Vinnish

Introduction

Vinnish is a North Germanic language spoken in the Commonwealth of Vinland. When the Viking expeditions to the New World were launched in our world, the settlements that the Vikings formed died out, but in this timeline, they hold on and eventually fructify into a a country called Vinland. This is the language they speak, descended from Old Norse. While in some ways it resembles its cousins in Iceland, the Faroes, and Scandinavia, in many others, Vinnish has developed in its own direction due to its relative isolation from the other North Germanic languages.

Morphology

Nouns

Vinnish nouns fall into one of two genders, common and neuter. The common gender comes from the conflation of the masculine and feminine genders in Old Norse. Nouns inflect for number and case.

Definite Article

Definiteness is shown via a cliticized definite article on the end of a noun. This definite article inflects for gender, case, and number.

Adjectives

Adjectives in Vinnish agree with the nouns they modify in gender, case, number, and definiteness. There are two inflections for adjectives: strong and weak adjectives.

Strong Adjectives

Strong adjectives are used with indefinite nouns and predicatively with nouns. They inflect for gender, case, and number.

Verbs

There are two types of verbs in Vinnish, strong and weak verbs. Weak verbs form the past stem via a dental suffix on the present stem, while strong verbs form the past stem via vowel alternation. Vinnish verbs inflect for two tenses (past and present), person, and number. In addition, they make use of certain auxiliary verbs to show aspect, and one of two moods: indicative and subjunctive. Verbs also have both a past and a present participle, and inflect for active and mediopassive voice.