Éljansk

Éljansk /eːʎənsk/ or Islander Norse is a heavily Gaelic-influenced West Norse language that developed in the medieval Kingdom of the Isles from the 9th century.

Phonology and Orthography

Vowels

	Front	Near- front	Central	Near- back	Back
Close	i u e o (ə) a
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

All vowels except /ə/ may be long or short; vowel length is phonemic and invariable. The obscure vowel /ə/ occurs only as an allophone of mid- and low vowels (i.e. /e, o, a/) in unstressed syllables.

There is only one diphthong, éi /ɛi̯/.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Guttural
Plosive	p	b			t	d			c	ɟ	k	g
Nasal		m		n						ɲ		(ŋ)
Fricative	ɸ	β	θ	ð	ʃ		s				(x)	ɣ	h
Affricate					t͡ʃ	d͡ʒ
Approximant								j
Lateral				l				ʎ
Rhotic				r

• /ŋ/ is an allophone of /n/ before /k, g/.
• /x/ is an allophone of /ɣ/ before /t/.

gh /ɣ/

The phoneme /ɣ/, written gh, has several allophonic variants, depending on its position. It is:

• /ɣ/ in word-final position and between vowels, e.g. hógh "hill" /hoːɣ/, borgh "fort" /borɣ/, dagher "days" /daɣər/
• /x/ before /t/, e.g. floght "flutter" /floxt/, láght "low" (neut.) /laxt/.
• /Ø/ (zero) before a consonant, causing the following vowel to lengthen when short, e.g. laghman "lawyer" /laːmən/, boghskot "bowshot" /boːskot/.

Stress

Primary stress is always on the first syllable of the word.

Spelling

Until the 13th century, Éljansk was primarily written using the Younger Futhark runes, but a spelling system using the Roman alphabet was already in use. The standardised form of the alphabet consists of the following letters:

a b d e f g h i j k l m n o p r s t u v

The runic letters ð and þ continued to be used into the 15th century, but are replaced by the digraphs dh and th in the standard orthography. In addition to these letters, all vowels may take the acute accent (á, é, í, ó, ú) to symbolise long vowels, and the letters d, k, l, n, s, t occur with a cedilla (usually realised as a diacritical comma in digital text; e.g. ḑ, ķ, ļ, ņ, ș, ț) to symbolise palatal consonants.

Palatal Consonants

The consonants /t, d, k, g, l, n, s/ (written t, d, k, g, l, n and s) all have palatal variants: /t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ, c, ɟ, ʎ, ɲ, ʃ/. The method of writing these palatal sounds is dependent on the context:

• before i or í, the sounds are always palatal and the unmarked forms of the letters are used, so that ti is always /t͡ʃi/ etc., e.g. dim "dim, dark" /d͡ʒim/, sidhan "since" /ʃiðən/.
• before other vowels, the letters are followed by j, e.g. tjarn "pond" /t͡ʃarn/, ljú "lie" /ʎuː/.
• before a consonant or word-finally, the sounds are marked with a diacritical comma, e.g. veņ "custom" /βeɲ/, driķ "drinking" /dric/. An exception is the letter g, which is usually written gj even at the end of a syllable, e.g. legj "lie down" /leɟ/.

Sound to Spelling Correspondence

a	/a/
á	/aː/
b	/b/
d	/d/
di dj ḑ	/d͡ʒ/
dh	/ð/
e	/e/
é	/eː/
f	/ɸ/
g	/g/
gi gj	/ɟ/
gh	/ɣ/ /Ø/
ght	/xt/
h	/h/
i	/i/
í	/iː/
j	/j/†
k	/k/
ki kj ķ	/c/
l	/l/
li lj ļ	/ʎ/
m	/m/
o	/o/
ó	/oː/
p	/p/
r	/r/
s	/s/
si sj ș	/ʃ/
t	/t/
ti tj ț	/t͡ʃ/
u	/u/
ú	/uː/
v	/β/

Notes:

• In some cases j signifies the palatal nature of the preceding consonant, rather than a distinct sound.
• When syllable-final palatal consonants written with a diacritic comma come to stand before a vowel, due to the addition of word-endings or compounding, the marked letter is replaced by Cj, e.g. ríķ "kingdom" → ríkjer "kingdoms", erviņ "heir" → ervinjum "heirs" (dat. pl.)

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns are declined according to three genders (Masculine, Feminine and Neuter), three cases (Nominative, Genitive and Dative) and two numbers (Singular and Plural).

First Declension: man "man" (m.)

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	man	maner
Genitive	mans	man
Dative	maņ	manum

First Declension: ríķ "kingdom" (n.)

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	ríķ	ríkjer
Genitive	ríķs	ríķ
Dative	ríķ	ríkjum

Second Declension: fadher "feather" (f.)

	Singular	Plural
Nominative	fadher	fadhrer
Genitive	fadhrer	fadher
Dative	fadher	fadhrum

Articles

There is no indefinite article in Éljansk. The definite article is declined according to gender, number and case.

	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
Nominative	en	ener	en	ener	et	en
Genitive	ens	ena	ener	ena	ens	ena
Dative	eņ	enum	en	enum	en	enum