Norþimris

Norþimris
Norþimris
Pronunciation	[[Help:IPA|nɔɹˈθɪmɾɪs]]
Created by	–
Native to	Norþimer
Native speakers	13 million (2011)
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Anglo-Frisian Anglic Norþimris
Early forms	Old English Early Norþimris
Official status
Official language in	Norþimer

Norþimris [nɔɹˈθɪmrɪs] (also Northimris or Northumbrian in English) is a Germanic language spoken by the people of Norþimer, one of the four states of Great Britain alongside Scotland, England and Wales. Physically situated between Scotland and England, Norþimris shares much in common with Scots and English, all of which descend from Old English, and may be seen as part of a dialect continuum with those two languages. However, unlike its neighbours, Norþimris has very little influence from French and retains a much stronger Anglo-Norse vocabulary.

History

Internal

Norþimris has its origins in the Northumbrian dialect of Old English, once spoken across central Britain between the River Humber and the Firth of Forth. Though already somewhat distinct from the dialects of Old English spoken further south due to the heavy Norse influence and the substantial reduction in inflexions, it would be the political changes of the late 11th century that ensured Norþimer developed as a language different from its neighbours to the north and south. Following the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror (Wilem Bastard) was faced with strong opposition to his rule, not least from the fiercely independent Anglo-Norse nobles of the north. Despite repeated attempts to subdue them William was never able to conquer the north and, as the Normans consolidated their hold over southern England, the old earldom of Northumbria developed into a self-governing rebel state, eventually declaring itself an independent kingdom in AD 1100.

The period c.1100-1600 is called Early Norþimris. At the start of this period the language was really indistinguishable from the Anglian dialects of late Old and early Middle English, but as English (and Scots) became increasingly influenced by French and Medieval Latin the differences increased. During this period, Norþimris lost most of its remaining inflexions and underwent important phonological changes culminating in the Great Vowel Shift. As a language of government, law and literature it became increasingly flexible and sophisticated.

Modern Norþimris is said to begin c.1600 when the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance encouraged efforts to standardise and describe the language, and simultaneously increased borrowing from Classical and Romance sources. During this period Norþimris became the language of religion alongside government and literature, and from the late 18th century it increasingly became a 'popular' language with written forms more representative of the spoken language. The spelling system of Þoruuff Þorsteynsun, published in 1877, was adopted as the official written form in 1884 and has remained in use ever since.

External

Norþimris is an a posteriori language based on Northumbrian Old English and Northern Middle English and influenced by the various modern dialects of northern England as well as Scots (and to some degree Dutch). It was developed as an answer to the hypothetical question "What would English sound like if William the Conqueror had never conquered the north?". Since French and Latin have so heavily influenced English vocabulary, grammar and orthography, I expected the result to be considerably different from Modern English. However, Modern English has also been heavily influenced by northern forms with many of the innovations of Middle and Early Modern English originating in the north (e.g. spread of plural -s, spread of 3rd person verb -s, use of they, them, their', use of hers, yours etc.).

Phonology

Dialects

There is a great deal of dialect variation across Norþimer, but there are generally considered to be four main dialects:

• Southern, which is the closest to a 'standard' dialect, found in Yorucscir
• Northern, extending north from Weer Ei (River Wear) to the Scottish border
• Western, the dialect west of the moors
• South-western, the dialect of the Þreiplands, sometimes called Þreiplandris

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m			n			ŋ
Plosive	p     b		t     d				k     g
Fricative		f     v	θ     ð	s     z	ʃ			h
Affricate					t͡ʃ     d͡ʒ
Approximant	ʍ     w			ɹ		j
Flap or tap				ɾ
Lateral app.				l

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː		uː
Near-close	ɪ		ʊ
Close-mid	eː		oː
Mid		ə
Open-mid	ɛ
Near-open	æː
Open	a		ɒ

Orthography

Norþimris is written with a Latin alphabet consisting of the following letters:

a b c d ð e f g h i l m n o p r s t þ u w x y z

The letters j, q and v do not occur, except in unassimilated borrowings. k only appears in the digraph sk.

The orthography is almost entirely phonemic, except notably in the case of s, the pronunciation of which is not always predictable in final position. The following table gives all the relevant values of the letters and digraphs.

