Naeng/Literature

Windermere is a Luminese language distantly related to Rencadian. It's also in a sprachbund with Rencadian so it has many grammatical features in common with it.

It's inspired by German, Khmer, Estonian, Vietnamese, and an older draft of IlL's Classical Wiobian.

Phonology

Consonants

Windermere consonants

		Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Medial	Velar	Labiovelar	Glottal
Nasal		m /m/		n /n/		ń /ɲˤ/	ng /ŋ/
Plosive	voiceless	p /p/		t /t/		z /cˤ/	k /k/
	voiced	ƀ /b/		đ /d/		ɟ /ɟˤ/	g /ɡ/
Fricative	voiceless	f /f~v/	þ /θ~ð/	ß /s/		s /ç~ʝ/	ch /x~ɣ/		(ḥ /h/)
	voiced	(v /v/)	(ð /ð/)	ʒ /z/			(gh /x~ɣ/)
Lateral approximant				l /l/		ĺ /ʎˁ/
Lateral fricative				lh /ɬ/
Approximant					j /j/	r /jˁ/		w /w/

The medial consonants vary by idiolect and can be laminal retroflex /ʈʂ, ɖʐ, ʂ, ɳ, ɭ, ɻ/, pharyngealized palatal, or pharyngealized uvular /qˁ, ɢˁ, χˁ, ɴˁ, ʟˁ, ʁˁ/.

Sounds in parentheses are phonemic in Southern Windermere. Voiceless fricatives except /s/ and /çˁ/ are voiced intervocalically in Northern Windermere.

Vowels

	Front		Central		Back
	short	long	short	long	short	long
Close	i /i/	ih /iː/	ü /ɨ/	üh /ɨː/	u /u/	uh /uː/
Close-mid	e /e~ɪ/	eh /eː~ɪː/			o /o~ʊ/	oh /oː~ʊː/
Mid			ö /ə/	öh /əː/
Open-mid	ä /ɛ/	äh /ɛː/			å /ɔ/	åh /ɔː/
Open	a /æ/	ah /æː/			ⱶ /ɑ/	ⱶh /ɑː/

As ⱶ is a rare vowel sound in Windermere, it's often merged with å into /ɑ~ɒ/. This does not happen in all accents of Windermere so the spelling distinguishes the two phonemes.

Windermere also allows the following diphthongs: ie üö uo ai ⱶe ⱶo au ⱶü ei åi eu oi äⱶ öi öü öu. The combinations ie uo ei are pronounced as if spelled iö uö äi.

Prosody

Stress

Most of the time, the stress falls on the first syllable. Exceptions are sesquisyllables that result from epenthesis of initial consonant clusters.

Phonotactics

The syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C)(C), where V can be a vowel or a diphthong.

Morphology

Pronouns

(to be added)

Verbs

Verbs conjugate for person and tense. The present tense conjugation is as follows:

Present indicative athematic endings
	Singular	Plural
1	-im	-im
2, 3	-ep	-ep

For example,

ädahþ 'to speak'
	Singular	Plural
1	ädim	ädim
2, 3	ädep	ädep

Thematic verbs conjugate differently:

meþahþ 'to sit'
	Singular	Plural
1	meþäm	meþäm
2, 3	meþöp	meþöp

[add rule here]

The past and future tense conjugations are identical to the present tense conjugation, except the first person forms coincide with the second person present forms.

Syntax

Word order in Windermere is SVO. Otherwise it's head-final, which means:

• adjectives and relative clauses precede nouns, so "the man who eats apples" is literally "the apple-eating man"
• postpositions, not prepositions
• complementizers are head-initial (because of the final-over-final constraint)