Brytho-Hellenic: Difference between revisions

|speakers = 52 millions

'''Brytho-Hellenic''', Brythohellenic or simply '''Neohellenic''' (the native name is ''Elynic'') is a language that is spoken nowadays in a different timeline in a country that corresponds almost exactly to our England and to our Wales.

In that timeline the Persians have won the wars against Greece and the Greeks have been forced to emigrate and to flee. Firstly the Greeks find protection in Magna Graecia, but, as the Persians conquer those territories, they shift to Northern Italy, where the Romans withstand the Persian troops. In 389 b.C. Rome is destroyed and both Romans and Greeks flee to Carthage, enemy of the Persian empire. Together they try to attack the Persian fleet, but they are defeated again.

In 381 b.C. ''Conon the Athenian'' and his Greeks reach our '''Scilly Islands''': they have chosen to sail northward, because they had heard about legends that spoke about a fertile and grassy island in the North. It is the beginning of the ''New Greece'' or '''Elas to Cain''' (IPA ['ɛlas 'tɔ 'kai̯n]).

After the defeat against the Persians almost the entire Greek people fled towards Roman territory: Rome triplicated its population and was greekized. During their living together Greeks and Romans used mainly the '''Greek language''' to communicate, whereas the ''Latin language'' became a secondary and socially lower language, spoken mainly by common people. Nevertheless - almost incomprehensibly - the Greeks adopted the '''Latin alphabet''', maybe trying to be understood even by the lower social classes.

As we are talking about the modern language, we don't consider the first versions of the alphabet that were used in ancient times. The alphabet of Brythohellenic contains 24 letters:

!'''Further informations'''

Brythohellenic has the following consonantic phonemes:

Brythohellenic has the following vowel system:

In Brythohellenic there are 17 diphthongs, that is clusters of two vowels pronounced with a single emission of air. These diphthongs are:

Brythohellenic has got only one digraph: ''rh'' [r̥], which is rare enough. The other combinations as ''ch'', ''dh''/''gh'', and ''th'' are considered true letters.

* almost always the last syllable has fallen, ex.: ''καινός'' > '''cain''', "new"; ''θάνατος'' > '''thanagh''', "death".

These two phoenomena have influenced heavily the stress system of Brythohellenic. Nowadays the stress steadily falls on the last but one syllable: this means that in the plural forms of nouns it shifts, ex.: '''thalas''' ['θalas], "sea" > '''thalasas''' [θa'lasas], "seas"; '''ailur''' ['ai̯lur], "cat" > '''ailuroi''' [ai̯'luroi̯], "cats".

Sometimes the accent falls on the last syllable, above all in some verbal forms. In these cases an acute accent is written on the accented vowel, ex.: '''emén nüi''' [e'men:ui̯], "we are"; '''acú eu''' [a'ku eu̯], "I hear". The written accent can also distinguish two words that are written the same but have got different meanings, ex.: '''y''', "than", ≠ '''ý''', "she".

Even if Ancient Greek had three genders and three numbers, the system simplified a lot and Modern Elynic has got two genders - '''masculine''' and '''feminine''' - and two numbers - '''singular''' and '''plural'''.

During the coexistence and the mixing with Brythons, the Greeks have adopted some Celtic words:

!'''Original word'''

Some words have a counterpart whose meaning has shifted: from the Greek ''ουάτις'', a word mentioned by Strabo and of Proto-Celtic origin (*''vatis''), comes '''guegh''', "astute person" < "one who can predict the moves of enemies" < "soothsayer". From the same root comes of course the Brythonic word ''ofydd'', that has been taken as loan once the Greeks reached Great Britain.

Another example is the word '''bard''', that has substituted the Ancient Greek ''ἀοιδός'', whose descendant, '''auid''', has got the meaning of "artist".

It isn't easy to distinguish between a masculine and a feminine noun, because there is no gender-linked ending. However, when we speak about entities that have got a physical gender, such as people and animals, it can be useful to be able to distinguish between masculine and feminine gender.

Brythohellenic hasn't got ''indefinite article'', to translate phrases like "a cat" or "some women" we have just to omit the article: '''ailur''' means both "a cat" and "cat", and '''ginais''' means both "some women" and "women".

There is only one kind of article, the ''definite'' one: this article is used to talk about well known things that are familiar to the speakers, because they have already been talked about, or because they belong to the experiences baggage of the speakers, that is we use the definite article to talk about known informations, to talk about determined informations.

