Mergian

Introduction

Goals

I wanted to try my hand at a realistic Germanic conlang. I've seen so many typical Germanic conlangs, that I tried to get Mergian nice and unique.

History

In 410, the Gothic king Alaric I sacked Rome. That year was an astonishing victory for all Goths. However, Alaric died that same year due to a hunting accident. The Goths were left without a suitable king, and they began to fracture into petty bickering. Almost none of the tribes wanted to leave the lush Roman Empire, and neither did they want to fight the Emperor. However, the Simmeck tribe, led by their chief Wallia, decided to abandon the Roman Empire. The year that the Simmecks left, the Roman general Constantius III crushed the remaining Goths, and all that were left were the men of Wallia's armies.

Soon after, Constantius became emperor and permitted the Simmecks to live north of Moesia. They acted as the first line of defense against the Huns. They lived in relative peace, and the Romans promised to not bother them. Around 440, the invasion of the Huns forced out the Simmecks all the way to the Rhine. They formed an alliance with the Alemanni and in 451, alongside the Romans, they defeated the Huns at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains. Wallia died in the battle, and Theodoric rose to power.

After the battle, the Pope Leo I converted Theodoric from Arianism to Nicene Christianity. He appointed Theodoric on a holy mission, citing it to be a revelation given to him by God. The Simmecks were to be the guards of the Christendom. He told them to move north and to establish a church there, to defend Rome and the Christian world.

Theodoric agreed to follow the word of the Pope, and he moved his kingdom east. They settled on the Elbe and Warta. He also adopted the name Fīnēs Rōmae (The borders of Rome). As a thanks, the Romans sent their best architects to design places for the Simmecks to live. Eventually, the Latin name dropped and instead the Old Mergian name Rumi marga stuck. That name evolved to the word Rommerg which is where the word Mergian comes from.

Morphology

Nouns

Cases

Mergian retained the nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative cases from Gothic. The vocative, as in Gothic, did not have its own independent suffixing. Instead, the accusative singular could also act as the vocative singular, and the nominative plural could act as the vocative plural.

The description of the cases is as follows:

• The nominative (nom.) case is used to mark the subject of a verb. It is also used in the predicate of the copula and as the dictionary form.
• The vocative (voc.) case is used when addressing someone.
• The accusative (acc.) case is used to mark the object of a verb. Some prepositions govern the accusative.
• The genitive (gen.) case is used to mark possession, measurement, source or other relations between nouns. A small amount of prepositions govern the genitive.
• The dative case (dat.) is used to mark the indirect object of a verb. The patients of causative actions are also in the dative. This is different to English where we would find a direct object instead(e.g. Ig ima (dat.) þangjen tafde vs. English "I made him (acc.) think"). The majority of prepositions govern the dative.

Gender and Number

Gothic gender was unpredictable. Over time, the Slavic influence on Mergian caused for the genders to regularize. Mergian has three genders: the masculine (m), feminine (f) and neuter (n). The masculine is attributed to biologically masculine nouns (e.g. father, son, boy) or nouns ending in a consonant. The feminine is attributed to biologically female nouns (e.g. mother, daughter, girl) or nouns ending in -a, -i or -ij. The neuter is attributed exclusively to intangible nouns (e.g. sky, name, sun) and to nouns ending in -o or a consonant.

Gothic made a distinction between gendered plurals, but Mergian lost this distinction. The new plural number inherited the masculine plural endings. Gothic's dual number was lost for the most part. However, it replaced the plural series of all pronouns.

Pronouns

The personal pronouns were inherited almost exactly from Gothic.

Personal pronouns

	1s	2s	3sm	3sn	3sf	1p	2p	3p	refl.
Nominative	ig	þo	e	da	si	við	juð	ið
Accusative	mig	þog	ina		ja	unge	ing	ins	sig
Genitive	mijne	hijne	e		izou	ungra	ingra	izei	sijne
Dative	me	þu	ima		izai	unge	ing	im	se

• The 3p pronoun come from two different sources. The accusative, genitive and dative declensions all come from eis, the nominative is an innovation so that it would fit the -ð paradigm of við and juð.