Luthic
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| Luthic | |
|---|---|
| Lûthica | |
 Flag of the Luthic-speaking Ravenna | |
| Pronunciation | [ˈlu.tʰi.xɐ] |
| Created by | Lëtzelúcia |
| Date | 2023 |
| Setting | Alternative history Italy |
| Native to | Ravenna; Ferrara and Bologna |
| Ethnicity | Luths |
| Native speakers | 149,500 (2020) |
Indo-European
| |
Dialects |
|
| Official status | |
Recognised minority language in | Italy (recognised by the Luthic Community of Ravenna) |
| Regulated by | Council for the Luthic Language |
 The areas where Luthic (red and orange) is spoken. | |
Luthic (/ˈluːθ.ɪk/ LOOTH-ik, less often /ˈlʌθ.ɪk/ LUTH-ik, also Luthish; endonym: Lûthica [ˈlu.tʰi.xɐ] or Rasda Lûthica [ˈʁaz.dɐ ˈlu.tʰi.xɐ]) is an Italic language that is spoken by the Luths, with strong East Germanic influence. Unlike other Romance languages, such as Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan and French, Luthic has a large inherited vocabulary from East Germanic, instead of only proper names that survived in historical accounts, and loanwords. About 250,000 people speak Luthic worldwide.
Luthic is the result of a prolonged contact among members of both regions after the Gothic raids towards the Roman Empire began, together with the later West Germanic merchants’ travels to and from the Western Roman Empire. These connections, the interactions between the Papal States and the conquest by the Germanic dynasties of the Roman Empire slowly formed a creole as a lingua franca for mutual communication.
As a standard form of the Gotho-Romance language, Luthic has similarities with other Italo-Dalmatian languages, Western Romance languages and Sardinian. The status of Luthic as the regional language of Ravenna and the existence there of a regulatory body have removed Luthic, at least in part, from the domain of Standard Italian, its traditional Dachsprache. It is also related to the Florentine dialect spoken by the Italians in the Italian city of Florence and its immediate surroundings.
Luthic is an inflected fusional language, with four cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative); three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter); and two numbers (singular, plural).
Classification
Luthic is an Indo-European language that belongs to the Gotho-Romance group of the Italic languages, however Luthic has great Germanic influence; where the Germanic languages are traditionally subdivided into three branches: North Germanic, East Germanic, and West Germanic. The first of these branches survives in modern Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Elfdalian, Faroese, and Icelandic, all of which are descended from Old Norse. The East Germanic languages are now extinct, and Gothic is the only language in this branch which survives in written texts; Luthic is the only surviving Indo-European language with extensive East Germanic derived vocabulary. The West Germanic languages, however, have undergone extensive dialectal subdivision and are now represented in modern languages such as English, German, Dutch, Yiddish, Afrikaans, and others.
Among the Romance languages, its classification has always been controversial, for example, it is one of the Italo-Dalmatian languages and most closely related to Istriot on the one hand and Tuscan-Italian on the other. Some authors include it among the Gallo-Italic languages, and according to others, it is not related to either one. Although both Ethnologue and Glottolog group Luthic into a new language group, the Gotho-Romance (opere citato) family is still somewhat dubious.
Luthic has been influenced by Italian, Frankish, Gothic and Langobardic since its first attestation, the great influence of these languages on the vocabulary and grammar of Modern Luthic is widely acknowledged. Most specialists in language contact do consider Luthic to be a true mixed language. Luthic is classified as a Romance langauge because it shares innovations with other Romance languages such as Italian, French and Spanish.
| Biblical Gothic | Crimean Gothic¹ | Luthic | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| ahtau /ˈax.tɔː/ | athe /ˈa.te/ | attau [ˈat.tɔ] | eight |
| baur /bɔr/ barn /barn/ |
baar /bar/ *ba(a)rn /barn/? |
baure [ˈbɔ.ɾe] barnȯ [ˈbaɾ.no] |
child |
| brōþar /ˈbroː.θar/ | bruder /'bru.der/ | broþar [ˈbɾo.θɐr] | brother |
| wair /wɛr/ | fers /fers/ | vaere [ˈvɛ.re] | wer- |
| handus /ˈhan.dus/ | handa /ˈan.da/ | hando [ˈhan.du] (archaic or obsolete) | hand |
| haubiþ /ˈhɔː.βiθ/ | hoef (for *hoeft) /oft/ | hauviþȯ [ˈhɔ.vi.θo] (archaic or obsolete) | head |
| qiman /ˈkʷi.man/ | kommen /'ko.men/ | qemare [kᶣeˈma.ɾe] | to come |
| hlahjan /'hlax.jan/ | lachen /'la.xen/ (/'la.ɣen/?) | clahare [klɐˈha.ɾe] | to laugh |
| augō /ˈɔː.ɣoː/ | oeghene /ˈo.ɣe.ne/ | augonȯ [ˈɔ.ɣ˕o.no] | eye |
- ¹ Discussions cover the different versions of Busbecq’s report, including scribal emendation and errors in printing and subsequent corrections. It seems that Busbecq’s understanding and documentation of Crimean Gothic were influenced by his Flemish background and possibly by German. He obtained his information from a Crimean Greek source who was knowledgeable in Crimean Gothic. The individual from Crimea who supplied the language information was either originally Greek or fluent in Crimean Gothic but more proficient in Greek than their own native language. In both cases, it’s likely that the pronunciation of Crimean Gothic words was influenced to some extent by the phonetics of the Greek language spoken in that area and time.
History
The Luthic philologist Aþalphonso Silva divided the history of Luthic into a period from 500 AD to 1740 to be “Mediaeval Luthic”, which he subdivided into “Gothic Luthic” (500–1100), “Mediaeval Luthic” (1100–1600) and “late Mediaeval Luthic” (1600–1740).
An additional period was later created by Lucia Giamane, from c. 325 AD to 500 AD to be called “Proto-Luthic”, which she believes to be an Vulgar Latin ethnolect, spoken by the early Goths during its period of co-existence with the Roman Empire, no written records from such an early period survive, and if any ever existed, it was fully lost during the Gothic War (376–382) and during the Sack of Rome (410). Proto-Luthic ultimately is the result of the Romano-Germanic culture.
The term Romano-Germanic describes the conflation of Roman culture with that of various Germanic peoples in areas successively ruled by the Roman Empire and Germanic “barbarian monarchies”. These include the kingdoms of the Visigoths (in Hispania and Gallia Narbonensis), the Ostrogoths (in Italia, Sicilia, Raetia, Noricum, Pannonia, Dalmatia and Dacia), the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Sub-Roman Britain, and finally the Franks who established the nucleus of the later “Holy Roman Empire” in Gallia Aquitania, Gallia Lugdunensis, Gallia Belgica, Germania Superior and Inferior, and parts of the previously unconquered Germania Magna. Additionally, minor Germanic tribes – the Vandals, the Suebi, the Burgundians, the Alemanni, and later the Lombards − also established their kingdoms in Roman territory in the West.
Romano-Germanic cultural contact begins as early as the first Roman accounts of the Germanic peoples. Roman influence is perceptible beyond the boundaries of the empire, in the Northern European Roman Iron Age of the first centuries AD. The nature of this cultural contact changes with the decline of the Roman Empire and the beginning Migration period in the wake of the crisis of the third century: the “barbarian” peoples of Germania Magna formerly known as mercenaries and traders now came as invaders and eventually as a new ruling elite, even in Italy itself, beginning with Odoacer’s rise to the rank of Dux Italiae in 476 AD.
The cultural syncretism was most pronounced in Francia. In West Francia, the nucleus of what was to become France, the Frankish language was eventually extinct, but not without leaving significant traces in the emerging Romance language. In East Francia on the other hand, the nucleus of what was to become the kingdom of Germany and ultimately German-speaking Europe, the syncretism was less pronounced since only its southernmost portion had ever been part of the Roman Empire, as Germania Superior: all territories on the right hand side of the Rhine remain Germanic-speaking. Those parts of the Germanic sphere extends along the left of the Rhine, including the Swiss plateau, the Alsace, the Rhineland and Flanders, are the parts where Romano-Germanic cultural contact remains most evident.
Early Germanic law reflects the coexistence of Roman and Germanic cultures during the Migration period in applying separate laws to Roman and Germanic individuals, notably the Lex Romana Visigothorum (506), the Lex Romana Curiensis and the Lex Romana Burgundionum. The separate cultures amalgamated after Christianisation, and by the Carolingian period the distinction of Roman vs. Germanic subjects had been replaced by the feudal system of the Three Estates of the Realm.
With a renewed close attention to the history and literature of ancient Rome in the 12th century, the mediaeval aristocracy saw itself mirrored in the accounts of ancient Roman nobility. Some made doubtful claims to direct descent from Roman aristocracy. In the 19th century, German, Luth and French mediaevalists worried about the origins of the great mediaeval families. Did the great families descend from the aristocracy of the Roman Empire or from the barbarian chieftains who invaded the Roman Empire between 400 and 600? Did the families originate in the Latin or Germanic world? Both, it seems. Mediaeval Western Europe was an amalgam of Roman and ‘Barbarian’ bloodlines. The cultural and genetic influence of the Visigoths, Franks, et al. is readily apparent in the socio-cultural and political framework of Mediaeval Europe. In spite of this, the legacy of Rome, both social-cultural and genetic pervaded every aspect of Mediaeval society – this was of course greatly assisted by the mediaeval Church.
The initial trouble for the later Roman Empire came from East Germanic speakers, with various tribal groups such as the Vandals and Burgundians traversing Europe. However, it was the Goths who notably contributed to the linguistic record of the East Germanic languages. Originating from the lower Vistula, they migrated to present-day Ukraine. Later, facing pressure from the Huns, they moved into the Balkans and eventually into Western Europe. Among them, the Visigoths settled in Spain, shaping its post-Roman state, while the Ostrogoths became custodians of the last Roman emperors in Italy. By the eighth century, linguistic assimilation into Romance-speaking populations had largely absorbed the Goths of Spain and Italy. Wulfila, a prominent Christian missionary and later bishop of the Visigoths, translated the Bible into Gothic while they resided in the northeast Balkans, providing a significant linguistic record of Gothic and East Germanic. A small group of Ostrogoths left in Crimea resurfaced in the sixteenth century through a wordlist compiled by Ogier de Busbecq, the Holy Roman Emperor’s ambassador to the Sublime Porte. However, these Crimean Gothic speakers disappeared linguistically shortly after Busbecq documented their vocabulary.
Gothic Luthic
The earliest varieties of a Luthic language, collectively known as Gothic Luthic or “Gotho-Luthic”, evolved from the contact of Latin dialects and East Germanic languages. A considerable amount of East Germanic vocabulary was incorporated into Luthic over some five centuries. Approximately 1,200 uncompounded Luthic words are derived from Gothic and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European. Of these 1,200, 700 are nouns, 300 are verbs and 200 are adjectives. Luthic has also absorbed many loanwords, most of which were borrowed from West Germanic languages of the Early Middle Ages.
Only a few documents in Gothic Luthic have survived – not enough for a complete reconstruction of the language. Most Gothic Luthic-language sources are translations or glosses of other languages (namely, Greek and Latin), so foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts. Nevertheless, Gothic Luthic was probably very close to Gothic (it is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus). These are the primary sources:
- Codex Luthicus (Ravenna), two parts: 87 leaves
- It contains scattered passages from the New Testament (including parts of the gospels and the Epistles), from the Old Testament (Nehemiah), and some commentaries. The text likely had been somewhat modified by copyists. It was written using the Gothic alphabet, an alphabet used for writing the Gothic language. It was developed in the 4th century AD by Ulfilas (or Wulfila), a Gothic preacher of Cappadocian Greek descent, for the purpose of translating the Bible.
- Codex Ravennas (Ravenna), four parts: 140 leaves
- A civil code enacted under Theodoric the Great. The code covered the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy, but mainly Ravenna, as Theodoric devoted most of his architectural attention to his capital, Ravenna. Codex Ravennas was also written using the Gothic alphabet. The text likely had been somewhat modified by copyists. Together with four leaves, fragments of Romans 11–15 (a Luthic–Latin diglot).
Mediaeval Luthic
In the mediaeval period, Luthic emerged as a separate language from Gothic. The main written language was Latin, and the few Luthic-language texts preserved from this period are written in the Latin alphabet. From the 7th to the 16th centuries, Mediaeval Luthic gradually transformed through language contact with Old Italian, Langobardic and Frankish. During the Carolingian Empire (773–774), Charles conquered the Lombards and thus included northern Italy in his sphere of influence. He renewed the Vatican donation and the promise to the papacy of continued Frankish protection. Frankish was very strong, until Louis’ eldest surviving son Lothair I became Emperor in name but de facto only the ruler of the Middle Frankish Kingdom.
After the fall of Middle Francia and the rise of Holy Roman Empire, Louis II conquered Bari in 871 led to poor relations with the Eastern Roman Empire, which led to a lesser degree of the Greek influence present in Luthic.
English: “Luthic is our language, and we must defend our right to use it freely, Italian will never be our language, as the Italians don’t respect us”
Late Mediaeval Luthic
Fraugiani e Narri hanno rasda fre.
“Lords and jesters have free speech.”
Following the first Bible translation, the development of Luthic as a written language, as a language of religion, administration, and public discourse accelerated. In the second half of the 17th century, grammarians elaborated grammars of Luthic, first among them Þiudareico Bianchi’s 1657 Latin grammar De studio linguæ luthicæ.
De Studio Linguæ Luthicæ
De Studio Linguæ Luthicæ (English: On Study of the Luthic Language) often referred to as simply the Luthicæ (/lʌˈθiˌki, lʌθˈaɪˌki/ lu-THEE-KEE), is a book by Þiudareico Bianchi that expounds Luthic grammar. The Luthicæ is written in Latin and comprises two volumes, and was first published on 9 September 1657.
Book 1, De grammatica
Book 1, subtitled De grammatica (On grammar) concerns fundamental grammar features present in Luthic. It opens a collection of examples and Luthic–Latin diglot lemmata.
Book 2, De orthographia
Book 2, subtitled De orthographia (On orthography), is an exposition of the many vernacular orthographies Luthic had, and eventual suggestions for a universal orthography.
Etymology
The name of the Luths is hugely linked to the name of the Goths, itself one of the most discussed topics in Germanic philology. The autonym is attested as 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌸𐌹𐌿𐌳𐌰 (gutþiuda) (the status of this word as a Gothic autonym prior to the Ostrogothic period is disputed) on the Gothic calendar (in the Codex Ambrosianus A): þize ana gutþiudai managaize marwtre jah friþareikeikeis. However, on the basis of parallel formations in Germanic (svíþjóð; angelþēod) and non-Germanic (Old Irish cruithen-tuath) indicates that it means “land of the Goths, Gothia”, instead of a more literal translation “Gothpeople”. The first element however may be also the same element attested on the Ring of Pietrossa ᚷᚢᛏᚨᚾᛁ (gutanī). Roman authors of late antiquity did not classify the Goths as Germani. While the Gutones, the Pomeranian precursors of the Goths, and the Vandili, the Silesian ancestors of the Vandals, were still considered part of Tacitean Germania, the later Goths, Vandals, and other East Germanic tribes were differentiated from the Germans and were referred to as Scythians, Goths, or some other special names. The sole exception are the Burgundians, who were considered German because they came to Gaul via Germania. In keeping with this classification, post-Tacitean Scandinavians were also no longer counted among the Germans, even though they were regarded as close relatives. The word for Luthic is first attested as 𐌻𐌿𐌸𐌹𐌺𐍃 (luþiks) on the Codex Luthicus, named after so. The name was probably first recorded via Greco-Roman writers, as *Luthae, a formation similar to Getae, itself derived from *leuhtą. Ultimately meaning the lighters. 𐌻𐌿𐌸𐌹𐌺𐍃 is probably a corruption *leuhtą, *leuthą, *Luthae, influenced by gothus, then reborrowed via a Germanic language, where *-th- > -þ-.
Geographical distribution
Luthic is spoken mainly in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, where it is primarily spoken in Ravenna and its adjacent communes. Although Luthic is spoken almost exclusively in Emilia-Romagna, it has also been spoken outside of Italy. Luth and general Italian emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in the Americas) sometimes employ Luthic as their primary language. The largest concentrations of Luthic speakers are found in the provinces of Ravenna, Ferrara and Bologna (Metropolitan City of Bologna). The people of Ravenna live in tetraglossia, as Romagnol, Emilian and Italian are spoken in those provinces alongside Luthic.
According to a census by ISTAT (The Italian National Institute of Statistics), Luthic is spoken by an estimated 250,000 people, however only 149,500 are considered de facto natives, and approximately 50,000 are monolinguals.
Status and usage
As in most European countries, the minority languages are defined by legislation or constitutional documents and afforded some form of official support. In 1992, the Council of Europe adopted the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe.
Luthic is regulated by the Council for the Luthic Language (Luthic: Gafaurdo faul·la Rasda Lûthica [ɡɐˈfɔɾ.du fɔl‿lɐ ˈʁaz.dɐ ˈlu.tʰi.xɐ]) and the Luthic Community of Ravenna (Luthic: Gamaenescape Lûthica Ravennae [ɡɐˌmɛ.neˈska.fe ˈlu.tʰi.xɐ ʁɐˈvẽ.nɛ]). The existence of a regulatory body has removed Luthic, at least in part, from the domain of Standard Italian, its traditional Dachsprache, Luthic was considered an Italian dialect like many others until about World War II, but then it underwent ausbau.
Diglossia and code-switching
Luthic is recognised as a minor language in Ravenna. Italy’s official language is Italian, as stated by the framework law no. 482/1999 and Trentino Alto-Adige’s special Statute, which is adopted with a constitutional law. Around the world there are an estimated 64 million native Italian speakers and another 21 million who use it as a second language. Italian is often natively spoken in a regional variety, not to be confused with Italy’s regional and minority languages; however, the establishment of a national education system led to a decrease in variation in the languages spoken across the country during the 20th century. Standardisation was further expanded in the 1950s and 1960s due to economic growth and the rise of mass media and television (the state broadcaster RAI helped set a standard Italian).
Code-switching between Luthic, Emilian dialects and Italian is frequent among Luthic speakers, in both informal and formal settings (such as on television).
Education
Education in Italy is free and mandatory from ages six to sixteen, and consists of five stages: kindergarten (scuola dell’infanzia), primary school (scuola primaria), lower secondary school (scuola secondaria di primo grado), upper secondary school (scuola secondaria di secondo grado), and university (università). Although mostly in Italian, education is Luthic has been implemented in 2018 by Ravenna University. In 2018, the Italian secondary education was evaluated as below the OECD average. Italy scored below the OECD average in reading and science, and near OECD average in mathematics. Mean performance in Italy declined in reading and science, and remained stable in mathematics. Trento and Bolzano scored at an above the national average in reading. Compared to school children in other OECD countries, children in Italy missed out on a greater amount of learning due to absences and indiscipline in classrooms. A wide gap exists between northern schools, which perform near average, and schools in the South, that had much poorer results. The 2018 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study ranks children in Italy 16th for reading. Compared to school children in other OECD countries, children in Italy missed out on a greater amount of learning due to absences and indiscipline in classrooms.
Most of the Luths also speak Italian, this is commoner for Luth elders, and most of the Luth elders may speak only Italian because of the influence from the Fascist period, as the Fascist government endorsed a stringent education policy in Italy aiming at eliminating illiteracy, which was a serious problem in Italy at the time, as well as improving the allegiance of Italians to the state. The Fascist government’s first minister of education from 1922 to 1924 Giovanni Gentile recommended that education policy should focus on indoctrination of students into Fascism and to educate youth to respect and be obedient to authority. In 1929, education policy took a major step towards being completely taken over by the agenda of indoctrination.> In that year, the Fascist government took control of the authorization of all textbooks, all secondary school teachers were required to take an oath of loyalty to Fascism and children began to be taught that they owed the same loyalty to Fascism as they did to God. In 1933, all university teachers were required to be members of the National Fascist Party. From the 1930s to 1940s, Italy’s education focused on the history of Italy displaying Italy as a force of civilization during the Roman era, displaying the rebirth of Italian nationalism and the struggle for Italian independence and unity during the Risorgimento. In the late 1930s, the Fascist government copied Nazi Germany’s education system on the issue of physical fitness and began an agenda that demanded that Italians become physically healthy. Intellectual talent in Italy was rewarded and promoted by the Fascist government through the Royal Academy of Italy which was created in 1926 to promote and coordinate Italy’s intellectual activity.
Films and music
Most films and songs are in vernacular Italian, Luthic is seldom spoken in television and radio. Some educational shows hosted by the Luthic Community of Ravenna and Ravenna University are often in Standard Luthic.
Written media
Luthic is mostly found as written media, However newspapers usually use Italian and reserve Luthic for sarcastic commentaries and caricatures. Headlines in Luthic are common. The letter to the editor section often includes entire paragraphs in Luthic. Many newspapers also regularly publish personal columns in Luthic. Most comedies are written in Luthic. Comic books are often written in Luthic instead of Italian. In novels and short stories, most of the Luth authors, write the dialogues in their Luthic dialects.
