Niemish

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Niemish
Nimsk
Pronunciation[/nʲimsk/]
Created byUser:Tardigrade
Date2015
Official status
Official language in
Niemgard
Language codes
ISO 639-3qnm
BRCLgrey
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Niemish (Nimsk) is an East Germanic language descended from Gothic, the oldest Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus. The name originated from Proto-Slavic *němĭcĭ, an exonym given by speakers of Slavic languages to Germanic speakers. Niemish has undergone extensive influence by Slavic languages and is a member of the Balkan sprachbund, having such features as suffixed definite articles and deriving the future tense from present subjunctive. There is also considerable influence from languages such as Turkish, Hungarian, Greek, Latin and Romance languages.

Scripts

Alphabet

The Niemish alphabet consists of 33 letters.

Majuscule Minuscule IPA
A a /a~aː/
Ą ą /ã~ãː/
Ä ä /ɛ~eː/
Ą̈ ą̈ /ɛ̃~ẽː/
B b /b~bʲ/
C c /k~ʦʲ/
D d /d~dʲ/
E e /ɛ~eː/
Ę ę /ɛ̃~ẽː/
F f /f~fʲ/
G g /g~gʲ/
Majuscule Minuscule IPA
H h /h/
I i /ɪ~iː/
Į į /ɪ̃~ĩː/
J j /j/
K k /k~kʲ/
L l /l~lʲ/
M m /m~mʲ/
N n /n~nʲ/
O o /ɔ~oː/
Ǫ ǫ /ɔ̃~õː/
P p /p~pʲ/
Majuscule Minuscule IPA
(Q) (q) /k~kʲ/
R r /ɾ~ɾʲ/
S s /s~sʲ/
T t /t~tʲ/
U u /ʊ~uː/
Ų ų /ʊ̃~ũ/
(V) (v) /v~vʲ/
W w /w~vʲ/
X x /ks~kʲsʲ/
Y y /ɪ̈~ɨː/
Z z /z~zʲ/

The acute and grave accent can respectively mark stressed long vowels (or diphthongs) and stressed short vowels. These are generally not used except in dictionaries for clarity.

In addition, Niemish orthography uses six digraphs: ⟨Ch, Cz, Ph, Sz, Th, Tz⟩ and two trigraphs:⟨Dsz, Zsz⟩ These function as sequences of two or three letters for collation purposes.

Outside digraphs, the letters ⟨C, Q, V⟩ only appear in loanwords, as do the digraphs ⟨Ph, Th⟩ and the trigraph ⟨Dsz⟩.

Phonology

Orthography

Cyrillic script

Historical changes

Wulfilan Gothic to Post-Gothic

Vowels

Wulfilan Gothic had three (in some analyses five) short vowels and seven long vowels. The short vowels were maintained in Post-Gothic and the long vowels reduced to five; Wulfilan Gothic already showed signs of merging close-mid vowels with close ones:

  • Got. ē /eː/ > Post-Got. ei /iː/
  • Got. ō /oː/ > Post-Got. ū /uː/

This is attested in variant spellings such as leikeis for lēkeis. In Post-Gothic this merger was complete.

The most important sound change with respect to short vowels was loss of syllable-final h /h/ with compensatory lengthening:

  • Got. ah /ah/ > Post-Got. ā /aː/
  • Got. aíh /ɛh/ > Post-Got. ái /ɛː/
  • Got. aúh /ɔh/ > Post-Got. áu /ɔː/

This raised ā /aː/ from a marginal phoneme to a common one.

Consonants

The proposed Thurneysen's law became fully operational in Post-Gothic, although it was modified:

  • Spirants gained or lost voice in dissimilation with the previous consonant in all syllables, not only unstressed ones
  • The condition for the law depended only on whether the previous consonant was voiced, and consonant clusters did not affect it