Filch

Filch
fylsch
Created by	User:Prinsessa
Language family	Germanic Filch

Introduction

Filch (fylsch, equivalent to "folk" + "-ish") is an artistic auxiliary language in the Germanic family.

It is not actually intended as an auxiliary language but designed for fun with the intention of the highest possible intelligibility to modern Germanic speakers while still seeming like a naturalistic descendant of Proto-Germanic that evolved organically. Ease of learning and producing Filch fluently is secondary. Vocabulary and phrases are only added if they have widespread counterparts, so Filch does not necessarily have a one-word translation of everything, and descriptive language to get around this is expected.

For the English name compare "French" from Old English Frenċisċ with the same umlaut and palatalisation.

Sample

Næhst de aulde·lighe cyrce stoud e heugh byrc, full e breune mærce opaų s' barc. Come somer wære de leufe greune, æfter dæt geulwe, e fore de jaur s' ende wære dei reude. Come wįter fælle dei af, dogh thącc de sneu war de byrc ne nace næy, for dæ war gefe e hweit croune. Warme weder sunge flyghene foghele; caulde weder saung frysene wind.

Design goals and process

Filch is meant to cast as wide a net as possible in terms of understanding. This makes peripheral varieties such as Icelandic and English, which often have less in common with the rest of the family, equally important when deciding on words or phrases.

An example of the considerations made in such a choice:

PG	HWG	LWG	IWG	NG	Filch
*bi	bei	bij	by	(bí)	*bei
*wiþ-	(wider)	(we[d]er)	(with)	við	*wid
*at	*at		at	at	*at
*midi	mit	met	—	með	*mid
*nēhwist	nächst	naast	next [to]	~næst [eftir]	næhst

Representative branches are very roughly divided into somewhat inaccurate, but useful, groups: Proto-Germanic, "High West Germanic", "Low West Germanic", "Insular North Germanic" and North Germanic respectively. "Insular" refers to the English-Scots continuum. "High" and "low" roughly represent the respective ends of the mainland continuum. Frisian may fall under either of these depending, simply for convenience. North is usually represented by Old Norse unless descendants disagree. Multiple reflexes may occur in one cell, and cells may merge.

Apostrophe, tilde, parentheses and brackets represent various considerations. Filch forms with an apostrophe show what disqualified cognates would look like. The final word in bold matches all branches well enough to be selected.

Grammar

The word order lies somewhere between the extant varieties. Basic order is SVO. Adverbs cause V2. Questions are VSO. Objects may be fronted, especially when auxiliaries are present. Otherwise the auxiliary's main verb may shift to the end.

SVO	V2	VSO	Fronting	Shifting
wi ete æpele	neu ete wi æpele	ete wi æpele?	æpele cunne wi ete	cunne wi æpele ete?

Nouns and adjectives

Nouns have lost gender and (mostly) case through mergers. The plural suffix is invariably -e (unless the word already ends in a vowel in which case it is unmarked) but there may also be umlaut.

		Singular	Plural
Consonant stem	No umlaut	dægh	dæghe
	Umlaut	gaųs	gæ̨se
Vowel stem	Stressed	schou
	Unstressed	name

Adjectives take the same suffix in the plural as well as in definite (strong) form and in the dative (see below).

	Singular	Plural
Indefinite	nyw dægh	nywe dæghe
Definite	nywe dægh

Dative

While nouns are unmarked for case, unmarked dative constructions as in English (e.g. "give the cat some food") are common, and attributive adjectives once again take the same suffix as above in these instances. The construction is also used of partitives.

Attributive	Partitive
warm-e weder	full-∅ hole

For example:

Caulde weder cann igh socce fulle hole ne hafe opaų mine feute næy.

However full can sometimes also be followed by a singular or plural indefinite article that may seem like a preposition.

Dative nouns are sometimes fossilised with the ending -e in certain expressions, generally without any article.

Igh cam te werlde schreighene e nace.

Articles

There is an indefinite article e used both in the singular and sometimes in the plural, and an indefinite article de. Both articles are invariable for number. They precede the noun phrase. They are not as frequent as in English and the definite article remains more like a demonstrative.

Adverbs

Adverbs are productively formed the same way as definite (strong) adjectives. Some inherited ones have umlaut or otherwise break the pattern, e.g. through suppletion.