Luthic regarded as an Italian dialect
Luthic lexicon is discrepant from those of other Romance languages, since most of the words present in Modern Luthic are ultimately of Germanic origin. The lexical differentiation was a big factor for the creation of an independent regulatory body. There were many attempts to assimilate Luthic into the Italian dialect continuum, as in recent centuries, the intermediate dialects between the major Romance languages have been moving toward extinction, as their speakers have switched to varieties closer to the more prestigious national standards. That has been most notable in France, owing to the French government’s refusal to recognise minority languages. For many decades since Italy’s unification, the attitude of the French government towards the ethnolinguistic minorities was copied by the Italian government. A movement called “Italianised Luthic Movement” (Luthic: Movimento Lûthicae Italianegiatae; Italian: Movimento per il Lutico Italianeggiato) tried to italianase Luthic’s vocabulary and reduce the inherited Germanic vocabulary, in order to assimilate Luthic as an Italian derived language; modern Luthic orthography was affected by this movement.
Almost all of the Romance languages spoken in Italy are native to the area in which they are spoken. Apart from Standard Italian, these languages are often referred to as dialetti “dialects”, both colloquially and in scholarly usage; however, the term may coexist with other labels like “minority languages” or “vernaculars” for some of them. Italian was first declared to be Italy's official language during the Fascist period, more specifically through the R.D.l., adopted on 15 October 1925, with the name of Sull'Obbligo della lingua italiana in tutti gli uffici giudiziari del Regno, salvo le eccezioni stabilite nei trattati internazionali per la città di Fiume. According to UNESCO's Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger, there are 31 endangered languages in Italy.
Standard Luthic
The basis of Standard Luthic was developed by the popular language spoken by the Ravennese people, whose was highly influenced by Gothic, together with other East Germanic substrate, such as Vandalic and Burgundian and other ancient West Germanic languages, mainly Frankish and Langobardic. Standard Luthic orthography was further influenced by Italian. Increasing mobility of the population and the dissemination of the language through mass media such as radio and television are leading to a gradual standardisation towards a “Standard Luthic” through the process of koineization.
Alphabet
Luthic has a shallow orthography, meaning very regular spelling with an almost one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. In linguistic terms, the writing system is close to being a phonemic orthography. The most important of the few exceptions are the following (see below for more details):
- The letter c represents the sound /k/ at the end of words and before the letters a, o, and u but represents the sound /t͡ʃ/ before the letters e and i.
- The letter g represents the sound /ɡ/ at the end of words and before the letters a, o, and u but represents the sound /d͡ʒ/ before the letters e and i. It also represents the sound /ŋ/ before c, q or g.
- The letter r represents the sound /ʁ/ onset or stressed intervocalic, /ɾ/ when intervocalic or nearby another consonant or at the end of words and /ʀ/ if doubled.
- The cluster sc /sk/ before the letters e and i represents the sound /ʃ/, geminate if intervocalic.
- The spellings ci and gi before another vowel represent only /t͡ʃ/ or /d͡ʒ/ with no /i/ ~ /j/ sound.
- Unless c or g precede stressed /i/ (pharmacia /pʰɐɾ.mɐˈtʃi.ɐ/ ‘pharmacy’, biologia /bjo.loˈdʒi.ɐ/ ‘biology’), these may be optionally spelt as cï and gï' (pharmacïa, biologïa).
- The spelling qu and gu always represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/.
- The spelling ġl and ġn represent the palatals /ʎ/ and /ɲ/ retrospectively; always geminate if intervocalic.
The Luthic alphabet is considered to consist of 22 letters; j, k, w, x, y are excluded, and often avoided in loanwords, as tacċi vs taxi, cċenophobo vs xenofobo, geins vs jeans, Giorque vs York, Valsar vs Walsar:
- The circumflex accent is used over vowels to indicate irregular stress.
- The digraphs ⟨ae, au, ei⟩ are used to indicate stressed /ɛ ɔ i/ retrospectively.
- In VCC structures and some Italian borrowings, the digraphs are not found.
- The overdot accent is used to over ⟨a, o⟩ to indicate coda /a o/.
- The letter o always represents the sound /u/ in coda.
- The overdot is also used over ⟨c, g⟩ to indicate palatalisation.
- The diaeresis accent is used to distinguish from a digraph or a diphthong.
- The letter ⟨s⟩ can symbolise voiced or voiceless consonants. ⟨s⟩ symbolises /s/ onset before a vowel, when clustered with a voiceless consonant (⟨p, f, c, q⟩), and when doubled (geminate); it symbolises /z/ when between vowels and when clustered with voiced consonants.
| Letter | Name | Historical name | IPA | Diacritics |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A, a | a [ˈa] | asga [ˈaz.ɡɐ] | /ɐ/ or /a/ | â, ȧ |
| B, b | bi [bi] | baerca [ˈbɛɾ.kɐ] | /b/ or /ʋ/ | — |
| C, c | ci [ˈt͡ʃi] | caunȯ [ˈkɔ.no] | /k/, /t͡ʃ/ or /x/ | ċ |
| D, d | di [ˈdi] | dago [ˈda.ɣ˕u] | /d/ or /ð̞/ | — |
| E, e | e [ˈɛ] | aeqqo [ˈɛk.kʷu] | /e/ or /ɛ/ | ê |
| F, f | effe [ˈɛf.fe] | faeho [ˈfɛ.hu] | /f/ or /p͡f/ | — |
| G, g | gi [ˈd͡ʒi] | geva [ˈd͡ʒe.vɐ] | /ɡ/, /d͡ʒ/, /ɣ˕/ or /ŋ/ | ġ |
| H, h | acca [ˈak.kɐ] | haġlo [ˈhaʎ.ʎu] | /h/ or /ç/ | — |
| I, i | i [ˈi] | eisso [ˈis.su] | /i/ or /j/ | ï |
| L, l | elle [ˈɛl.le] | lago [ˈla.ɣ˕u] | /l/ | — |
| M, m | emme [ˈẽ.me] | manno [ˈmɐ̃.nu] | /m/ | — |
| N, n | enne [ˈẽ.ne] | nauþo [ˈnɔ.θu] | /n/ | — |
| O, o | o [ˈɔ] | oþalȯ [oˈθa.lo] | /o/, /u/ or /ɔ/ | ô, ȯ |
| P, p | pi [ˈpi] | paerþa [ˈpɛɾ.t͡θɐ] | /p/ or /f/ | — |
| Q, q | qoppa [ˈkʷɔp.pɐ] | qaerþa [ˈkᶣɛɾ.t͡θɐ] | /kʷ/ | — |
| R, r | erre [ɛˈʀe] | raeda [ˈʁɛ.ð̞ɐ] | /ʀ/, /ʁ/ or /ɾ/ | — |
| S, s | esse [ɛsˈse] | sauila [ˈsɔj.lɐ] | /s/, /t͡s/ or /z/ | — |
| T, t | ti [ˈti] | teivo [ˈti.vu] | /t/ or /θ/ | — |
| Þ, þ | eþþe [ˈɛθ.θe] | þaurno [ˈθɔɾ.nu] | /θ/ or /t͡θ/ | — |
| U, u | u [ˈu] | uro [ˈu.ɾu] | /u/ or /w/ | û, ü |
| V, v | vi [ˈvi] | viġna [ˈviɲ.ɲɐ] | /v/ | — |
| Z, z | zi [ˈt͡si] | zetta [ˈt͡sɛt.tɐ] | /t͡s/ or /d͡z/ | — |
Luthic has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished by length and intensity. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for /d͡z/, /ʎ/, /ɲ/ , which are always geminate when between vowels, and /z/, which is always single. Geminate plosive and affricates are realised as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and /l/ are realised as lengthened continuants. When triggered by Gorgia Toscana, voiceless fricatives are always constrictive, but voiced fricatives are not very constrictive and often closer to approximants.
Phonology
There is a maximum of 8 oral vowels, 5 nasal vowels, 2 semivowels and 41 consonants; though some varieties of the language have fewer phonemes. Gothic, Frankish, northern Suebi, Langobardic, Lepontic and Cisalpine Gaulish (Roman Gaul) influences were highly absorbed into the local Vulgar Latin dialect. An early form of Luthic was already spoken in the Ostrogothic Kingdom during Theodoric’s reign and by the year 600 Luthic had already become the vernacular of Ravenna. Luthic developed in the region of the former Ostrogothic capital of Ravenna, from Late Latin dialects and Vulgar Latin. As Theodoric emerged as the new ruler of Italy, he upheld a Roman legal administration and scholarly culture while promoting a major building program across Italy, his cultural and architectural attention to Ravenna led to a most conserved dialect, resulting in modern Luthic.
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oral | nasal | oral | nasal | oral | nasal | |
| Close | i | ĩ | u | ũ | ||
| Close-mid | e | ẽ | o | õ | ||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɐ | ɐ̃ | ɔ | ||
| Open | a | |||||
Notes
When the mid vowels /ε, ɔ/ precede a nasal, they become close [ẽ] rather than [ε̃] and [õ] rather than [ɔ̃].
- /i/ is close front unrounded [i].
- /u/ is close back rounded [u].
- /e/ is close-mid front unrounded [e].
- /o/ is close-mid back rounded [o].
- /ɛ/ has been variously described as mid front unrounded [ɛ̝] and open-mid front unrounded [ɛ].
- /ɔ/ is somewhat fronted open-mid back rounded [ɔ̟].
- /ɐ/ is near-open central unrounded [ɐ].
- /a/ has been variously described as open front unrounded [a] and open central unrounded [ä].
Diphthongs and triphthongs
| Rising | je | jɛ | jo | jɔ | jɐ | ju |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| we | wɛ | wo | wɔ | wɐ | wi |
| Falling | ej | ɛj | oj | ɔj | ɐj |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ew | ɛw | ow | ɔw | ɐw |
| Rising | jwo |
|---|
| Falling | jɛj | jɔj | jɐj |
|---|---|---|---|
| wɛj | wɔj | wɐj |
Consonants
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | labialized | ||||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | (ŋʷ) | ||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p, pʰ | t, tʰ | k, kʰ | kʷ | ||||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | ɡʷ | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s θ | ʃ | ç | (x) | (h) | ||
| voiced | v | z | ʁ | ||||||
| Affricate | voiceless | (p͡f) | t͡s (t͡θ) | t͡ʃ | |||||
| voiceless | d͡z | d͡ʒ | |||||||
| Approximant | semivowel | j | w | ||||||
| lateral | l | ʎ | |||||||
| Gorgia Toscana | (ʋ) | (ð̞) | (ɣ˕) | ||||||
| Flap | ɾ | ||||||||
| Trill | ʀ | ||||||||
Notes
- Nasals:
- Plosives:
- /p/, /pʰ/ and /b/ are purely labial.
- /t/, /tʰ/ and /d/ are laminal dentialveolar [t̻, t̻ʰ, d̻].
- /k/ and /ɡ/ are pre-velar [k̟, ɡ̟] before /i, e, ɛ, j/.
- /kʷ/ and /ɡʷ/ are palato-labialised [kᶣ, ɡᶣ] before /i, e, ɛ, j/.
- Affricates:
- /p͡f/ is bilabial–labiodental and is only found as a common allophone.
- /t͡θ/ is dental and is only found as a common allophone.
- /t͡s/ and /d͡z/ are dentalised laminal alveolar [t̻͡s̪, d̻͡z̪].
- /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ are strongly labialised palato-alveolar [t͡ʃʷ, d͡ʒʷ].
- Fricatives:
- /f/ and /v/ are labiodental.
- /θ/ is dental.
- /s/ and /z/ are laminal alveolar [s̻, z̻].
- /ʃ/ is strongly labialised palato-alveolar [ʃʷ].
- /x/ is velar, and only found when triggered by Gorgia Toscana.
- /ʁ/ is uvular, but in anlaut is in free variation with [h].
- /h/ is glottal, but is in free variation with [x ~ ʁ], /h/ is palatal [ç] nearby /i, e, ɛ, j/. Word initial /h/ is often dropped off.
- Approximants, flap, trill and laterals:
- /ʋ/ is labiodental, and only found when triggered by Gorgia Toscana.
- /ð̞/ is dental, and only found when triggered by Gorgia Toscana.
- /j/ and /w/ are always geminate when intervocalic.
- /ɾ/ is alveolar [ɾ].
- /ɣ˕/ is velar, and only found when triggered by Gorgia Toscana.
- /ʀ/ is uvular [ʀ], but is in free variation with alveolar [r].
- /l/ is laminal alveolar [l̻].
- /ʎ/ is alveolo-palatal, always geminate when intervocalic.
Historical phonology
The phonological system of the Luthic language underwent many changes during the period of its existence. These included the palatalisation of velar consonants in many positions and subsequent lenitions. A number of phonological processes affected Luthic in the period before the earliest documentation. The processes took place chronologically in roughly the order described below (with uncertainty in ordering as noted).
Vowel system
The most sonorous elements of the syllable are vowels, which occupy the nuclear position. They are prototypical mora-bearing elements, with simple vowels monomoraic, and long vowels bimoraic. Latin vowels occurred with one of five qualities and one of two weights, that is short and long /i e a o u/. At first, weight was realised by means of longer or shorter duration, and any articulatory differences were negligible, with the short:long opposition stable. Subtle articulatory differences eventually grow and lead to the abandonment of length, and reanalysis of vocal contrast is shifted solely to quality rather than both quality and quantity; specifically, the manifestation of weight as length came to include differences in tongue height and tenseness, and quite early on, /ī, ū/ began to differ from /ĭ, ŭ/ articulatorily, as did /ē, ō/ from /ĕ, ŏ/. The long vowels were stable, but the short vowels came to be realised lower and laxer, with the result that /ĭ, ŭ/ opened to [ɪ, ʊ], and /ĕ, ŏ/ opened to [ε, ɔ]. The result is the merger of Latin /ĭ, ŭ/ and /ē, ō/, since their contrast is now realised sufficiently be their distinct vowel quality, which would be easier to articulate and perceive than vowel duration.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i iː ĩː | u uː ũː | |
| Mid | e eː ẽː | o oː õː | |
| Open | ä äː ä̃ː |
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | ɪ iː ĩː | ʊ uː ũː | |
| Mid | ε eː ẽː | ɔ oː õː | |
| Open | ä äː ä̃ː |
Unstressed a resulted in a slightly raised a [ɐ]. In hiatus, unstressed front vowels become /j/, while unstressed back vowels become /w/.
In addition to monophthongs, Luthic has diphthongs, which, however, are both phonemically and phonetically simply combinations of the other vowels. None of the diphthongs are, however, considered to have distinct phonemic status since their constituents do not behave differently from how they occur in isolation, unlike the diphthongs in other languages like English and German. Grammatical tradition distinguishes “falling” from “rising” diphthongs, but since rising diphthongs are composed of one semiconsonantal sound [j] or [w] and one vowel sound, they are not actually diphthongs. The practice of referring to them as “diphthongs” has been criticised by phoneticians like Alareico Villavolfo.
Cluster smoothing
Clusters such as -p.t- -k.t- -x.t- are always smoothed to -t.t-.
- Latin aptus [ˈäp.t̪us̠ ~ ˈäp.t̪ʊs̠] > Luthic atto [ˈat.tu]
- Latin āctuālis [äːk.t̪uˈäː.lʲis̠ ~ äːk.t̪uˈäː.lʲɪs̠] > Luthic attuale [ɐtˈtwa.le]
- Gothic ahtau [ˈax.tɔː] > Luthic attau [ˈat.tɔ]
- Gothic nahts [naxts] > Luthic natto [ˈnat.tu]
This is also valid for other CC clusters with similar manner or place.
Absorption of nasals before fricatives
This is the source of such alterations as modern Standard Luthic fimfe [ˈfĩ.(p͡)fe] “five”, monþo [ˈmõ.(t͡)θu] “mouth” versus Gothic 𐍆𐌹𐌼𐍆 [ˈɸimɸ] “id.”, 𐌼𐌿𐌽𐌸𐍃 [ˈmunθs] “id.” and German fünf [fʏnf] “id.”, Mund [mʊnt] “id.”.
Monophthongization
The diphthongs au, ae and oe [au̯, ae̯, oe̯] were monophthongized (smoothed) to [ɔ, ɛ, e] by Gothic influence, as the Germanic diphthongs /ai/ and /au/ appear as digraphs written ⟨ai⟩ and ⟨au⟩ in Gothic. Researchers have disagreed over whether they were still pronounced as diphthongs /ai̯/ and /au̯/ in Ulfilas' time (4th century) or had become long open-mid vowels: /ɛː/ and /ɔː/: 𐌰𐌹𐌽𐍃 (ains) [ains] / [ɛːns] “one” (German eins, Icelandic einn), 𐌰𐌿𐌲𐍉 (augō) [auɣoː] / [ɔːɣoː] “eye” (German Auge, Icelandic auga). It is most likely that the latter view is correct, as it is indisputable that the digraphs ⟨ai⟩ and ⟨au⟩ represent the sounds /ɛː/ and /ɔː/ in some circumstances (see below), and ⟨aj⟩ and ⟨aw⟩ were available to unambiguously represent the sounds /ai̯/ and /au̯/. The digraph ⟨aw⟩ is in fact used to represent /au/ in foreign words (such as 𐍀𐌰𐍅𐌻𐌿𐍃 (Pawlus) “Paul”), and alternations between ⟨ai⟩/⟨aj⟩ and ⟨au⟩/⟨aw⟩ are scrupulously maintained in paradigms where both variants occur (e.g. 𐍄𐌰𐌿𐌾𐌰𐌽 (taujan) “to do” vs. past tense 𐍄𐌰𐍅𐌹𐌳𐌰 (tawida) “did”). Evidence from transcriptions of Gothic names into Latin suggests that the sound change had occurred very recently when Gothic spelling was standardised: Gothic names with Germanic au are rendered with au in Latin until the 4th century and o later on (Austrogoti > Ostrogoti).
Palatalisation
Early evidence of palatalized pronunciations of /tj kj/ appears as early as the 2nd–3rd centuries AD in the form of spelling mistakes interchanging ⟨ti⟩ and ⟨ci⟩ before a following vowel, as in ⟨tribunitiae⟩ for tribuniciae. This is assumed to reflect the fronting of Latin /k/ in this environment to [c ~ t͡sʲ]. Palatalisation of the velar consonants /k/ and /ɡ/ occurred in certain environments, mostly involving front vowels; additional palatalisation is also found in dental consonants /t/, /d/, /l/ and /n/, however, these are often not palatalised in word initial environment.
- Latin amīcus [äˈmiː.kus̠ ~ äˈmiː.kʊs̠], amīcī [äˈmiː.kiː] > Luthic amico [ɐˈmi.xu], amici [ɐˈmi.t͡ʃi].
- Gothic giba [ˈɡiβa] > Luthic geva [ˈd͡ʒe.vɐ].
- Latin ratiō [ˈrä.t̪i.oː] > Luthic razione [ʁɐˈd͡zjo.ne]
- Latin fīlius [ˈfiː.li.us̠ ~ ˈfiː.lʲi.ʊs̠] > Luthic fiġlo [ˈfiʎ.ʎu].
- Latin līnea [ˈliː.ne.ä ~ ˈlʲiː.ne.ä] , pugnus [ˈpuŋ.nus̠ ~ ˈpʊŋ.nʊs̠], ācrimōnia [äː.kriˈmoː.ni.ä ~ äː.krɪˈmoː.ni.ä] > Luthic liġna [ˈliɲ.ɲɐ], poġno [ˈpoɲ.ɲu], acremoġna [ɐ.kɾeˈmoɲ.ɲɐ].
Labio-velars remain unpalatalised, except in monosyllabic environment:
- Latin quis [kʷis̠ ~ kʷɪs̠] > Luthic ce [t͡ʃe].
- Gothic qiman [ˈkʷiman] > Luthic qemare [kʷeˈma.ɾe ~ kᶣeˈma.ɾe].
In some cases, palatalisation occurs word initially, mainly if /kn/ is the initial cluster:
- Gothic knōþs [knoːθs] > Luthic ġnode [ˈɲo.ð̞e].
- Gothic kunnan [ˈkunːan], influenced by Latin (co)gnōscere [koŋˈnoːs̠.ke.re ~ kɔŋˈnoːs̠.kɛ.rɛ] and later Langobardic *knājan */ˈknaːjan/ > Luthic ġnoscere [ɲoʃˈʃe.ɾe]
- Langobardic *knohha /ˈknoxːa ~ ˈknɔxːa/ > Luthic ġnocco [ˈɲɔk.ku].
It may not happen if intervocalic:
- Gothic kēlikn [ˈkeːlikn] > Luthic celecna [t͡ʃeˈlek.nɐ].
- Gothic auknan [ˈɔːknan] > Luthic aucnare [ɔkˈna.ɾe].
Lenition
The Gotho-Romance family suffered very few lenitions, but in most cases the stops /p t k/ are lenited to /b d ɡ/ if not in onset position, before or after a sonorant or in intervocalic position as a geminate. A similar process happens with /b/ that is lenited to /v/ in the same conditions. The non-geminate rhotic present in Latin is simplified to /ɾ ʁ/. The unstressed labio-velar /kʷ/ delabialises before hard vowels, as in:
- Gothic ƕan [ʍan] > *[kʷɐn] > Luthic can [kɐn].
- Latin nunquam [ˈnuŋ.kʷä̃ː ~ ˈnʊŋ.kʷä̃ː] > Luthic nogca [ˈnoŋ.kɐ].
Luthic is further affected by the Gorgia Toscana effect, where every plosive is spirantised (or further approximated if voiced). Plosives, however, are not affected if:
- Geminate.
- Labialised.
- Nearby another fricative.
- Nearby a rhotic, a lateral or nasal.
- Stressed and anlaut.
