Suebish

Suebish
lyngala söiguisca
Pronunciation	[[ˈlʏŋːala ɕøʏ̯ˈɡiska]]
Created by	Lili21
Date	Oct 2019
Setting	Alt-Earth
Ethnicity	Suebians (Söigueses)
Native speakers	1,700,000 (2019)
Language family	Indo-European Italic Romance Northern Romance Suebish
Official status
Official language in	Suebia
Regulated by	National Academy of the Suebish Language Academíla Nazionala ad Lyngala Söiguisca

Suebish (natively söiguisc [ɕøʏ̯ˈɡisk] or lynga(la) söiguisca [ˈlʏŋːala ɕøʏ̯ˈɡiska]) is a Romance language spoken in an alt-historical Earth, in the country of Suebia (Söiga), in the area of real-world Pomerania.

The only member of the Northern Romance branch, Suebish has, due to relative and long isolation from the rest of the Romance-speaking world, followed its own path of evolution and has absorbed lots of words, grammatical features, and influence on phonology, from its neighboring languages: most prominently Old Norse, but also Proto-Slavic, Baltic languages, Low German and, more recently, Standard High German and Polish.

Introduction

External history

Suebish is basically a near-total reboot of my earlier romlang-turned-jokelang Wendlandish (alongside Lifashian, which is a translation of the same setting in another area), with a more serious Romance aesthetic instead of the faux-Old Norse one it had; the language itself is completely different aside from being derived from Latin, and had as main natlang inspirations all Gallo-Italic languages (most notably Piedmontese) and Catalan. It is also meant to follow an approach to romlanging quite different from the one of my other current romlang, Atlantic.

Morphology

Nouns

Suebish nouns mainly follow two declension patterns, the masculine and the feminine one. Unlike many Romance languages (but like Romanian and close relatives, as well as Suebish's neighbours on the other side of the Baltic sea, the mainland North Germanic languages), articles are suffixed to the noun.

	Masculine		Feminine
	Indefinite	Definite	Indefinite	Definite
Singular	vir "man"	virol	fimna "wife"	fimnala
Plural	virs	virsos	fimnas	fimnallas

There are some exceptions to these declensions, for example:

• there are many feminine words that follow the same pattern as the masculine declension in the indefinite, as in ciutat "city" - pl. indefinite ciutads - sg. definite ciutalla - pl. definite ciutadsas - and similarly all words in -tat (e.g. viortat "truth", liurtat "freedom").
• some feminine words have no ending in the singular indefinite and add -es in the plural instead, like tur "tower" (tures - tulla - turellas).
• feminine words ending in a stressed vowel have -r- in the other forms, as with mylé "woman" (mylella - myleres - mylerellas).
• masculine words ending in a diphthong or in a palatal consonant (except for -gl) have -el instead of -ol in the singular definite, e.g. peś "fish" (pesel - peses - pesellos);
  • masculine words ending in -gl have palatal -ś in the plural indefinite and -il in the singular definite, e.g. figl "son" (figlil - figlś - figlsios)
• As in the example with ciutat above, word-final devoicing is orthographically marked, so that those words are written with the unvoiced counterpart in other forms (even before -s, where those consonants are still phonetically unvoiced), e.g. cent "male kid, baby" (cendol - cends - cendsos)
• As seen in previous examples such as tur or mylé(r), and in many plural forms, final -r (and plural -s) assimilates to the -l- of the definite suffixes, but it is the reverse with other final consonants like -n or -s, e.g. alsös "salmon" (alsössa - alsöses - alsösellas) or elen "deer" (elenna - elenes - elenellas).
• There are irregular plural forms, such as om "human" and nom "name", whose plural indefinite forms are omens and nomens respectively.

Verbs

Suebish has regularized most verbal forms to extents greater than most other Romance languages, otherwise only found in Gallo-Italic languages such as Lombard. Like Gallo-Italic languages (but in a different way), originally emphatic clitic pronouns became mandatory and then formed new verbal suffixes in all persons but the first singular and the third plural. Suebish, unlike other Romance languages (excluding clitics in Gallo-Italic languages), mandatorily indicates gender in the third person singular. This process of cliticization is most evident in the synchronically irregular forms of "to be" such as tess "you are" (< *tə-és-(tə)). Only two conjugations are distinguished, with the second conjugation (the merger of the latter three conjugations of Latin) having just a distinction in the first person, with original third conjugation verbs (excluding those in -IŌ) having a zero ending, while the others have -i, as well as original third conjugation verbs having an unstressed final vowel (cf. arcibi "to receive" vs. intarviní "to intervene").

As with nouns, word-final devoicing is indicated in the first person singular, leading to alternations such as mi terp "I need", ti terbet "you need".

First conjugation: copài (to buy)

	Present ind.	Imperf. ind.
mi	cop	copava
ti	copet	copaust
igl	copal	copaudal
glia	copia	copaudla
nisaltars	copàn	copvamun
vusaltars	copàu	copvàdiu
ilò	copen	copaven

Second conjugation: arcibi (to receive)

	Present ind.	Imperf. ind.
mi	arcibi	arcibeia
ti	arcibit	arcibeist
igl	arcibil	arcibeidal
glia	arcibia	arcibeidla
nisaltars	arcibín	arcibvamun
vusaltars	arcibíu	arcibvàdiu
ilò	arcibiun	arcibeien

Reflexive forms are made by suffixing -s to the infinitive and prefixing the corresponding clitic pronoun in other forms; the clitic is usually as, except for the first- and second-person singular in the indicative, which have am and at respectively. Note that they still use as in the subjunctive:

• Indicative: Ti t'arcordet ad fàigl. "You remember to do that."
• Subjunctive: Al fać pi ca ti s'arcordet ad fàigl. "I do it, so that you remember to do that."

Past

There are two different forms of analytic past tenses in Suebish, differing by the choice of their auxiliary. The auxiliaries aví and essi (for transitive and intransitive verbs respectively) denote an action performed once or at a specific moment in time, while using tení (for all verbs) denotes frequentative or experiential aspect, as in the following examples:

• Ilò agen digut - "they said (once)"
• Ilò tenguen digut - "they said (multiple times); they used to say"
• Nisaltars al agèn re digut - "we did not say it (then, at that point in time)"
• Nisaltars al tenín re digut - "we never said it"

Subjunctive

The present subjunctive forms of regular verbs are identical to the present indicative ones; verbs which have a different stem in the 1SG present indicative form, however, use that stem in the present subjunctive, and with first conjugation terminations:

• Regular verb (copài "to buy", pres. ind. mi cop, ti copet) → pres. subj. mi cop, ti copet, igl copal, glia copia, ...
• Irregular verb (vení "to come", pres. ind. mi venc, ti venit) → pres. subj. mi venc, ti venguet, igl vengal, glia venguia, ...

Main irregular verbs

The main irregular verbs are, as common among Romance languages, essi (to be) and aví (to have):

essi (to be)

	Present ind.	Imperf. ind.
mi	somm	era
ti	tess	erest
igl	el	erdal
glia	eia	erdla
nisaltars	ansú	erimun
vusaltars	vess	erídiu
ilò	sun	eren

aví (to have)

	Present ind.	Imperf. ind.
mi	ać	veia
ti	aget	veist
igl	agil	veidal
glia	agia	veidla
nisaltars	agèn	avamun
vusaltars	agèu	avàdiu
ilò	agen	veien