Suebish
| Tudicese | |
|---|---|
| thýdhyk tuña | |
| Pronunciation | [[çyːjʏkʲ tuŋːa]] |
| Created by | Lili21 |
| Date | Sep 2019 |
| Setting | Alt-Earth |
| Ethnicity | Tudicese (thýdhykusit) |
| Native speakers | 3,000 (2018) |
Indo-European
| |
Tudicese (natively thýdhyk tuña [çyːjʏkʲ tuŋːa]) is a minoritary Germanic language spoken by a few thousands of speakers in southern Piedmont and parts of inland Liguria, in northern Italy, roughly in a territory between the Scrivia river in the east and the Bormida in the west.
Tudicese is an outlier language in the Germanic branch, having evolved itself in isolation from its sister languages (even if some similarities with distant relatives such as the North Germanic languages can be found), and while it maintained a small literary tradition, its spelling is fairly conservative, even though the pronunciation is easily predictable. Phonologically, it is very distinct from both other Germanic languages and the Gallo-Italic languages it is nestled among.
In the course of its history, Tudicese adopted various Piedmontese and Ligurian borrowings, as well as, in more recent times, lots of influence from Standard Italian, whose expansion in the last century has made Tudicese a severely endangered language: as with most minoritary languages of Italy, nearly all Tudicese speakers carry Italian names, are bilingual in Italian and use predominantly the latter in most social contexts.
The areas where the use of Tudicese is most vibrant are the uppermost valleys of the Erro, Orba, and Stura rivers, particularly in the Ligurian municipalities of Mioglia, Pontinvrea, Sassello, Urbe, Tiglieto, Campo Ligure, and Masone, and the Piedmontese municipalities of Pareto, Ponzone, and Molare. While most areas have their own dialects, they diverge mostly in vocabulary rather than phonology or morphology (with a few differences in phonology to be found in the mostly moribund dialects of the areas of Gavi and Parodi Ligure). Unless differently noted, the variant used in this page is the dialect spoken around Sassello (Sälsyl [ɕɛlʲɕʏlʲ] in Tudicese).
Morphology
Nouns
In line with the most innovative Germanic languages and with its Romance neighbours, Tudicese lost case in its evolution, and probably was one of the earliest Germanic languages to lose its case system, as early as the late Middle Ages. Nouns are inflected for number and take a suffixed definite article; unlike most other Germanic languages with suffixed articles, there is no standalone definite article. The plural and definite inflections vary according to the three genders of Tudicese nouns.
Feminine nouns are the most simple, as all regular declensions have been analogically levelled to a single one, having -e in the singular indefinite, -a in the singular definite, -us in the plural indefinite, and -veis or -useis in the plural definite:
- tuñe "a tongue, a language"
- tuña "the tongue, the languages"
- tuñus "tongues, languages"
- tuñveis "the tongues, the languages"
Irregular plurals just have -eis as the definite inflection:
- svietir [ɕfʲiə̯tʲirʲ] "a sister"
- svietira "the sister"
- svítris [ɕfʲeɪ̯ʈʂɯɕ] "sisters"
- svítriseis "the sisters"
Masculine nouns distinguish three inflections: -us plurals (Proto-Germanic a-stems), -is plurals (i-stems), and -ys plurals (u-stems). The definite inflections are -an for the singular and -it for the plural:
- vulf "a wolf"
- vulfan "the wolf"
- vulfus "wolves"
- vulfusit "the wolves"
- gáti "a guest"
- gátian [ɣɑːtʲæn] "the guest"
- gátis "guests"
- gátisit "the guests"
- sun "a son"
- sunan "the son"
- synys "sons"
- synysit "the sons"
Neuter nouns have three patterns: invariable nouns, -u plurals (ending in -a in the singular), and -uon plurals. The definite inflections are -et for the singular and -a for the plural:
- ioka "a yoke"
- iokat "the yoke"
- iuku "yokes"
- iukua [ˈjukwa] "the yokes"
- ág "an eye"
- áget "the eye"
- águon "eyes"
- águona "the eyes"
- mär "a lake"
- märet "the lake"
- mär "lakes"
- mära "the lakes"