Czecklish

Czecklish (Čeklis [tɕɛkˈlis]) is a constructed, a priori and naturalistic language from the Liberec family of languages, descended from the hypothetical Proto-Liberec language. The closest genetic relatives to Czecklish are Ostritzisch (2,451 speakers) and Leśna (4,752 speakers). Czecklish itself is spoken in the tiny village of Chrastava, with a total of 5,112 native speakers. Czecklish is heavily influenced by the West Slavic and Romance language families. The greatest substrata are Czech, Polish and Italian. Despite being in the very midst of the Standard Average European Sprachbund, Czecklish morphology is definitively non-Indo-European. Czecklish is an agglunitative, polysynthetic and noun-incorporating language. As such, it's verb conjugation and noun declension is (over)complicated and difficult. A unique characteristic of Czecklish morphology is that it utilizes polyexponential formatives to encode multiple grammatical categories. That is to say, one bound morpheme can be used to express different grammatical categories simultaneously. These morphemes, which serve as function words, are known as screeves in Czecklish linguistics. Like Georgian screeves, Czecklish screeves are a number of combinations that indicate person, number and TAM categories. Contrastive to the Georgian screeve, though, screeve endings in Czecklish encode all TAM categories - Tense, Mood and Voice. Czecklish is also unusual in that adjectives and adverbs are completely absent, being replaced with auxiliary participles and attibutive verbs.

Background

The Czecklish language, along with its relatives, have only been discovered recently. In 2004 Jans Hochbäcker recorded and described the newly-found languages briefly in his article about the linguistic diversity of the Czech Republic. Shortly after its brief mention in the said article, his discovery was forgotten until about 2010. Since then, a team of six German linguists have recorded as much about Czecklish as possible. It is speculated that is may be the only other pre-Indo-European language in Europe besides Basque. The impossibility of linking Czecklish with its Indo-European neighbors in Europe has inspired many scholars to search for its possible relatives elsewhere. Besides many pseudoscientific comparisons, the appearance of long-range linguistics gave rise to several attempts to connect Czecklish with geographically very distant language families. All hypotheses on the origin of Czecklish are controversial, and the suggested evidence is not generally accepted by most linguists. Some of these hypothetical connections are as follows:

• Indo-European: Possibly a mixing of a Indo-European and Proto-Liberec. Hansing proposed that the grammatical morphology came from Proto-Liberec, while the lexicon is derived from Indo-European. Many historical linguists consider this hypothesis unrealistic, as the first Indo-European loanwords entered Czecklish vocabulary in the 200s. It would be highly improbable that a mixing had occurred before the arrival of the Romans. There is evidence of language contact before the Roman conquest of Germania, though. The frequent trading between PL and PIE peoples during the late Neolithic and Chalcolithic did result in some loanwords (68 total), but nowhere near the number proposed (>1,600).
  

• Tyrsenian: This relation is proposed mainly on geographic location. The closest Tyrsenian language to the Liberec sprachraum is Rhaetic. As Rhaetic itself is unclassified - being either a language isolate or Indo-European - this classification is controversial. So little is known about the Tyrsenian languages that the claim of genetic relation is ridiculous. Almost all linguists reject this hypothesis, but for the few that support it as an option. Those that do claim that Rhaetic was an isolate, and that the geographical location of Proto-Liberec was most likely in Austria, near the Alps.
  

• Northwest Caucasian: This the most likely candidate. Northwest Caucasian is a language family renowned for their highly agglutinative verbal systems. Systems so complex as to contain the entirety of the syntactic structure in the verb. Liberec is also highly agglutinative and also has complex verbal systems. Other similarities between the two families are ergative-absolutive alignment, and left-branching. However, the geographical distance and cultural differences make a relationship between Czecklish and Northwest Caucasian doubtful.
  

Phonology

Vowels

Main article: Czecklish phonology

Czecklish's vowel system is very similar to Polish's. This is because Polish and Czecklish share a close relationship phonologically, and sound changes tend to be shared between them. One such 'shared' sound change is Proto-Slavic *ų̄ (realized as Proto-Czecklish /ɯ/)to Common Slavic/Polish /y/. This sound change is not so much shared, as it is a common innovation. However, Czecklish has many diphthongs, which are not characteristic of Slavic languages. Czecklish diphthongs arose from syncope of voiced fricatives, and are not related to Indo-European diphthongs. For more information about Czecklish phonology, see Czecklish Phonology.

Oral Monophthongs

Czecklish has a total of 10 monophthongs. Monophthongs occur in short and elongated variants. Vowel length is phonemic, and is used to disambiguate some minimal pairs. There are two central vowels: /ɨ/ and /ɑ/. The central vowel /ɑ/ is actually a back vowel, but is realized in a central position. In some dialects, though, it is pronounced as a back vowel.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i i:	ɨ ɨ:	u u:
Open-mid	ɛ ɛ:		ɔ ɔ:
Open		ɑ ɑ:

Nasal Monophthongs

Czecklish has a total of 8 nasal monophthongs. Like oral monophthongs, nasal vowels occur in both elongated and short variants. Close Front and Back monophthongs are never nasalized, due to phonotactic constraints. Nasal monophthongs cannot occur before nasal consonants.

