Brittonica

Brittonica (Brittoníca) is a reconstructed form of late Common Brythonic dating to about the early 6th century, the time of King Arthur, shortly before the loss of final syllables led to the development of the earliest daughter languages (ancestors of Welsh, Breton and Cornish).

Phonology

Vowels

	Front	Near- front	Central	Near- back	Back
Close	iː ʉː ɪ ʊ eː ɛ(ː) ɔ(ː) a
Near-close
Close-mid
Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Consonants

	Bilabial	Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m	n		ŋ
Plosive	p      b	t      d		k      g
Fricative	ɸ   (β, μ)	s     (ð)		x     (ɣ)	h
Approximant	w		j
Trill		r
Lateral app.		l

Notes:

• All consonants except /w, j, ɸ, x, h/ may be geminate between vowels.
• The fricatives [β, ð, ɣ] and [μ] (representing a nasalised /β/) are allophones of /b, d, g/ and /m/ respectively, occuring between vowels or between /l, r/ and a vowel.

Stress

Primary stress is routinely placed on the penultimate syllable of polysyllabic words, with secondary stress on the pre-antepenult.

Prefixes and proclitics, such as pronouns and prepositions, do not take stress.

Orthography

The orthography of Brittonica is based on the Latin alphabet, which was adopted during the Roman occupation of Britain. As a result of long usage, the pronunciation of words is not entirely phonemic (though it is predictable) as spelling has remained relatively conservative as pronunciation has changed.

The alphabet consists of the following letters:

Aa Áá Ææ Bb Cc Dd Ee Éé Ff Gg Hh Ii Íí Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Rr Ss Tt Uu Úú Vv Xx

Graph	IPA	Notes	Example
A a	/a/		catta
Á á	/ɔː/		máro
Æ æ	/ɛː/		cæto
B b	/b/	initially	bena
[β]	between vowels, before or after r, l	abona
C c	/k/	initially	catta
[g]	between vowels	teca
D d	/d/	initially	druco
[ð]	between vowels, before or after r, l	monido
E e	/ɛ/		mercess
É é	/eː/		ecléssia
F f	/ɸ/		fonna
G g	/g/	initially	gabro
[ɣ]	between vowels, before or after r, l	dago
H h	/h/		henton
I i	/ɪ/		viro
Í í	/iː/		híro
L l	/l/		láma
M m	/m/	initially	merkess
[μ]	between vowels, before or after r, l	láma
N n	/n/		nanton
O o	/ɔ/		cotto
P p	/p/	initially	pempe
[b]	between vowels, before r, l	mapo
R r	/r/		ríma
S s	/s/		priston
T t	/t/	initially	teca
[d]	between vowels, before r, l	cenetlon
U u
Ú ú
V v
X x

Morphology

Nouns

Nouns are marked for three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and five cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and vocative). As with other ancient Indo-European languages, nouns belonged to one of several stem classes.

O-Stems

All o-stem nouns are either masculine or neuter.

	Masculine mapoh "boy"	Neuter dínon "fort"
Sg.	Du.	Pl.	Sg.	Du.	Pl.
Nom.	mapoh	mapú	mapí	dínon	dínú	díná
Voc.	mape	mapíh
Acc.	mapon
Gen.	mapí	mapíh	mapon	díní	díníh	dínon
Dat.	mapobon	mapobo	dínobon	dínobo

Syntax

[[Category:Celtic languages