The definite article has got one invariable form, '''to''', that is used both for masculine and feminine nouns, for singular and plural nouns: '''to omyr''', "the rain"; '''to huvagh''', "the body"; '''to lusai''', "the languages"; '''to nysoi''', "the islands", and so on.

Some adjectives have got an irregular form of higher degree comparative:  

The same adjectives that have an irregular higher degree comparative have got also an irregular superlative form:

The superlative has got only one singular form, in the plural masculine and feminine are different, ex.: '''aryd''' > '''arydoi''', '''arydai'''.

Brythohellenic personal pronouns have three cases: ''nominative'', ''accusative'', and ''dative''. In Brythohellenic there is no need to indicate subject pronoun before the verb, whereas in English it is compulsory.

The neuter pronoun ''it'' is translated in Brythohellenic with '''ý'''. The feminine pronoun '''ý''' is written with the accent to be distinguished from the preposition '''y''' (= "than").

Indefinites give us incomplete informations, because they don't define the precise quantity or the identity:

Also '''edher''' has got plural: '''edheroi''' for masculine and '''edherai''' for feminine.

Some adverbs have got suppletive forms, ex.: ''ivygh > ei''; ''penyr > faul''.

In Brythohellenic place adverbs ''naugh'' and ''cys'' inflect to express state or movement to and from. The adverb ''u'', "where", also inflects:

The adverb ''u'' has got also a relative function:

The verbal system has undergone deep alterations that have strongly simplified it. Neohellenic has got only 4 moods: ''indicative'', ''imperative'', ''infinitive'', and ''participle''; the other Ancient Greek moods have been completely lost. This rather evident simplification has modified also the tenses. The modern language has got only 4 tenses: ''present'', ''imperfect'', ''perfect'' (that originates from the ancient aorist, actually), and ''future''. This is true for the indicative mood only, the others have got only two or even one tense.

The verb ''to be'' is, as in the majority of languages, irregular, but, what distinguishes Brytho-Hellenic is that it has got two different forms of this verb, even if the infinitive form is the same:

Not all the verbal persons have got different forms, the third person plural has got only one form as it can be seen in the following table:

In Brytho-Hellenic many important verbs are irregular and they have got peculiarities that must be learned and cannot be summed up in tables.

As many verbs have got a regular present, but an irregular imperfect or perfect, it is better to talk of '''regular present''' rather than "present of regular verbs".

The regular present can follow two different patterns, known as '''e-pattern''' and '''u-pattern''': these names come from the vowel of the ending of the 1st person plural. The persons of the singular and the 3rd person plural have got always the same endings, only the first two persons of the plural can change and by knowing which pattern the verb belongs to, one can predict the ending of the 1st and the 2nd persons plural.

Many verbs have got an irregular present: unfortunately it isn't possible to establish some patterns, because the difference can lie in the whichever person when not in all of them. Very often the different endings are the result of vowel contractions that took place in antiquity, thus these verbs are called '''contracted verbs'''.

The '''imperfect''' is used to talk about habitual actions that happened in the past. English hasn't got a corrispective of this tense: the same form can be obtained using the ''Simple past'' or, even better, the pattern "used to + infinitive": ''I '''used to play''' football with friends every Friday''. This tense is also used to talk about actions that were happening in the past, to underline their duration, whereas in English one would rather use the ''Past Progressive'', which, anyway, exists also in Neohellenic, but, as for the progressive form of the present, it is rarely used.

As it has been said, in Brythohellenic many verbs have got a regular present, but an irregular imperfect, so it is impossible to talk about "regular verbs". However there are some "structural changes" in the formation of this tense that are common and can be analysed.

Let's see the imperfect of six verbs whose present tense has already been observed and of the verb "to be", that has got two different forms for this tense too.

|su

|lalu

|filu

|sys

|lalys

|filys

|sy

|laly

|fily

|s'''un'''

|lal'''un'''

|fil'''un'''

|s'''ych'''

|lal'''ych'''

|fil'''ych'''

|sus

|lalus

|filus

The colour system of Brythohellenic is particular, because, except ''white'', ''black'' and ''red'', colours' names derive from flowers or natural elements. Historians have supposed that as the Greeks of Conon reached Great Britain they used natural elements to estabilish a first contact between their languagage and the language of Celtic people.

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[[Category:Conlangs]]