Fortition
In every case, /j/ and /w/ are fortified to /d͡ʒ/ and /v/, except when triggered by hiatus collapse. The Germanic /ð/ and /xʷ ~ hʷ ~ ʍ/ are also fortified to /d/ and /kʷ/ in every position; which can be further lenited to /d͡z/ and /k ~ t͡ʃ/ in the environments given above. The Germanic /h ~ x/ is fortified to /k/ before a rhotic or a lateral, as in:
- Gothic hlaifs [ˈhlɛːɸs] > Luthic claefo [ˈklɛ.fu].
- Gothic hriggs [ˈhriŋɡs ~ ˈhriŋks] > Luthic creggo [ˈkɾeŋ.ɡu].
Coda consonants with similar articulations often sandhi, triggering a kind of syntactic gemination, it also happens with oxytones:
- Ed þû, ce taugis? [e‿θˈθu | t͡ʃe ˈtɔ.d͡ʒis].
- La cittâ stâþ sporca [lɐ t͡ʃitˈta‿sˈsta‿sˈspoɾ.kɐ].
Regarding the absorption of nasals before fricatives, voiceless fricatives are often fortified to affricates after alveolar consonants, such as /n l ɾ/, or general nasals:
- Il monþo [i‿mˈmõ.t͡θu].
- L’inferno [l‿ĩˈp͡fɛɾ.nu].
- La salsa [lɐ ˈsal.t͡sɐ].
- L’arsenale [l‿ɐɾ.t͡seˈna.le].
Deletion
In some rare cases, the consonants are fully deleted (elision), as in the verb havere, akin to Italian avere, which followed a very similar paradigm and evolution:
- 1st person indicative present: Latin habeō, Gothic haba, Luthic hô, Italian ho.
- 2nd person indicative present: Latin habēs, Gothic habais, Luthic hais, Italian hai.
- 3rd person indicative present: Latin habet, Gothic habaiþ, Luthic hâþ, Italian ha.
Vowels other than /a/ are often syncopated in unstressed word-internal syllables, especially when in contact with liquid consonants:
- Latin angulus [ˈäŋ.ɡu.ɫ̪us̠ ~ ˈäŋ.ɡʊ.ɫ̪ʊs̠] > Luthic agglo [ˈaŋ.ɡlu].
- Latin speculum [ˈs̠pɛ.ku.ɫ̪ũː ~ ˈs̠pɛ.kʊ.ɫ̪ũː] ~ Luthic speclȯ [ˈspɛ.klo].
- Latin avunculus [äˈu̯uŋ.ku.ɫ̪us̠ ~ äˈu̯ʊŋ.kʊ.ɫ̪ʊs̠] > Luthic avogclo [ɐˈvoŋ.klu].
Phonotactics
Luthic allows up to three consonants in syllable-initial position, though there are limitations. The syllable structure of Luthic is (C)(C)(C)(G)V(G)(C)(C). As with English, there exist many words that begin with three consonants. Luthic lacks bimoraic (diphthongs and long vowels), as the so-called diphthongs are composed of one semiconsonantal (glide) sound [j] or [w].
| C₁ | C₂ | C₃ |
|---|---|---|
| f v p b t d k ɡ | ɾ | j w |
| s | p k | ɾ l |
| s | f t | ɾ |
| z | b | l |
| z | d ɡ | ɾ |
| z | m n v d͡ʒ ɾ l | — |
| p b f v k ɡ | ɾ l | — |
| ɡ | n l | — |
| pʰ t tʰ kʰ d | ɾ | — |
| θ | v ɾ | — |
| kʷ ɡʷ t͡s t͡ʃ d͡ʒ ʃ h ð ʁ ɲ l ʎ | — | — |
CC
- /s/ + any voiceless stop or /f/;
- /z/ + any voiced stop, /v d͡ʒ m n l ɾ/;
- /f v/, or any stop + /ɾ/;
- /f v/, or any stop except /t d/ + /l/;
- /f v s z/, or any stop or nasal + /j w/;
- In Graeco-Roman words origin which are only partially assimilated, other combinations such as /pn/ (e.g. pneumatico), /mn/ (e.g. mnemonico), /tm/ (e.g. tmesi), and /ps/ (e.g. pseudo-) occur.
As an onset, the cluster /s/ + voiceless consonant is inherently unstable. Phonetically, word-internal s+C normally syllabifies as [s.C]. A competing analysis accepts that while the syllabification /s.C/ is accurate historically, modern retreat of i-prosthesis before word initial /s/+C (e.g. miþ isforza “with effort” has generally given way to miþ sforzȧ) suggests that the structure is now underdetermined, with occurrence of /s.C/ or /.sC/ variable “according to the context and the idiosyncratic behaviour of the speakers.”
CCC
- /s/ + voiceless stop or /f/ + /ɾ/;
- /z/ + voiced stop + /ɾ/;
- /s/ + /p k/ + /l/;
- /z/ + /b/ + /l/;
- /f v/ or any stop + /ɾ/ + /j w/.
| V₁ | V₂ | V₃ |
|---|---|---|
| a ɐ e ɛ | i [j] u [w] | — |
| o ɔ | i [j] | — |
| i [j] | e o | — |
| i [j] | ɐ ɛ ɔ | i [j] |
| i [j] | u [w] | o |
| u [w] | ɐ ɛ ɔ | i [j] |
| u [w] | e o | — |
| u [w] | i | — |
The nucleus is the only mandatory part of a syllable and must be a vowel or a diphthong. In a falling diphthong the most common second elements are /i̯/ or /u̯/. Combinations of /j w/ with vowels are often labelled diphthongs, allowing for combinations of /j w/ with falling diphthongs to be called triphthongs. One view holds that it is more accurate to label /j w/ as consonants and /jV wV/ as consonant-vowel sequences rather than rising diphthongs. In that interpretation, Luthic has only falling diphthongs (phonemically at least, cf. Synaeresis) and no triphthongs.
| C₁ | C₂ |
|---|---|
| m n l ɾ | Cₓ |
| Cₓ | — |
Luthic permits a small number of coda consonants. Outside of loanwords, the permitted consonants are:
- The first element of any geminate.
- A nasal consonant that is either /n/ (word-finally) or one that is homorganic to a following consonant.
- /ɾ/ and /l/.
- /s/ (though not before fricatives).
Prosody
Luthic is quasi-paroxytonic, meaning that most words receive stress on their penultimate (second-to-last) syllable. Monosyllabic words tend to lack stress in their only syllable, unless emphasised or accentuated. Enclitic and other unstressed personal pronouns do not affect stress patterns. Some monosyllabic words may have natural stress (even if not emphasised), but it is weaker than those in polysyllabic words.
- rasda (ʀᴀ-sda ~ ʀᴀs-da) /ˈʁa.zdɐ ~ ˈʁaz.dɐ/;
- Italia (i-ᴛᴀ-lia) /iˈta.ljɐ];
- approssimativamente (ap-pros-si-ma-ti-va-ᴍᴇɴ-te) /ɐp.pɾos.si.mɐ.θi.vɐˈmen.te/.
Compound words have secondary stress on their penultimate syllable. Some suffixes also maintain the suffixed word secondary stress.
- panzar + campo + vaġno > panzarcampovaġno (ᴘᴀɴ-zar-ᴄᴀᴍ-po-ᴠᴀ-ġno) /ˌpan.t͡sɐɾˌkam.poˈvaɲ.ɲu/;
- broþar + -scape > broþarscape (ʙʀᴏ-þar-sᴄᴀ-pe) /ˌbɾo.θɐɾˈska.fe/.
Secondary stress is however often omitted by Italian influence. Tetrasyllabic (and beyond) words may have a very weak secondary stress in the fourth-to-last syllable (i.e. two syllables before the main or primary stress).
Research
Luthic is a well-studied language, and multiple universities in Italy have departments devoted to Luthic or linguistics with active research projects on the language, mainly in Ravenna, such as the Linguistic Circle of Ravenna (Luthic: Creizzo Rasdavitascapetico Ravennai; Italian: Circolo Linguistico di Ravenna) at Ravenna University, and there are many dictionaries and technological resources on the language. The language council Gafaurdo faul·la Rasda Lûthica also publishes research on the language both nationally and internationally. Academic descriptions of the language are published both in Luthic, Italian and English. The most complete grammar is the Grammatica ġli Lûthicae Rasdae (Grammar of the Luthic Language) by Alessandro Fiscar & Luca Vaġnar, and it is written in Luthic and contains over 800 pages. Multiple corpora of Luthic language data are available. The Luthic Online Dictionary project provides a curated corpus of 35,000 words.
History
The Ravenna School of Linguistics evolved around Giovanni Laggobardi and his developing theory of language in linguistic structuralism. Together with Soġnafreþo Rossi he founded the Circle of Linguistics of Ravenna in 1964, a group of linguists based on the model of the Prague Linguistic Circle. From 1970, Ravenna University offered courses in languages and philosophy but the students were unable to finish their studies without going to Accademia della Crusca for their final examinations.
- Ravenna University Circle of Phonological Development (Luthic: Creizzo Sviluppi Phonologici giȧ Accademiȧ Ravennȧ) was developed in 1990, however very little research has been done on the earliest stages of phonological development in Luthic.
- Ravenna University Circle of Theology (Luthic: Creizzo Theologiae giȧ Accademiȧ Ravennȧ) was developed in 2000 in association with the Ravenna Cathedral or Metropolitan Cathedral of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Luthic: Cathedrale metropolitana deï Osstassi Unsari Siġnori Gesosi Christi; Italian: Cattedrale metropolitana della Risurrezione di Nostro Signore Gesù Cristo; Duomo di Ravenna).
Phonological development
Phonological development refers to how children learn to organize sounds into meaning or language (phonology) during their stages of growth.
Phoneme inventory and phonotactics
Word-final consonants are rarely produced during the early stages of word production. Consonants are usually found in word-initial position, or in intervocalic position. At 6 months, infants are also able to make use of prosodic features of the ambient language to break the speech stream they are exposed to into meaningful units, e.g., they are better able to distinguish sounds that occur in stressed vs. unstressed syllables. This means that at 6 months infants have some knowledge of the stress patterns in the speech they are exposed and they have learned that these patterns are meaningful.
10 months
Most consonants are word-initial only: They are voiced stops /d/, /b/ and the nasal /m/. A presence of voiceless stops is also found as /t/, /p/ and rarely /k/; who can be allphones of each other. A preference for a front place of articulation is present. Clicks are also present, although mostly for imitative suckling sounds.
Babbling becomes distinct from previous, less structured vocal play. Initially, syllable structure is limited to CVCV, called reduplicated babbling. Consonant clusters are still absent. Children’s first ten words appear around month 12, and take CVCV format, such as mama “mother”, papa “father” and dada “give me!”.
21 months
More phones now appear: the nasal /n/, the voiceless fricative /t͡ʃ/, who can be an allphone of /t ~ d/; as voice is still not a distinctive feature, and the liquid /l/. The preference for front articulation is still present, triggering palatalisation.
24 months
Fricatives may appear: /f ~ v/ and /s/ (who can be further palatalised to /ʃ/), primarily at intervocalic position. Voice may become a distinctive feature at this stage. Onomatopoeiae are also produced, such as /aw aw/ for dog’s barking; /ow/, or preferably /aj/ for denoting pain. Production of trisyllabic words begins, such as C₁VC₂VC₃V. Consonant clusters are now present and are often subject to consonant harmony, such as -mb-, -nd- and -dɾ-; however voiced-voiceless clusters are still rare, such as -mp- and -tɾ-.
30 months
Approximately equal numbers of phones are now produced in word-initial and intervocalic position. Additions to the phonetic inventory are the voiced stop /ɡ/ and a few consonant clusters. Co-articulations are perceived, such as labio-velar plosives and the aspirated plosive series. Alveolars and bilabials are the two most common places of articulation. Labiodental and postalveolar production increases throughout development, while velar production decreases. Luthic lenitions also become evident, as more fricatives and approximants are produced. Children develop syllabic segmentation awareness earlier than phonemic segmentation awareness.
Word processes
These phonological processes may happen within a range of 3 to 6 years.
- Nasal assimilation: non-nasal sounds often become nasal sound due to a nasal sound in the word [ˈʁɛn.dɐ] > [ˈnen.nɐ];
- Weak syllable deletion: word-initial and word-terminal unstressed syllables are often omitted [bɐˈna.nɐ] > [ˈna.nɐ];
- Coda deletion: omission of general coda consonant and the final consonant in the word [kɐɾ] > [kɐ], [ˈbɾo.θɐɾ] > [ˈbɾo.θɐ] ([ˈbɾo]);
- Consonant harmony: a target word consonant takes on features of another target word consonant , [kɐn] > [kɐŋ], [ˈstɛk.kɐ] > [ˈstɛt.tɐ] ([ˈstɛt ~ ˈstɛ]);
- Coalescence: adjacent consonants are merged into one with similar features [ˈzbaf.fu] > [ˈvaf.fu];
- Cluster reduction: consonant clusters are often simplifed into a single consonant [oˈʁek.klɐ] > [oˈʁel.lɐ] ([ˈʁel.lɐ]);
- Velar fronting: velar plosives are often replaced by alveolar ones nearby a front vowel [ki] > [ti];
- Stopping or affrication: fricatives are often fortified nearby a front vowel [si] > [ti ~ t͡ʃi];
- Gliding: taps and liquids are replaced by a glide [ˈka.ɾu] > [ˈka.wu], [ˈaʎ.ʎo] > [ˈaj.jo].
6 years
Children produce mostly adult-like segments. Their ability to produce complex sound sequences and multisyllabic words continues to improve throughout middle childhood.
Typology
Luthic has right symmetry, as other VO languages (verb before object) like English.
| Correlation | VO language | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Adposition type | prepositions | of..., than..., on... |
| Order of noun and genitive | noun before genitive | father + of John |
| Order of adjective and standard of comparison | adjective before standard | taller + than Bob |
| Order of verb and adpositional phrase | verb before adpositional phrase | slept + on the floor |
| Order of verb and manner adverb | verb before manner adverb | ran + slowly |
| Order of copula and predicative | copula before predicate | is + a teacher |
| Order of auxiliary verb and content verb | auxiliary before content verb | want + to see Mary |
| Place of adverbial subordinator in clause | clause-initial subordinators | because + Bob has left |
| Order of noun and relative clause | noun before relative clause | movies + that we saw |
WALS
The Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials (such as reference grammars) by a team of 55 authors.
| WALS | Luthic | Italian¹ | Romanian¹ | English | German | Icelandic¹ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Headed | Mixed | Mixed | Mixed | Mixed | Mixed | Mixed | |
| Typology | Analytic (partially) | Analytic (partially) | Analytic (partially) | Analytic (partially) | Analytic (partially) | Analytic (partially) | |
| Isochrony | Syllable | Syllable | Stress | Stress | Stress | Syllable | |
| Pro-drop | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Mostly (colloquial) | No | |
| Consonant Inventories | 1A | Large | Average | Average | Average | Average | Average |
| Vowel Quality Inventories | 2A | Large (7-14) | Average (5-6) | Large (7-14) | Large (7-14) | Large (7-14) | Large (7-14) |
| Consonant-Vowel Ratio | 3A | Moderately high | Average | Average | Low | Low | Low |
| Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives | 4A | In both plosives and fricatives | In both plosives and fricatives | In both plosives and fricatives | In both plosives and fricatives | In both plosives and fricatives | In both plosives and fricatives |
| Voicing and Gaps in Plosive Systems | 5A | None missing in /p t k b d g/ | None missing in /p t k b d g/ | None missing in /p t k b d g/ | None missing in /p t k b d g/ | None missing in /p t k b d g/ | None missing in /p t k b d g/ |
| Uvular Consonants | 6A | Uvular continuants only | None | None | None | Uvular continuants only | None |
| Glottalised Consonants | 7A | No glottalised consonants | No glottalised consonants | No glottalised consonants | No glottalised consonants | No glottalised consonants | No glottalised consonants |
| Lateral Consonants | 8A | /l/, no obstruent laterals | /l/, no obstruent laterals | /l/, no obstruent laterals | /l/, no obstruent laterals | /l/, no obstruent laterals | /l/, no obstruent laterals |
| The Velar Nasal | 9A | No initial velar nasal | No velar nasal | No velar nasal | No initial velar nasal | No initial velar nasal | No initial velar nasal |
| Vowel Nasalisation | 10A | Contrast present | Contrast absent | Contrast absent | Contrast absent | Contrast absent | Contrast absent |
| Front Rounded Vowels | 11A | None | None | None | None | High and mid | High and mid |
| Syllable Structure | 12A | Complex | Moderately complex | Moderately complex | Complex | Complex | Complex |
| Fixed Stress Locations | 14A | No fixed stress | No fixed stress | No fixed stress | No fixed stress | No fixed stress | Initial |
| Weight-Sensitive Stress | 15A | Right-oriented: One of the last three | Right-edge: Ultimate or penultimate | Right-edge: Ultimate or penultimate | Right-oriented: One of the last three | Right-oriented: One of the last three | Fixed stress (no weight-sensitivity) |
| Weight Factors in Weight-Sensitive Stress Systems | 16A | Lexical stress | Lexical stress | Lexical stress | Long vowel or coda consonant | Coda consonant | No weight |
| Rhythm Types | 17A | Undetermined | Undetermined | Undetermined | Trochaic | Trochaic | Trochaic |
| Absence of Common Consonants | 18A | All present | All present | All present | All present | All present | All present |
| Presence of Uncommon Consonants | 19A | ‘Th’ sounds | None | None | ‘Th’ sounds | None | ‘Th’ sounds |
| Fusion of Selected Inflectional Formatives | 20A | Exclusively concatenative | Exclusively concatenative | Exclusively concatenative | Exclusively concatenative | Exclusively concatenative | Exclusively concatenative |
| Exponence of Tense-Aspect-Mood Inflection | 21B | TAM+agreement | TAM+agreement | TAM+agreement | Monoexponential TAM | Monoexponential TAM | Monoexponential TAM |
| Inflectional Synthesis of the Verb | 22A | 4-5 categories per word | 4-5 categories per word | 4-5 categories per word | 2-3 categories per word | 2-3 categories per word | 2-3 categories per word |
| Locus of Marking in the Clause | 23A | Double marking | Double marking | Double marking | Dependent marking | Dependent marking | Dependent marking |
| Locus of Marking in Possessive Noun Phrases | 24A | Dependent marking | Dependent marking | Dependent marking | Dependent marking | Dependent marking | Dependent marking |
| Locus of Marking: Whole-language Typology | 25A | Inconsistent or other | Inconsistent or other | Inconsistent or other | Dependent-marking | Dependent-marking | Dependent-marking |
| Zero Marking of A and P Arguments | 25B | Non-zero marking | Non-zero marking | Non-zero marking | Non-zero marking | Non-zero marking | Non-zero marking |
| Prefixing vs. Suffixing in Inflectional Morphology | 26A | Strongly suffixing | Strongly suffixing | Strongly suffixing | Strongly suffixing | Strongly suffixing | Strongly suffixing |
| Reduplication | 27A | No productive reduplication | No productive reduplication | No productive reduplication | No productive reduplication | No productive reduplication | No productive reduplication |
| Case Syncretism | 28A | Core and non-core | Core and non-core | Core and non-core | Core cases only | Core and non-core | Core and non-core |
| Syncretism in Verbal Person/Number Marking | 29A | Syncretic | Syncretic | Syncretic | Syncretic | Syncretic | Syncretic |
- ¹ Some features and values are stipulated due to lack of resources.
Information rate
The concept of “information density” relates to how languages convey semantic information within the speech signal. Essentially, a language is considered dense if it uses fewer speech elements to convey a given amount of semantic meaning compared to a sparser language. Units such as features or articulatory gestures involve complex multidimensional patterns (such as gestural scores or feature matrices) that are unsuitable for computing average information density during speech communication. In contrast, each speech sample can be described in terms of discrete sequences of segments or syllables, which are potential candidates, although their exact significance and role in communication remain uncertain. Therefore, this study opts to utilise syllables for both methodological and theoretical reasons.
Assuming that for each text Tk, composed of σk(L) syllables in language L, the over-all semantic content Sk is equivalent from one language to another, the average quantity of information per syllable for Tk and for language L is calculated as in 1.
Since Sk is language-independent, it was eliminated by computing a normalised information density (ID) using Vietnamese (VI) as the benchmark. For each text Tk and language L, IDkL resulted from a pairwise comparison of the text lengths (in terms of syllables) in L and VI respectively.
Next, the average information density IDL (in terms of linguistic information per syllable) with reference to VI is defined as the mean of IDkL evaluated for the K texts.
| Language | IDL | Syllabic rate | Information rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | 0.91 | 6.19 | 1.08 |
| French | 0.74 | 7.18 | 0.99 |
| Italian | 0.72 | 6.99 | 0.96 |
| Spanish | 0.63 | 7.82 | 0.98 |
| German | 0.79 | 5.67 | 0.90 |
| Luthic | 0.81 | 6.45 | 0.97 |
| Vietnamese | 1 (reference) | 5.22 | 1 (reference) |
Another factor is the syllabic complexity index, being measured in two ways: type and token.
- Type complexity: considers each unique syllable only once when calculating the average complexity.
- Token complexity: takes into account the frequency of occurrence of each unique syllable in the corpus by weighting the complexity accordingly.
| Language | Syllable inventory size | Type complexity | Token complexity |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | 7,931 | 3.70 | 2.48 |
| French | 5,646 | 3.50 | 2.21 |
| Italian | 2,719 | 3.50 | 2.30 |
| Spanish | 1,593 | 3.30 | 2.40 |
| German | 4,207 | 3.70 | 2.68 |
| Luthic | 4,129 | 3.60 | 2.40 |
The Handbook of Luthic Linguistics, Culture and Religion
Aena lettura essenziale summȧ importanzȧ, inu andarogiugga.
