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.
Phonology
Orthography
Consonants
Vowels
Prosody
Stress
Intonation
Phonotactics
Morphophonology
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.
Common Nouns
On the whole, common nouns show a much larger variance in declension patterns than neuter nouns. There are two overarching declension patterns among common nouns: strong and weak.
Note that "(u)" refers to the presence of u-umlaut and "∅" refers to a null ending.
| Nominative | Accusative | Dative | Genitive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | -er, ∅ | ∅ | -i | -s, -ar |
| Plural | -ar | -e | (u)-em | -e |
Neuter Nouns
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 overarching 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.
Weak Verbs
Weak verbs are characterized by their usage of a dental consonant to form their past stem.