This order is commonly used in the phrase "I see X, not Y".

• Vánar ruþaú seó, ni blaú. - "I see a red car, not a blue one."