“An essential lecture, of the highest importance, without equivalents.”
In 2012, a collaboration of the Circle of Linguistics, the Circle of Phonological Development and the Circle of Theology resulted in The Handbook of Luthic Linguistics, Culture and Religion (Luthic: Il Handobuoco Rasdavitascapeticae, Colturae e Religioni Lûthicae) initiated in 2005 by Lucia Giamane, designed to illuminate an area of knowledge that encompasses both general linguistics and specialised, philologically oriented linguistics as well as those fields of science that have developed in recent decades from the increasingly extensive research into the diverse phenomena of communicative action.
Mnemonics
A mnemonic device (/nɪˈmɒnɪk/ nih-MON-ik) or memory device is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval in the human memory, often by associating the information with something that is easier to remember.
A Luthic mnemonic verse or mnemonic rhyme is a mnemonic device for teaching and remembering Luthic grammar. Such mnemonics have been considered by teachers to be an effective technique for schoolchildren to learn the complex rules of Luthic accidence and syntax. Mnemonics may be helpful in learning foreign languages, for example by transposing difficult foreign words with words in a language the learner knows already, also called “cognates” which are very common in Romance languages and other Germanic languages. A useful such technique is to find linkwords, words that have the same pronunciation in a known language as the target word, and associate them visually or auditorially with the target word; such tecniques have been applied into Luthic learning for children, Italian and other dialleti speakers.
A Luthic rhyme for remembering the masculine nominative singular, masculine accusative singular and neuter nominato-accusative singular is given by many teachers during school first years:
buono: veġlȯ vessare
buonȯ: veġlȯ stare
ac e buonȯ? veġlȯ mangiare!
Translated it into English as follows:
good: I want to be
in a good place: I want to be in
but what about a good food? I want to eat!
The Ravenna University Circle of Phonological Development also found out that mnemonics can be used in aiding children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other neurodevelopmental disorders, patients with memory deficits that could be caused by head injuries, strokes, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and other neurological conditions, however, in the case of stroke patients, the results did not reach statistical significance.
Grammar
Luthic Grammar is the body of rules describing the properties of the Luthic language. Luthic words can be divided into the following lexical categories: articles, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.
Nouns
Luthic grammar is almost typical of the grammar of Romance languages in general. Cases exist for personal pronouns (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive), and unlike other Romance languages (except Romanian), they also exist for nouns, but are often ignored in common speech, mainly because of the Italian influence, a language who lacks noun cases. There are three basic classes of nouns in Luthic, referred to as genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. Masculine nouns typically end in -o, with plural marked by -i, feminine nouns typically end in -a, with plural marked by -ae, and neuter nouns typically end in -ȯ, with plural marked by -a. A fourth category of nouns is unmarked for gender, ending in -e in the singular and -i in the plural; a variant of the unmarked declension is found ending in -r in the singular and -i in the plural, it lacks neuter nouns:
Examples:
| Definition | Gender | Singular nominative | Plural nominative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Son | Masculine | Fiġlo | Fiġli |
| Flower | Feminine | Bloma | Blomae |
| Fruit | Neuter | Acranȯ | Acrana |
| Love | Masculine | Amore | Amori |
| Art | Feminine | Crafte | Crafti |
| Water | Neuter | Vadne | Vadni |
| King | Masculine | Regġe | Regġi |
| Heart | Neuter | Haertene | Haerteni |
| Father | Masculine | Fadar | Fadari |
| Mother | Feminine | Modar | Modari |
Declension paradigm in formal Standard Luthic:
| Number | Case | o-stem m | a-stem f | o-stem n | i-stem unm | r-stem unm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | nom. | dago | geva | hauviþȯ | crafte | broþar |
| acc. | dagȯ | geva | hauviþȯ | crafte | broþare | |
| dat. | dagȧ | gevȧ | hauviþȧ | crafti | broþari | |
| gen. | dagi | gevae | hauviþi | crafti | broþari | |
| Plural | nom. | dagi | gevae | hauviþa | crafti | broþari |
| acc. | dagos | gevas | hauviþa | craftes | broþares | |
| dat. | dagom | gevam | hauviþom | craftivo | broþarivo | |
| gen. | dagoro | gevaro | hauviþoro | craftem | broþarem |
A small class of quasi-irregular nouns is found, itself being a variant of the unmarked class. The nominative forms always are oxytones and hide their consonant stem -d-. These are often called d-stem:
| Number | Case | d-stem unm | d-stem unm | d-stem unm |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | nom. | piê | fê | -tâ |
| acc. | piede | fede | -tade | |
| dat. | piedi | fedi | -tadi | |
| gen. | piedi | fedi | -tadi | |
| Plural | nom. | piedi | fedi | -tadi |
| acc. | piedes | fedes | -tades | |
| dat. | piedivo | fedivo | -tadivo | |
| gen. | piedem | fedem | -tadem |
Pronouns
Luthic, like Latin and Gothic, inherited the full set of Indo-European pronouns: personal pronouns (including reflexive pronouns for each of the three grammatical persons), possessive pronouns, both simple and compound demonstratives, relative pronouns, interrogatives and indefinite pronouns. Each follows a particular pattern of inflection (partially mirroring the noun declension), much like other Indo-European languages. Although Luthic inherited a paradigm extremely close to Gothic (and Common Germanic), the Italic influence is visible in the genitive and plural formations.
| PIE | Latin | Gothic | German | Luthic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| *u̯ei̯ nom, *n̥s acc | nōs nom/acc | 𐍅𐌴𐌹𐍃 nom, 𐌿𐌽𐍃 acc | wir nom, uns acc | vi nom, unse acc |
| Number | Case | 1st person | 2st person | 3rd person | reflexive | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | feminine | neuter | |||||
| Singular | nom. | ic | þû | is | ia | ata | — |
| acc. | mic | þuc | inȯ | ina | ata | sic | |
| dat. | mis | þus | iȧ | iȧ | iȧ | sis | |
| dat. | meina | þeina | eis | isae | eis | seina | |
| Singular | nom. | vi | gi | eis | isae | ia | — |
| acc. | unse | isve | eis | isas | ia | sic | |
| dat. | unsis | isvis | eis | eis | eis | sis | |
| gen. | unsara | isvara | eisôro | eisâro | eisôro | seina | |
Pronouns often a clitic with imperative or after non-finite forms of verbs, being applied as enclitics.
| Number | Case | 1st person | 2st person | 3rd person | reflexive | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | feminine | neuter | |||||
| Singular | acc. | mi | þi ti¹ di² |
lȯ | la | lȯ | si |
| dat. | mi | þi ti¹ di² |
ġli | ġle | ġli | si | |
| gen. | — | — | ne | ne | ne | ne | |
| Plural | acc. | ci | vi | los | las | la | si |
| dat. | ci | vi | li | li | li | si | |
| gen. | — | — | ne | ne | ne | ne | |
- ¹ before voiceless fricatives or sonorants
- ² before voiced fricatives or sonorants
- These forms are often ignored or regarded as hypercorrection, commoner in Italian influenced sociolects.
| Number | Case | 1st person | 2st person | 3rd person | reflexive | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | feminine | neuter | |||||
| Singular | nom. | io | þû | is | ia | ata | — |
| acc. | me | þe | inȯ | ina | ata | sic | |
| dat. | mi | þi | iȧ | iȧ | iȧ | sis | |
| dat. | meina | þeina | eis | isae | eis | seina | |
| Singular | nom. | nôi | vôi | eis | isae | ia | — |
| acc. | nôi | vôi | eis | isas | ia | sic | |
| dat. | ci | vi | eis | eis | eis | sis | |
| gen. | nosâra | vosâra | eisôro | eisâro | eisôro | seina | |
- These forms are also common in everday speech due to Italian influence. Nevertheless, both declension paradigmata are considered to be correct. Main differences are emphasised.
| Number | Case | 1st person singular | 2st person singular | 3rd person singular | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | feminine | neuter | masculine | feminine | neuter | masculine | feminine | neuter | ||
| Singular | nom. | meino | meina | meinȯ | þeino | þeina | þeinȯ | seino | seina | seinȯ |
| acc. | meinȯ | meina | meinȯ | þeinȯ | þeina | þeinȯ | seinȯ | seina | seinȯ | |
| dat. | meinȧ | meinȧ | meinȧ | þeinȧ | þeinȧ | þeinȧ | seinȧ | seinȧ | seinȧ | |
| gen. | meini | meinae | meini | þeini | þeinae | þeini | seini | seinae | seini | |
| Plural | nom. | meini | meinae | meina | þeini | þeinae | þeina | seini | seinae | seina |
| acc. | meinos | meinas | meina | þeinos | þeinas | þeina | seinos | seinas | seina | |
| dat. | meinom | meinam | meinom | þeinom | þeinam | þeinom | seinom | seinam | seinom | |
| gen. | meinoro | meinaro | meinoro | þeinoro | þeinaro | þeinoro | seinoro | seinaro | seinoro | |
| Number | Case | 1st person singular | 2st person singular | 3rd person singular | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | feminine | neuter | masculine | feminine | neuter | masculine | feminine | neuter | ||
| Singular | nom. | unsar | unsara | unsarȯ | isvar | isvara | isvarȯ | seino | seina | seinȯ |
| acc. | unsare | unsara | unsarȯ | isvare | isvara | isvarȯ | seinȯ | seina | seinȯ | |
| dat. | unsari | unsarȧ | unsarȧ | isvari | isvarȧ | isvarȧ | seinȧ | seinȧ | seinȧ | |
| gen. | unsari | unsarae | unsari | isvari | isvarae | isvari | seini | seinae | seini | |
| Plural | nom. | unsari | unsarae | unsara | isvari | isvarae | isvara | seini | seinae | seina |
| acc. | unsares | unsaras | unsara | isvares | isvaras | isvara | seinos | seinas | seina | |
| dat. | unsarivo | unsaram | unsarom | isvarivo | isvaram | isvarom | seinom | seinam | seinom | |
| gen. | unsarem | unsararo | unsaroro | isvarem | isvararo | isvaroro | seinoro | seinaro | seinoro | |
The pronouns unsar, isvar have an irregular declension, being declined like an unmarked adjective in the masculine gender and marked in the other genders. Every possessive pronoun is declined like an o-stem adjective for masculine and neuter gender, while its feminine counterpart is declined as an a-stem adjective
Interrogative and indefinite pronouns are indeclinable by case and number:
| Interrogative pronouns | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|
| What | ce | ce | ce |
| Who | qo | qa | qȯ |
| Whom | ci | ci | ci |
| Which | carge | carge | carge |
| Whose | cogio | cogia | cogiȯ |
| Indefinite pronouns | Masculine | Feminine | Neuter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Each | caso | casa | casȯ |
| Every | cargiso | cargisa | cargisȯ |
| Whoever/Whatever | þecargiso | þecargisa | þecargisȯ |
The relative pronoun ei is fully indeclinable, it is sometimes called “common relative particle”.
Luthic has a Proximal-Medial-Distal demonstrative system:
| Number | Case | Proximal | Medial | Distal | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | feminine | neuter | masculine | feminine | neuter | masculine | feminine | neuter | ||
| Singular | nom. | so | sa | þata | este | esta | estȯ | giaeno | giaena | giaenȯ |
| acc. | þȯ | þa | þata | este | esta | estȯ | giaenȯ | giaena | giaenȯ | |
| dat. | þammo | þisae | þammo | esti | estȧ | estȧ | giaenȧ | giaenȧ | giaenȧ | |
| gen. | þis | þisae | þis | estis | estae | esti | giaeni | giaenae | giaeni | |
| Plural | nom. | þi | þae | þa | esti | estae | esta | giaeni | giaenae | giaena |
| acc. | þos | þas | þa | estes | estas | esta | giaenos | giaenas | giaena | |
| dat. | þom | þam | þom | estivo | estam | estom | giaenom | giaenam | giaenom | |
| gen. | þisaro | þisara | þisaro | estem | estaro | estoro | giaenoro | giaenaro | giaenoro | |
Articles
Luthic articles are used similarly to the English articles, a and the. However, they are declined differently according to the number, gender and case of their nouns.
| Number | Case | Indefinite | Definite | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| masculine | feminine | neuter | masculine | feminine | neuter | ||
| Singular | nom. | aeno | aena | aenȯ | il | la | lata, ata |
| acc. | aenȯ | aena | aenȯ | lȯ | la | lata, ata | |
| dat. | aenȧ | aenȧ | aenȧ | lȧ | lȧ | lȧ | |
| gen. | aeni | aenae | aeni | ġli, i | ġli, i | ġli, i | |
| Plural | nom. | aeni | aenae | aena | ġli, i | lae | la |
| acc. | aenos | aenas | aena | los | las | la | |
| dat. | aenom | aenam | aenom | lom | lam | lom | |
| gen. | aenoro | aenaro | aenoro | loro | loro | loro | |
Adjectives
In Luthic, an adjective can be placed before or after the noun. The unmarked placement for most adjectives is after the noun. Placing the adjective after the noun can alter its meaning or indicate restrictiveness of reference.
- Aeno buoco rosso “a red book” (unmarked)
- Aeno rosso buoco “a book that is red” (marked)
Adjectives are inflected for case, gender and number, the paradigmata are identical to the nominal paradigmata.
| Number | Case | o-stem m | a-stem f | o-stem n | i-stem unm | r-stem unm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | nom. | rosso | rossa | rossȯ | felice | polchar |
| acc. | rossȯ | rossa | rossȯ | felice | polchare | |
| dat. | rossȧ | rossȧ | rossȧ | felici | polchari | |
| gen. | rossi | rossae | rossi | felici | polchari | |
| Plural | nom. | rossi | rossae | rossa | felici | polchari |
| acc. | rossos | rossas | rossa | felices | polchares | |
| dat. | rossom | rossam | rossom | felicivo | polcharivo | |
| gen. | rossoro | rossaro | rossoro | felicem | polcharem |
Luthic has two grammatical constructions for expressing comparison: comparative and superlative. The suffixes -izo (the “comparative”) and -issimo (the “superlative”) are of Indo-European origin and are cognate with the Latin suffixes -ior and -issimus and Ancient Greek -ῑ́ων (-īōn) and -ῐστος (-istos). This system also contains a number of irregular forms, mainly because of suppletion.
Regular examples are:
- rosso “red” > rossizo “redder”
- rosso “red” > rossissimo “reddest”
- polchar “beautiful” > polcharizo “more beautiful”
- polchar “beautiful” > polcharissimo “most beautiful”
Irregular examples are:
- buono “good” > betizo “better”
- buono “good” > betissimo “best”
- malo “bad” > vaersizo “worse”
- malo “bad” > vaersissimo “worst”
| Number | Case | o-stem m | a-stem f | o-stem n |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | nom. | -izo | -iza | -izȯ |
| acc. | -izȯ | -iza | -izȯ | |
| dat. | -izȧ | -izȧ | -izȧ | |
| gen. | -izi | -izae | -izi | |
| Plural | nom. | -izi | -izae | -iza |
| acc. | -izos | -izas | -iza | |
| dat. | -izom | -izam | -izom | |
| gen. | -izoro | -izaro | -izoro |
| Number | Case | o-stem m | a-stem f | o-stem n |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | nom. | -issimo | -issima | -issimȯ |
| acc. | -issimȯ | -issima | -issimȯ | |
| dat. | -issimȧ | -issimȧ | -issimȧ | |
| gen. | -issimi | -issimae | -issimi | |
| Plural | nom. | -issimi | -issimae | -issima |
| acc. | -issimos | -issimas | -issima | |
| dat. | -issimom | -issimam | -issimom | |
| gen. | -issimoro | -issimaro | -issimoro |
Numerals
| # | Cardinal | Ordinal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Word | Declension | Word | Declension | |
| 0 | zephero | o-stem adjective, singulare tantum | zepherêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 1 | aeno | o-stem adjective | fromo | o-stem adjetive |
| 2 | tvi | o-stem adjective, plurale tantum | anþar | r-stem adjetive |
| 3 | þreis | indeclinable | þrigiane | i-stem adjetive |
| 4 | fidvor | indeclinable | fidvorêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 5 | fimfe | indeclinable | fimfêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 6 | sê | indeclinable | sesto | o-stem adjective |
| 7 | siu | indeclinable | siudo | o-stem adjective |
| 8 | attau | indeclinable | attudo | o-stem adjective |
| 9 | niu | indeclinable | niudo | o-stem adjective |
| 10 | ziu | indeclinable | ziudo | o-stem adjective |
| 11 | aellefe | indeclinable | aellefto | o-stem adjective |
| 12 | tvelefe | indeclinable | tvelefto | o-stem adjective |
| 13 | þreiziu | indeclinable | þreiziudo | o-stem adjective |
| 14 | fidvorziu | indeclinable | fidvorziudo | o-stem adjective |
| 15 | fimfeziu | indeclinable | fimfeziudo | o-stem adjective |
| 16 | seziu | indeclinable | seziudo | o-stem adjective |
| 17 | setteziu | indeclinable | setteziudo | o-stem adjective |
| 18 | tvedivinta | indeclinable | tvedivintêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 19 | aendivinta | indeclinable | aendivintêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 20 | vinta | indeclinable | vintêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 28 | tvediþreinta | indeclinable | tvediþreintêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 29 | aendiþreinta | indeclinable | aendiþreintêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 30 | þreinta | indeclinable | þreintêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 38 | tvedifidvorinta | indeclinable | tvedifidvorintêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 39 | aendifidvorinta | indeclinable | aendifidvorintêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 40 | fidvorinta | indeclinable | fidvorintêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 50 | fimfinta | indeclinable | fimfintêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 60 | sessanta | indeclinable | sessantêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 70 | siunta | indeclinable | siuntêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 80 | attanta | indeclinable | attantêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 90 | niunta | indeclinable | niuntêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 98 | tvedihondo | o-stem adjective | tvedihondêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 99 | aendihondo | o-stem adjective | aendihondêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 100 | hondo | o-stem adjective | hondêsimo | o-stem adjective |
- Adverbial numbers are formed together with the noun vece: aena vece “once”, tvae veci “twice”.
- Multiplier numbers are formed together with the noun falþo: aeno falþo “single, onefold”, hondi falþi “centuple, hundredfold”. This noun was originally a suffix, compare Gothic 𐌰𐌹𐌽𐍆𐌰𐌻𐌸𐍃 (aenfalþs), English onefold, Icelandic einfaldur.
- Distributive numbers are formed together with the adjective falþoleico: þreis falþoleici “triply”.
- Collective numbers are formed together with the adjective somo: tvelefe somi “dozen”.
- Fractional numbers are formed together with the adjective integro: fidvor integri “quarter”.
| # | Cardinal | Ordinal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Word | Declension | Word | Declension | |
| 200 | tvihondi α | o-stem adjective, plurale tantum | tvihondêsimo β | o-stem adjective |
| 500 | fimfehondi γ | o-stem adjective, plurale tantum | fimfehondêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 1 000 | mille | i-stem | millêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 2 000 | tvimilli α | i-stem adjective, plurale tantum | tvimillêsimo β | o-stem adjective |
| 5 000 | fimfemilli γ | i-stem adjective, plurale tantum | fimfemillêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 10 000 | ziumilli γ | i-stem adjective, plurale tantum | ziumillêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 20 000 | vintamilli γ | i-stem adjective, plurale tantum | vintamillêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 50 000 | fimfintamilli γ | i-stem adjective, plurale tantum | fimfintamillêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 100 000 | hondimilli α | i-stem adjective, plurale tantum | hondimillêsimo β | o-stem adjective |
| 200 000 | tvihondimilli δ | i-stem adjective, plurale tantum | tvihondimillêsimo β | o-stem adjective |
| 500 000 | fimfehondimilli ε | i-stem adjective, plurale tantum | fimfehondimillêsimo β | o-stem adjective |
| 106 | millione | i-stem adjective | millionêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 2 x 106 | tvimillioni α | i-stem adjective, plurale tantum | tvimillionêsimo β | o-stem adjective |
| 109 | milliarde | i-stem adjective | milliardêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 1012 | billione | i-stem adjective | billionêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 1015 | billiarde | i-stem adjective | billiardêsimo | o-stem adjective |
| 1019 | trillione | i-stem adjective | trillionêsimo | o-stem adjective |
- α Both elements are declinable, e.g. tvaehondae, tvahonda;
- β Only the last element is declinable, e.g. tvihondêsima, tvihondêsimoro;
- γ The first element is indeclinable;
- δ All the three elements are declinable, e.g. tvarohondaromillem, tvoshondosmilles;
- ε Only the two last elements are declinable, e.g. fimfehondommillivo.
Luthic uses the long scale, unlike English that uses the short scale instead. The long and short scales are two of several naming systems for integer powers of ten which use some of the same terms for different magnitudes. Luthic has a verbal system similar to Italian, German, Dutch and French:
| Luthic | Italian | German | Dutch | French | English | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 106 | millione | milione | Million | miljoen | million | million |
| 109 | milliarde | miliardo | Milliarde | miljard | milliard | billion |
| 1012 | billione | bilione | Billion | biljoen | billion | trillion |
Combinations of a decade and a unit are constructed in a regular way: the decade comes first followed by the unit. No spaces are written between them. Vowel collision triggers an interpunct. For example:
- 28 vinta·attau (lit “twenty eight”)
- 73 siuntaþreis (lit “seventy three”)
- 82 attantatvi (lit “eighty two”)
- 95 niuntafimfe (lit “ninety five”)
Combinations of a hundred and a lower number are expressed by just placing them together, with the hundred coming first.
