South Carpathian

South Carpathian language
Čorulki
Pronunciation	[/ˈt͡ʃo.rul.ki/]
Created by	Raistas
Setting	parallel Earth
Ethnicity	Carpathian people
Native speakers	15 000 (2011 census)
Language family	Oronaic South Carpathian language
Early forms	Proto-Oronaic Proto-Alpathian (?) Proto-Carpathian

South Carpathian (native name - čorulki, older spelling - corulki) is one of the three recognized Carpathian languages spoken by the Carpathian people in Romania, mostly in Bistrița-Năsăud County . It has approximately 15 000 native speakers according to 2011 Romanian census.

South Carpathian was influenced by Romanian and Hungarian. Like other Carpathian languages, typologically it is between fusional and agglutinative languages, but has more agglutinative features. It has a complex inflection system for nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs, depending on their roles in the sentence.

Classification

South Carpathian belongs to the Carpathian branch of the Alpatho-Hirtic languages along with West and East Carpathian. Like other languages of this group, South Carpathian is a predominantly agglutinative language, but unlike them, it has preserved vowel harmony, similar to Hungarian. Its word order is considerably more flexible than English one, but the basic order is subject–verb–object (SVO).

Geographic distribution

South Carpathian is spoken by about 15 thousand people in Romania. The majority of the Carpathian population speak Romanian as their first language, only 39% as of 2011, speak South Carpathian natively. In recent times, however, a number of second-language speakers started increasing as well as the number children learning South Carpathian as their first language alongside Romanian.

History

The Proto-Carpathian language is believed to have formed near Polish-Slovak border near 2500 BCE, after its split from hypothetical Proto-Alpathian or directly from Proto-Oronaic itself with an intermediate stage as a proto-dialect. According to most linguists, the language comes from Polish lowlands in the basin of Vistula river.

The first mention of čorulăk (the South Carpathian people) was during the XVIth century by various foreign travellers into the Carpathian region. Pierre Lescalopier writes in 1574 about people living in the northern part of Transylvania, who call themselves ciorulec and speak the language unlike any neighbouring one.

Petre Cantemir created few books and liturgical works in South Carpathian between 1785–1810, using Romanian alphabet to write words and sentences in Carpathian. During the XVIIIth century onwards the linguistic situation was the gradual development of bilingualism as Romanian continued to spread and was the official language, whereas South Carpathian remained in mountainous villages. This was also the time, when transitional dialects between East and South Carpathian became extinct. Writings in South Carpathian became significant only in the XXth century, when the standard alphabet was created, similar to other Carpathian languages. A spelling reform was made in 1996, replacing "c" with "č" and "ț" with "c".

Dialects

There are two dialects: Bistĕrca and Orodna-Lešu. The South Carpathian standard was based on the Bistĕrca dialect, but the distiction between them is small. The noticeable distinction is the /ʃ/ sound (written "š") in Orodna-Lešu replaced most of /s/, making the speech sound more hushing. A similar process happened in some Puohō dialects of East Carpathian. Also the weak grade of "nk" is zero both in the standard and Bistĕrca, but "g" in Orodna-Lešu, example: the plural form of pienkä "wind" is piejäg in Bistĕrca and piegäg in Orodna-Lešu.

Writing system

Like other Carpathian languages, South carpathian employs the Latin script as the basis for its alphabet, plus the additions of ä, ö, ü, ă, ĕ, ĭ, š and č. The letters q, w, x and y are limited to proper names of foreign origin, and f, z appear in loanwords and foreign names only. Ö and ü are pronounced similarly to Hungarian or German, while ä is pronounced like "a" in English "cat". The letter ĭ represents a sound almost identical to the Bulgarian ъ /ɤ̞/. Sometimes "y" can be used instead for technical conveniences. Letters ĕ and ă represent reduced vowels [ɘ~ɜ] and [ə] respectively.

Phonology

Vowels

South Carpathian has 12 distinct vowel phonemes. Unlike other Carpathian languages, they do not contrast in length. West Carpathian still preserves a complete vowel harmony, except for diphthongs containing back vowels and ‘’i’’ as their components. Vowel [i] neutralized in modern speech in most words.

