Řeuŋnie

Ouřefr /ˈəʊr̝ɛfə/ (Ourefŕnie cítnŕ /əʊr̝ɛfəɲeː tsijʔtnɐː/) is an Idavic language belonging to the Nabŋaic branch. It is inspired by Czech, Dutch, Cantonese, and Japanese (but mainly by the first two). It is the most widely spoken Nabŋaic language and is related to Nabbrzé, which is the Mandarin/Russian counterpart.

Ouřefr is the international lingua franca in its home world. It is native to the island nation of Ouřefie, where it evolved in isolation from other Nabŋaic languages, and is also official in the large continental country of Lo'eďeu, and thus has some accentual variation.

Unlike Nabbrzé, Ouřefr has more loans from the classical language Netagin, a fellow Idavic language.

todo

Diachronics

1. OSL
2. Czech-like depalatalization and hard/soft vowel splits
3. Palatalization-dependent GVS, then another depalatalization?
4. Old Ouřefr ć dź ś ź merge into c dz s z
5. n- > l- (unless assimilating)

Test

Woeŋanies uistřivt melouk lo vahrádyvijŋ, ar mezryz woþmyce bacirňr řeunie aš ŋávej těmzánisie. Evloedr wie doezanejne hář, po ryhoteuŋ.

Phonology

"Czech with more vowels and simpler phonotactics" or "Play up the Dutch in Czech"

Consonants

		Bilabial		Dental	Alveolar		Palatal(ized)		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m /m/			n /n/		nj /ɲ/		ng /ŋ/
Plosive		p /p/	b /b/		t /t/	d /d/	tj /c/	dj /ɟ/	k /k/		' /ʔ/
Fricative		f /f/	v /v/	þ /θ/	s /s/	z /z/		ř /ʒ/	ch /x/	g /ɣ/	h /h/
Affricate					c /ts/
Trill					r /r/
Approximant		w /w/			l /l~ɫ/		j /j/

m ŋ can be syllabic; when syllabic they are written ḿ ŋ́ and have the same length as long vowels.

Voiceless stops are unaspirated as in Dutch and Czech.

Obstruent voicing assimilation as in Slavic.

Glottal reinforcement, but no gemination

/l/ has the same l~ɫ allophony as in RP; vocalization of dark L possible

Realizing /c ɟ ɳ/ as [tʲ dʲ nʲ] is a feature of sung Ouřefr.

ř is pronounced like the Czech ř in dialects or certain posh accents. The same dialects keep ć ś ź distinct, whereas the standard language no longer does.

Notes on consonant diachronics

Like Nabbrzé, Ouřefr shows debuccalization of Proto-Nabŋaic *g to /ɣ/ similar to Dutch and Czech.

Proto-Nabŋaic *ɬ has shifted to þ /θ~ð/.

Proto-Nabŋaic *b has shifted to v while it stayed as /b/ in Nabbrzé. /p b/ are loan phonemes.

Proto-Nabŋaic *ť ď has shifted to c z.

Vowels

Ouřefr vowel orthography is more conservative, and reflects a shift similar to the Great Vowel Shift (cf. Common Czech and Dutch), which also affects loanwords borrowed before the shift.

a e/je i/y o u á é í/ý ó ú eu/ui ie oe ou ŕ /ɐ ɛ ɪ ɔ ɵ aː ɛː ɛɪ~ɪj ɔː yː~ʉː œː ɪː oː~uː əʊ~əʏ ɜː/

Closer allophones [ɪj~eɪ] of /ɛɪ/ are more common after palatals /c ɟ ɲ/.

• je i ie í eu are palatalizing; all other orthographic vowels are nonpalatalizing.
  • For C = b p v f, Cje Ceu Cí denote /Cjɛ Cjœː Cjɛɪ/; mje meu mij denotes /mɲɛ mɲœː mɲɛɪ/.
  • For C = d t n, Cje Ci Cie Cí Ceu denote /ɟ c ɲ/ + vowel.
• ó mostly occurs in loanwords from Netagin.

