Hanebrugish

Hanebrugish
Hanebrugish
Flag of Hanebrug
Pronunciation	[ˈhanəbryɡiʃ]
Created by	Charles, xadrezo
Date	September 2023
Native to	Hanebrug
Language family	Indo-European Germanic Para-East Germanic Hanebrugish
Standard form	West Hanebrugish (Westhanebrugish)
Dialects	East Hanebrugish (Oasthanebrugish)† Sangish† Hanefurpish†

Hanebrugish (Hanebrugish:  Hanebrugish; /ˈhanəbryɡiʃ/), also spelled Hanebruggish, is a Germanic conlang originally developed for Hanebrug, a city founded by a small band of friends (who all happened to be linguistics nerds) on a Minecraft Realm in September 2023. Its lack of umlaut and rhotacism and its other similarities to East Germanic make it characteristically simple and conservative compared to other Germanic languages that are spoken today.

Etymology

Hanebrug is ultimately named after one of Charles' cats, Hannah, who had already been enjoying a sort of celebrity status within the friend group; "Hane" is Charles' favorite nickname for her. The original proposal for the city's name was actually Haneburg, but a typo rendered it Hanebrug; the mistake stuck and the city was thus officially named Hanebrug. In Hanebrugish, Hanebrug can be analyzed as a compound of Hane ("Hannah, Hane") + brug ("bridge"), making the city's name literally translate to "Hanebridge." The term brug comes from Proto-Germanic *brugjǭ, with irregular schwa-deletion (the expected form would be *bruge). The irregularity of brug likely has to do with it having originally been a mispelling of burg instead of a conventionally derived word.

History

Early September 2023 and Vanilla Hanebrug

Hanebrugish was first developed in September 2023 by co-founders Charles (then known by Charlotte) and xadrezo, with the intent of giving Hanebrug a deeper, more defined culture with its own language. Because they wanted it to be both easily made and taught to the rest of Hanebrug, they did away with some of the most definitive sound change trends found in the Germanic languages, like umlaut. While no one did ever achieve any level of fluency in Hanebrugish, other members of Hanebrug would go on to contribute to the language's development during its first revival effort. Road signs were written in both English and Hanebrugish, as well as official documentations.

Late September—Early October and Modded Hanebrug

Sometime during the later half of September, the friend group decided that they would restart Hanebrug in a modded server. Using the same seed from before, most of the group returned to Hanebrug's location to rebuild it, now with mods. By October, a space race was brewing between Hanebrug and a member who chose to remain at the world spawn. The space race led to a destructive drama that would end with modded Hanebrug being griefed beyond repair. The situation fractured the friend group, effectively killing Hanebrug and the Hanebrugish language along with it.

Early 2024 and the Revival Efforts

In February 2024, Charles, xadrezo and other former members of Hanebrug wanted to revive the Minecraft Realm, thus revitalizing Hanebrugish. More documentation was made on the language; members started to contribute by forming their own dialects of the language, each with their own distinct identity. This initial revitalization effort quickly died out due to even more drama. This would eventually result in one of the co-founders, Charles, being exiled from the friend group.

Even after splitting from the group, Charles still loved the conlang he co-authored and wanted to continue to work on developing it by himself; he has been actively working on it ever since then.

Phonology

Consonants

Hanebrugish has a minimal yet not relatively unusual 16-consonant phoneme inventory.