Anbirese

Amphirese (amphirifh /amphiriv/) is a major Talmic language descended from Tigol, inspired by Welsh, Korean, Etruscan, Romani, and the Slavic languages. Compared to Eevo, it has a relatively conservative verb system. On the planet of Tricin (Anbirese: i Smaoukh /i smaukh/), it is an analogue of German in terms of influence. Anbirese is the official language of the Talman nation Amphir and of former colonies in Cualuav and Txapoalli; after Eevo, it is the second-largest Talmic language in terms of number of speakers, though most modern speakers know Eevo. Like most modern Talmic languages, Anbirese is a descendant of Thensarian. Like with German, there is a Standard Anvirese and various regiolects.

Thanks in large part to the printing press, Modern Anbirese rapidly gained prominence over a larger area in Northern Talma and came to serve as a lingua franca for northern mainland Talma. Today, Anbirese still enjoys status as a "cultured" language and is one of the most widely taught foreign languages.

Amphirese began as Tíogall, which was a thought experiment posing the question "What would Irish look like with umlaut instead of palatalization?". For a while it developed as an Irish-German hybrid. At one point I decided to remove all "giblangs" from modern Tricin, or languages with the aesthetics of one natlang (unless the premise was funny, like Bhlaoighne or Clofabosin). Since Tíogall was basically an Irish with German characteristics, it was abandoned. I still felt that Talmic languages needed somewhat more internal diversity (in particular, a "German" analogue to Eevo's "English"), so I decided to revive this project as "Anvyrese" or "Anvirese". One thing that was still nagging me was that the grammar was still too German for a country with a Germany-like history, so I decided to swap a minority Tigolic language "Tumaka" with "Anvirese", and this is the result.

Todo

• Numbers: cemph, tzath, nusch, doiph, solitzh, ...
• Swadesh list
• Tigol > Amphirese sound changes
  • How do syllabic resonants arise?
  • e.g. imm- > syllabic nasal
  • car > cr 'person'
  • mh > mph after a stressed vowel

Phonology

Consonants

• c g ch ŋ /k g kʰ ŋ/
• t d th n /t d tʰ n/
• tz dz tzh /ts dz tsʰ/
• p b ph m /p b pʰ m/
• f fh s sh (ś) (š) h /f v~fʰ s z~sʰ ç ɕ h/
• r l i /r L j/

At word-final position, the voicing distinction in unaspirated plosives is lost, and unaspirated plosives are unreleased.

Some consonants could be syllabic, namely m n ŋ l r.

Vowels

i u ou e y a o /i ɨ u e ə a o/

Stress

Stress is always initial.

Prosody

Anbirese has a distinctive intonation paradigm. It originates from discursive uptalk in older stages of the language, which has since generalized to all declarative sentences. A few accents, such as the Tummaka accent, do not use this pattern.

• In declarative sentences, the stressed syllable of the focus word (if there is no focused constituent, the last word) has a lower pitch than the immediately preceding syllable. ("...mid ꜜ LOW mid...")
• In interrogative sentences, the stressed syllable of the focus word has a higher pitch than the syllable immediately before. ("... mid ꜛ HIGH mid ... ?")
• In exclamations, the stressed syllable starts low and receives a rising intonation ("... mid ꜜ LOW-HIGH mid ... !"), possibly with a gradual drop to low pitch in the end. Angry or indignant questions also use an exclamatory intonation.

Morphology

Mutations

Tumaka has no mutation; instead, former feminine nouns often begin in an aspirated consonant, as a result of lenition after the definite article. (cf. Eevo, where former feminine nouns begin in different consonants than former masculine nouns.)

Nouns

Nouns only have two states (absolute and construct) and two numbers (singular and plural). The usual affixes are:

• plural absolute: -r
• singular construct: -(y)th
• plural construct: -(y)ph

e.g. cuthr 'flower', cuthryr 'flowers'; chufhn 'woman', chufhnyr 'women'.

The definite article is always i, or in before a V.

Verbs

Tumaka verbs have two tenses (nonpast and past) and two aspects (imperfective and perfective). The imperfective-perfective distinction is characterized by the absolute-conjunct allomorphy inherited from Tigol: As in Slavic languages, the perfective form is often formed by adding a prefix, which causes the verb stem to take the conjunct form. Most Tumaka verbs thus have two principal parts: imperfective and perfective.

An example of the aspect allomorphy:

• 'to tell': imperfective boŋi, perfective simŋi
• 'to eat': imperfective dzecai, perfective ŋcu

Past tense: -n (can be syllabic)

Pronouns

na, scid, fu, si, maech, tid, scid, thar

Prepositions

eph = to, for