	Front		Central	Back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Unrounded	Rounded
Close	i [i]	ü [y]	ĕ [ɘ]	ĭ [ɤ]	u [u]
Mid	e [e]	ö [ø]	ă [ə]		o [o]
Open	ä [æ]			a [ɑ]

• The vowel ĭ [ɤ̞] usually occures only in initial syllables. It can also be realized as close back [ɯ] or (less common, Romanian influence) close central [ɨ], depending on the speaker and the dialect.
• The mid vowels are phonetically mid [e̞, ø̞, o̞, ɤ̞].
• The unrounded open vowel transcribed in IPA with /ɑ/ has been described as open central [ɑ̈].

South Carpathian has a rich system of diphthongs. There are seven phonemic and eleven non-phonemic diphthongs (eighteen in total).

Phonemic diphthongs i u e o a i ie u uo e ea o oa ü üi ä äi ĭ ĭu

Non-phonemic diphthongs i u e a i ia u ui e ei o oi ou ä äe a ai au ae ö öi ĭ ĭa

Phonemic diphthongs contrast with plain vowels while inflecting nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verbs. Most scholars treat non-phonemic diphthongs as sequences of two vowels.

Consonants

Consonant clusters are not allowed word-intially in native words, and only two consonants are allowed together medially and finally, except for a very small ammount of words, like in tarstă "a big bag". However, this rule is omitted in recent loanwords, like elektronika "electronics". There is no palatalization in South Carpathian, however it was present during the Middle Ages and was lost approximately in the XVIIIth century.

		Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal		m	n
Plosive	voiceless	p	t			k
	voiced	b	d			g
Affricate			c [t͡s]	č [t͡ʃ]
Fricative	voiceless	f	s	š [ʃ]			h [h~ɦ]
	voiced		z	ž [ʒ]
Approximant		v [ʋ]	l		j
Trill			r

• v [ʋ] can be pronounced as a voiced labidental fricative [v].
• /n/ is realized as velar [ŋ] before a velar consonant (e.g. bankă [ˈbɑŋ.kə] "bank").
• In quick speech, word-initial /h/ is usually dropped. It is mostly retained while speaking clearly, and can be realized as voiced [ɦ] between two vowels.
• r an be tapped [ɾ] in a fast speech, but trilled [r] is prefered.

The distinction between short and geminated consonants was lost, but a distinction between voiceless and voiced consonants is preserved, unlike in other Carpathian languages (Puohō Carpathian has an allophonic distinction in plosives only, where [b], [d], [g] are weak grades of [p], [t], [k]). Thus consonant gradation became only qualitative in South Carpathian.

Morphology

Typologically, South Carpathian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to a fusional language. The canonical word order is SVO (subject–verb–object).

Nouns and even pronouns do not have grammatical gender in South Carpathian, similarly to other Oronaic languages. Nouns and adjectives decline in nine cases: nominative, genitive, accusative, inessive, elative, lative, adessive, ablative and essive. the comitative case is mostly obsolete, but can be found in literature. The case and number of adjectives always agree with that of nouns (except in the essive and comitative, where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the genitive form). Thus the inessive for laku koi "a small house" is lakut kojut "in a small house". Like in other Carpathian languages, elision has occurred in some endings; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed.

Adjectives are inflected in exactly the same way as nouns. All adjective can possibly have a comparative and superlative forms. The comparative is formed by adding a -i/-u suffix to the stem, while superlative is formed with a suffix -m- added to a superlative form. For example, laku "small" - lakou "smaller" - lakomu "the smallest".

The verbal system lacks a distinctive future tense (the present tense serves here as well as analytical constructions) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the "impersonal"). There are three tenses: imperfective, perfective and aorist, which is similar to English Present Simple, Present Perfect and Past Simple tenses. South Carpathian has only three infinitives, unlike other languages of this group. The infinitive I is a dictionary form of verbs (it ends with -ĕd, -ăd or -ĭt).

There are three types of adverbs in South Carpathian: type I contains adverbs that describe time (like nie "now", arĭ "finally", peke "always"), type II adverbs describe state ( positivis "positively", šeidis "fine") and type III adverbs describe manner of action (like rogošt "in this way", inešt "nicely"). Adverbs can belong to more than one type by adding a type marker: tě šeidis "it's fine", but tăkul šeidišt "I did it well".

Vocabulary

Although South Carpathian is not Indo-European, one can identify many similar words between it and Romanian, for example. This is primarily because the South Carpathian language has borrowed nearly one fourth of its vocabulary from Romanian. The amount of loanwords from Hungarian is also big, but a bit less, than Romanian loanwords. The percentage of Slavic loanwords can be estimated at 15-20 percent, which is comparable to other Carpathian languages.