User:Ceige/Ceuja: Difference between revisions
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
Line 43: | Line 43: | ||
Three main processes define this period: | Three main processes define this period: | ||
* Loss of vowel length distinctions | * Loss of vowel length distinctions | ||
* Loss of nasalisation in vowels | * Loss of nasalisation in vowels (and nasals before fricatives) | ||
* Reanalysis of inflectional endings | * Reanalysis of inflectional endings | ||
Line 94: | Line 94: | ||
===Old Ceuja=== | ===Old Ceuja=== | ||
<!-- More analytical orthography --> | <!-- More analytical orthography --> | ||
Old Ceuja is characterised by: | |||
* an initial wave of palatalisation for velars and dentals caused by front vowels and /j/ | |||
* a reduction of consonant clusters involving plosives, resulting in a second wave of palatalisation | |||
* Romance vowel metaphony (cf Germanic umlaut) caused by the second wave of palatalisation | |||
* lenition of some intervocalic plosives | |||
====Palatalisation of velars and dentals==== | |||
Palatalisation of velars occurred when velars came before front vowels, producing *tsj (c) and *dj (j), and palatalisation of /t/ occurred when it was found before *-jV-, as in Vulgar Latin, producing *tś as well. | |||
In addition, PGmc *þ merged into *tś (via laminalisation). | |||
Examples: [[wiktionary:Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/skēpą | *skēpą]] → *escɛ́pa, *estsjɛ́pa | |||
====Consonant cluster reduction==== | |||
===Middle Ceuja=== | ===Middle Ceuja=== | ||
Line 132: | Line 147: | ||
The main difference in orthography with Spanish is the use of ⟨y⟩ to represent tonic /i/. For example, ⟨týe⟩ instead of *⟨tíe⟩, but ⟨cieba⟩ instead of *⟨cyeba⟩. | The main difference in orthography with Spanish is the use of ⟨y⟩ to represent tonic /i/. For example, ⟨týe⟩ instead of *⟨tíe⟩, but ⟨cieba⟩ instead of *⟨cyeba⟩. | ||
==Grammar== | ==Grammar== | ||
<!-- þahtaz -> cecha, "thought" +o -> cecho, "thinking" ~= gerundive, resulting in "I want to cecho" --> |
Revision as of 09:29, 5 January 2019
Ceutch language | |
---|---|
Léban Goceuja, Ceuja | |
Pronunciation | [/ˈleβan goˈθeuxa, ˈθeuxa/] |
Created by | Ceige |
Indo-European
| |
Early forms | |
Ceuja, or the Ceutch language, (also known as Thutch; Léban Goceuja and Ceuja in Ceuja itself) is a Germanic language best characterised as Proto-Germanic with Spanish sound changes (via relevant Western Romance and Iberian sound changes) applied.
Name
The name Ceuja comes from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz, and is thus cognate to Deutsch, the endonym of the German language. It is often elongated to Goceuja, related to the rare translation of Gothia in Gothic, 𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌸𐌹𐌿𐌳𐌰 (gutþiuda). The association of Ceuja with the Goths does not necessarily refer to actual historical Goths so much as the medieval label given to Germanic peoples in general.
Real world development
Around June 2013, a Germanic conlang with a naïve interpretation of French sound changes applied to it was sketched up and called Jaillais (located currently on Google Sites). Later on, resources on the Phonological history of French, the History of the Spanish language and the History of Romanian (amongst many others) were encountered, highlighting some of the deficiencies of Jaillais.
For a while, no further development on Jaillais was made, but casual sketches with both more and less authentic Romance sound changes applied to the Germanic languages were made over the years. In the end, Spanish-inspired sound changes won out, as, next to French, Spanish has some of the stranger sound changes in the Romance language family, making it easier to obscure the original Proto-Germanic roots.
Over time, other conlangers developed better fleshed-out French-inspired mixed Romance-Germanic conlangs, and so Jaillais has been left unfinished to avoid crowding that creative space.
In December 2019, 6 and a half years after Jaillais, an absurdist, untranslated text was left in a conlanging group on Facebook with the intent of it being deciphered; this text demonstrated an earlier stage of Ceuja.