- 111 hondoaellefe
- 164 hondosessantafidvor
- 225 tvihondivintafimfe
- 788 siuhondi·attanta·attau
Combinations of a thousand and a lower number are expressed by placing them together, with the thousand coming first. A space is written between them.
- 1 066 mille sessantasê
- 9 011 niumilli aellefe
- 61 500 sessanta·aenomilli fimfehondi
- 123 456 hondivintaþreismilli fidvorhondifimfintasê
For millions and above, combinations with lower numbers are much the same as with the thousands.
- 123 456 789 hondivintaþreis millioni fidvorhondifimfintasêhondi siuhondiniunta·attau
- 10 987 654 321 ziu milliardi niuhondi·attantasiumillioni sehondifimfintafidvorhondi þreishondivinta·aeno
When alone, numbers are always in the masculine gender, however numbers always agree in gender and in case (if declinable) with the head noun. For example:
- aeno vaere (“one man”)
- aena qena (“one woman”)
- aeno harge hondom vaerivo (“an army [composed] of hundred men”)
- il meino hareme hâþ tvashondas qenas (“my harem has two hundred women”)
Compound numbers have both elements declined (if possible):
| Number | Case | o-stem m | a-stem f | o-stem n |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plural | nom. | tvihondi | tvaehondae | tvahonda |
| acc. | tvoshondos | tvashondas | tvahonda | |
| dat. | tvomhondom | tvamhondam | tvomhondom | |
| gen. | tvorohondoro | tvarohondaro | tvorohondoro |
Verbs
Luthic verbs have a high degree of inflection, the majority of which follows one of three common patterns of conjugation. Luthic conjugation is affected by voice, mood, person, tense, number, aspect and occasionally gender.
The four classes of verbs (conjugation’s patterns) are distinguished by the infinitive’s endings form of the verb:
- 1st conjugation: -are (þagcare “to think”);
- 2nd conjugation: -ere (credere “to believe”);
- 3rd conjugation: -ore (holore “to accuse”);
- 4th conjugation: -ire (dormire “to sleep”).
Additionally, Luthic has a number of verbs that do not follow predictable patterns in all conjugation classes, most markedly the present and the past. Often classified together as irregular verbs, their irregularities occur to different degrees, with forms of vessare “to be”, and somewhat less extremely, havere “to have”, the least predictable. Others, such as ganare “to go”, stare “to stay, to stand”, taugiare “to do, to make”, and numerous others, follow various degrees of regularity within paradigms, largely due to suppletion, historical sound change or analogical developments.
Present
The present is used for:
- Events happening in the present;
- Habitual actions;
- Current states of being and conditions;
- Actions planned to occur in the future.
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagcȯ | credȯ | holȯ | dormȯ | im | hô | gô | stô | taugiȯ |
| þû | þagcas | credes | holos | dormis | is | hais | gâs | stais | taugis |
| is | þagcat | credet | holot | dormit | ist | hâþ | gâþ | stâþ | taugit |
| vi | þagcamos | credemos | holomos | dormimos | ismos | haemos | gamos | stamos | taugiamos |
| gi | þagcates | credetes | holotos | dormites | istes | haetes | gates | states | taugiates |
| eis | þagcanno | credonno | holonno | dormonno | sonno | hanno | ganno | stonno | taugionno |
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagcara | credera | holora | dormira | — | havara | andara | — | taugiara |
| þû | þagcasa | credesa | holosa | dormisa | — | havasa | andasa | — | taugiasa |
| is | þagcada | crededa | holoda | dormida | — | havada | andada | stada | taugiada |
| vi | þagcanda | credenda | holonda | dorminda | — | havanda | andanda | — | taugianda |
| gi | þagcanda | credenda | holonda | dorminda | — | havanda | andanda | — | taugianda |
| eis | þagcanda | credenda | holonda | dorminda | — | havanda | andanda | standa | taugianda |
Present subjunctive
Used for subordinate clauses of the present to express opinion, possibility, desire, or doubt. The Subjunctive is almost always preceded by the common relative particle.
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagci | creda | holuȯ | dorma | sia | abbia | vada | stia | taugia |
| þû | þagcis | credas | holuas | dormas | sias | abbias | vadas | stias | taugias |
| is | þagcit | credat | holuat | dormat | siaþ | abbiat | vadat | stiaþ | taugiat |
| vi | þagciamos | crediamos | holuamos | dormamos | siamos | abbiamos | andiamos | stiamos | taugiaumos |
| gi | þagciates | crediates | holuates | dormates | siates | abbiates | andiates | stiates | taugiautes |
| eis | þagcinno | credanno | holanno | dormanno | sianno | abbianno | vadanno | stianno | taugianno |
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagcira | credara | holuora | dormara | — | abbaera | vadara | — | taugiaura |
| þû | þagcisa | credasa | holuasa | dormasa | — | abbaesa | vadasa | — | taugiausa |
| is | þagcida | credada | holuada | dormada | — | abbaeda | vadada | stiada | taugiauda |
| vi | þagcinda | credianda | holuonda | dormanda | — | abbaenda | andianda | — | taugiaunda |
| gi | þagcinda | credianda | holuonda | dormanda | — | abbaenda | andianda | — | taugiaunda |
| eis | þagcinda | credianda | holuonda | dormanda | — | abbaenda | andianda | stianda | taugiaunda |
Present conditional
Used for events that are dependent upon another event occurring. The conditional is also used for politely asking for something (as in English: “could I please have a glass of water?”)
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagceria | crederia | holoria | dormiria | saria | haveria | garia | staria | tavaria |
| þû | þagcerias | crederias | holorias | dormirias | sarias | haverias | garias | starias | tavarias |
| is | þagceriat | crederiat | holoriat | dormiriat | sariat | haveriat | gariat | stariat | taveriat |
| vi | þagceriamos | crederiamos | holoriamos | dormiriamos | sariamos | haveriamos | gariamos | stariamos | tavariamos |
| gi | þagceriates | crederiates | holoriates | dormiriates | sariates | haveriates | gariates | stariates | tavariates |
| eis | þagcerianno | crederianno | holorianno | dormirianno | sarianno | haverianno | garianno | starianno | tavarianno |
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagceriara | crederiara | holoriara | dormiriara | — | haveriara | gariara | — | tavariara |
| þû | þagceriasa | crederiasa | holoriasa | dormiriasa | — | haveriasa | gariasa | — | tavariasa |
| is | þagceriada | crederiada | holoriada | dormiriada | — | haveriada | gariada | stariada | taveriada |
| vi | þagcerianda | crederianda | holorianda | dormirianda | — | haverianda | garianda | — | tavarianda |
| gi | þagcerianda | crederianda | holorianda | dormirianda | — | haverianda | garianda | — | tavarianda |
| eis | þagcerianda | crederianda | holorianda | dormirianda | — | haverianda | garianda | starianda | tavarianda |
- vessare lacks a passive voice form;
- stare passive voice form is only impersonal.
Present perfect
The present perfect is used for single actions or events (sa maurgina im ganato a scuola “I went to school this morning”), or change in state (sic ist þvaersoto can ata iȧ hô rogiato “he got angry when I told him that”), contrasting with the imperfect which is used for habits (egġiavȯ biciclettȧ a scuola alla maurgina “I used to go to school by bike every morning”), or repeated actions, not happening at a specific time (sic þvaersovat alla vece ei, giuvedar can ata iȧ rogiavat “he got angry every time someone told him that”).
Past participle
The past participle is used to form the compound pasts (e.g. hô tavito “I have done”). Regular verbs follow a predictable pattern, but there are many verbs with an irregular past participle.
- 1st conjugation: -ato (þagcato “thought”);
- 2nd conjugation: -uto (creduto “believed”);
- 3rd conjugation: -oto (holoto “accused”);
- 4th conjugation: -ito (dormito “slept”);
- vessare and stare have both stato;
- qemare (“to come”) has qemuto;
- taugiare has tavito.
| Number | Case | o-stem m | a-stem f | o-stem n |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | nom. | -ato, -uto, -oto, -ito | -ata, -uta, -ota, -ita | -atȯ, -utȯ, -otȯ, -itȯ |
| acc. | -atȯ, -utȯ, -otȯ, -itȯ | -ata, -uta, -ota, -ita | -atȯ, -utȯ, -otȯ, -itȯ | |
| dat. | -atȧ, -utȧ, -otȧ, -itȧ | -atȧ, -utȧ, -otȧ, -itȧ | -atȧ, -utȧ, -otȧ, -itȧ | |
| gen. | -ati, -uti, -oti, -iti | -atae, -utae, -otae, -itae | -ati, -uti, -oti, -iti | |
| Plural | nom. | -ati, -uti, -oti, -iti | -atae, -utae, -otae, -itae | -ata, -uta, -ota, -ita |
| acc. | -atos, -utos, -otos, -itos | -atas, -utas, -otas, -itas | -ata, -uta, -ota, -ita | |
| dat. | -atom, -utom, -otom, -itom | -atam, -utam, -otam, -itam | -atom, -utom, -otom, -itom | |
| gen. | -atoro, -utoro, -otoro, -itoro | -ataro, -utaro, -otaro, -itaro | -atoro, -utoro, -otoro, -itoro |
Except with an immediately preceding third person pronominal direct object, the participle always ends in -o.
All transitive verbs and most intransitive verbs form the present perfect by combining the auxiliary verb havere “to have” in the present tense with the past participle of the transitive verb. A small number of intransitive verbs, namely vessare itself and verbs indicating motion (qemare “to come”, ganare “to go”, affargiare “to arrive”, etc.) use the auxiliary verb vessare instead of havere. The past participle in this agrees with gender and number of the subject. Passive forms always use havere.
Imperfect
The Imperfect fuses past tense with imperfective aspect and is used for:
- Repeated or habitual actions in the past;
- Ongoing actions in the past and ongoing actions in the past that are eventually interrupted;
- States of being and conditions in the past, including weather, time, age.
The difference between imperfective and perfective aspects can be illustrated clearly with the verb vitare “to know”. The Italian imperfect expresses being in possession of knowledge in the past, while the perfective expresses the moment of acquiring the knowledge.
Imperfective: Vitavȯ la vera. “I knew the truth.” Perfective: Hô vitato la vera. “I found out the truth.”
The Imperfect is, in most cases, formed by taking the stem along with the thematic vowel and adding -v- + the ending of the -are verbs in the present tense (with -amos instead of -iamos). There are no irregular conjugations in the Imperfect except for a few forms inherited from Gothic weak verbs, suppletion, and vessare, which uses the stem er- and -v- appears only in 1st and 2nd person plurals.
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagcavȯ | credevȯ | holovȯ | dormivȯ | erȯ | havaedȯ | egġiavȯ | stavȯ | tavidȯ |
| þû | þagcavas | credevas | holovas | dormivas | eras | havaedas | egġiavas | stavas | tavidas |
| is | þagcavat | credevat | holovat | dormivat | erat | havaedat | egġiavat | stavat | tavidat |
| vi | þagcavamos | credevamos | holovamos | dormivamos | eravamos | havaedamos | egġiavamos | stavamos | tavidamos |
| gi | þagcavates | credevates | holovates | dormivates | eravates | havaedates | egġiavates | stavates | tavidates |
| eis | þagcavanno | credevanno | holovanno | dormivanno | eranno | havaedanno | egġiavanno | stavanno | tavidanno |
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagcavara | credevara | holovara | dormivara | — | havaedara | egġiavara | — | tavidara |
| þû | þagcavasa | credevasa | holovasa | dormivasa | — | havaedasa | egġiavasa | — | tavidasa |
| is | þagcavada | credevada | holovada | dormivada | — | havaedada | egġiavada | stavada | tavidada |
| vi | þagcavanda | credevanda | holovanda | dormivanda | — | havaedanda | egġiavanda | — | tavidanda |
| gi | þagcavanda | credevanda | holovanda | dormivanda | — | havaedanda | egġiavanda | — | tavidanda |
| eis | þagcavanda | credevanda | holovanda | dormivanda | — | havaedanda | egġiavanda | stavanda | tavidanda |
Subjunctive imperfect
Used for the subordinate clauses of the imperfect indicative or the conditional. For regular verbs, the subjunctive is formed by taking the infinitive and replacing -re with -ssi, -ssis, -ssit, -ssimos, -ssites, -ssero:
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagcassi | credessi | holossi | dormissi | fossi | havessi | egġissi | stessi | tavissi |
| þû | þagcassis | credessis | holossis | dormissis | fossis | havessis | egġissis | stessis | tavissis |
| is | þagcassit | credessit | holossit | dormissit | fossit | havessit | egġissit | stessit | tavissit |
| vi | þagcassimos | credessimos | holossimos | dormissimos | fossimos | havessimos | egġissimos | stessimos | tavissimos |
| gi | þagcassites | credessites | holossites | dormissites | fossites | havessites | egġissites | stessites | tavissites |
| eis | þagcassero | credessero | holossero | dormissero | fossero | havessero | egġissero | stessero | tavissero |
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagcassira | credessira | holossira | dormissira | — | havessira | egġissira | — | tavissira |
| þû | þagcassisa | credessisa | holossisa | dormissisa | — | havessisa | egġissisa | — | tavissisa |
| is | þagcassida | credessida | holossida | dormissida | — | havessida | egġissida | stessida | tavissida |
| vi | þagcassinda | credessinda | holossinda | dormissinda | — | havessinda | egġissinda | — | tavissinda |
| gi | þagcassinda | credessinda | holossinda | dormissinda | — | havessinda | egġissinda | — | tavissinda |
| eis | þagcassinda | credessinda | holossinda | dormissinda | — | havessinda | egġissinda | stessinda | tavissinda |
Preterite
The preterite (or perfect) has a function distinct from the present perfect. It is used for events which are distant from the present and no longer directly affect it (e.g. telling a story), whereas the present perfect is used for more recent events which may have a direct impact on the present.
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagcai | credeï | holoi | dormei | fui | ebbi | gai | stetti | tavi |
| þû | þagcasti | credesti | holosti | dormisti | fosti | havesti | gasti | stesti | tavisti |
| is | þagcaut | credaet | holaut | dormeit | fuiþ | ebbet | gauþ | stettet | tavit |
| vi | þagcammos | credemmos | holommos | dormimmos | fostes | havemmos | gammos | stemmos | tavimmos |
| gi | þagcastes | credestes | holostes | dormistes | fostes | havestes | gastes | stestes | tavistes |
| eis | þagcaronno | crederonno | holoronno | dormironno | furonno | ebbero | garonno | stettero | tavironno |
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagcaera | credeira | holoira | dormeira | — | ebbira | gaira | — | tavira |
| þû | þagcasa | credessa | holossa | dormissa | — | havessa | gassa | — | tavessa |
| is | þagcauda | credaeda | holauda | dormeida | — | ebbeda | gauda | stetteda | taveda |
| vi | þagcamma | credemma | holomma | dormimma | — | havemma | gamma | — | tavemma |
| gi | þagcamma | credemma | holomma | dormimma | — | havemma | gamma | — | tavemma |
| eis | þagcamma | credemma | holomma | dormimma | — | havemma | gamma | stettemma | tavemma |
Subjunctive preterite
Used for subordinate clauses of the imperfect indicative or the conditional. The subjunctive preterite is formed the same as the present perfect, but with the auxiliary verb in the subjunctive present.
- Active
- abbia þagcato;
- sia qemuto;
- sias affargiato.
- Passive
- abbaera þagcato;
- abbaera qemuto;
- abbaesa affargiato.
Conditional preterite
Used for events that would, could or should have occurred or as a prospective past tense. The conditional preterite is formed the same as the present perfect, but with the auxiliary verb in the conditional.
- Active
- haveria dormito;
- saria venuto.
- Passive
- haveriara dormito;
- haveriara venuto.
Future
The future tense is used for events that will happen in the future. It is formed by adding the forms of havere to the infinitive (with haemos and haetes contracted to -êmos and -êtes respectively). Sometimes the infinitive undergoes some changes:
- It always loses its final -e;
- Verbs in -are end in -er, not in -ar (stare however retains star-);
- Most irregular verbs lose the vowel before the last r altogether (e.g. havr- for havere and andr- for ganare, suppletion from *andare). Clusters -mr-, -nr- and -lr- are simplified to -rr- (e.g. qerr- for qemare);
- vessare has sar-.
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagcerô | crederô | holorô | dormirô | sarô | havrô | andrô | starô | taugierô |
| þû | þagcerais | crederais | holorais | dormirais | sarais | havrais | andrais | starais | taugierais |
| is | þagcerât | crederât | holorât | dormirât | sarât | havrât | andrât | starât | taugierât |
| vi | þagcerêmos | crederêmos | holorêmos | dormirêmos | sarêmos | havrêmos | andrêmos | starêmos | taugierêmos |
| gi | þagcerêtes | crederêtes | holorêtes | dormirêtes | sarêtes | havrêtes | andrêtes | starêtes | taugierêtes |
| eis | þagceranno | crederanno | holoranno | dormiranno | saranno | havranno | andranno | staranno | taugieranno |
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ic | þagcerâra | crederâra | holorâra | dormirâra | — | havrâra | andrâra | — | taugierâra |
| þû | þagcerâsa | crederâsa | holorâsa | dormirâsa | — | havrâsa | andrâsa | — | taugierâsa |
| is | þagcerâda | crederâda | holorâda | dormirâda | — | havrâda | andrâda | starâda | taugierâda |
| vi | þagcerânda | crederânda | holorânda | dormirânda | — | havrânda | andrânda | — | taugierânda |
| gi | þagcerânda | crederânda | holorânda | dormirânda | — | havrânda | andrânda | — | taugierânda |
| eis | þagcerânda | crederânda | holorânda | dormirânda | — | havrânda | andrânda | starânda | taugierânda |
Future perfect
Used for events that will have happened when or before something else happens in the future. The future perfect is formed the same as the present perfect, but with the auxiliary verb in the future.
- Active
- havrô þagcato;
- sarais holoto.
- Passive
- havrâra þagcato;
- havrâsa holoto.
Imperative
The imperative is used for giving commands. The imperative is formed by:
- Removing the infinitive -re;
- Adding -te for the plural;
- The word becomes an oxytone in the singular, ending in digraphs for the second, third and fourth conjugation.
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| þû | þagcâ | credae | holau | dormei | vessâ | havae | ganâ | stâ | taugiâ |
| gi | þagcate | credete | holote | dormite | vessate | havete | ganate | state | taugiate |
| þagcare | credere | holore | dormire | vessare | havere | ganare | stare | taugiare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| þû | non þagcare | non credere | non holore | non dormire | non vessare | non havere | non ganare | non stare | non taugiare |
| gi | non þagcarete | non crederete | non holorete | non dormirete | non vessarete | non haverete | non ganarete | non starete | non taugiarete |
Nominal verb forms
Luthic verbs have three additional forms, known as nominal forms, because they can be used as nouns or adjectives, rather than as verbs.
- The past participle has been discussed above;
- The present participle is used as an adjective or a noun describing someone who is busy doing something. For example, rogiante means “talking” or “someone who is talking”:
- Verbs in -are form the present participle by adding -ante to the stem;
- Verbs in -ere and -ire form the present participle by adding -ente to the stem;
- Verbs in -ore form the present participle by adding -onte to the stem.
- The gerund is the adverbial form of the present participle, and has a very broad use. For example: rogiando can translate to “talking, while talking, by talking, because of one’s talking, through talking…”:
- The gerund is identical to the present participle, but with final -te replaced by -do;
- Keep in mind that the gerund is an adverb, not an adjective, and so it does not agree in gender and number. The ending is always -o.
Adverbs
An adjective can be made into a modal adverb by adding -mente (from Latin “mente”, ablative of “mens” (mind), feminine noun) to the ending of the feminine singular form of the adjective. E.g. lenta “slow (feminine)” becomes lentamente “slowly”. Adjectives ending in -re or -le lose their e before adding -mente (facile “easy” becomes facilmente “easily”, particolare “particular” becomes particolarmente “particularly”). Other adjectives become adverbs by adding -e. E.g. solo (alone) becomes sole (only).
These adverbs can also be derived from the absolute superlative form of adjectives, e.g. lentissimamente (“very slowly").
There is also a plethora of temporal, local, modal and interrogative adverbs, mostly derived from Latin.
Prepositions
Luthic has a closed class of basic prepositions, to which a number of adverbs can be added that also double as prepositions.
