Wessedian

Wessedian
væssoyskur
Pronunciation	[/ˈvɛsː.ɔɪ̯.skʊr/]
Created by	Freyja
Date	2024
Native to	Republic of Wessey
Language family	Indo-European Germanic North Germanic West Norse Wessedian
Early forms	Old West Norse Early Wessedian
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Wessey
Recognised minority language in	Scotland
Language codes
ISO 639-1	ws
ISO 639-2	wsd
ISO 639-3	wsd

Wessedian (endonym: væssoyskur; Wessedian: [ˈvɛsː.ɔɪ̯.skʊr]) is a North Germanic language it is spoken by about two million people, principally in and around Wessey, where it is the official language. Communities of Wessedian speakers also exist in England and Scotland, where it is recognised as a minority language. Minor Wessedian-speaking communities also exist in Norway, the United States and Canada.

Wessedian, like all other North Germanic languages, is descended from Old Norse, the common language of the Norsemen during the Viking Age. Wessedian is descended from the West Norse dialect group, along with Icelandic, Faroese and Norwegian. However, unlike the continental Scandinavian languages — namely Swedish, Danish and Norwegian — Wessedian is not easily mutualy intelligible with other Scandinavian languages, mainly due to its conservation of a case system. Wessedian has borrowed some vocabulary from the Goidelic languages, especially Scottish Gaelic, and Scots due to shared historical contact between between the languages in the region.

History

It is suspected that the first Norsemen settled in the area of what now would be considered Wessey in the late 8^th century, as records from Scottish monasteries from that time show, most of these settlers were originally from Southern and Western Norway, and brought their respective dialects of the Old Norse language with them. Besides a few runestones, very few written documents survive from this period, although many texts managed to survive through oral tradition, and were written down by scholars in subsequent centuries, one of the most well-known being the Orkneyinga saga.

Orthography

The Wessedian alphabet consists of 30 letters, thirteen of which are vowels and 17 are consonants.

Majuscule forms
A	À	B	D	Ð	E	È	F	G	H	I	Ì	J	K	L	M	N	O	Ò	P	R	S	T	U	Ù	V	X	Y	Æ	Ø
Minuscule forms
a	à	b	d	ð	e	è	f	g	h	i	ì	j	k	l	m	n	o	ò	p	r	s	t	u	ù	v	x	y	æ	ø

Non-native letters — these being ⟨c⟩, ⟨q⟩, ⟨w⟩ and ⟨z⟩ — mostly appear in some foreign proper nouns, like toponyms and given names, and loanwords that haven't been adapted to Wessedian spelling and are not usually considered part of the Wessedian alphabet, one exception to this is the letter ⟨y⟩, where, despite the Old Norse /y/ sound merging with /i/, the letter and it's associated sound got reintroduced in the language through loanwords from other, mainly other Scandinavian, languages.

Phonology

Consonants

		Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n			ɲ*	(ŋ)
Plosive	voiceless	p	t			c	k
	voiced	b	d			ɟ	ɡ
Affricate					t͡ʃ*	(t͡ɕ)*
Fricative	voiceless	f	θ*	s	ʃ	ɕ*	(x)*	h
	voiced	v ~ ʋ	(ð)*
Approximant						j
Trill			r
Lateral approximant			l			ʎ

Notes:

• Sounds with an asterisk indicate that the usage of said consonant depends on the speaker's dialect.
• /x/ is only ever found as /xʷ/.
• /ŋ/ is an allophone of /n/ in front of /k/ and /g/.
• In fast speech /r/ is often pronounced as [ɾ].