Naeng/Literature
Windermere is a Rencadic language closely related to C'mere, Nail Polish and Chrome Finish. It's inspired by German, Khmer, Estonian, Vietnamese, and an older draft of IlL's Ancient Wiebian.
Introduction
Phonology
Orthography
Consonants
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Medial | Velar | Labiovelar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m /m/ | n /n/ | ng /ŋ/ | ||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p /p/ | t /t/ | ƈ /cˤ/ | k /k/ | qu /kʷ/ | |||
| voiced | b /b/ | d /d/ | ʛ /ɟˤ/ | g /ɡ/ | ꝿu /ɡʷ/ | ||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f /f~v/ | th /θ~ð/ | s /s/ | ƨ /çˤ~ʝˤ/ | h /x~ɣ/ | xu /xʷ/ | (ħ /h/) | |
| voiced | (v /v/) | (dh /ð/) | z /z/ | (gh /x~ɣ/) | |||||
| Affricate | ts /ts/ | ||||||||
| Lateral approximant | l /l/ | ||||||||
| Approximant | j /j/ | r /jˤ/ | w /w/ | ||||||
- Notes
- Voiceless plosives and affricates are lightly aspirated.
- The medial consonants /cˤ, ɟˤ, çˤ, jˤ/ vary by idiolect and can be laminal retroflex [ʈʂ, ɖʐ, ʂ, ɻ], pharyngealized palatal [cˤ, ɟˤ, çˤ,jˤ], or pharyngealized uvular [qˤ, ɢˤ, χˤ, ʁˤ].
- Sounds in parentheses are phonemic in Southern Windermere. Voiceless fricatives except /s/ are voiced intervocalically in Northern Windermere.
Vowels
| Front | Central | Back | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | rhotic | short | long | rhotic | short | long | rhotic | |
| Close | i /i/ | ii /iː/ | ir, ɿr, iər /ɪɚ/ | y /ɨ/ | yy /ɨː/ | yr, yər /ɨɚ/ | u /u/ | uu /uː/ | ur, ꝏr, uər /ʊɚ/ |
| Close-mid | ɿ /e~ɪ/ | ɿɿ /eː~ɪː/ | ꝏ /o~ʊ/ | oo /oː~ʊː/ | |||||
| Mid | ə /ə/ | əə /əː/ | ər /ɚː/ | ||||||
| Open-mid | e /ɛ/ | ee /ɛː/ | er /ɛɚ/ | ɔ /ɔ/ | ɔɔ /ɔː/ | ꜿr, ɔr /ɑɚ/ | |||
| Open | a /æ/ | aa /æː/ | ar /æɚ/ | ꜿ /ɑ/ | ꜿꜿ /ɑː/ | ||||
As ꜿ is a rare vowel sound in Windermere, it's often merged with ɔ 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: iə yə uə ai ꜿe ꜿo au ꜿy ei ɔi ɿu ꝏi eꜿ əi əy əu.
Prosody
Stress
Most of the time, the stress falls on the first syllable. Exceptions are sesquisyllables that result from epenthesis of initial consonant clusters.
Intonation
Phonotactics
The syllable structure is (C)(C)V(C)(C), where V can be a vowel or a diphthong.
Morphophonology
Morphology
Nouns
Windermere nouns have 12 cases.
Nouns are always capitalized, but the first word of a sentence is not necessarily capitalized.
| Sngeef - world | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | Sngeef | |||
| Genitive | Sngeefə | |||
| Partitive | Sngeefəƨ | |||
| Illative | Sngeefərə | |||
| Inessive | Sngeefər | |||
| Elative | Sngeefərƨ | |||
| Allative | Sngeefənə | |||
| Adessive | Sngeefən | |||
| Ablative | Sngeefənƨ | |||
| Translative | Sngeefəthə | |||
| Essive | Sngeefəth | |||
| Instructive | Sngeefəng | |||
The plural prefix is ɿm-, so: Ꞁmsngeef = 'worlds', Ꞁmsngeefe = 'of worlds', ...
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)