Reardish

Reardish
Reoþþisco · Reoððisco
Pronunciation	[reo̯ð.ðis.ko]
Created by	wfosøra
Ethnicity	Reardish people
Language family	Indo-European Germanic Reardish
Early forms	Proto-Indo-European Proto-Germanic Early Reardish (Or "Proto-Reardish")
Writing systems	Latin Runic
ConWorkShop	HDS

Reardish (Autonym: Reoþþisco; Reardish: [reo̯ð.ðis.ko]) is a Germanic language. It is spoken throughout Britain, but its speaking population is mostly centered around southern to middle England. It is a descendant of Proto-Germanic, though it developed alongside Old English, leading to its divergence from Proto-Germanic.

Reardish, having developed alongside Old English, experienced many of the sound changes that affected Old English, though it alsk lacks several of the sound changes that would qualify it for a closer classification to Old English, it cannot even be labeled West Germanic due it lacking some of the distinctive sound changes of the family. As such, it must be classed in its own branch, this is typically referred to as the "Reardic" branch. However, it is unclear whether it should even be classified as such since the early form is, in large part, still intelligible to the modern language, thus leading most linguists to simply place Reardish as a divergent descendant of Proto-Germanic and give it no specific familial classification.

Today, Reardish is typically written in the Latin alphabet, still using the Insular script, the alphabet is near-identicle to that of Old English. In many artistic works, and quite often in elders, Anglo-Frisian runes are still used. Efforts to reinstate runes have been successful, leading to nearly all government issued writings (letters, signs, documents, etc) being offered in both scripts.

Etymology

Reoþþisco, a compound of rāþþo and -isco, roughly means "pertaining to language", though -isco, the feminine singular of -isċ, is largely used to mean 'of our people', which often replaces þēodisċ, understanding this leads to the meaning "The language of our people", or more simply, "Our language".

Reardish, the English name, is a cognate based borrowing, with reard being the direct English cognate to rāþþo (the root of reoþþ in the native name)

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

	Labial		Dental		alveolar		palatal		velar
Nasal		m			n̥ ⟨hn⟩	n				[ŋ]
Stop	p	b			t	d			k	[g]
Fricative	f	[v]	θ ⟨þ, ð⟩	[ð]	s	[z]	ʃ ⟨sċ⟩		x ⟨h⟩	ɣ ⟨g⟩
Affricate							tʃ ⟨ċ⟩	dʒ ⟨ċġ⟩
Approximant	ʍ ⟨hƿ⟩	w ⟨ƿ⟩			l̥ ⟨hl⟩	l		j ⟨ġ⟩
Trill					r̥ ⟨hr⟩	r

Vowels

Monophthongs in Reardish

	Front		Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	i iː	y yː		u uː
Mid	e eː	ø øː		o oː
Open	æ æː		ɑ ɑː

All vowels besides /ø/, which is written as <œ>, are written with their corresponding Latin letters; additionally, long vowels are indicated through a macron.

Diphthongs

Diphthongs in Reardish

First element	Short (monomoraic)	Long (bimoraic)	Spelling
High	i͝y	i͞y	ie, īe
Mid	e͝o	e͞o	eo, ēo
Low	æ͝ɑ	æ͞ɑ	ea, ēa

Prosody

Stress

Stress, like in PG, still lies solely on the first syllable unless prefixed, where stress moves with the root word.

Grammar

Main article: Reardish grammar

Nouns decline for five cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental. (A sixth case, the vocative, is highly contentious.); three genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; and two numbers; singukar, and plural (Reardish has a fully in tact duel declension, but it is only in pronouns and verbs).

Pronouns decline largely the same as nouns, except for having a duel in the first and second persons. The plural third person pronouns have been entirely leveled, so the masculine, feminine, and neuter third person plurals decline identically, though a formal "Archaic masculine" is retained, and has been shifting to have the usage of a formal third person plural. In casual speech, this "Archaic masculine" is instead used as a gender-neutral (or even genderless) pronoun.

Syntax

Constituent order

The word order is mostly free, the base order is SOV, but this is subject to change when importance needs to be stressed on one word.

Other resources

• Swadesh
• Phrases
• lemmas