In modern Luthic, all the basic prepositions have to be combined with an article placed next to them. Prepositions normally require the article before the following noun in a similar way as the English language does. However Latin’s (and to extension, Gothic) lack of articles influenced several cases of prepositions used without article in Luthic. The prepositions tra and fra are interchangeable, and often chosen on the basis of euphony.
| Mandatory contractions | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luthic | English | Preposition + article | ||||||
| m. sg. | f. sg. | n. sg. | l’ | m. pl. | f. pl. | n. pl. | ||
| di | of, from | dȧ | dȧ | dȧ | dal’ | dom | dam | dom |
| du | to | giȧ | giȧ | giȧ | gial’ | giom | giam | giom |
| a | to, at | al·lȯ | al·la | al·lata | all’ | al·los | al·las | al·la |
| da | from, by, since | dal·lȧ | dal·lȧ | dal·lȧ | dall’ | dal·lom | dal·lam | dal·lom |
| in | in | nal·lȯ | nal·la | nal·lata | nall’ | nal·los | nal·las | nal·la |
| ana | into, on, onto | aġnȯ | aġna | aġnata | an’ | aġnos | aġnas | aġna |
| su + ACC | on, about | sul·lȯ | sul·la | sul·lata | sull’ | sul·los | sul·las | sul·la |
| su + DAT | on, about | sul·lȧ | sul·lȧ | sul·lȧ | sull’ | sul·lom | sul·lam | sul·lom |
| Optional contractions | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luthic | English | Preposition + article | ||||||
| m. sg. | f. sg. | n. sg. | l’ | m. pl. | f. pl. | n. pl. | ||
| miþ | with | miþ·þȧ | miþ·þȧ | miþ·þȧ | miþþ’ | miþ·þom | miþ·þam | miþ·þom |
| inu | without | in·nȧ | in·nȧ | in·nȧ | inn’ | in·nom | in·nam | in·nom |
| faur | for, through | faul·lȯ | faul·la | faul·lata | faull’ | faul·los | faul·las | faul·la |
| tra | between, among | tral·lȧ | tral·lȧ | tral·lȧ | trall’ | tral·lom | tral·lam | tral·lom |
| fra | between, among | fral·lȧ | fral·lȧ | fral·lȧ | frall’ | fral·lom | fral·lam | fral·lom |
Conjunctions
Most of the Luthic monosyllabic conjunctions and prepositions have preconsonantal and prevocalic variations.
- e and ed
- au and aud
- a and ab
- a and ad
Intervocalic conjunctions are often reduced, these reductions are however not mandatory:
- e, ed but ·d if intervocalic
- ac but ·c if intervocalic
Examples:
- Ic e þû (I and you)
- Ic ed is (I and he)
- Þû·d ic (You and I)
- Is ed ic (He and I)
- Ic au þû? (I or you?)
- Ic aud is? (I or he?)
- Þû·d ic? (You or I?)
- Is aud ic? (He or I?)
Romance copula
- Main article: Romance copula
As a Romance language, Luthic shares the complexities of the copula in Romance languages when to its counterparts in other languages. A copula is a word that links the subject of a sentence with a predicate (a subject complement). Whereas English has one main copula verb (and some languages like Russian mostly express the copula implicitly) some Romance languages have more complex forms.
Vessare generally focuses on the essence of the subject, and specifically on qualities that include:
- Nationality
- Possession
- Physical and personality traits
- Material
- Origin
Stare generally focuses on the condition of the subject, and specifically on qualities that include:
- Physical condition
- Feelings, emotions, and states of mind
- Appearance
Vessare is the main copula. Stare refers to state rather than essence, but more narrowly than in Spanish. Vessare is used for almost all cases in which English uses “to be”. It therefore makes sense to concentrate on the few uses of stare.
- Stare means “to be”, “to be feeling”, or “to appear”.
- Stare is used to form continuous forms of tenses.
- Stare’s past participle stato has replaced that of vessare, and so stato is used for “been” in all senses.
- Stare is occasionally “to be located.” This is very common for both transient and durable location.
Sentence structure
Luthic is an OV (Object-Verb) language. Additionally, Luthic, like all Germanic languages except English, uses V2 word order, though only in independent clauses. In dependent clauses, the finite verb is placed last.
Declarative sentences use V2 (verb in the second position) word order: the finite verb is preceded by one and only one constituent (unlike in English, this doesn’t need to be the subject). The subject is usually omitted when it is a pronoun – distinctive verb conjugations make it redundant. Subject pronouns are considered emphatic when used at all.
- (Ic) drigcȯ la vadna.
- ic drigc-ȯ l-a vadn-a
- I.NOM drink-PRS.1SG the-ACC.SG.F water-ACC.SG
- “I drink water (lit. I drink the water).”
- La vadna drigcȯ (ic).
- l-a vadn-a drigc-ȯ ic
- the-ACC.SG.F water-ACC.SG drink-PRS.1SG I.NOM
- “The water I drink.”
Non-finite verbs as well as separable particles are placed at the end of the sentence:
- La meina frigionda ist al·lȧ festȧ anaqemando.
- l-a mein-a frigiond-a ist al=l-ȧ fest-ȧ ana=qem-ando
- the-ACC.SG.F my-ACC.SG.F friend-ACC.SG.F is at=the-DAT.SG.F party-DAT.SG on=come-GER
- “My friend is arriving (lit. is on-coming) at the party.”
- La meina frigionda qemaut al·lȧ festȧ ana.
- l-a mein-a frigion-a qem-aut al=l-ȧ fest-ȧ ana
- the-ACC.SG.F my-ACC.SG.F friend-ACC.SG.F come-PRF.3SG at=the-DAT.SG.F party-DAT.SG on
- “My friend arrived (lit. on-came) at the party.”
An inversion is used to emphasise an adverbial phrase, a predicative, an object, or an inner verbal phrase in a sentence. The subject phrase, at the beginning of an indicative unstressed sentence, is moved directly behind the conjugated verb, and the component to be emphasised is moved to the beginning of the sentence. The conjugated verb is always the second sentence element in indicative statements.
Example 1:
- Fliugat snele. “(It) flies fast.” – not emphasised;
- Snele fliugat. “Fast (it) flies.” – emphasised, i.e. “Fast is how it flies.”
Example 2:
- Is liuvaleico. “(You) are adorable.” – not emphasised;
- Liuvaleico is. “Adorable (you) are.” – emphasised, i.e. “Adorable is what you are.”
Interrogative and command sentences use the V1 (verb-first) word order: the finite verb occupies the first position in the sentence. However, wh question sentences use the V2 word order. The pronoun subject is never omitted in those cases. Questions are formed by a rising intonation at the end of the sentence (in written form, a question mark).
- Fliugas þû snele?
- fliug-as þû snel-e
- fly-PRS.2SG you.SG fast-ADVR
- “Do you fly fast?”
- Ce taugis þû?
- ce taugis þû
- what do-PRS.2SG you-SG
- “What are you doing?”
- Taugiâ þû svasve rogiȯ!
- taugi-â þû svasve rogi-ȯ
- do-IMP.2SG you.SG as say-PRS.1SG
- “Do as I say!”
Relative and subordinate clauses maintain the same word order.
- Galauvȯ ei, sariat beteze si þata tavissimos gestradage.
- galauv-ȯ ei sari-at betez-e si þata ta-vi-ssimos gestradag-e
- think-PRS.1SG that be-CND.PRS.3SG better-ADVR if it.ACC.SG do-IMPF-CND.1PL tomorrow-ADVR
- “I think that it would be better if we did it tomorrow.”
- Galauvas þû ei, sariat beteze si þata tavissimos gestradage?
- galauv-as þû ei sari-at betez-e si þata ta-vi-ssimos gestradag-e
- think-PRS.2SG you.SG that be-CND.PRS.3SG better-ADVR if it.ACC.SG do-IMPF-CND.1PL tomorrow-ADVR
- “Do you think that it would be better if we did it tomorrow?”
Case usage
Luthic case usage is very similar to Gothic, itself who calqued Ancient Greek grammar.
- Nominative: (Ic) im lûthico. “I am Luthic”
- Accusative: (Ic) spracȯ lȯ lûthicȯ. “I speak Luthic”
- Dative: (Ic) lasȯ lȯ lûthicȯ þus. “I teach Luthic to you”
- Genitive: La rasda lûthicoro þiudesca non ist. “The language of the Luths is not Germanic”
- Ablato-locatival accusative:
- Extent of space: (Is) qaervaut þreis quilometros. “He walked three kilometres”
- Duration of time: (Is) non beidô aenȯ dagȯ. “He didn’t waited for one day”
- Place when: Þȯ staþȯ. “In/on this place”
- Sometimes prepositional: Naþ·þȯ staþȯ. “id.”
- Time when: Giaenȯ vintrȯ. “In/at/during that winter”
- Within which: Leizelas horas (is) scolat sveltare. “Within a few hours he shall die”
- Sometimes prepositional (dative is used instead): Dentro di leizelam horam (is) scolat sveltare. “Within a few hours he shall die”
- Dative:
- Purpose: Mannesci non ovilȧ, ac gôdanȧ taugianda. “Humans are not made for evil, but for good”
- Action for: Þus scolȯ helfare los friundos þeinos. “I must help your friends for you”
- Purpose for action for: Qenam naseini im. “I am the (cause of) salvation for women”
- Action against: La þeina frescaþi scolȯ gadauþare þuc. “Against/in opposition to your freedom I shall kill you”
- Purpose for action against: Manni dauþam im. “I am the (cause of) death for men” (affects negatively)
- Concerning: Ce þû mis scolas taugiare? “What will you do for me? (expressing the speaker being especially interested in what the other is doing for him or her)”
- Instrumental dative:
- Instrument: (Ic) reizȯ pennȧ. “I write with a pen”
- Means: (Ic) saeqȯ augonivo. “I see with the eyes”
- Impersonal agent: Is gadauþada coltellȧ velvi. “He was killed by the knife of the robber”
- Manner: (Ic) fregiȯ þuc managv fregiaþþȧ. “I love you with many affection”
- Prepositional if with no adjective: (Ic) fregiȯ þuc miþ fregiaþþȧ. “I love you with affection”
- Accompaniment: (Ic) scolȯ qemare friundom. “I shall come with friends”
- Sometimes prepositional: (Ic) scolȯ qemare miþ friundom. “id.”
- Degree of difference: (Is) alþezo aenom giarivo. “He is older by a few years”
- Quality: Aeno vaere summȧ honestȧ. “A man of highest honesty”
- Ablatival dative:
- Separation: (Ic) sculȯ cofare l'ovelȯ þus. “I shall keep the evil away from you”
- Motion away (prepositional): Giofa Ravennȧ du Americȧ furonno. “They went from Ravenna to America”
- Personal agent (prepositional): Roma a lom Gôthicom qesċada. “Rome is destroyed by the Goths”
- Comparison (adjectival): Qenam scauneza. “More beautiful than women”
- Cause: (Ic) gretȯ irȧ ed agi. “I cry with anger and fear” (marks the reason)
Example text
Schleicher’s fable in Standard Luthic:
- La pecora e ġl’aeqqi
- Aena pecora ei, stavat inu vollȧ, saecaut somos aeqqos: aenȯ eisôro tiravat aenȯ pesante carrȯ, aenȯ anþerȯ baeravat aenȯ mêquelȯ caricȯ ed aenȯ anþerȯ transportavat aenȯ mannȯ snele. La pecora rodit al·los aeqqos: “Mic plagget ata haertene saecando ce il manno trattat l’aeqqos”. Ġl’aeqqi rodironno: “Ascoltâ, pecora: faur unse ist penoso saecare ei, il manno, l’unsar siġnore, sic taugit aena veste lȧ vollȧ pecorae, mentre lae pecorae ristonno inu vollȧ”. Dopo ascoltauda þata, la pecora agrȯ fliugat.
- aen-a pecor-a ei st-avat inu voll-ȧ saec-aut som-os aeqq-os aen-ȯ eis-ôro tir-av-at aen-ȯ pesant-e carr-ȯ aen-ȯ anþer-ȯ baer-av-at aen-ȯ mêquel-ȯ caric-ȯ ed aen-ȯ anþer-ȯ transport-av-at aen-ȯ mann-ȯ snel-e l-a pecor-a rod-it al=l-os aeqq-os mic plagg-et ata haerten-e saec-ando ce il mann-o tratt-at l=aeqq-os ġl=aeqq-i rod-ironno ascolt-â pecor-a faur uns-e ist penos-o saec-are ei il mann-o l=unsar siġnor-e sic taug-it aen-a vest-e l-ȧ voll-ȧ pecor-ae mentre l-ae pecor-ae rist-onno inu voll-ȧ dopo ascolt-au-da þata l-a pecor-a agr-ȯ fliug-at
- a-NOM.F.SG sheep-NOM.SG that be-IMPF.3SG without wool-DAT.SG see-PRF.3SG some-ACC.M.PL horse-ACC.PL one-ACC.M.SG they-GEN.M.PL pull-IMPF.3SG wagon-ACC.SG one-ACC.M.SG other-ACC.SG bring-IMPF.3SG a-ACC.M.SG big-ACC.M.SG load-ACC.SG and one-ACC.M.SG other-ACC.SG carry-IMPF.3SG a-ACC.M.SG man-ACC.SG fast-ADVR the-NOM.F.SG sheep-NOM.SG say-PRF.3SG to=the-ACC.M.PL horse-ACC.PL I.ACC.SG pain-PRS.3SG the-ACC.N.SG heart-ACC.SG see-GRD how the-NOM.M.SG man-NOM.SG manage-PRS.3SG the-ACC.M.PL=horse-ACC.PL the-NOM.M.PL=horse-NOM.PL say-PRF.3PL hear-IMP.2SG sheep-NOM.SG for us.ACC.PL be-PRS.3SG pitiful see-INF that the-NOM.M.SG man-NOM.SG the-NOM.M.SG=our-NOM.M.SG lord-NOM.SG do-PRS.3R.SG a-ACC.F.SG garnment-ACC.SG the-DAT.F.SG wool-DAT.SG sheep-GEN.SG whereas the-NOM.F.PL sheep-NOM.PL remain-PRS.3PL without wool-DAT.SG after hear-IMPF.PASS.3SG that.ACC.N.SG the-NOM.F.SG sheep-NOM.SG field-ACC.SG flee-PRS.3SG
Dialectology
Luthic has many sociolects, whose differ in phonology and grammar; Standard Luthic is the only form who declines noun by cases, other informal sociolects are way closer to other Romance languages in grammar (restrict register). Whereas sociolect refers to a variation in language between different social groups, dialect is a language variation based upon a geographical location, and Luthic has a small geographical area, however, a major dialect is found nearby Ferrara, who was first mentioned when it was conquered by Germanic tribe the Lombards in 753 CE, and the Byzantine Empire lost its rule over the city. It was gifted to the Holy See by the Franks in either 754 or 756 CE, and was led by the Bishops of Ravenna. Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries started reclaiming Podeltan lands in the 9th century. This contact with West Germanic languages, and the lesser presence of East Germanic influence (unlike Ravenna) modelled some sound changes in discrepancy when compared to Standard Luthic. This dialect is often called Ferraresi Luthic (Lûthica Estense) or Upper Luthic (Altalûthica).
Main phonetic differences
- Thorn fortition: /θ/ is fortified to /t/ in every position:
- þû [ˈθu] > tû [tu].
- H elision: /h ~ ç/ is elided in every position:
- hemenȯ, hemena [çeˈme.no çeˈme.nɐ] > emen, emena [e.men e.me.nɐ];
- Vowel fracture: Luthic strong vowels become diphthongs, ae /ɛ/ > ai /ɐj/, au /ɔ/ > au /aw/, ei /i/ > ei /ɐj/:
- aeno [ˈɛ.nu] > ain [ɐjn];
- hauviþȯ, hauviþa [ˈhɔ.vi.θo ˈhɔ.vi.θɐ] > auvit, auvita [ɐw.vit ɐw.vi.tɐ];
- þeino [ˈθi.nu] > tein [tɐjn].
- The feminine plural form becomes /e/.
- Monophthongisation: Luthic diphthong /ju/ is monophthongised to /y/:
- diusȯ [ˈdju.zo] > deus [dys].
- Loss of untressed final vowels and terminal devoicing: Every unstressed vowel is dropped, except in plurals and monosyllabic words; terminal consonants are devoiced (except if sonorants):
- geva, gevae [ˈd͡ʒe.vɐ ˈd͡ʒe.vɛ] > gef, geve [ʒef ʒe.ve];
- manago, managi [mɐˈna.ɣ˕u mɐˈna.d͡ʒi] > manac, managi [mɐ.nɐk mɐ.nɐ.ʒi].
- Deaffrication: Affricates are lenited to fricatives:
- ce [t͡ʃe] > ce [ʃe];
- gi [d͡ʒi] > gi [ʒi].
- Loss of stress: Stress is fully lost, together with Gorgia Toscana:
- qotidiano [kʷo.θiˈdja.nu] > qotidian [ko.ti.djɐn].
- This also triggers the loss of stressed phonemes, such as /a/ and /ʁ/.
- Degemination: Lack of gemination as a distinctive feature:
- grassa [ˈɡɾas.sɐ] and grasȯ [ˈɡɾa.zo] > gras [ɡɾɐs];
- oreccla [oˈʁek.klɐ] > oreccl [o.ɾekl].
- Loss of coarticulations: Aspiration and labialisation are lost:
- Lûthica [ˈlu.tʰi.xɐ] > Lûthic [lu.tik];
- qena [ˈkᶣe.nɐ] > qen [k̟en].
Sample text and comparison
Fadar unsar, þû hemenȯ, |
Fadar unsar, tû in emen |
[ˈfa.ð̞ɐɾ ˈũ.t͡sɐɾ | ˈθu‿ççeˈme.no |
[fɐ.dɐɾ ũ.sɐɾ | tu in e.men |
Although general grammar remains very similar, prepositions become more frequent due to a lack of cases. Some sociolects may also lack the neuter gender, fully merging it with the masculine or the feminine (via the plural form). There are also many ethnolects influenced by regional languages, such as the Lutho-Emilian ethnolect, who has its grammar and vocabulary largely affected and influenced by the Emilian dialects. The orthography may also be affected, since Upper Luthic lacks a regulatory body:
- ⟨gi⟩ or ⟨j⟩ for /ʒ/: Standard Luthic giâ [ˈd͡ʒa], Upper Luthic gia or ja [ʒɐ];
- ⟨ġl⟩ or ⟨lh⟩ for /ʎ/: Standard Luthic ġli [ʎi], Upper Luthic ġli or lhi [ʎi];
- ⟨ġn⟩ or ⟨nh⟩ for /ɲ/: Standard Luthic siġnore [siɲˈɲo.ɾe], Upper Luthic siġnor or sinhor [si.ɲoɾ];
- ⟨eu⟩, ⟨y⟩ or ⟨ü⟩ for /y/: Standard Luthic niu [nju], Upper Luthic neu, ny or nü [ny];
- Disagreement on voiceless terminal consonant spelling: Standard Luthic ac [ɐx], Upper Luthic ac or ag [ɐk]; Standard Luthic garda [ˈɡaɾ.dɐ], Upper Luthic gart or gard [ɡɐɾt].
Another problem with Upper Luthic lacking a regulatory body is the lack of official statistics:
- Unknown amount of native speakers;
- Unknown status as an endangered language;
- Lack of resources.
Phonology
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oral | nasal | oral | nasal | oral | nasal | |
| Close | i | ĩ | u | ũ | ||
| Close-mid | e | ẽ | o | õ | ||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɐ | ɐ̃ | ɔ | ||
Notes
- Nasal vowels may be realised as velar nasal release [ɐᵑ eᵑ iᵑ oᵑ uᵑ];
- [ɛ] and [ɔ] are in free variation with [ɜ] and [ɞ];
- [ɐ] is in free variation with [ə].
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | |||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | k | |||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | ||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s | ʃ | |||
| voiced | v | z | ʒ | ||||
| Approximant | semivowel | j | w | ||||
| lateral | l | ʎ | |||||
| Flap | ɾ | ||||||
| Trill | ʀ | ||||||
Notes
- [k] and [ɡ] are described as pre-velar [k̟] and [ɡ̟] to palatal [c] and [ɟ] before /i, e, ɛ, j/;
- [ʃ] and [ʒ] are not labialised and are in free variation with [ʂ] and [ʐ];
- [ʀ] is in free variation with [r];
- [ʎ] may be described as a fricative [ʎ̝].
Standard Bolognese Luthic
- "… I say, then, that perhaps those are not wrong who claim that the Bolognese speak a more beautiful language than most, especially since they take many features of their own speech from that of the people who live around them, in Imola, Ferrara and Modena I believe that everybody does this with respect to his own neighbours.... So the above-mentioned citizens of Bologna take a soft, yielding quality from those of Imola, and from the people of Ferrara and Modena, on the other hand, a certain abruptness which is more typical of the Lombards.... If, then, the Bolognese take from all sides, as I have said, it seems reasonable to suggest that their language, tempered by the combination of opposites mentioned above, should achieve a praiseworthy degree of elegance; and this, in my opinion, is beyond doubt true."
(Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia - Liber I, xv, 2-5)
Although very similar to Standard Ravennese Luthic, there is noticeable influence from the regional Bolognese dialects, dialects of Emilian, one of the Gallo-Italic languages of the Romance family:
- /h ç/ are fully lost, however spelling remains the same;
- /ʁ ɾ/ merge as /r/ and /ʀ/ is reanalised as /rː/;
- /t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ are fully merged with /t͡s d͡z/.
Furthermore, Standard Bolognese Luthic is affected by apophony:
| Unaffected | Mutated |
|---|---|
| /ˈmet.to/ “I put” | /ˈmit.tis/ “you put” |
| /ˈes.to/ “this (neut.)” | /ˈis.tu/ “this (masc.)” |
| /moˈdɛs.tɐ/ “modest (fem.)” | /moˈdes.tu/ “modest (masc.)” |
| /ˈspo.zɐ/ “wife” | /ˈspu.zu/ “husband” |
| /ˈmɔ.reθ/ “he dies” | /ˈmo.ris/ “you die” |
| /ˈmɔ.ʃɐ/ “depressed (fem.)” | /ˈmo.ʃu/ “depressed (masc.)” |
Phonology
Standard Bolognese Luthic is almost identical to Standard Ravennese Luthic, however it has fewer consonant phonemes, itself being very similar to the phonology of Emilian Bolognese dialects.