Graph	IPA	Comments
a	/a/
au	/oː/	sometimes /aː/ in parts of the W
b	/b/
c	/k/
ch	/t͡ʃ/
cg	/d͡ʒ/	traditionally not permitted to occur word initially, but now used in borrowings such as cgin 'engine'
d	/d/
ð	/ð/
e	/ɛ/
ea	/eː/	tending towards /eə/
	/ja/	often word initially or after initial /h/, particularly in N & W (e.g. ean 'one' /jan/, heam /hjam/)
ee	/iː/	often /iə/ in N & W
ei	/iə/	but /iː/ in open syllables (e.g. sei 'sea'). Often /ei/ in N & W
eo	/iː/	/ɪu̯/ in areas bordering Scotland
ey	/ei̯/
f	/f/	initially or before a voiceless plosive
	/v/	medially and finally
f	/f/
g	/g/
h	/h/	initially
	/f/	medially and finally; tends to become /x/ in the far N
	Ø	generally before -t
i	/ɪ/
ie	/ɪ/	word-finally in unstressed syllables, notably the endings -ie, -lie (e.g. nouhtie 'poor').
	/iː/	in stressed position
iy	/æː/
l	/l/
m	/m/
n	/n/
ng	/ŋ/
o	/ɒ/
oo	/oː/
ou	/ɔu̯/
p	/p/
r	/ɾ/	before a vowel
	/ɹ/	before a consonant
s	/s/	initially, adjacent to a voiceless consonant and sometimes finally after a vowel
	/z/	between vowels or adjacent to a voiced sound, sometimes finally after a vowel
sc	/ʃ/
sk	/sk/	the only permitted use of k in native words
ss	/s/	only occurs following short vowels
t	/t/
þ	/θ/
u	/ʊ/
uu	/uː ~ ʊu̯/
w	/w/
hw	/ʍ/	in some dialects, tending to become /h/ before round vowels and /w/ elsewhere
x	/ks/
z	/t͡s/	used mostly in borrowed words

Notes:

• the only letter which should present any difficulty to the reader is <s>, the pronunciation of which is not always predictable. In this article, voiceless /s/ will be written <ṡ> where confusion may arise (e.g. huuṡ 'house', riyṡ 'rice').

Grammar

Morphology

Articles

The indefinite article is identical to English: a before a consonant and an before a vowel (e.g. a man, an apel).

The definite article is 't in all cases (e.g. 't man, 't apel).

Nouns

Nouns have no grammatical gender and case is limited to the genitive.

The plural of most nouns ends in -s, or -es after a sibilant (e.g. apels, huuses). A few nouns have a rare plural in -en or -er (e.g. een 'eyes', ousen 'oxen', sceon 'shoes', lamer 'lambs', caufer 'calves', childer 'children'). There is also a small number of nouns with a change of vowel in the plural: man 'man' → men, wiman 'woman' → wimen, hand 'hand' → hend, teoþ 'tooth' → teeþ, feot 'foot' → feet, geoṡ 'goose' → geeṡ, muuṡ 'mouse' → miys, cuu 'cow' → ciy.

The genitive has two forms:

• the dependent genitive is used directly before a noun or noun phrase and is unmarked (e.g. 't man huuṡ 'the man's house', his faðer sun 'his father's son').
• the independent genitive usually occurs as the complement in a copular construction and is marked with -s (-es after a sibilant; e.g. 't huuṡ is Cetels 'the house is Cetel's', ðat 's his faðers 'that's his fathers').

Adjectives

Adjectives precede the noun they qualify and are generally immutable, regardless of number or case (e.g. a micel hund 'a big dog', 't hwiyt deors 'the white doors').

All regular adjectives may form a comparative with the addition of -ar and a superlative with -ast (e.g. aud 'old' → audar, audast, healie 'holy' → healiar, healiast).

The following are compared irregularly: il 'bad' → wer/werṡ, werst; geod 'good' → beter, best; micel 'large' → mear/mea, meast; liytel/liyl 'small' → leeṡ, leest.

