Niemish

Niemish
Nimsk
Pronunciation	[/nʲimsk/]
Created by	User:Tardigrade
Date	2015
Language family	Indo-European Germanic East Germanic Gothic Post-Gothic Niemish
Official status
Official language in	Niemgard
Language codes
ISO 639-3	qnm
BRCL	grey

Niemish (Nimsk) is an East Germanic language descended from Gothic, the oldest Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus. The name originated from Proto-Slavic *němĭcĭ, an exonym given by speakers of Slavic languages to Germanic speakers. Niemish has undergone extensive influence by Slavic languages and is a member of the Balkan sprachbund, having such features as suffixed definite articles and deriving the future tense from present subjunctive. There is also considerable influence from languages such as Turkish, Hungarian, Greek, Latin and Romance languages.

Scripts

Alphabet

The Niemish alphabet consists of 33 letters.

Majuscule Minuscule IPA A a /a~aː/ Ą ą /ã~ãː/ Ä ä /ɛ~eː/ Ą̈ ą̈ /ɛ̃~ẽː/ B b /b~bʲ/ C c /k~ʦʲ/ D d /d~dʲ/ E e /ɛ~eː/ Ę ę /ɛ̃~ẽː/ F f /f~fʲ/ G g /g~gʲ/

Majuscule Minuscule IPA H h /h/ I i /ɪ~iː/ Į į /ɪ̃~ĩː/ J j /j/ K k /k~kʲ/ L l /l~lʲ/ M m /m~mʲ/ N n /n~nʲ/ O o /ɔ~oː/ Ǫ ǫ /ɔ̃~õː/ P p /p~pʲ/

Majuscule Minuscule IPA (Q) (q) /k~kʲ/ R r /ɾ~ɾʲ/ S s /s~sʲ/ T t /t~tʲ/ U u /ʊ~uː/ Ų ų /ʊ̃~ũ/ (V) (v) /v~vʲ/ W w /w~vʲ/ X x /ks~kʲsʲ/ Y y /ɪ̈~ɨː/ Z z /z~zʲ/

The acute and grave accent can respectively mark stressed long vowels (or diphthongs) and stressed short vowels. These are generally not used except in dictionaries for clarity.

In addition, Niemish orthography uses six digraphs: ⟨Ch, Cz, Ph, Sz, Th, Tz⟩ and two trigraphs:⟨Dsz, Zsz⟩ These function as sequences of two or three letters for collation purposes.

Outside digraphs, the letters ⟨C, Q, V⟩ only appear in loanwords, as do the digraphs ⟨Ph, Th⟩ and the trigraph ⟨Dsz⟩.

Historical changes

Wulfilan Gothic to Post-Gothic

Vowels

Wulfilan Gothic had three (in some analyses five) short vowels and seven long vowels. The short vowels were maintained in Post-Gothic and the long vowels reduced to five; Wulfilan Gothic already showed signs of merging close-mid vowels with close ones:

• Got. ē /eː/ → Post-Got. ei /iː/
• Got. ō /oː/ → Post-Got. ū /uː/

This is attested in variant spellings such as leikeis for lēkeis. In Post-Gothic this merger was complete.

The most important sound change with respect to short vowels was loss of syllable-final h /h/ with compensatory lengthening:

• Got. ah /ah/ → Post-Got. ā /aː/
• Got. aíh /ɛh/ → Post-Got. ái /ɛː/
• Got. aúh /ɔh/ → Post-Got. áu /ɔː/

This raised ā /aː/ from a marginal phoneme to a common one.

Consonants

The proposed Thurneysen's law became fully operational in Post-Gothic, although it was modified:

1. Spirants gained or lost voice in dissimilation with the consonant beginning the previous syllable. This occurred in all syllables, not only unstressed ones.
2. The condition for the law depended only on the voicing of the consonant beginning the previous syllable, and consonant clusters beginning that previous syllable did not affect it.

Development of Niemish proper

Ruki

Much like Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages (and to an extent High German), Niemish retracted s /s/ to sz /ʃ/ before and after /r, w, uː, j, iː/:

• P-Gmc. *barsaz → barsz
• Got. swarts → szwart
• P-Gmc. *mūs → musz
• P-W-Gmc. *kirsijā → kaírsjū → kersza

This sound change took place before the backing of /iː/ to /ɨː/, as indicated by the fact that mēs became mysz.

Emergence of /ɨː/

The long /iː/ (from Gothic ei and ē) became y /ɨː/ when preceded by a labial or labialised consonant (/p, b, m, f, w, kʷ, gʷ/) and not followed by a front vowel in the next syllable. Labialised velars were subsequently delabialised:

• Got. beist > byst
• Got. mēs → meis → mysz
• Got. wein → wyn
• Got. qēns → qeinū¹ > qyna → kyna

1. At some point qēns and qinō merged into one word.