Weddish

Weddish
Weðisk
Created by	Robert Murphy
Native to	Wales
Language family	Indo-European Weddish

Weddish is a w:West Germanic language spoken by several small communities within w:Wales. Approximately 50,000 people speak Weddish as their L1. It is of considerable interest to linguists and ethnographers, because of its complex history and unique place in the world.

Weddish appears to have begun as a dialect of w:Old Frisian, which fell under the influence of its Welsh-speaking neighbors (unlike its Anglo-Saxon kin). It was "conquered" by Jews in 1066, and "freed" by the w:Edict of Expulsion in 1290, and so returned to being under Welsh influence.

Design Goals

While I have taken elaborate pains to make Weddish appear naturalistic and give it a rich history, it is nevertheless an auxlang, designed for me to work on my philosophical ideas and methodologies of translations. I welcome feedback and appreciate any advice you might give, but people are often surprised to find out my primary goal is not to avoid artificiality.

My goals are 1) anti-abstraction, 2) marking marriage, 3) lots of Hebrew, 4) close to English, 5) Welsh influence

Anthropology

Early Antiquity

Weddish was born under a different name: Frisian. While there are individual words that cannot be explained under this rubric, the overwhelming majority of Weddish vocabulary is clearly of Frisia – not Anglo-Saxon – ancestry. While the differences are small, the evidence is clear. Unlike the Frisians of the continent, however, and unlike the conquering Anglo-Saxons, the ancestors of the Wedds were heavily influenced by the nearby Celts. The Old Welsh language rubbed off on Old Weddish, winnowing many consonant clusters, producing significant vowel changes, and greatly altering the phonology and phonotactics.

Old Welsh (Proto-Brythonic) also gave Weddish is system of consonantal mutations. Certain words and grammatical processes trigger regular changes in the first consonant of the next word. This is also the only period where Latin words came into the language (until the modern, international terminology).

Late Antiquity

Some time in the eighth or ninth century, a charismatic leader supposedly brought the Weddish community into his quasi-Jewish cult. He also introduced two key elements of the Basque language into Weddish: ergative-absolutive morphosyntax and animate-inanimate distinctions in noun phrases.

1066

Will the arrival of William the Conqueror, actual Jews arrived from the Continent and called the Wedd's bluff. Mandatory Hebrew schools were formed, and a similar situation to the rest of the U.K. developed for two centuries. The elites and leaders spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, and Judeo-Arabic. The common folk spoke Weddish.

1290

When Edward I issued the edict of expulsion in 1290, the influence of external Jewry ceased, and all appearance of Judaism had to be removed from the public eye. The Wedds had their own Domus Conversorum set up, and were allowed to create their own monastic order, where the vows of marriage were conjoined with the vows of holy orders. Hebrew school continued in private, with Talmud and Maimonides studies ongoing for several more centuries. Because they were not allowed to officiate over the Mass, Weddish "convents" avoided much of the accreting philosophy, and were among the hotbeds of Protestant theology, until the w:Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542.

Phonology

Consonants of Weddish

Consonant phonemes
		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post.	Velar	Uvular	Glottal
Nasals	v+	m		n		ŋ
	v-	m̥		n̥		ŋ̊
Obstr.	v+	b		d	d͡ʒ	g
	v-	p	t͡θ	t	t͡ʃ	k		ʔ
Fric.	v+	v	ð	z
	v-	f	θ	s	ʃ		χ	h
Trills	v+			r
	v-			r̥
Approx.	v+	w		l	ç
	v-	ʍ		ɬ	j

Weddish consonants primarily center around a voiced-unvoiced contrast. Several sounds do not occur in the lexical forms of words, but are nevertheless common as the result of consonant mutation.

Vowels of Weddish

Vowel phonemes
	Front	Mid	Back
High	ɪi	ɨː	ʊu
Near-high	ɪ		ʊ
High-mid		ǝ	oʊ
Low-mid	ɛː	ʌ	ɔ
Low	æ	aː

Weddish vowels are most easily characterized a six-vowel system: the typical five, plus a central vowel. They all occur in "long" and "short" versions, though (as in English) those terms are used colloquially, and not as linguists mean them.

There are also many diphthongs, as in Welsh: eu, ei, au, ai, oi, ui, and the palatalized iu, ie, ia.

Orthography

Weddish is written with the letters of Hebrew abjad and the "points" (Hebrew niqqud). Romanization is unheard of, apart from our linguistics literature.

Morphophonology

Mutation

Morphology

Weddish ודסק
Progress: 60%
Type
fusional
Alignment
Ergative-Absolutive
Head direction
Initial	Mixed		Final
Primary word order
Subject-verb-object
Tonal
No
Declensions
Yes
Conjugations
Yes
Genders
3
Nouns decline according to...
Case		Number
Definiteness		Gender
Verbs conjugate according to...
Voice		Mood
Person		Number
Tense		Aspect

Pronouns

Weddish pronouns are split in two groups. The 1st and 2nd person are nominative-accusative. The third person pronouns are ergative-absolutive.

1st and 2nd

Person	Number	Nominative	Accusative	Suffixing	Dative	Genitive
1st	sg.	אִח	מִח	־מִי	מֵה	מִין
	ant./dl.	וִט	אֹוק	־אֹוח	אֹוע	אֹונְקֵנְז
	pl.	וִי	וּס	־אֻס	וֵה	וּסר
2nd	sg.	תוּ	תִיק	־תִי	תֵה	תִין
	ant./dl	יְהַט	אִינְק	־אִנְך	יְהִח	אִינְקִנְז
	pl.	יְהִי	יְהוּק	־יְהוּ	יְהֹו	יְהוּור

Nouns

It is important to be aware of case, number, and gender (animacy) when dealing with Weddish nouns.

Animacy

Vowel vs consonant ending ... sometimes

Number

Singular vs. Plural, but also antinomic vs. dual

Genitive

Animate vs dǝ-

Dative

Prepositions to

Ergative

-k