Cumbraek

Cumbraek is a modern reconstruction of the lost medieval language of Cumbric, a Brythonic Celtic tongue once spoken in parts of southern Scotland and northern England.

Phonology and Orthography

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m			n			ŋ
Plosive	p b			t d			k g
Fricative		f v	θ ð	s (z)	ʃ		x	h
Affricate					t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
Approximant	w					y
Trill				r
Flap or tap				ɾ
Lateral app.				l	ɫ

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː y(ː)		u(ː)
Near-close	ɪ
Close-mid	eː		oː
Mid		ə
Open-mid	ɛ		ʌ ɔ(ː)
Near-open	æː
Open	a(ː)

Vowel Length

Pure vowels have long and short forms, with vowel length being determined by environment:

• Long vowels occur in monosyllables where the syllable ends in a single consonant or no consonant (-VC, -V)
• Short vowels occur in all polysyllables; in monosyllables ending in more than one consonant (-VCC(C)) and in proclitics

Note that the digraphs th, dh and ch are considered to be single letters.

Orthography

Cumbraek is written with the Latin alphabet and uses the following letters.

a b c/k ch d dh e f g gw h hw i j l m n o p r s t th u v w y

The table below shows the correspondences between letters and pronounciation.

Graph	IPA	Comments
a	/a(ː)/
ae, ay	/æː/	takes stress in final syllables
ai	/əɨ̯/
aw	/au̯/
b	/b/
c, k	/k/	c occurs word initially and in the digraph ck, k occurs everywhere else
	/g/	word-finally, before a voiced sound in the next word
ch	/x/
d	/d/
dh	/ð/
e	/eː/	long
	/ɛ/	short
ea, ee	/eː/	takes stress in final syllables
ey	/ɛɨ̯/
ew	/ɛu̯/
f	/f/
g	/g/
gw	/gʷ/
h	/h/	word-initially
	Ø	between vowels
hw	/xw ~ ʍ/	the distinction between /xw/ and /ʍ/ is largely a matter of personal choice
i	/iː/	long
	/ɪ/	short
iw	/ɪu̯/
j	/d͡ʒ/
l	/l/
l	/ɫ/
m	/m/
n	/n/
ng	/ŋ/
o	/oː/	long
	/ɔ ~ ɒ/	short (/ɒ/ is more common in the south)
oa	/ɔː ~ ɒː/	/ɒː/ is more common in the south
oe	/oː/	takes stress in final syllables
oo	/uː/	long
	/u/	short
ou	/yː ~ ʉː/	long; /ʉː/ is the southern form
	/y ~ ʉ/	short; /ʉ/ is the southern form
oy	/ɔɨ̯/
ow	/ɔu̯/
p	/p/	in most environments
	/b/	word-finally, before a voiced initial
r	/r/
rr	/r/
s	/s/	generally written <ss> between vowels
t	/t/	in most environments
	/d/	word finally, before a voiced initial
u	/uː/	long
	/u/	short, in monosyllables
	/ʌ/	in pretonic syllables and proclitics
uw	/uː/
v	/v/	v is a weak consonant, liable to be lost in final position unless a vowel initial follows
w	/w/
y	/j/	before vowels
	/ɪ/	in word-final, unstressed syllables only

Diacritics

Cumbraek makes occasional use of three diacritics:

• the acute accent is used to show an unexpected long vowel (e.g. bónt 'they may be'); when it occurs in the final syllable, it also marks stress (e.g. cantín 'canteen')
• the grave accent is used to show an unexpected stressed syllable (e.g. gràvity 'gravity'); it is also used to mark a short vowel in monosyllables (e.g. bùs 'bus')
• the trema is used to mark diaeresis and is place on the second vowel of a sequence (e.g. troäv 'I turn', troöun 'I was turning')

Grammar

Morphology

Consonant Mutations

As with all modern Celtic languages, Cumbraek makes extensive use of initial consonant mutations to help signal grammatical and syntactic information. Cumbraek has three main mutations: lenition (mootthei), spirantisation (anadhlolhei) and nasalisation (troonolhei). There is a fourth type of mutation called aspiration (anadhleth) in which word-initial vowels take an h'- before them.

The changes caused by the mutations are summarised in the following table.

Radical	Lenition	Spirantisation	Nasalisation
p	b	f
t	d	th
c	g	ch
b	v		m
d	dh		n
g	h		ng
gw	w		nw
j	y		ny
m	v

For brevity, words routinely causing mutations will be marked with superscript letters in this article: ^L for lenition, ^S for spirantisation, ^N for nasalisation and ^H for aspiration.

Vowel Mutations

Cumbraek also has two vowel mutations, which occur regularly. Feminisation is generally restricted to adjectives and causes an i to become e and a u to become o. Alternation is common in the formation of plurals and in certain verb forms, and causes the following changes:

Radical	Alternate
a	e
e	i
o
ae	ea
ay
oy	oo
a...a	e...e
a...e	e...i
a...o
o...o
a...u

In some cases, these changes work backwards (e.g. gwrek 'woman' has the plural form gwragedh).