Anbirese

Anbirese/Wordlist
Anbirese/Swadesh list
Anbirese/Names

Anbirese
Jωsgat Anbirjωγ
Created by	IlL
Setting	Verse:Tricin
Language family	Quihum Talmic Tigolic Anbirese

Anbirese (Anbirjωγ /ànbirjəŋ/ [ànbírjəŋ]) is a major Talmic language descended from Tigol, inspired by Korean (particularly Sino-Korean), Swedish, and Irish. Compared to its relatives Skellan and Qenian, it has a relatively conservative verb system. On the planet of Tricin (Anbirese: i Smauk /i smauk/), it is an analogue of German in terms of influence. Anbirese is the official language of the Talman nation Anbir and of former colonies in Cualuav and Txapoalli; it is the second-largest Talmic language in terms of number of speakers. Like most modern Talmic languages, Anbirese is a descendant of Thensarian. Like with German, there is a Standard Anbirese 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.

External history

Anbirese 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 Snachian 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 Skellan'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

• ot, od > vat, vad
• Numbers: kjωγ, tjωtωr, nask, dyv, solj, staγ, rvad, lad, berb, γjor, jakiγ, kne
• scaimh 'mountain' > skeγ
• obey < TELIC + 'listen' (like in Þiús'k)
• Conjunctions that take pronominal suffixes, like Arabic ʔinna and ʔanna (or maybe Bhlaoighne)
• Swadesh list
• Tigol > Anbirese sound changes

plus, Anbirese has "accusativus in infinitivo"!
le could be omitted before indefinite nouns in modern Anbirese
but Maith Sivy always used it
that's one way of distinguishing archaic from modern Anbirese
another could be the use of the pronoun 'fiar'
which in modern Anbirese was completely replaced with 'scid'
ca-ephyth = of that
ca-leth = that (acc.)
ca-dzeth = in that; there
ma-, ca-, ta-, m-compounds: this, that, what, which
in that house = ca-dzen souar
or "dze cin souar"
both are valid
the first being more archaic

a verbalizer like -ować

• Verb prefixes:
  • ar-: on, at > ar-
  • (deut.) as-: telic > ys-
  • (prot.) de-, (deut.) do-: in, at > dze-, do-
  • é-: with, co- > e-
  • fin-/sin- = well, thoroughly > fin-
  • for-: causative, through > for-
  • (prot.) ful-, (deut.) fol-: around, back > fl-
  • imm-: immediately > im-, m-, n-, ŋ-
  • (prot.) gel-, (deut.) gol-: up, out > gol-
  • ro-: down > ro-
  • sol-: a causative > sol-
  • (prot.) su-, (deut.) so-: towards > su-
  • (prot.) sur-, (deut.) sor-: back > sor-
  • (prot.) u(cc)-, (deut.) oc-: from > oc-

Vowel reflexes:

• a e i o u > y jy ji u u
• ai ei oi ui > e ji e i
• á éa í(o) ó ú > a je ji o ou
• ái éi ói úi éu > ai ji oi oui jaou
• eá eó eói iú iúi > ja jo joi jou joui
• ae ao aoi > e aou eui
• ia ua uai > jeo veo vae

Phonology

Consonants

Radical consonants

• g k γ /g kʰ ŋ/
• gj kj γj /dʑ tɕ ɲ/
• d t n /d tʰ n/
• dj tj nj /dʐ tʂʰ ɲ/
• z c /dz tsʰ/
• b p m /b pʰ m/
• f v s sj h /f v~w s ɧ h/
• r l lj j /r ɴ̆ j j/

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

sj = sje, etc.

Lenited consonants

• gh kh /ɣ x/
• ghj khj /j ɕ/
• dh th /ɣ h/
• dhj thj /ɹ ɧ/
• zh ch /z s/
• bh ph /v f/
• sh shj /z ɹ/

Eclipsed consonants

• γg gk ng /ŋ g/
• γgj gkj /ɲ d͡ʑ/
• nd dt /n d/
• ndj dtj /ɲ dʐ/
• zc /dz/
• mb bp m /m b/
• vf ns nsj /v z ɹ/

Vowels

i y u e ω a o æ œ /i ɨ~ÿ u e ə~ʌ a o ɛ ø/

Stress

Stress is weak to nonexistent in Modern Anbirese.

Pitch accent

Pitch accent is phonemic in Standard Anbirese, and often distinguishes different grammatical forms of the same word.

Each word has one of two possible pitch accents:

1. Rising (or low, or peaking): starts low and rises, peaks at the second syllable; unmarked
2. High: high and level, falls off word-finally, transcribed with an acute accent

For example:

• skaen /skěn/ (rising tone) = 'a friend (sg)'; n skaen /ən skěn/ = 'the friend'
• skáen /skén/ (high tone) = 'friends (pl)'; n skáen /ən skén/ = 'the friends'
• ael (rising tone) = 'loves (present tense)'
• áel (high tone) = 'loved (past tense)'

A handful of dialects lack pitch accent.