Numerals

	Cardinal	Ordinal
1	ean	first
2	twea	anar
3	þree	þird
4	four	ferd
5	fiyf	fift
6	sex	sext
7	sefen	sefend
8	auht	auhted
9	niyn	niynd
10	tein	tend
11	elefen	eleft
12	twelf	twelft
13	þretein	þreteind
14	fourtein	fourteind
15	fiftein	fifteind
20	twentie	twentiand
21	ean an twentie	ean an twentiand
30	þritie	þritiand
40	fourtie	fourtiand
50	fiftie	fiftiand
100	hunreþ	hunreþd
1000	þuusan	þuusand
1,000,000	milyoon	milyoond

Pronouns

	Subject		Object
	Unstressed	Stressed	Unstressed	Stressed
1sg	i	ic	mi	mie
2sg	ðu, -tu	ðuu	ði	ðie
3sg m.	hi	hie	him
3sg f.	scu	sceo	her
3sg n.	hit
1pl	wi	wie	us	uus
2pl	yi	yie	yu	yuu
3pl	ðey		ðam

Several of the personal pronouns have different stressed and unstressed forms. The stressed forms are only used in speech and writing when particular emphasis is put on the pronoun, such as when they occur independently (e.g. ic leof him 'I love him', hwea didd ðat? Yuu 'who did that? You') . Elsewhere, the unstressed forms are used (e.g. hi wuns in Yoruc 'he lives in York').

Notes:

• the 2nd person singular -tu is an enclitic form used with interrogative verbs (e.g. censtu Cetel? 'do you know Cetel?').
• the 3rd person singular forms him, her and hit are pronounced without the h in unstressed position, but this is not expressed in writing.
• as in English, 'hi/hie' are used for male humans, scu/sceo for females and hit for inanimate objects.
• Norþimris maintains a T/V distinction, in which 2nd person plural yie etc. can be used as formal 'you' when addressing a single person. Its use is generally more restricted than in many European languages, only used in particularly formal situations and not necessarily expected when speaking to elders or strangers.
• there is an informal use of us/uus in place of mi/mie (e.g. gie us hit 'give me it').

The genitive pronouns have dependent and independent forms, used like the nominal equivalents.

	Dependent	Independent
1sg	miy(n)	miyn
2sg	ðiy(n)	ðiyn
3sg m.	his
3sg f.	her	hers
3sg n.	his
1pl	uur	uurs
2pl	your	yours
3pl	ðer	ðers

There is no independent form for the 3rd person neuter.

Reflexive pronouns are formed with -(s)seln, irregularly pronounced /sɛl/ or /sɛn/ according to dialect, which is added to the object pronouns (e.g. misseln 'myself', herṡeln 'herself'). These pronouns are more emphatic than their English counterparts and the object pronouns are preferred when the sense of reflexiveness is already implied (e.g. i sau mi i 't scewer 'I saw myself in the mirror').

The demonstrative pronouns are:

• ðiss 'this' and ðir 'these', used for objects close at hand or abstracts metaphorically so;
• ðat 'that' and ðea 'those', used for objects or abstracts at a distance or out of sight;
• yon 'that, those', used only for objects in sight but at a distance.

These may be employed as demonstrative adjectives, preceding the noun (e.g. ðat wiyff 'that woman', yon fel 'that mountain').

The interrogatives are:

• pronouns: hwea 'who', hwat 'what', hwilc 'which', referring to things already mentioned or implied, hweðer 'which of two';
• adjectives: hwilc 'what, which', hweaṡ 'whose';
• adverbs: hwiy 'why', huu 'how', hwear 'where', hwan 'when'.

Verbs

Norþimris has only two conjugated tenses: the present and the past. Beyond this, a number of moods, tenses and voices are created using auxiliary verbs and modals.

All regular verbs follow the same pattern in the present tense, given below with leof 'love':

	Sg	Pl
1	leof	leof
2	leofs
3

Whenever the present tense verb is separated from its pronoun or is used with a noun, the -s form is used throughout (e.g. ic, your cining, beeds yu 'I, your king, command you', 't men sings 'the men sing').

In the past tense, regular verbs may be divided into strong and weak conjugations, the former conjugating by a vowel change, the latter by the addition of a suffix. There are no distinctions of person in the past tense.