	Adjective	Adverb
Regular	full	fulle
Umlaut	lang	længe
Suppletion	goud	wel

For example:

Igh hafe længe lifd į de heus.

Pronouns

Pronouns come from unstressed forms so lack diphthongisation. First and second person pronouns retain obliques and possessives. Third person only distinguishes between number and anaphora. Preferably avoided as much as possible when composing cross-intelligible texts as these are probably the weakest link between Germanic varieties.

	1sg	2sg	1pl	2pl	3sg cataphoric	3sg anaphoric	3pl
subject	igh	du	wi	ji	dæt, 't	dæ	dei
oblique	mi	di	ǫss	jer
reflexive	mi sælf	di sælf	ǫss sælfe	jer sælfe	s' sælf		s' sælfe
possessive	mi(ne)	di(ne)	ǫsse	jere	s'

Possession

The nasal forms of the 1sg and 2sg possessives are for plural possessa. Other possessives are invariable.

Singular	Plural
mi heus	mine heuse

The third person s' also works as a possessive marker on nouns, similar to Scandinavian sin or German sein, e.g. de junge mann s' heus.

Verbs

Infinitives end in -e and take the marker t'. Weak verbs do not differentiate between number and strong verbs only do so in the past, with the exception of the copula and preterite-present stems. Participles work like adjectives but the present one is invariable. The past one (or the supine) never takes a prefix like German ge-.

Weak dental stems

These take a dissimilatory vowel between the stem and the past tense/participle suffix.

	Present	Past	Imperative	Pres. participle	Past participle
Singular	hate	hatede	hat (du)	hatene	hated
Plural			hate (ji)		hatede

Weak non-dental stems

These attach the dental past tense/participle suffix directly to the non-dental stem. Voicing assimilation occurs.

	Present	Past	Imperative	Pres. participle	Past participle
Singular	hacce	haccte	hacc (du)	haccene	hacct
Plural			hacce (ji)		haccte

Strong stems

These follow various inherited ablaut patterns for the past tense/participle. The past participle ends invariably in -e.

	Present	Past	Imperative	Pres. participle	Past participle
Singular	finde	fand	find (du)	findene	funde
Plural		funde	finde (ji)

Copula

Irregular and defective but simplified through analogy between the few remaining forms.

	Present	Past	Supine
Singular	es	war	wæst
Plural	ese	wære

Preterite-present stems

These look like strong past forms in the present and like weak past forms in the past. They are defective similarly to the copula.

	Present	Past	Supine
Singular	cann	cųdde	cųdd
Plural	cunne

Mood

Indicative and conjunctive/subjunctive have merged, but the latter is still formed syntactically by fronting the verb and applying VSO order.

Come ji te mi, gefe igh jer mi heus.

Separable verbs

Verbs with a preposition-like particle as an inseparable part of the lexeme are common as in other Germanic languages. They generally don't fuse.

Greune leufe falle af, e lande opaų de frose græs.

Phonology and spelling

There isn't necessarily a strict pronunciation system meant to be followed, but in the spirit of maximising intelligibility also here, these are the baseline.

Spelling is largely phonetic, the main exception being ⟨sch⟩ for [ʃx~ʃç] with an etymological ⟨c⟩ to aid in recognition.

Stress is always on the first syllable.

Consonants

		Labial	Coronal	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		⟨m⟩ [m]	⟨n⟩ [n]		⟨n⟩ [ŋ]
Plosive	Voiceless	⟨p⟩ [p]	⟨t⟩ [t]	⟨c⟩ [c~k]
	Voiced	⟨b⟩ [b]	⟨d⟩ [d]	⟨g⟩ [ɟ~g]
Fricative	Voiceless	⟨f⟩ [f~v]	⟨th⟩ [θ]	⟨h⟩ [ç~x~h]
	Voiced		⟨dh⟩ [ð]	⟨gh⟩ [ɣ]
	Sibilant		⟨s⟩ [s~ʃ~z]
Rhotic			⟨r⟩ [r]
Lateral			⟨l⟩ [l]
Glide		⟨w⟩ [w]		⟨j⟩ [j]

• Velar nasal [ŋ] occurs before /k g/; the ⟨g⟩ is pronounced in the ⟨ng⟩ cluster.
• Velar stops /k g/ are palatal around front vowels.
• Labiodental frivative /f/ is voiced [v] between vowels and before voiced consonants.
• Glottal frivative /h/ is velar [x] in clusters around back vowels and [ç] in clusters around front vowels.
• Sibilant fricative /s/ is voiced [z] between vowels and before voiced consonants, and [ʃ] in the /sh/ cluster (spelled ⟨sch⟩).
• There is no word-final devoicing except of fricatives, which also do voicing assimilation to following consonants.

