Wessedian: Difference between revisions

Wessedian, like all other North Germanic languages, is descended from [[w:Old Norse|Old Norse]], the common language of the [[w:Norsemen|Norsemen]] during the [[w:Viking Age|Viking Age]]. Wessedian is descended from the West Norse dialect group, along with [[w:Icelandic language|Icelandic]], [[w:Faroese language|Faroese]] and [[w:Nynorsk|Norwegian]]. However, unlike the continental Scandinavian languages — namely [[w:Swedish language|Swedish]], [[w:Danish language|Danish]] and [[w:Norwegian language|Norwegian]] — Wessedian is not easily [[w:Mutual intelligibility|mutualy intelligible]] with other Scandinavian languages. Wessedian has [[w:Borrowing (linguistics)|borrowed]] some vocabulary from the [[w:Goidelic languages|Goidelic languages]], especially [[w:Scottish Gaelic|Scottish Gaelic]], [[w:Scots language|Scots]] and [[w:English language in Northern England|Northern English dialects]], due to shared historical contact between between the languages in the region.

Although no exact date is know, it is suspected that the first Norse settlers came to Wessey in the late 8th and early 9th century. Most of these settlers were from the western region of modern day Norway, and brought their dialects of the Old Norse language with them. Other than a few runestones, very few texts of the early settler period survive, some stories managed to survive through oral tradition, and were later written down by scholars.

The Wessedian alphabet consists of 25 letters, nine of which are vowels and 16 are consonants. Some people also consider ''â'' and ''ô'' to be separate letters, and not just ''a'' and ''o'' with a circumflex.

{| class="wikitable" style="width:50em;text-align:center;border-collapse:collapse"

! colspan="28" | Letters of the Wessedian alphabet

| Aa || (Ââ) || Bb || Dd || Ðð || Ee || Ff || Gg || Hh || Ii || Jj ||Kk || Ll || Mm || Nn || Oo || (Ôô) || Pp || Rr || Ss || Tt || Uu || Vv || Xx || Yy || Øø || Ææ || Åå

</center>

Non-native letters mostly appear in some foreign proper nouns, like toponyms and given names. They can also be found in some loanwords, but are usually spelt with the native equivalent of their sound instead, compare ''centimeter'' and ''sentimeter''.

 

Wessedian letters almost always correspond to their pronunciation, Some graphemes however do not correspond directly to their pronunciation, these are:

 

* The letters '''k''' and '''g''' become palatised, i.e. are pronounced as /c/ and /ɟ/ respectively, when followed an '''e''', '''i''' or '''j'''. Examples: ''tba''

* The combinations '''sj''', '''skj''', '''stj''' and very rarely '''ti''' are pronounced as /{{IPA|ʃ}}/

Words written in Wessedian are generally spelt the same across every dialect, regardless of the speakers pronunciation. This is accomplished with the use of [[w:Diasystem|diasystems]], which are always spelt the same but can be pronounced differently depending on the speakers dialect.

 

| (ɕ)*