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| oral | nasal | oral | nasal | oral | nasal | |
| Close | i | ĩ | u | ũ | ||
| Close-mid | e | ẽ | o | õ | ||
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɐ | ɐ̃ | ɔ | ||
| Open | a | |||||
Consonants
| Labial | Dental/ Alveolar |
Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | labialized | ||||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ | (ŋʷ) | ||
| Plosive | voiceless | p, pʰ | t, tʰ | k, kʰ | kʷ | ||
| voiced | b | d | ɡ | ɡʷ | |||
| Fricative | voiceless | f | s θ | ʃ | (x) | ||
| voiced | v | z | |||||
| Affricate | voiceless | (p͡f) | t͡s (t͡θ) | ||||
| voiceless | d͡z | ||||||
| Approximant | semivowel | j | w | ||||
| lateral | l | ʎ | |||||
| Gorgia Toscana | (ʋ) | (ð̞) | (ɣ˕) | ||||
| Trill | r | ||||||
Vocabulary
It is generally stated that Luthic has around 370,000 words, or 410,000 if obsolete words are counted, however 98% of the Luthic used today consists of only 5,800 words.
A 2016 statistic by Lucia Giamane is based on 3,172 words chosen on the criteria of frequency, semantic richness and productivity, which also contain words formed on the territory of the Luthic language. This statistic gives the percentages below:
- 1,200 words inherited from Gothic;
- 953 words inherited from Latin;
- 510 words, academic loanwords from Latin;
- 133 words borrowed from Italian;
- 125 words borrowed from West Germanic, such as Frankish, Langobardic and Standard High German;
- 101 words formed in Luthic;
- 98 words borrowed from French;
- 52 words borrowed from Greek.
Luthic has approximately 2,000 uncompounded words inherited from Proto-Indo-European. These were inherited via:
- 45% Germanic;
- 43% Italic, Romance;
- 8% Celtic;
- 2% Hellenic;
- 2% Uncertain.
A single etymological root appears in Luthic in a native form, inherited from Vulgar Latin, and a learned form, borrowed later from Classical Latin. The following pairs consist of a native noun and a learned adjective:
- finger: dito / digitale from Latin digitus / digitālis;
- faith: fê (stem fed-) / fidele from Latin fidēs / fidēlis;
- foot: piê (stem pied-) / pedale from pēs / pedālis.
There are also noun-noun and adjective-adjective pairs with slightly different meanings:
- thing / cause: cosa / caüsa from Latin causa;
- bull / calf: toro / taüro from Latin taurus;
- chilled / frozen: freddo / frigido from Latin frīgidus.
Insertional code-switching
Code-switching or language alternation occurs when a speaker alternates between two or more languages, or language varieties, in the context of a single conversation or situation. Code-switching is different from plurilingualism in that plurilingualism refers to the ability of an individual to use multiple languages, while code-switching is the act of using multiple languages together.
Insertional code-switching is often referred to as “borrowing” or “tag-switching”, when lexical items from a secondary language are introduced into the primary language. These loan words are partially or fully assimilated into the secondary language, conforming to its phonological and morphological structure. Insertional code-switching serves a “pragmatic purpose, acting as sentence enhancers or indicating the speaker's attitude towards the context of an utterance.”
- Standard Luthic: Il natto stâþ scauno. Lae staerna sceinanno e la luna stâþ folla.
- Standard Italian: La notte è bella. Le stelle brillano e la luna è piena.
- Insertional code-swicthing: Il natto ae bello. Le stelle ~ lae stellae sceinanno e la luna ae piena.
- Note that both è and ae stand for /ɛ/.
The borrowed words can be integrated into the host language either partially or entirely, taking into account their phonological and morphological structure.
Swadesh list
The Swadesh list (/ˈswɑːdɛʃ/) is a compilation of tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. Translations of the Swadesh list into a set of languages allow researchers to quantify the interrelatedness of those languages. The Swadesh list is named after linguist Morris Swadesh. It is used in lexicostatistics (the quantitative assessment of the genealogical relatedness of languages) and glottochronology (the dating of language divergence). Because there are several different lists, some authors also refer to "Swadesh lists".
The most used list nowadays is the Swadesh 207-word list, adapted from Swadesh 1952.
| Swadesh list | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ic [iç] “I” | 53. stecca [ˈstɛk.kɐ] “stick” | 105. flaerare [flɛˈʁa.ɾe] “to smell” | 157. sabbia [ˈsab.bjɐ] “sand” |
| 2. þû [ˈθu] “you” | 54. acranȯ [aˈkɾa.no] “fruit” | 106. ogare [oˈɡa.ɾe] “to fear” | 158. molda [ˈmɔl.dɐ] “dust” |
| 3. is [is] “he” ia [jɐ] “she” ata [a.θɐ] “it” | 55. seme [ˈse.me] “seed” | 107. slefare [sleˈfa.ɾe] “sleep” | 159. aerþa [ˈɛɾ.t͡θɐ] “earth” |
| 4. vi [vi] “we” | 56. laufo [ˈlɔ.fu] “leaf” | 108. vivere [viˈve.ɾe] “to live” | 160. molmano [mɔlˈma.nu] “sand” |
| 5. gi [d͡ʒi] “you” | 57. vaurte [ˈvɔɾ.te] “root” | 109. sveltare [zvɛlˈta.ɾe] “to die” | 161. nêbola [ˈne.ʋo.lɐ] “fog” |
| 6. eis [ˈis] isae [iˈsɛ] eis [ˈis] “they” | 58. renda [ˈʁɛn.dɐ] “bark” | 110. dauþare [dɔˈθa.ɾe] “to kill” | 162. hemeno [heˈme.nu] “sky” |
| 7. so [su] sa [sɐ] þata [θɐ.θɐ] “this” | 59. bloma [ˈblo.mɐ] “flower” | 111. lottare [lotˈta.ɾe] “to fight” | 163. vendo [ˈven.du] “wind” |
| 8. este [ˈes.te] esta [ˈes.tɐ] estȯ [ˈes.to] “that” | 60. herba [ˈhɛɾ.bɐ] “grass” | 112. cacciare [kɐtˈt͡ʃa.ɾe] “to hunt” | 164. neve [ˈnɛ.ve] “snow” |
| 9. her [heɾ] “here” | 61. corda [ˈkɔɾ.dɐ] “rope” | 113. blegguare [bleɡˈɡʷa.ɾe] “to hit” | 165. glacciȯ [ˈɡlat.t͡ʃo] “ice” |
| 10. þar [θɐɾ] “there” | 62. pelle [ˈpɛl.le] “skin” | 114. taġliare [tɐʎˈʎa.re] “to cut” | 166. fumo [ˈfu.mu] “smoke” |
| 11. qo [kʷu] qa [kʷɐ] qȯ [kʷo] “who” | 63. carne [ˈkaɾ.ne] “meat” | 115. scindere [ʃinˈde.ɾe] “to split” | 167. fona [ˈfo.nɐ] “fire” |
| 12. ce [t͡ʃe] “what” | 64. saggue [ˈsaŋʷ.ɡʷe] “blood” | 116. poġnalare [poɲ.ɲɐˈla.ɾe] “to stab” | 168. asga [ˈaz.ɡɐ] “ash” |
| 13. car [kɐɾ] “where” | 65. beine [ˈbi.ne] “bone” | 117. crazzore [kɾɐtˈt͡so.ɾe] “to scratch” | 169. bruciare [bruˈt͡ʃa.ɾe] “to burn” |
| 14. can [kɐn] “when” | 66. grassa [ˈɡɾas.sɐ] “fat” | 118. gravare [ɡɾɐˈva.ɾe] “to dig” | 170. strada [ˈstɾa.ð̞ɐ] “road” |
| 15. ce [t͡ʃe] “how” | 67. uovȯ [ˈwo.vo] “egg” | 119. svemmare [zvẽˈma.ɾe] “to swim” | 171. baergana [ˈbɛɾ.ɡɐ.nɐ] “mountain” |
| 16. non [non] “not” | 68. haurnȯ [ˈhɔɾ.no] “horn” | 120. fliugare [fljuˈɡa.ɾe] “to fly” | 172. rosso [ˈʁɔs.su] “red” |
| 17. allo [ˈal.lu] “all” | 69. coda [ˈko.ð̞ɐ] “tail” | 121. carvore [kɐɾˈvo.ɾe] “to walk” | 173. verde [ˈveɾ.de] “green” |
| 18. manago [mɐˈna.ɣ˕u] “many” | 70. feþar [ˈfe.θɐɾ] “feather” | 122. qemare [kᶣeˈma.ɾe] “to come” | 174. giallo [ˈd͡ʒal.lu] “yellow” |
| 19. somo [ˈso.mu] “some” | 71. taglȯ [ˈta.ɡlo] “hair” | 123. legare [leˈɡa.ɾe] “to lie” | 175. blagco [ˈblaŋ.ku] “white” |
| 20. favo [ˈfa.vu] “few” | 72. capo [ˈka.fu] “head” | 124. setare [seˈta.ɾe] “to sit” | 176. nero [ˈne.ɾu] “black” |
| 21. anþero [ɐ̃ˈt͡θe.ɾu] “other” | 73. oreccla [oˈʁek.klɐ] “ear” | 125. stare [ˈsta.ɾe]. “stand” | 177. natto [ˈnat.tu] “night” |
| 22. aeno [ˈɛ.nu] “one” | 74. augonȯ [ˈɔ.ɣ˕o.no] “eye” | 126. girare [d͡ʒiˈʁa.ɾe] “to turn” | 178. dago [ˈda.ɣ˕u] “day” |
| 23. tvi [ˈtvi] “two” | 75. naso [ˈna.zu] “nose” | 127. driusare [dɾjuˈza.ɾe] “to fall” | 179. giar [d͡ʒɐɾ] “year” |
| 24. þreis [ˈθɾis] “three” | 76. monþo [ˈmõ.t͡θu] “mouth” | 128. gevare [d͡ʒeˈva.ɾe] “to give” | 180. varmo [ˈvaɾ.mu] “warm” |
| 25. fidvor [ˈfid.voɾ] “four” | 77. dente [ˈden.te] “tooth” | 129. haldare [hɐlˈda.ɾe] “to hold” | 181. caldo [ˈkal.du] “cold” |
| 26. fimfe [ˈfĩ.p͡fe] “five” | 78. tugga [ˈtuŋ.ɡɐ] “tongue” | 130. spremere [spɾeˈme.ɾe] “to squeeze” | 182. follo [ˈfol.lu] “full” |
| 27. mêquelo [ˈme.xe.lu] “big” | 79. oggla [ˈoŋ.ɡlɐ] “fingernail” | 131. fregare [fɾeˈɡa.ɾe] “to rub” | 183. nuovo [ˈnwo.vu] “new” |
| 28. laggo [ˈlaŋ.ɡu] “long” | 80. piê [ˈpje] “foot” | 132. þvahare [θvɐˈha.ɾe] “to wash” | 184. alto [ˈal.tu] “old” |
| 29. largo [ˈlaɾ.ɡu] “wide” | 81. gamba [ˈgam.bɐ] “leg” | 133. asciugare [ɐʃ.ʃuˈɡa.ɾe] “to wipe” | 185. buono [ˈbwo.nu] “good” |
| 30. spesso [ˈspes.su] “thick” | 82. ġnivȯ [ˈɲi.vo] “knee” | 134. tirare [tiˈʁa.ɾe] “to pull” | 186. malo [ˈma.lu] “bad” |
| 31. pesante [peˈzan.te] “heavy” | 83. mano [ˈma.nu] “hand” | 135. spiggere [spiŋˈɡe.ɾe] “to push” | 187. macio [ˈma.t͡ʃu] “rotten” |
| 32. leizelo [ˈlid.d͡ze.lu] “little” | 84. ala [ˈa.lɐ] “wing” | 136. vaerfare [vɛɾˈp͡fa.ɾe] “to throw” | 188. sporco [ˈspoɾ.ku] “dirty” |
| 33. scaurto [ˈskɔɾ.tu] “short” | 85. qeþo [ˈkᶣe.θu] “belly” | 137. bendare [benˈda.ɾe] “to tie” | 189. dritto [ˈdɾit.tu] “straight” |
| 34. agguo [ˈaŋʷ.ɡʷu] “narrow” | 86. viscerae [ˈviʃ.ʃe.ɾɛ] “guts” | 138. siugiare [sjuˈd͡ʒa.ɾe] “to sew” | 190. ritondo [ʁiˈton.du] “round” |
| 35. sottile [sotˈti.le] “thin” | 87. collo [ˈkɔl.lo] “neck” | 139. contare [konˈta.ɾe] “to count” | 191. scarfo [ˈskaɾ.p͡fu] “sharp” |
| 36. qena [ˈkᶣe.nɐ] “woman” | 88. dorsȯ [ˈdɔɾ.t͡so] “back” | 140. rogiare [ʁoˈd͡ʒa.ɾe] “to say” | 192. smussato [zmusˈsa.θu] “dull” |
| 37. manno [ˈmɐ̃.nu] “man” | 89. brosto [ˈbɾos.tu] “breast” | 141. segguare [seŋʷˈɡʷa.ɾe] “to sing” | 193. slaetto [ˈzlɛt.tu] “smooth” |
| 38. mannesco [mɐ̃ˈnes.ku] “human being” | 90. haertene [ˈhɛɾ.te.ne] “heart” | 142. giucare [d͡ʒuˈka.ɾe] “to play” | 194. ûmido [ˈu.mi.ð̞u] “wet” |
| 39. bambino [bamˈbi.nu] “child” | 91. figatȯ [fiˈɡa.θo] “liver” | 143. flotore [floˈto.ɾe] “to float” | 195. þaurso [ˈθɔɾ.t͡su] “dry” |
| 40. sposa [ˈspo.zɐ] “wife” | 92. dregcare [dɾeŋˈka.ɾe] “to drink” | 144. fluire [fluˈi.ɾe] “to flow” | 196. raetto [ˈʁɛt.tu] “correct” |
| 41. abno [ˈab.nu] “husband” | 93. mangiare [mɐnˈd͡ʒa.ɾe] “to eat” | 145. glacciare [ɡlɐtˈt͡ʃa.ɾe] “to freeze” | 197. vicino [viˈt͡ʃi.nu] “near” |
| 42. modar [ˈmo.ð̞ɐɾ] “mother” | 94. beidare [biˈda.ɾe] “to bite” | 146. svellare [zvɛlˈla.ɾe] “to swell” | 198. lontano [lonˈta.nu] “far” |
| 43. fadar [ˈfa.ð̞ɐɾ] “father” | 95. suqquiare [sukˈkja.ɾe] “to suck” | 147. sauilȯ [ˈsɔj.lo] “sun” | 199. destra [ˈdes.tɾɐ] “right” |
| 44. animale [ɐ.niˈma.le] “animal” | 96. speivare [spiˈva.ɾe] “to spit” | 148. luna [ˈlu.nɐ] “moon” | 200. sinistra [siˈnis.tɾɐ] “left” |
| 45. fesco [ˈfes.ku] “fish” | 97. vomitare [vo.miˈta.ɾe] “to vomit” | 149. staerna [ˈstɛɾ.nɐ] “star” | 201. a [a] ad [a‿ð̞] “at” |
| 46. foglo [ˈfo.ɡlu] “bird” | 98. soffiare [sofˈfja.ɾe] “to blow” | 150. vadne [ˈvad.ne] “water” | 202 in [in] “in” |
| 47. hondo [ˈhon.du] “dog” | 99. rispirare [ʁis.piˈʁa.ɾe] “to breathe” | 151. plogġia [ˈplod.d͡ʒa] “rain” | 203. miþ [miθ] “with” |
| 48. pidocclo [piˈð̞ɔk.klu] “louse” | 100. clahare [klɐˈha.ɾe] “to laugh” | 152. aca [ˈa.xɐ] “river” | 204. e [e] ed [e‿ð̞] “and” |
| 49. serpe [ˈsɛɾ.pe] “snake” | 101. saecare [sɛˈka.ɾe] “to see” | 153. lago [ˈla.ɣ˕u] “lake” | 205. si [si] “if” |
| 50. vaurmo [ˈvɔɾ.mu] “worm” | 102. hausare [hɔˈza.ɾe] “to hear” | 154. mareina [mɐˈʁi.na] “sea” | 206. faurcê [fɔɾˈt͡ʃe] “because” |
| 51. trivȯ [ˈtɾi.vo] “tree” | 103. ġnoscere [ɲoʃˈʃe.ɾe] “to know” | 155. sale [ˈsa.le] “salt” | 207. namnȯ [ˈnam.no] “name” |
| 52. valþo [ˈval.t͡θu] “forest” | 104. þagcare [θɐŋˈka.ɾe] “to think” | 156. staeno [ˈstɛ.nu] “stone” | 208. Râsdifice [ˈʁaz.di.fi.t͡ʃe] “Linguifex” |
Comparison
Lexical and grammatical similarities among the Romance languages spoken in Ravenna and Emilia-Romagna, and between Latin and each of them, are apparent from the following examples in various Romance lects, all meaning ‘She always closes the window before she dines/before dining’. Additional translations are provided in Gothic, German, Icelandic, due to Luthic Germanic stems, and other related Romance languages.
Latin (Ea) semper antequam cēnat fenestram claudit. Gothic 𐍃𐌹 𐌰𐌹𐍅 𐍆𐌰𐌿𐍂(𐌰) 𐌼𐌰𐍄𐌾𐌹𐌸 𐌰𐌿𐌲𐌰𐌳𐌰𐌿𐍂𐍉 𐌲𐌰𐌻𐌿𐌺𐌹𐌸.
Si aiw faur(a) matjiþ augadaurō galūkiþ.German Sie schließt immer das Fenster, bevor sie speist.
Sie immer schließt das Fenster bevor speist. (altered, wrong in Standard German)Icelandic Hún æ fyrir metur glugganum lókar. (obsolete or altered)
Hún lokar alltaf glugganum áður en hún borðar. (standard Modern Icelandic)
Hún lokar alltaf glugganum fyrir mat. (also correct)Luthic (Ia) galucet aeve la finestra faur di cenare / mazzare. Upper Luthic (Lei) galucet aif la finestar faur id cenar / mazzar. Reggiano Emilian (Lē) la sèra sèmpar sù la fnèstra prima ad snàr. Bolognese Emilian (Lî) la sèra sänper la fnèstra prémma ed dṡnèr. Placentine Emilian Ad sira lé la sèra seimpar la finéstra prima da seina. Italian (Ella/lei) chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare. Eastern Lombard (Lé) la sèra sèmper sö la finèstra prima de senà. Western Lombard (Lee) la sara sù semper la finestra primma de disnà / scenà. Romagnol (Lia) la ciud sëmpra la fnèstra prëma ad magnè. Tuscan Lei chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenà. Umbrian Lia chiude sempre la finestra prima de cenà. Venetian Eła ła sara / sera senpre ła fenestra vanti de diznar. Northern Corsican Ella chjode / chjude sempre lu / u purtellu avanti/nanzu di cenà. Southern Corsican Edda / Idda sarra / serra sempri u purteddu nanzu/prima di cinà. Gallurese Idda chjude sempri lu balconi primma di cinà. Ligurian (Le) a saera sempre u barcun primma de cenà. Neapolitan Essa 'nzerra sempe 'a fenesta primma d'a cena / 'e magnà. Piedmontese Chila a sara sèmper la fnestra dnans ëd fé sin-a/dnans ëd siné. Romanian (Ea) închide întotdeauna fereastra înainte de a cina. Campidanese Sardinian Issa serrat semp(i)ri sa bentana in antis de cenai. Logudorese Sardinian Issa serrat semper sa bentana in antis de chenàre. Sassarese Edda sarra sempri lu balchoni primma di zinà. Sicilian Iḍḍa ncasa sempri a finesṭṛa prima ’i manciari â sira.