	Front	Central	Back
Close		ɨ̃ ɨ̃:
Open-mid	ɛ̃ ɛ̃:		ɔ̃ ɔ̃:
Open		ɑ̃ ɑ̃:

Diphthongs Czecklish has a very large number of diphthongs - 38 in fact! Vowels can form diphthongs with both close and open-mid vowels, as well as /ɑ/. The central vowel /ɨ/ cannot be a second element in diphthongs, as it can never be non-syllabic. Nasal vowels can also form diphthongs, but they are not as common, and do not appear before nasal consonants.

	i̯	u̯	ɛ̯	ɔ̯	ɑ̯	ɛ̯̃	ɔ̯̃	ɑ̯̃
i		iu̯	iɛ̯	iɔ̯	iɑ̯	iɛ̯̃	iɔ̯̃	iɑ̯̃
u	ui̯		uɛ̯	uɔ̯	uɑ̯	uɛ̯̃	uɔ̯̃	uɑ̯̃
ɛ	ɛi̯	ɛu̯		ɛɔ̯	ɛɑ̯		ɛɔ̯̃	ɛɑ̯̃
ɔ	ɔi̯	ɔu̯	ɔɛ̯		ɔɑ̯	ɔɛ̯̃		ɔɑ̯̃
ɑ	ɑi̯	ɑu̯	ɑɛ̯	ɑɔ̯		ɑɛ̯̃	ɑɔ̯̃
ɨ	ɨi̯	ɨu̯	ɨɛ̯	ɨɔ̯	ɨɑ̯	ɨɛ̯̃	ɨɔ̯̃	ɨɑ̯̃

Consonants

Pulmonic

Czecklish has a total of 31 phonemic consonants:

	Labial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	p b	t d	c ɟ	k g
Affricate	pf	ts dz	tɕ dʑ
Fricative	f v	s z	ɕ ʑ ɕʷ	x ɣ	ɦ
Approximant			j	w
Trill		r	r̝
Lateral app.		l	ʎ

/ɕʷ/

The labialized voiceless palatal fricative /ɕʷ/ is a rare phoneme that is found in only 58 lexemes. /ɕʷ/ cannot appear before back vowels or nasal vowels. As such, it is only found before short or elongated front vowels. It can also appear before /ɑ/.

/pf/

The labial affricate /pf/ is not a true labial affricate; it is actually a labial plosive that is released as a labiodental fricative. It is a rare consonant worldwide, but is actually a quite frequent Czecklish phoneme, occurring in 26% of Czecklish lexemes.

/ŋ/

The velar nasal is both a phoneme and an allophone. As a phoneme, /ŋ/ can occur in any position in a word, including in the initial position. Before the velar consonants /k/ and /g/, [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/. The phoneme /ŋ/ can never occur before velar consonants.

Alphabet

The Czecklish alphabet is closely based upon the Czech and Polish alphabets. The close relationship that Czecklish has with its neighboring West Slavic languages has influenced its phonology significantly over the centuries. Therefore, its alphabet has been made to reflect Czecklish's phonological changes. Because of this, the Czecklish alphabet is considered a 'Frankenstein' of the Czech and Polish alphabets, with German influence. Czecklish uses the letter ẞß, as in German. It is important to note that Eszett has a different phonetic value than in German. Czecklish’s Latin alphabet has a total of 41 letters:

Letter	IPA	Letter	IPA	Letter	IPA	Letter	IPA	Letter	IPA
Aa	/ɑ/	Ęę	/ɛ̃/	Łł	/w/	Ss	/s/	Yy	/ɨ/
Ąą	/ɑ̃/	Ff	/f/	Mm	/m/	Šš	/ɕ/	Y̨y̨	/ɨ̃/
Bb	/b/	Gg	/g/	Nn	/n/	Tt	/t/	Zz	/z/
Cc	/ts/	Hh	/ɦ/	Ňň	/ɲ/	Ťť	/c/	Žž	/ʑ/
Čč	/tɕ/	Ii	/i/	Oo	/ɔ/	Uu	/u/
Dd	/d/	Jj	/j/	Ǫǫ	/ɔ̃/	Ůů	/u:/
Ďď	/ɟ/	Kk	/k/	Pp	/p/	Vv	/f/
Ee	/ɛ/	Ll	/l/	Rr	/r/	Ww	/v/
Ěě	/ɛ/	Ľľ	/ʎ/	Řř	/r̝/	Xx	/ks/

For more information on the Czecklish alphabet and its letters, see Czecklish Orthography & Numerals. It contains detailed explanations of the origins of certain letters, and how they are pronounced. It also explains how and when the letter Eszett is used, and its origins as it relates to the Czecklish alphabet. More information on diacritics and punctuation can also be found on the Czecklish Orthography & Numerals page.

Digraphs Czecklish uses 7 digraphs:

Letter	IPA
Ch ch	/x/
Dz dz	/dz/
Dž dž	/dʑ/
Gh gh	/ɣ/
Ng ng	/ŋ/
Pf pf	/pf/
Rž rž	/rʑ/