User:Aquatiki/Sandbox: Difference between revisions

|script        =  [[w:Hebrew script|Hebrew]]

'''Weddish''' is a [[w:West Germanic language]] spoken by several small communities within [[w:Wales]].  Approximately 50,000 people speak Weddish as their L1.  It is of considerable interest to linguists and ethnographers, because of its complex history and unique place in the world.

Weddish appears to have begun as a dialect of [[w:Old Frisian]], which fell under the influence of its Welsh-speaking neighbors (unlike its Anglo-Saxon kin). It was "conquered" by Jews in 1066, and "freed" by the [[w:Edict of Expulsion]] in 1290, and so returned to being under Welsh influence.

== Design Goals ==

''While I have taken elaborate pains to make Weddish appear naturalistic and give it a rich history, it is nevertheless an auxlang, designed for me to work on my philosophical ideas and methodologies of translations.  I welcome feedback and appreciate any advice you might give, but people are often surprised to find out my primary goal is not to avoid artificiality.''

''My goals are 1) anti-abstraction, 2) marking marriage, 3) lots of Hebrew, 4) close to English, 5) Welsh influence''

=== Early Antiquity ===

Weddish was born under a different name: Frisian.  While there are individual words that cannot be explained under this rubric, the overwhelming majority of Weddish vocabulary is clearly of Frisia – not Anglo-Saxon – ancestry.  While the differences are small, the evidence is clear.  Unlike the Frisians of the continent, however, and unlike the conquering Anglo-Saxons, the ancestors of the Wedds were heavily influenced by the nearby Celts.  The Old Welsh language rubbed off on Old Weddish, winnowing many consonant clusters, producing significant vowel changes, and greatly altering the phonology and phonotactics.

 

 

 

 

{| {{Table/bluetable}} style="text-align:center; float:left;"

! colspan="9"|Consonant phonemes

! colspan="2"|

! style="text-align: center;"|Labial

! style="text-align: center;"|Alveolar

! style="text-align: center;"|Post.

! style="text-align: center;"|Velar

! style="text-align: center;"|Uvular

! style="text-align: center;"|Glottal

! rowspan="2" |Nasals

! v⁺

| {{IPA|m}}

|

| {{IPA|n}}

|

| {{IPA|ŋ}}

|

! v^-

Weddish vowels are most easily characterized a six-vowel system: the typical five, plus a central vowel.  They all occur in "long" and "short" versions, though (as in English) those terms are used colloquially, and not as linguists mean them.

 

There are also many diphthongs, as in Welsh: '''eu''', '''ei''', '''au''', '''ai''', '''oi''', '''ui''', and the palatalized '''iu''', '''ie''', '''ia'''.

Weddish is written with the letters of Hebrew abjad and the "points" (Hebrew niqqud).  Romanization is unheard of, apart from our linguistics literature.