Weddish: Difference between revisions

|setting      = Jewish intermarriage / Systematic Theology

'''Weddish''' (''Weddish'': '''װעדיש''', ''X"Q'': '''וֶדִש''', ''Romanization'': '''Vediš''') is a constructed, ''a posteriori'', naturalistic [[auxlang]], made from Yiddish with heavy influences from Hebrew, English, German, and some Basque.  It has ergative-absolutive [[Linguistics:Morphosyntactic alignment|morphosyntactic alignment]] and a pervasive yet symbolic use of the dual.  It is meant to promote the institution of marriage, foster better communication between persons, and improve the tenor of Systematic Theological discussions.  It is well-suited as an auxlang for Jewish intermarriage.

== Philosophy ==

First and foremost, there is the Creator-Creature distinction.  That means, God is wholly other than the Universe.  Second, human beings are made in the image of God.  This means that we are persons -- like God is -- and our ''agency'' is our single-most important feature.  Third, we reflect the image of God as females '''''and''''' males.  The marriage bond is God-created and a fundamental part of our identity in this life.  Hence it is, that we may divide the world into: actors, non-actors, and actions.  Stated grammatically, this list becomes: ergative nouns, absolutive nouns, and verbs.  Furthermore, ergative nouns may be divided up into married and non-married actors, which we will mark with the ''dual'' or not.

 

We have said that ontologically speaking, there are ultimately only two (God and not-God).  However, the 800lb. gorilla in the room -- philosophically speaking -- is abstraction. Since before Pythagoras, abstract nouns (such as numbers, "goodness", etc.) had been held by the Greeks to be ontic.  Westerns betray their affinity to Greek ideal, classifying humanity as ''homo sapiens'' - "thinking man".  We seek to disenthrall ourselves from this metaphysic and banish abstract nouns from our language.  Numerals are adjectives.  Infinity is that which we cannot see the end of.  Universals are the same as aggregates ("all" is the same as "sum" ... but not "some"!).

 

The Language Creation Society (as fine institution) waves a flag of the Tower of Babylon.  Unlike the hubristic man of the initial chapters ''In the Land of Invented Languages'' (Arika Okrent's chronicle), we do not believe we can undo by human effort what God has done. Our aim is for Jews and Christians to discuss the truth ''better''.  The status of English as a ''lingua franca'', German as a language of science, and Hebrew as a holy language suggests that an Indo-European language is still the best option for an ''a posteriori'' auxlang.  Rather than compete with those vital languages, however, it seems most prudent to build upon a base off them all at once, utilizing a language that is already as eclectic as English, yet built off German and Hebrew.  That language is Yiddish.

! style="text-align: center;"|Dorsal

| colspan="2" align="center" | '''נ''' <tt>/n/</tt>

| * <tt>/ŋ/</tt>

| colspan="2" align="center" | '''ט''' <tt>/t/</tt>

| colspan="2" align="center" | '''ד''' <tt>/d/</tt>

Weddish phonotactics are inherited from Yiddish, which is among the more permissive in the world<ref>http://wals.info/chapter/12</ref>.  While they do not rise to the level of Georgian or Salish, they are nevertheless daunting for new learners.  Gemination only becomes phonemic across word boundaries.  Consonant clusters are spontaneously broken up across syllables in order to make codas less complicated and, if necessary, onsets more so.

Liquids and fricatives may all be said syllabically.  Apart from the inseparable prepositions '''l''' and '''m''', and the proclitic conjunction '''v''', syllabic consonants all occur at the end of a word.  In an unstressed syllable, syllabic sonorants and syllables with a reduced vowel are indistinguishable.  In stressed syllables, no vowel is written, the onset and coda are optional or may consist of a single stop.

Weddish aims to appeal to English speakers.  While the verbal-system is somewhat new, the noun-system should be easy.  Nouns are not inflected, but pronouns do have unique forms that show what part of speech they can be.  Like German, however, articles do inflect.  Like Hebrew, there are two noun genders.  The masculine is most often animate, while the feminine is not.  Adjectives do not inflect unless substantive.   

 

 

It would be tempting to classify Weddish as VSO (subject-veb-object) like Hebrew, but that's not quite right.  It is, in fact, a V2 language, which means the verb always wants to come second.  (Discourse particles and few other things do not count towards calculating where "second" is, and entire phrases are taken as a whole when counting this place.) Because core cases are marked almost solely by word order, the actor of a transitive verb (the ergative case) must come before the verb, i.e. first in the sentence.

The V2 Principle is carried throughout Weddish, to the point where it might be labeled a "head second" language.  This is not a recognized typology, since languages are either head-initial, head-final, or mixed.  In compound nouns, the head is second.  For auxiliary verbs, the head verb is second.  For nouns with attributive modifiers, the article comes first, but adjectives come after the noun, making it head-second as well.

When the relationships between nouns is genitive, and it has already been stated or can easily be implied, compound nouns may be formed.  For example, ''a field for football/soccer'' may become '''fusbolfeld'''.  (Note the loss of abstraction suffixes.)  Suppose it was an Australian rules football field.  Would could make '''fusbolfeldeoystralie'''. Lastly, If one wanted to add that it is '''mgroz'''/''composed of grass'', this could become '''פֿוסבאָלפֿעלדעאויסטראליעגראָז'''/'''fusbolfeldeoystraliegroz'''.  Words with greater than four parts are deemed colloquial.  Word order is "head second", with the first specifier coming at the very front.

All nouns in Weddish are inherently concrete.  Two levels of abstraction are possible through suffixation.  The first signifies the ''practice'' of one or more persons.  The second signifies the ''understanding'' of the practice.  Both are available in both genders, with the masculine form referring to a person (of either gender), however, the "practice"-form occurs much more often in the masculine and the "understanding"-form occurs much more often in the feminine.  Remember, this are no truly abstract nouns in Weddish, for they do not exist.

| '''a tennis'''

| ''a game of tennis''