Notes on vowel diachronics

Ouřefr has lost Proto-Nabŋaic vowel length. Pre-Proto-Nabŋaic i u e a ī ū ē ā become e o e a i y ě o when not lengthened. Unlike in Nabbrzé, some vowel devoicing has occurred (cf. Japanese), which gave Ouřefr more consonant clusters.

Long vowels result from open-syllable lengthening (OSL): **čettijn > *četijn; **četijn > *čétijn. OSL occurred before the devoicing, making the Ourefr distribution of long vowels somewhat similar to Czech.

Modern ie ý/í oe ú result from older 'ää ý/í ó ú. Old Ouřefr u, ú has shifted to i, ij after soft consonants j č ž š ň *ľ ř.

Palatalizing eu /œː/ is common in native words. Common sources are:

• Old Ouřefr /æː/ before velars or /l/: for example, reuŋ /rœːŋ/ 'wind' comes from Old Ouřefr řa̋ŋ < PNab *rěŋu < PId *rēŋu.
• Old Ouřefr long /juː/, coming from PId /ew/ or /iw/.

Non-palatalizing ui /œː/ comes mostly from historical *ujV or loanwords.

Most speakers today are in the process of merging /ɜː/ into á /aː/.

As suggested by the spelling, ŕ /ɜː/ comes from syllabic r; they are cognate to Nabbrzé -arz/-árz.

Pitch accent

Long vowels take two morae; downstep as in Japanese

• vác (vaàc) /vaꜜ.ats/ 'basil'
• vác (vàac) /va.atsꜜ/ 'feather'
• vác (vaac) /va.ats/ 'stump'

Accent is not distinguished in the native orthography except in dictionaries; hence all three words above will be transliterated bác, unless disambiguation is needed.

Historically hard-soft vowel pairs

• hard y ~ soft i
• hard u ~ soft i
• hard a ~ soft ě
• hard ý ~ soft í
• hard á ~ soft ie/eu
• hard ou ~ soft eu
• hard ui ~ soft eu
• hard oe ~ soft ie
• hard ú ~ soft í

Long vowels result from OSL ćettijn > cetijn; ćetijn > cétijn

Morphology

Inflectional morphology is Slavic and Germanic-inspired; clitics and syntax are Japanese-inspired

Nouns

Ouřefr nouns are classified into two genders: animate and inanimate, and they inflect for case. Similarly to Slavic languages, the case affixes are fusional, encoding both case and number.

The inflectional cases are as follows. Other grammatical relations are expressed using postpositions and clitics.

• nominative (Japanese ga)
• accusative (Japanese wo)
• genitive (Japanese no)
• dative (Japanese ni)
• allative (Japanese e)
• comitative/"and" (Japanese to)
• instrumental/locative (Japanese de)

Declension classes

The declension classes are:

• -a declension (usually animate)
• -e declension (usually animate)
• hard consonant declension (usually inanimate)
• soft consonant declension (usually inanimate, but default for loans ending in a consonant)
• Inanimate vowel nouns (default for loans ending in a vowel)
• -ŕ declension
• -ýn/-ín declension (adjectival noun)
• -é/-ie declension (adjectival noun)
• -aw/-ui- nouns

There are more declension classes than in related languages such as Nabbrzé; this is because of vowel changes after soft consonants and subsequent depalatalization.

meřega (a) 'bear'

• nom: meřega, meřegu
• acc: meřeze, meřezij
• gen: meřegu, meřezij
• dat: meřegy, meřegas
• all: meřegy, meřegata
• ins/loc: meřegel, meřegata

roustje (a) 'puppy'

Verbs and adjectives

vej- for negation; generally like Korean, except verbs also inflect for the animacy of the subject.

Conjugation classes:

• -as verbs
• -is verbs
• -es/-ěs verbs
• -s verbs
• irregular: "to do" (added to foreign words to verb them)
• irregular: "to be (copula)"
• irregular: "to exist"

Derivational morphology

Native

• -oelie '-ess'
• -ytj/-itj/-tje diminutive
• -ech/-ch verbal noun
• -vŕ patient
• -fa agent
• -koek instrument
• -ář diminutive
• -yCe/-iCe (C = redup) diminutive; not very productive
• -ngoh abstract noun
• -myc (soft) abstract noun

Syntax

Lifted from Korean and Japanese.