There are eight classes of strong verb, each with different changes in the past tense and the past participle:

Class	Present	Past	Past Participle
1	biyt	beat	biten
2	beed	bead	boden
3	sing	sang	sungen
4	beir	bar	boren
5	eit	eat	eten
6	fear	feor	faren
7	mau	mew	maun
	grou	grew	groun
	faud	feld	fauden
8	cerf	carf	corfen

Weak verbs form their past tense with a dental suffix, the form of which depends on the stem:

• stems ending in -l, -m, -n, -nd or a voiceless consonant take -t (e.g. smelt 'smelled', fiyct 'fidgetted', lamt 'beat');
• stems ending in -d or -t take -it (e.g. liltit 'hummed', bratit 'curdled, breidit 'stretched');
• other stems take -d (e.g. bleðerd 'talked loudly', ligd 'lay', hiysd 'hoisted').

A number of verbs in <ee> may undergo shortening in the past (e.g. bleed → bledd, meet → mett, sleep → slept/sleept). A number of other verbs have a past tense ending in -ht (e.g. seec → souht, wurc → wrouht, lach 'catch' → lauht).

The imperative of regular verbs is identical to the stem (e.g. leof mi 'love me', eit ðiy meit 'eat your food').

The present participle of all verbs is formed with -and (e.g. leofand 'loving', singand 'singing').

The past participle of most weak verbs is identical to the past tense form (e.g. leofd 'loved', ligd 'layed'). The strong verbs form a past participle with -(e)n and a change of vowel, as shown in the table above but a number of weak verbs ending in -d, -t also form their past participle in -en (e.g. breiden 'stretched', leaden 'loaded').

A number of irregular verbs occur in Norþimris, the most important of which is bie 'be':

	Sg	Pl	Participle
Present	is, 's	ar, 'r	bieand
Past	wer		bien
Imperative	bie

The contracted forms 's and 'r are very common in all but the most formal writing and stand alone in the sentence (e.g. 't man 's singand 'the man's singing').

Other irregular verbs are:

	Present	Past	Present Ptc	Past Ptc
do	deo	didd	deond	deon
have	hea, has	hadd	heand	hadd
go	gang/gea	gangd	gangand	gean
	gan	gand	ganand
give	gie	gaf	giend	gien
make	mac	mead	macand	mead
take	tac	teac	tacand	tean

Each of the present forms takes -s in the 2nd and 3rd person singular, but hea has the separate form has.

The majority of tenses in Norþimris are form periphrastically.

Tense	Structure	Example
Present Continuous	present of bie + present participle	i 's singand	I am singing
Past Continuous	past of bie + present participle	i wer singand	I was singing
Perfect	present of hea + past participle	i hea sungen	I have sung
	present of bie + past participle	i 's faun	I have fallen
Pluperfect	past of hea + past particple	i hadd sungen	I had sung
	past of bie + past participle	i wer faun	I had fallen
Future	auxiliary sal + stem	i sal sing	I will sing

In the perfect and pluperfect, bie is used with unaccusative verbs, i.e. verbs in which the subject is not the agent but the patient of the verb (e.g. 't snea 's mouten 'the snow has melted').

Syntax

The basic word order of Norþimris is Subject-Verb-Object:

• i leof ði 'I love you'
• Cetel sang 't sang 'Cetel sang the song
• Maria leirs Frencis 'Maria teaches French'

Unlike some other Germanic languages, Norþimris prefers to keep auxiliary and lexical verbs together:

• Cetel 's singand 't sang 'Cetel is singing the song'
• ðu hadd seen him 'you had seen him'

A direct object follows an indirect object, unless both are personal pronouns, in which case the direct object comes first:

• hi gaf Askil 't beoc 'he gave Askil the book'
• hi gaf hit him 'he gave it to him'

Adverbial expressions are not in a fixed position and generally come at the beginning or end of the sentence:

• yestren, gangd i til 't seekhuuṡ 'yesterday, I went to the hospital'
• i gangd til 't seekhuuṡ yestren 'I went to the hospital yesterday'

Adverbs of manner are placed close to the words to which they relate:

• scu leyct wel 't geamen / scu leyct 't geamen wel 'she played the game well'
• wi ran snel heam / wi ran heam snel 'we ran home fast'

When an adverbial or other element is placed before the verb, the subject is moved to come after the auxiliary verb:

• in a circ wer ðey wedit 'in a church they were married'
• tomorn, sal i gang til 't skeol 'tomorrow I will go to school'

The relative pronoun is at:

• 't wiyff at i leof 'the woman who I love'
• a barn at cens au 'a child that knows everything'