History of sound changes
Proto-Ceuja
This stage describes the state of Proto-Germanic after some initial sound changes have been applied to make the language more amenable to Latinate sound changes.
Three main processes define this period:
- Loss of vowel length distinctions
- Loss of nasalisation in vowels (and nasals before fricatives)
- Reanalysis of inflectional endings
Loss of vowel length distinctions
This process took place by replacing length distinctions with height distinctions instead. This mirrors the sound changes in late Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin.
PGmc vowel | Early Proto-Ceuja | Late Proto-Ceuja | Latin Equivalents |
---|---|---|---|
*ū | u: | u | ū |
*u | ʊ | o | u, ō |
*ō | ɔ: | ɔ | o |
*ô | ɔ:: | ɔ, a | see more info |
*ī | i: | i | ī |
*i | ɪ | e | i |
*ē₂ | e: | e | ē |
*e | e~ɛ | e | ē |
*ē | ɛ: | ɛ | e |
*ê | ɛ:: | ɛ | see more info |
*a | a | a, ā |
Reanalysis of inflectional endings
The main results of this process include:
- *-ą neuter nouns collapsing into *-az masculine nouns
- merger of the accusative and nominative cases, leading to singular *-a and plural *-az for a-stem nouns (from *-az/-ą, and *-ōz/-anz), and singular *-i and plural -iz for i-stem nouns (from *-iz/-į, and *-īz/-inz).
- haphazard expansion of an-stem nominative *-ô (e.g. sahsô) into *-an- as per the above merger of the accusative and nominative, but in such a way that doublets are created, e.g. *sahsanu and *sahsō (Ceuja sajano, sajo)
Old Ceuja
Old Ceuja is characterised by:
- an initial wave of palatalisation for velars and dentals caused by front vowels and /j/
- a reduction of consonant clusters involving plosives, resulting in a second wave of palatalisation
- Romance vowel metaphony (cf Germanic umlaut) caused by the second wave of palatalisation
- lenition of some intervocalic plosives
Palatalisation of velars and dentals
Palatalisation of velars occurred when velars came before front vowels, producing *tsj (c) and *dj (j), and palatalisation of /t/ occurred when it was found before *-jV-, as in Vulgar Latin, producing *tś as well.
In addition, PGmc *þ merged into *tś (via laminalisation).
Examples: *skēpą → *escɛ́pa, *estsjɛ́pa
Consonant cluster reduction
Middle Ceuja
Modern Ceuja
Insular Ceuja
Phonology
The phonology of Ceuja is not unlike that of a somewhat artificial and sanitised form of European Spanish. For more context, see Spanish phonology on Wikipedia.
Debuccalisation
The main changes concern the voiced fricatives and /ʝ/.
In Modern Spanish dialects, the voiced fricatives are often pronounced debuccalised between vowels and other voiced sounds. In addition, ⟨y ~ ll⟩ (from *j and *lj respectively, now /ʝ/) is pronounced more closed. In practice, this results in ⟨b, d, g, ll~y⟩ all having similar phonation.
In Ceuja, the voiced fricatives and ⟨y ~ ll⟩ are all generally pronounced as actual voiced fricatives in the medial position. More debuccalised pronunciations are allowed, but not considered necessary for sounding "native".
Phonemes | Cueja initially | Ceuja medially | Ceuja devoiced | Spanish equivalents |
---|---|---|---|---|
b | b | β | f | b β̞ ɸ̞ |
d | d̪ | ð | θ | d̪ ð̞ θ̞ |
g | g | ɣ | x | g ɣ̞ x̞ |
y, ll | (d)ʒ | ʒ | ʃ | ɟʝ ʝ̞ *ç̞ |
This trend against debuccalisation can be seen in the treatment of fricatives before plosives, with many modern Spanish dialects debuccalising these fricatives to a breathy sound, something not as common in Ceuja (but still acceptable).
Orthography
The main difference in orthography with Spanish is the use of ⟨y⟩ to represent tonic /i/. For example, ⟨týe⟩ instead of *⟨tíe⟩, but ⟨cieba⟩ instead of *⟨cyeba⟩.