Intonation

• General fall: declarative clauses
• General rise: dependent clauses
• Interrogative: interrogative clauses

Dialectology

Dueum beopchik

Reflecting the partially koineized origin of the language, Anbirese orthography is mostly based on dialects without dueum beopchik (두음 법칙, the Korean term for change of initial /r/ to /n/, and deletion of initial /n/ before /i/ or /j/; lit. 'initial law'), a sound change due to Swuntsim influence.

Dueum beopchik varies by dialect or accent: Cualuavian Anbirese has dueum beopchik for both initial r and initial nj, whereas Talman Anbirese only tends to have it for initial r. Some words have dueum beopchik even in dialects (such as the Flian dialect) that do not normally have it, like í 'not' (from Tigol ní).

In order to block dueum beopchik, loans from Tseezh, Windermere and other languages that begin with r- tend to be modified to begin with eor-. For example, Windermere prith becomes peorid 'autumn'.

Orthography

Anbirese is written in the Talmic alphabet.

Vocabulary

Anbirese is about as purist as German, though it has a fair helping of Swuntsim loanwords. Anbirese vocabulary often uses compounding to disambiguate words that were made similar by dueum beopchik. Like in other Talman languages, academic vocabulary has more Tseezh and Windermere loans.

Morphology

Mutations

Like Qenian, Anbirese has spirant and nasal mutation.

Nouns

Definite article

Regardless of gender and number, the definite article is

• eo before nasals and resonants: eo mar [ə̀ mǎɾ] 'the tree'
• n before other consonants and before vowels: n keotir [ə̀n kə̀tɕîɾ] 'the flower'; n aveot [ə̀n àvə̂t] 'the book'

TODO: definite article mutations by gender

Definite article

	singular			plural
	m.	f.	n.	m.	f.	n.
nom.	eclipsis	lenition	no mut.	no mut.	no mut.	eclipsis

Plural nouns

A common way to pluralize nouns is by tone change. This is the default paradigm for loans.

• mar /mǎɾ/ [mǎɾ] = a tree
• már /máɾ/ [mâɾ] = trees

However, many plurals use suffixes or other changes:

• íms /íms/ [îms] = a loved one
• imseot /ǐmsət/ [ìmsə̂t] = loved ones (some dialects use ímseot)

Adjectives

Adjectives do not inflect at all.

Adverbs derived from adjectives are unchanged (as in German).

TODO: degree words

Verbs

Anbirese verbs have two tenses (nonpast and past) and two aspects (imperfective and perfective).

The past tense usually has high tone, whereas the nonpast tense has rising tone.

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. However, the perfective is sometimes marked with ablaut. Most Anbirese 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 ŋci

Past tense: usually -n (can be syllabic) (but sometimes ablaut?)

• 'to tell': imperfective boŋin, perfective smŋin
• 'to eat': imperfective dzecain, perfective ŋcin

Copula

Anbirese is zero copula in the present tense; ngu, si, jeo and thar can be used as present tense copulas.

The past tense copula is latheon and the infinitive is fath.

Pronouns

na, skid, ngu, si, jeo, mekh, tid, skid, thar = I, you, he, she, it, we (exc), we (inc), you, they

There is also an archaic 2nd person singular pronoun fjeor 'thou'.

Prepositions

• ljeo = accusative (ljeo + n > ljeon) (only used with definite nouns in modern Anbirese)
  • ljeo-na, (ljeo-s,) lj-u, l-i, lj-eot, lj-eom, ljeof, ljeok, ljur
• djeo = in, at (dze + i > dzen)
  • djeo-na, (deo-s,) dj-u, d-i, dj-eot, dj-eom, djeof, djeok, djur
• e = to, for
  • ena, (ephys), ephou, ephi, epheth, ephym, efe, ephyc, ephur

Syntax

Anbirese is particularly rich in non-finite subordinate clause constructions, which may be used when English uses subordinate clauses with finite verbs.

Negation

The negation particle is da (preposed) for imperatives and tzin (preposed; from Tigol *ter ní- 'not once') otherwise.

Questions

Wh-words are fronted. Yes-no questions use a question particle sm (< Tigol is question particle + imb complementizer) before the sentence.

Wishes/Jussive

Wishes can be formed by using toumid (< Tigol tuabh mít 'who will grant') before a verb in the non-past tense.

Word order

Anbirese word order is primarily SVO, but may be VSO in more archaic or literary usage.

Accusative with infinitive

The accusative particle le can be used to introduce the subject of a dependent clause. The verb of the dependent clause is preceded by the particle e 'to'.

Na docn le mrothr e slav eph Intar.

1SG think.IPFV ACC apple-PL INF good to I.

I think Intar likes apples.

Preposition + verb clauses

A preposition may be used with a verb followed by a possessive suffix indexing the subject, as in Hebrew and Irish.

An example with dze 'at':

dze argiarna ar i loichou

at keep_watch.IPFV-1SG on DEF stuff-3SG.M

when I was keeping watch on his belongings