Skundavisk

Shoundavish (sh.: skundavisk, /ʃyndaβɪʃ/) is a West-Germanic language spoken in Shoundafland, a Northern Europe country located between Germany, Poland and Denmark. It evolved from the Old Saxon dialects that were spoken in the Sleswijk and Holtsat (German Schleswig and Holstein) in the early Middle Ages, and is thus closely related to English, Dutch, Low Saxon, Frisian and (High) German. Because of the huge influence it exerced on the Scandinavian languages during the Middle Ages, Shoundavish bears many similarities with Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. Reversely, Shoundavish underwent a slight North Germanic influence by contact with the Nordic countries, and which is reflected by the presence of Scandinavian loanwords in its vocabulary, especially from Old Norse and Early Modern Danish.

Shoundavish didn't take part in the High German consonant shift, and is overall one of the most conservative Germanic languages regarding the consonants. Because of its preservation of the sounds "th" and "w", along with a large common vocabulary, Shoundavish is one of the closest languages to English. However, both languages underwent very different vowel shifts over time, which makes them sound quite different. Besides, while English borrowed many words from the Romance languages (especially French), the Shoundavish vocabulary remained mostly Germanic, and very few words were borrowed from non-Germanic sources. Therefore, words like "biology" or "litterature" are built using Germanic roots instead of Latin or Greek ones. While being very conservative in its phonology and lexicon, Shoundavish didn't preserve the complex grammar of Proto-Germanic, and the medieval case system has been reduced to scattered remnants in the modern language.

Classification and Dialects

Skundavisk belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Germanic languages. It bears many similarities with the Anglo-Frisian, Low Saxon and Low Franconian languages, which include English, Frisian, Low German and Dutch among others.

There are seven dialects of Shoundavish: Sleswijksk, west Holtatisk, oost Holtsatisk, sunth Holtsatisk, west Mikelenborgisk, oost Mikelenborgisk and Seelandisk, all of which differ in grammar, phonology, vocabulary and syntax. The written standard is based on the oost Holtsatisk dialect, and is understood everywhere in Shoundafland. However, outside the region of East Holtsat, standard Shoundavish is rarely spoken, and the dialects are still widely used, unlike what happened in most West European countries.

Origin

The name Shoundavish comes from an old Germanic compound name: *skunduz habai, litterally "fast way to the sea" (the word *habai is the genitive of *haba and is related to English "haven"), referring to the original homeland of the Shoundaves between the North and the Baltic Seas. The earliest stage of the language is Old Shoundavish, which emerged in the 6th century from North Sea Germanic dialects, near the original homeland of the Angles, the Saxons and the Frisians. At that time the language was, like the other early Germanic languages, highly inflected. The original four cases of Proto-Germanic were all preserved, but were quite simplified.

By the 12th century the language had evolved significantly and was entering the Middle Shoundavish period, during which many vowels in unstressed syllables were reduced (ex. Old Shoundavish daga, sunno, friunds, drivan > Middle Shoundavish dag, sunne, friend, driven). The Middle Shoundavish vocabulary is quite close to that of Modern Shoundavish, but the pronunciation was different and the adjectives and articles were still inflected, like in Modern German. Middle Shoundavish was one of the main languages of the Hanseatic league, and had a huge impact on the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian), whose modern vocabulary contains around 30% of Shoundavish loanwords. By the 15th century, the dialects of Shoundavish had diverged quite a lot from each other, and each dialect developed its own distinct pholonogial and grammatical characteristics.

The 16th century saw a drastic simplification of the grammar, all the cases disappeared (except the very formal genitive case which survived in the written language) and the use of the subjunctive mood declined. Several vowels shifted during this period, especially the long vowels which split into diphthongs or were significantly modified (ex. Middle Shoundavish driven /dri:βən/, hus /hu:s/, stan /sta:n/ > Modern Shoundavish drijven /drɪjβən/, hous /hows/, stån /sto:n/). Since Sleswijk was under Danish rule during this time, Shoundavish borrowed a few words from Danish, and adopted a Scandinavian-looking orthography using the letters å, æ, ø and y. Since then, the language didn't undergo any significant change, therefore the 17th century texts almost don't differ with actual texts in style, grammar and vocabulary.

While the other Germanic languages were adopting many new scientific and technical words, which were coined from Latin and Greek roots, Shoundavish coined its own scientific vocabulary using Germanic roots. For example, words like biology, physics or gene are translated as lijfkunthe, byrdkunthe and erfthe (literally "life-knowledge", "nature-knowledge" and "heritage" with a "-the" suffix related to English "-th"). It is therefore possible to write a Shoundavish text dealing with science or technology without any loanword from Latin or Greek, as it is the case in Icelandic.

Phonology

Consonants

	bilabial	dental	alveolar	post-alveolar	palatal	velar	uvular	glottal
nasal	m		n			ɳ
plosive	p b		t d		c ɟ	k g		ʔ
fricative	ɸ β	θ ð	s	ʃ		x	χ
fricative				l ɫ	j	w ʍ
trill				r

Vowels

	front	central	back
close	y		u
near-close	ɪ ʏ
close-mid	e ø
mid		ɘ
open-mid	ɛ œ		ɔ
near-open	æ	ɐ
open	a		ɑ

Phonotactics

/g/+/h/=/x/ or /χ/

/n/+/g/=/ŋ/

/s/+k/=/ʃ/

/t/+/h/=/θ/ or /ð/

/h/+/w/=/ʍ/