Weddish: Difference between revisions

|region=[[w:Wales|Wales]]

|ancestor3=[[w:Olf Frisian|Old Frisian]]

|script       =  [[w:Hebrew script|Hebrew]]

'''Weddish''' is a [[w:West Germanic language]] spoken by several small communities within [[w:Wales]].  Approximately 40,000 people speak Weddish as their L1.  It is of considerable interest to linguists and ethnographers, because of its complex history and unique place in the world.

Weddish appears to have begun as a dialect of [[w:Old Frisian]], which fell under the influence of its Welsh-speaking neighbors (unlike its Anglo-Saxon kin).  It was "conquered" by Jews in 1066, and "freed" by the [[w:Edict of Expulsion]] in 1290, and so returned to being under Welsh influence.

Weddish was born under a different name: Frisian.  While there are individual words that cannot be explained under this rubric, the overwhelming majority of Weddish vocabulary is clearly of Frisian – not Anglo-Saxon – ancestry.  While the differences are small, the evidence is clear.  Unlike the Frisians of the continent, however, and unlike the conquering Anglo-Saxons, the ancestors of the Wedds were heavily influenced by the nearby Celts.  The Old Welsh language rubbed off on Old Weddish, winnowing many consonant clusters, producing significant vowel changes, and greatly altering the phonology and phonotactics.

Old Welsh (Proto-Brythonic) also gave Weddish is system of consonantal mutations.  Certain words and grammatical processes trigger regular changes in the first consonant of the ''next'' word.  This is also the only period where Latin words came into the language (until the modern, international terminology).

Some time in the eighth or ninth century, a charismatic leader supposedly brought the Weddish community into his quasi-Jewish cult.  He also introduced two key elements of the Basque language into Weddish: ergative-absolutive morphosyntax and animate-inanimate distinctions in noun phrases.  Folk stories continue to warn young Wedds of the danger of crying wolf, i.e. being like Horsa and hiding under the auspice of false-Judaism, when he was actually just creating a cult.

With the arrival of William the Conqueror, ''actual'' Jews arrived from the Continent and called the Wedd's bluff.  Mandatory Hebrew schools were formed, and a similar situation to the rest of the U.K. developed for two centuries.  The elites and leaders spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, and Judeo-Arabic.  Ethnic Jews arrived from Spain and the continent.  The common folk spoke Weddish, but like England with the Norman language, Hebrew dominated the upper crust.

When Edward I issued the edict of expulsion in 1290, the influence of external Jewry ceased, and all appearance of Judaism had to be removed from the public eye.  The Wedds had their own Domus Conversorum set up, and were allowed to create their own monastic order, where the vows of marriage were conjoined with the vows of holy orders.  Hebrew schools continued in private, with Talmud and Maimonides studies ongoing on for several more centuries.  Because they were not allowed to officiate over the Mass, Weddish "convents" avoided much of the accreting philosophy, and were among the hotbeds of Protestant theology, until the [[w:Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542]].   

With the decline of the surrounding Welsh culture, Wedds happily retreated into the background.  By the 19th century, however, a growing concern over the state of the Western world had settled in, and after several Weddish-wide councils, a missions-through-monasticism philosophy was official ensconced in the Weddish laws.  Since then, they have actively been involved in evangelism and scholarly theology.  [[w:James B. Jordan]] and his [[w:Christian Reconstructionist]] theology have become the mainstay of Weddish discourse.

Weddish is written with the letters of Hebrew abjad and the "points" (Hebrew niqqud).  Romanization is unheard of, apart from our linguistics literature.

| סי '''sy'''

| הו '''wh'''

| יה '''yh'''

; With Þ/X : In a few Semitic words, תנ and צנ begin the syllable, e.g. {{C|צנוע}} (modest), or {{C|תנוך}} (earlobe).

Weddish pronouns are split in two groups.  The 1st and 2nd person are nominative-accusative.  The third person pronouns are ergative-absolutive.

| {{C2|אח|אִח}}

| {{C2|מח|מִח}}

| {{C2|וט|וִט}}

| {{C2|אונקנז|אֹונְקֵנְז}}

| {{C2|וסר|וּסר}}

| {{C2|אינק|אִינְק}}

| {{C2|אינקנז|אִינְקִנְז}}

| {{C2|יהוור|יְהוּור}}

| סִיר

| סִיר

{{C|־ק}}

The two articles of Weddish are definite and specific.

Anarthrous clauses might un-adorned vocative phrase, or non-specific and indefinite.  That is, they typically refer to an entity not immediately discernible from discourse and not any particular entity.  

Most of the remaining determiner not mentioned heretofore, are quantifiers, determiners that describe the quantity of an item.  Weddish very particular with its quantifiers, distinguishing very particularly between determiners and adjectives based on position.  Linguists note that these differences are off a very unique kind, what they call 'evidentials'.  Quantifiers used as determiners betray a kind of "God's eye point of view" or "omniscient evidentiality" which is not present when used as an adjective.

While these phrases are synonymous in English,  in Weddish they indicate a difference in level of confidence in the information presented: ''all men'' is a phrase used when God himself would make, whereas ''the men, all of them'' is completely human and normal, allowing for natural exceptions and exceptions.

Nouns can be made adnominal, either by being put into the genitive or by certain suffixes.  For example {{C|־סק}} '''-(i)sq''' attaches to nouns or adjectives and makes them into adjectives mean "of or pertaining to x" (cp. English -ish).

Like in English, nouns of time can be used as adverbs with zero-derivation.  The suffix {{C|־לך}} '''-lik'' (cp. English -ly) is the most common adverb-maker.

[[Category:Philosophical language]]