Norroman

Norroman (Classical Norroman: Norrumão, Minstrelian Norroman: Norrumaun, Neo-Norroman: Nohumãu, Nopong Creole: Nopong) is a language family often treated as a single language, spoken in the Norroman hills and lowlands. A branch of the Romance language family, Norroman resembles a Western-Romance language such as Portuguese.

Introduction

Norroman is intended to be the product of combining the stranger of the sound changes of Portuguese, Spanish, French, and whatever else can fit in to that mess (perhaps Romanian: I like what Romanian does to Latin terra; Italian's oculus > occhio is also appealing).

For example, take the rampant diphthongisation of Old French, combine it with the quirks of Iberian Romance languages (l~r confusion, palatalisation of CL clusters, and so on), borrow from Brazilian Portuguese is debuccalisation of //r//, vowel reductions and subsequent palatalisations, and eventually you end up with something so unlike Latin you have to wonder if you broke historical linguistics or not.

Varieties

There are several varieties of Norrumão: Classical, Minstrelian, Neo-Norroman, and Nopong Creole. Varieties differ primarily by orthography and tradition, but in the case of Nopong, there are far greater differences on a deeper grammatical level in addition to many phonological changes (somewhat erroneously referred to as phonological simplifications by tradition).

Phonology

Orthography

There are several competing orthographies, each rooted in a different era of the language. Classical Norroman's resembles Portuguese and medieval Romance orthographies, while Minstrelian resembles French orthographical traditions.

Phonotactics

Many sound changes in the central Norroman tradition involve reducing consonant clusters and introducing a CVCV(C)-esque structure to the language. While there is variation dialectally, for example reduced nasalisation of vowels and fairly intact nasal consonants, the result is that most dialects prevent clusters between non-sonorant units; even these though have been threatened by overall trends in phonological change. However, vowel reduction and devoicing has resulted in a new set of pseudo-clusters emerging in normal speech for many speakers, much like with Japanese.