Vowels

Filch is characterised, like the rest of its family, by many vowel qualities and diphthongs. Vowel length is not phonemic, but phonetically vowels are long in stressed weak syllables (no coda except at the end of a word). There are nasal vowels marked by an ogonek; in nasal diphthongs it goes on the last vowel letter.

Vowel	Long	Short
⟨a⟩	[aː]	[a]
⟨e⟩	[eː]	[e]
⟨æ⟩	[ɛː]	[ɛ]
⟨i⟩	[iː]	[ɪ]
⟨o⟩	[oː]	[ɔ]
⟨u⟩		[ʊ]
⟨y⟩	[yː]	[ʏ]

• Additionally ⟨e⟩ in unstressed syllables represents schwa [ə].
• Nasals are pronounced like their oral counterparts with nasalisation.
• Diphthongs are pronounced like their monophthong constituents in succession.
• Long ⟨u⟩ does not exist because original PG *ū diphthongised into ⟨eu⟩ and PG *u turned into either ⟨o⟩ or ⟨y⟩ in weak syllables depending on umlaut.

Conventions

• Compound words are separated by a hyphen - to make it easier to tease words apart.
• Derivational suffixes such as ·ligh are separated from the stem with an interpunct · for the same reason.
• Quotation marks are « and ».

Examples

Spelling	Pronunciation
⟨fisch⟩	[fɪʃx]
⟨cyrce⟩	[cʏr.cə]
⟨dægh⟩	[dɛːɣ]
⟨dægh·ligh⟩	[dɛːɣ.lɪɣ]
⟨hafde⟩	[hav.də]

Translations

These are all loose and rely on rewording to capture the ideas of the original texts using only widely recognisable vocabulary. They may also provide more information than the original story to add context that could help understand words that might be trickier in isolation. This is how Filch would actually be used for auxiliary purposes, but of course this is not actually the intention.

Article one of the universal declaration of human rights

All folc come frei te werlde.
Dei hafe leice weurde e rehte.
Dei hafe goude heufde opaų næcce.
Dei finde alle life weghe leice.
All folc es freunde.

Schleicher's fable

Į de greune græs war e gæyte-bocc.
Wull hafde ne de bocc næy; dæ war wulle-leus.
So saugh dæ folc comene, reidene; dei ræyde opaų merre.
Fyrste merr drough e waughen; aųdhere merr baur e weghene byrde.
Bocc sæghde te merre: «igh finde peine į mi hearte, neu igh sæe mænne reide opaų merre».
Merre sæghde: «heur ǫss; wi finde peine į ǫsse hearte, neu wi sæe mænne į wulle-clæyde, næhst e wulle-leus bocc».
Bocc heurde merre, e leupte af wegh.

First paragraph of The Hobbit

Į hol under eurde lifde e «hobbe».
Ne was 't e scheite-hol full e wate næy; her wære ne creupene worme, ne feul rotning næy.
De hol war ne bar, ne nace, ne full e sand næy.
Her cųdde folc sitte, e her cųdde dei ete: 't war e «hobbe-hol», e dæt seghe, her es 't goud.

Phrases

Greetings

• goude morgening
• goude dægh
• goude næht
• wel come
• fare wel

Questions

• hwat es de name?
• hwat es de eur neu?
• hafe hunger?
• hafe thorste?

Answers

• name es…
• eur es…
• ja
• næy
• thącce

Numbers

• æyn
• twæy
• thri
• feure
• feųf
• sehs
• seų
• æhte
• neų
• teų
• elefe
• twælf
• hundred(e)
• theusend(e)

Other

• Lange fische fylle mi flyghene schip!