| Lexical similarity coefficients | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Luthic | Italian | Spanish | Portuguese | French | Romanian | Catalan | Romansh | Sardinian | English | German | |
| Luthic | 1 | 0.49 | 0.40 | 0.38 | 0.47 | 0.35 | 0.45 | 0.36 | 0.43 | 0.41 | 0.42 |
| Italian | 0.49 | 1 | 0.82 | 0.80 | 0.89 | 0.77 | 0.87 | 0.78 | 0.85 | — | — |
| Spanish | 0.40 | 0.82 | 1 | 0.89 | 0.75 | 0.71 | 0.85 | 0.74 | 0.76 | — | — |
| Portuguese | 0.38 | 0.80 | 0.89 | 1 | 0.75 | 0.72 | 0.85 | 0.74 | 0.76 | — | — |
| French | 0.47 | 0.89 | 0.75 | 0.75 | 1 | 0.75 | — | 0.78 | 0.80 | 0.27 | 0.29 |
| Romanian | 0.35 | 0.77 | 0.71 | 0.72 | 0.75 | 1 | 0.73 | 0.72 | 0.74 | — | — |
| Catalan | 0.45 | 0.87 | 0.85 | 0.85 | — | 0.73 | 1 | 0.76 | 0.75 | — | — |
| Romansh | 0.36 | 0.78 | 0.74 | 0.74 | 0.78 | 0.72 | 0.76 | 1 | 0.74 | — | — |
| Sardinian | 0.43 | 0.85 | 0.76 | 0.76 | 0.80 | 0.74 | 0.75 | 0.74 | 1 | — | — |
| English | 0.41 | — | — | — | 0.27 | — | — | — | — | 1 | 0.60 |
| German | 0.42 | — | — | — | 0.29 | — | — | — | — | 0.60 | 1 |
Phrasebook
| Luthic | English | IPA |
|---|---|---|
| Haelȯ m Haela f |
Hello | [ˈhɛ.lo] m [ˈhɛ.lɐ] f |
| Buona maurgina | Good morning | [ˈbwɔ.nɐ ˈmɔɾ.d͡ʒi.nɐ] |
| Buonȯ dagȯ | Good afternoon | [ˈbwɔ.no ˈda.ɣ˕o] |
| Buona sera | Good evening | [ˈbwɔ.nɐ ˈse.ɾɐ] |
| Buonȯ nattȯ | Good night | [ˈbwɔ.no ˈnat.to] |
| Ce ist ata þeinȯ namnȯ? | What is your name? | [t͡ʃe ist ɐ.θɐ ˈθi.no ˈnam.no] |
| Ata meinȯ namnȯ ist [...] | My name is [...] | [ɐ.θɐ ˈmi.no ˈnam.no ist ⸨...⸩] |
| Car is? | Where are you from? | [kɐɾ is] |
| Im di [...] | I am from [...] | [im di ⸨...⸩] |
| Beneqemuto m Beneqemuta f |
Welcome | [ˌbe.ne.kᶣeˈmu.tu] m [ˌbe.ne.kᶣeˈmu.tɐ] f |
| Piacere! | Pleased to meet you! | [pjɐˈt͡ʃe.ɾe] |
| Ce taugis? | How are you? | [t͡ʃe ˈtɔ.d͡ʒis] |
| Bene Male |
Well Bad |
[ˈbe.ne] [ˈma.le] |
| Begiȯ | Please | [ˈbe.d͡ʒo] |
| Scusâ | Excuse me | [skuˈza] |
| Grazie | Thank you | [ˈɡɾat.t͡sje] |
| Di nullȧ | You are welcome | [di ˈnul.la] |
| Giumane her rogiat Lûthicȯ? | Does anyone here speak Luthic? | [d͡ʒuˈma.ne heɾ ˈʁo.d͡ʒɐθ ˈlu.tʰi.xo] |
| Rogias Lûthicȯ? | Do you speak Luthic? | [ˈʁo.d͡ʒɐs ˈlu.tʰi.xo] |
| Sei Non Forse |
Yes No Maybe |
[ˈsi] [non] [ˈfoɾ.t͡se] |
| Ce pronuncias þata vaurdȯ? | How do you pronounce this word? | [t͡ʃe pɾoˈnun.t͡ʃɐ‿ssɐ.θɐ ˈvɔɾ.do] |
| Ce rogiare [...] in Lûthicȯ? | How to say [...] in Luthic? | [t͡ʃe ʁoˈd͡ʒa.ɾe ⸨...⸩ i‿lˈlu.tʰi.xo] |
| Cantas rasdas rogias? | How many languages do you speak? | [ˈkan.tɐs ˈʁaz.dɐs ˈʁo.d͡ʒɐs] |
| Begiȯ, rogiâ maeze lentamente | Please, speak more slowly | [ˈbe.d͡ʒo｜ʁoˈd͡ʒɐ‿mˈmɛd.d͡ze len.tɐˈmen.te] |
| Begiȯ, ripetae þata | Please, repeat that | [ˈbe.d͡ʒo｜ʁi.feˈtɛ‿θθɐ.θɐ] |
| Begiȯ, screvae þata | Please, write that down | [ˈbe.d͡ʒo｜skɾeˈvɛ‿θθɐ.θɐ] |
| Sciȯ Non sciȯ |
I understand I don’t understand |
[ˈʃi.o] [non ˈʃi.o] |
| Arrivederci | Goodbye | [ɐ.ʀi.veˈdeɾ.t͡ʃi] |
| Buonȯ viagġȯ | Bon voyage | [ˈbwɔ.no ˈvjad.d͡ʒo] |
| Buonȯ appetitȯ | Bon appetit | [ˈbwɔ.no ɐp.peˈti.θo] |
Idiomatic phrases
Mostly of the Luthic idiomatic phrases are similar to mostly European languages idioms, mainly Italian and French. Luthic idioms are often about food or mocking the French people, but mostly because of the French government and its movements against minority people within its territory. Another factor is the Roman inherited culture, as the Roman elite considered the Germanic people savage and stupid (e.g. the word Vandal, that can also stand for a person who needlessly destroys, defaces, or damages things, especially other people’s property; and Gothic that also meant barbarous, rude, unpolished, belonging to the “Dark Ages”, mediaeval as opposed to classical; ultimately of Germanic origin, the name of two East Germanic tribes, but drastically semantic changed to sound pejorative). There were many Germanic raids against the Roman Empire, and a common weapon used back then by the West Germanic people were the javelins, the Common West Germanic word for javelin is *frankō, which is also the name of the Frankish tribe (cf. Latin Francus and Francia). Luthic inherited the word “fragquese” [fɾɐŋˈke.ze] from Francia + -ensis, ultimately meaning “French (language)”, “Frenchman, Frenchwoman” and "French (people)”, but also meaning “stupid, savage, useless” from a semantic change similar to Vandal and Gothic.
- Monþȯ al·lȯ volfȯ: calqued from Italian in bocca al lupo, equivalent to break a leg, good luck; literally, “in the wolf’s mouth”.
- Dauþit lȯ volfȯ: calqued from Italian crepi in lupo, an answer similar to “thank you”; literally, “may the wolf die”.
- Tvi italiani miþ sole aenȧ manȧ: equivalent to two birds with one stone; literally, “two Italians with only one hand”, a mock to Italians’ che vuoi?.
- Veġlare anþerȯ pomȯdorȯ: an expression for someones who is asking for special treatment; literally, “to want another tomato”.
- La herba vicini ist aeve verdiza: equivalent to the grass is always greener on the other side; literally, “The neighbour’s grass is always greener”.
- La fame laþot pasta, agque si inu salsȧ: equivalent to desperate times call for desperate measures; literally, “Hunger calls for pasta, even if without sauce”.
- L’amore dominat inu regolam: somewhat equivalent to all’s fair in love and war; literally, “Love rules without rules”.
- Blegguare lȯ quiodȯ capȯ: equivalent to hit the nail on the head, with the same literal translation.
- Martellare lȯ ditȯ: the opposite to the previous idiomatic phrase, when someone is totally wrong; literally, “To hammer the finger”.
- Ġnoscȯ las meinas patatas: equivalent to I can handle this; literally, “I know my potatoes”.
- Stoppau di rogiare fragcese: an expression asking for someone to be straightforward and speak one’s mind; literally, “Stop speaking French”.
- Imparasti fragcese, nu rogiâ: equivalent to make one’s bed and lie in it; literally, “You learnt French, now speak it”.
- Pasta miþ salsȧ e caffê aeve nero: equivalent to call a spade a spade; literally, “Pasta with sauce and coffee always black”.
- Il þeino sale stâþ dolce: equivalent to out of one’s mind; literally, “Your salt is sweet”.
- Havere managos casos faul·lȯ dativȯ: equivalent to wear too many hats; literally, “Have too many usages for the dative”, a joke about the many usages of the dative case in Luthic.
- Sputâ la patata dȧ seinȧ monþȧ faur di rogiare: equivalent to speak up; literally, “Spit the potato out of your mouth before speaking”.
- Rogiando dȧ diavolȧ: equivalent to speak of the devil, with the same literal translation.
- Il pomodoro non taugit lȯ capocuocȯ: equivalent to clothes don’t make the man; literally, “The tomato doesn’t make the chef”.
- Aeno pomodoro grosso: equivalent to big shot; literally, “A big tomato”.
- Havere aenȯ cervellȯ di fragcesi: an expression for someone who acts stupidly, has low intelligence or has poor judgment; literally, “To have a French brain”.
- Cosa ist marcia in Roma: equivalent to something is rotten in the state of Denmark; literally, “Something is rotten in Rome”.
- Scimmia non dauþat scimmia: equivalent to honour among thieves; literally, “Monkey doesn’t kill monkey”.
- Costare aenȯ augonȯ: equivalent to an arm and a leg; literally, “To cost an eye”.
- Þata ist Italiana mis: equivalent to it’s all Greek to me; literally, “This is Italian to me”.
- Drigcare svasve aeno russo: equivalent to drink like a fish; literally, “To drink like a Russian”.
- Vivere grande ed al·la fragcesa: an expression for living in extravagance, 'to live in luxury; literally, “To live big and French”, mocking the French lifestyle.
- Possere drigcare velenȯ ana þata: equivalent to bet one’s bottom dollar; literally, “To can drink poison on that”.
- Il volfo danzat her: an expression for a great party; literally, “The wolf dances here”.
- Non vendere los seinos pomosdoros faur di maturanda: equivalent to don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched; literally, “Don’t sell your tomatoes before they’re ripe”.
- Pizza buona non cambiat la ricetta: equivalent to if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; literally, “A good pizza doesn’t change its recipe”.
Sample text
The North Wind and the Sun in Luthic:
- Orthographic version in Standard Luthic
- Il vendo trabaerganȧ ed ata sauilȯ giucavanno carge erat il fortizo, can aeno pellegrino qemavat avvolto hacolȧ varmȧ ana. I tvi dicideronno ei, il fromo a rimuovere lȯ hacolȯ pellegrinȧ sariat il fortizo anþerȧ. Il vendo trabaerganȧ dustogġiat a soffiare violenzȧ, ac ata maeze is soffiavat, ata maeze il pellegrino striggevat hacolȯ; tanto ei, al·lȯ angiȯ il vendo desistaet dȧ seinȧ sforzȧ. Ata sauilȯ allora sceinaut varmamente nal·lȯ hemenȯ, e þan il pellegrino rimuovaet lȯ hacolȯ immediatamente. Þan il vendo trabaerganȧ obbligauda ad andahaetare ei lata sauilȯ erat ata fortizȯ tvoro.
- Broad transcription
- /il ˈven.du tɾɐˈbɛɾ.ɡɐ.na e.d‿ɐ.tɐ ˈsɔj.lo d͡ʒu.kɐˈvɐ̃.nu kɐɾ.d͡ʒe ˈɛ.ɾɐθ il ˈfɔɾ.ti.d͡zu | kɐn ɛ.nu pel.leˈɡɾi.nu kʷeˈma.vɐθ ɐvˈvol.tu hɐˈkɔ.la ˈvaɾ.ma ɐ.nɐ ‖ i tvi di.t͡ʃi.deˈʁõ.nu ˈi | il ˈfɾo.mu ɐ ʁi.mwoˈve.ɾe lo hɐˈkɔ.lo pel.leˈɡɾi.na ˈsa.ɾjɐθ il ˈfɔɾ.ti.d͡zu ɐ̃ˈθe.ɾa ‖ il ˈven.du tɾɐˈbɛɾ.ɡɐ.na duˈstɔd.d͡ʒɐθ ɐ sofˈfja.ɾe vjoˈlɛn.t͡sa | ɐ.k‿ɐ.tɐ ˈmɛ.d͡ze is sofˈfja.vɐθ | ɐ.tɐ ˈmɛ.d͡ze il pel.leˈɡɾi.nu stɾiŋˈɡe.vɐθ hɐˈkɔ.lo | ˈtan.tu ˈi | ɐl.lo ˈan.d͡ʒo il ˈven.du deˈzi.stɛθ da ˈsi.na ˈsfɔɾ.t͡sa ‖ ɐ.tɐ ˈsɔj.lo ɐlˈlɔ.ɾɐ ʃiˈnɔθ vɐɾ.mɐˈmen.te nɐl.lo çeˈme.no | e θɐn il pel.leˈɡɾi.nu ʁiˈmwo.vɛθ lo hɐˈkɔ.lo ĩ.me.djɐ.tɐˈmen.te ‖ θɐn il ˈven.du tɾɐˈbɛɾ.ɡɐ.na ob.bliˈɡɔ.dɐ ɐ.d‿ɐn.da.çɛˈta.ɾe ˈi | lɐ.tɐ ˈsɔj.lo ˈɛ.ɾɐθ ɐ.tɐ ˈfɔɾ.ti.d͡zo ˈtvo.ɾu/
- Narrow transcription (differences emphasised)
- [il ˈven.du tɾɐˈbɛɾ.ɡɐ.na e.ð̞‿ɐ.θɐ ˈsɔj.lo d͡ʒu.xɐˈvɐ̃.nu kɐɾ.d͡ʒe ˈɛ.ɾɐθ il ˈfɔɾ.tid.d͡zu | kɐn ɛ.nu pel.leˈɡɾi.nu kᶣeˈma.vɐθ ɐvˈvol.tu hɐˈkɔ.la ˈvaɾ.ma ɐ.nɐ ‖ i tvi di.t͡ʃi.ð̞eˈʁõ.nu ˈi | il ˈfɾo.mu ɐ‿ʀi.mwoˈve.ɾe lo hɐˈkɔ.lo pel.leˈɡɾi.na ˈsa.ɾjɐθ il ˈfɔɾ.tid.d͡zu ɐ̃ˈt͡θe.ɾa ‖ il ˈven.du tɾɐˈbɛɾ.ɡɐ.n' duˈstɔd.d͡ʒɐθ ɐ.s‿sofˈfja.ɾe vjoˈlɛn.t͡sa | ɐ‿xɐ.θɐ ˈmɛd.d͡ze is sofˈfja.vɐθ | ɐ.θɐ ˈmɛd.d͡ze il pel.leˈɡɾi.nu stɾiŋˈɡ̟e.vɐh‿hɐˈkɔ.lo | ˈtan.tu ˈi | ɐl.lo ˈan.d͡ʒo il ˈven.du deˈzis.tɛθ da‿sˈsi.na ˈsfɔɾ.t͡sa ‖ ɐ.θɐ ˈsɔj.lo ɐlˈlɔ.ɾɐ ʃiˈnɔθ vɐɾ.mɐˈmen.te nɐl.lo çeˈme.no | e θɐn il pel.leˈɡɾi.nu ʁiˈmwo.vɛθ lo hɐˈkɔ.lo ĩ.me.djɐ.θɐˈmen.te ‖ θɐn il ˈven.du tɾɐˈbɛɾ.ɡɐ.na ob.bliˈɡɔ.ð̞ɐ ɐ.ð̞‿ɐn.da.çɛˈta.ɾe ˈi | lɐ.θɐ ˈsɔj.lo ˈɛ.ɾɐθ ɐ.θɐ ˈfɔɾ.tid.d͡zo ˈtvo.ɾu]
- Orthographic version in Standard Luthic, with reductions
- Il vendo trabaerganȧ·d ata sauilȯ giucavanno carge erat il fortizo, can aeno pellegrino qemavat avvolto hacolȧ varmȧ ana. I tvi dicideronno ei, il fromo a rimuovere lȯ hacolȯ pellegrinȧ sariat il fortizo anþerȧ. Il vendo trabaerganȧ dustogġiat a soffiare violenzȧ, ac ata maeze is soffiavat, ata maeze il pellegrino striggevat hacolȯ; tanto ei, all’angiȯ il vendo desistaet dȧ seinȧ sforzȧ. Ata sauilȯ allora sceinaut varmamente nal·lȯ hemenȯ, e þan il pellegrino rimuovaet lȯ hacolȯ immediatamente. Þan il vendo trabaerganȧ obbligauda·d andahaetare ei lata sauilȯ erat ata fortizȯ tvoro.
- Orthographic version in English
- The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveller came along wrapped in a warm cloak. They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveller take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other. Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveller fold his cloak around him; and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveller took off his cloak. And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.
The Lord’s Prayer in Luthic:
Fadar unsar, þû hemenȯ, |
/ˈfa.dɐɾ ˈũ.sɐɾ | ˈθu çeˈme.no |
[ˈfa.ð̞ɐɾ ˈũ.t͡sɐɾ | ˈθu‿ççeˈme.no |
Our Father, who art in heaven, |
For more, vide Translated works in Luthic.
Bibliography
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- Haller, Hermann W. (1999). The other Italy: the literary canon in dialect. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
- Renzi, Lorenzo (1994). Nuova introduzione alla filologia romanza. Bologna: Il Mulino.
- Koryakov, Y. B. (2001). Atlas of Romance languages. Moscow: Moscow State University.
- Mallory, J.P.; Douglas Q. Adams (1997). Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture. London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers.
- Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthias; Wenthe, Mark (2017). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics (Vol. 1). Berlin: De Gruyer.
- Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthias; Wenthe, Mark (2017). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics (Vol. 2). Berlin: De Gruyer.
- Klein, Jared; Joseph, Brian; Fritz, Matthias; Wenthe, Mark (2018). Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics (Vol. 3). Berlin: De Gruyer.
- Ringe, Donald A. (2006). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Linguistic history of English, v. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Kroonen, Guus (2013). Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Leiden–Boston: Brill.
- Orel, Vladimir (2003). A Handbook of Germanic Etymology. Leiden–Boston: Brill.
- E. Prokosch (1939). A Comparative Germanic Grammar. Connecticut: The Linguistic Society of America for Yale University.
- A. Noreen (1913). Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen. Trübner: Straßburg.
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- Kloekhorst, Alwin (2008). Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon. Leiden–Boston: Brill.
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- Bennett, William Holmes (1980). An Introduction to the Gothic Language. New York: Modern Language Association of America.
- Wright, Joseph (1910). Grammar of the Gothic Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
- Snædal, Magnús (2011). "Gothic <ggw>". Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis. 128: 145–154.
- G. H. Balg (1889): A comparative glossary of the Gothic language with especial reference to English and German. New York: Westermann & Company.
- Ebbinghaus, E. A. (1976). THE FIRST ENTRY OF THE GOTHIC CALENDAR. The Journal of Theological Studies, 27(1), 140–145. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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- Stearns Jr, MacDonald (1978). Crimean Gothic: Analysis and Etymology of the Corpus. Stanford: Anma Libri.
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- Allen, William Sidney (1978) [1965]. Vox Latina: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Allen, William Sidney (1987). Vox Graeca: The Pronunciation of Classical Greek. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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- Grandgent, C. H. (1907). An introduction to Vulgar Latin. Boston: D.C. Heath & Co.
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- Calabrese, Andrea (2005). On the Feature [ATR] and the Evolution of the Short High Vowels of Latin into Romance. Connecticut: University of Connecticut
- Calabrese, Andrea (1998). Some remarks on the Latin case system and its development in Romance, in J. Lema & E. Trevino, (eds.), Theoretical Advances on Romance Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Batllori, Montserrat & Roca, Francesc (2011). Grammaticalization of ser and estar in romance. Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online.
- Bruckner, Wilhelm (1895). Die Sprache der Langobarden. Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Culturgeschichte der germanischen Völker. Vol. LXXV. Strassburg: Trübner.
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- Hockett, Charles F. (1958). A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan.
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- Nair, RD; Lincoln, NB (2007). Lincoln, Nadina (ed.). Cognitive rehabilitation for memory deficits following stroke. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
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Conlang status
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Hello there! I am Luthic’s creator, Lëtzelúcia, and I thank you a lot for checking out my project. My sincere thanks to Sware, who helped me out creating this Linguifex article with many handy hints and tips; to Hazer and Norge /nɔɹ̠ʷd͡ʒ/, who kept ut with Luthic since its creation (January 5th 2023); to the Language Sloth conlang community; to my close friend circle (Discado), Zen and CLS; to Dillon and BenJamin P. Johnson for their feedback and quick, but useful, assistance; and last but not least, my sincere thanks to my mum, who helped me out with the phonological development, as we talked about my phonological development when I was younger, and we remembered together the development of my two younger siblings. Luthic first started as a Google Docs file trying to mimic a Wikipedia article (you can find the first Luthic stub here), and I tried my best to keep a similar aesthetic here. Luthic was created when I got into Portuguese philology (one of my mother tongues) and I noticed a fair presence of Gothic etymologies, so I just decided to amplify it by a lot, really, a lot. Luthic also started as a tool to get me introduced into Gothic and other ancient Germanic languages; I also kept many Indo-European grammar archaisms in order to get introduced into Classical Latin and Attic Greek grammars, the latter being also calqued in Gothic.
Luthic is based on Gothic, but I also got some inspirations from West Germanic, such as the small Langobardic corpus we have available and the reconstructed Frankish lemmata, Icelandic was also an inspiration for me, as I always enjoyed this idea of a conserved language that retains many archaic characteristics (i.e. Lithuanian, Icelandic, Faroese). My other ideas came from general Romance languages, such as my mother tongues (Italian and Portuguese).
Luthic’s main goal is to look like a real language, I want the reader to look at my article and ponder: “Well, that could be a real language indeed!” Although some of Luthic features are quite unusual, such as the case system, the large consonant inventory, the survival of the aspirate plosives and the passive voice, however I think that it is acceptable, at least according to most of my researches (vide § Bibliography), but as I said before, I also wanted to create a language with many archaisms, like Icelandic or Lithuanian. My main inspirations for the large phonology were Classical Latin, Gothic and Modern Italian (dialects affected by Gorgia Tuscana mainly).
It is not an easy language to be learnt, it has cases, genders, a large phonology, but some of my inspiration also came from Avendonian, who’s pretty much Luthic’s opposite, as it’s way simpler, yet similar, and I had an easy time understanding Avendonian by just speaking Italian fluently and having advanced knowledge in German and English, which may not happen at the same degree to any Luthic learner, unfortunately (as some of my friends can definitely relate to that).
This conlang is basically finished, it just lacks a bit of vocabulary, and I still want to improve some details on this article, but you can consider it finished. In case you want to request a translation of a short text into Luthic, report a typo (in case you don’t have a Linguifex account to correct it already), send me a suggestion or feedback, feel free to contact me on Linguifex’s Discord server, I’ll be very glad.
You can see more of Luthic’s vocabulary progress at Luthic/Colours, Luthic/Time and Luthic/Kinship.