Weddish: Difference between revisions

'''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 constructs of Systematic Theological discussions.  It is well-suited as an auxlang for Jewish intermarriage.

First and foremost, there is the [[w:Monism#Creator-creature_distinction|Creator-Creature distinction]].  That means, God is wholly other than the Universe.  Second, human beings are made in the [[w:Image of God|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 [[w:Abstraction|abstraction]].  Since before [[w:Pythagoras|Pythagoras]], abstract nouns (such as numbers, "goodness", etc.) had been held by the Greeks to be [[w:Ontology|ontic]].  Westerners betray their affinity to Greek ideals, 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 [[w:Language Creation Society|Language Creation Society]] (a fine institution) waves a flag of the [[w:Tower of Babel|Tower of Babel]].  Unlike the hubristic men of the initial chapters ''In the Land of Invented Languages'' ([[w:Arika Okrent|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 in better terms.  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, but with Semitic components.  Rather than compete with those vital languages, however, it seems most prudent to build upon a base of all at once, utilizing a language that is already as eclectic as English, similar to German, and utilizing Hebrew.  That language is Yiddish.  Basque serves as an inspiration for new categories and "outside the box" thinking.

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| <tt>/ə/</tt>

| '''אָ''' <tt>/o/~/ɔ/</tt>

| '''אַ''' <tt>/ɐ/~/ä/</tt>

| '''אַו''' = aw

| '''אָו''' = ow

In the dialect of the Americas, central vowels retain a color of their original/short form.  Elsewhere, they are all central, except <tt>/a/</tt> before glottals and <tt>/ɪ/</tt> before labials.  Another dialect difference is that '''c''' and '''dž''' are sometimes pronounced <tt>/θ/</tt> and <tt>/ð/</tt><ref>http://wals.info/chapter/19</ref>.  However, the rhotic is still not retroflex!

Weddish written in the Hebrew alphabet, following the standard of YIVO Yiddish.  There is a one-to-one correspondence between grapheme and phoneme, except for three digraphs and one trigraph.  Weddish also has its own Romanization scheme, largely Slavic in appearance.  In it, <tt>/ʃ/</tt> is written '''š''', <tt>/ʒ/</tt> is written '''ž''', <tt>/j/</tt> is written '''y''', <tt>/ts/</tt> is written '''c''', <tt>/tʃ/</tt> is written '''č''', <tt>/dʒ/</tt> is written '''dž''', and <tt>/ʁ/</tt> is written '''r'''.

{| {{Table/bluetable}}

Alphabetical order is '''alef''', '''alef pasex''', '''alef komac''', '''beys''', ('''veys''',) '''giml''', '''dalet''', '''dalet zayen''', '''dalet zayen šin''', '''hey''', '''vov''', '''gvovayin''', '''šurek''', '''zayen''', '''zayen šin''', ('''xes''',) '''tes''', '''tes šin''', '''yud''', '''yud xirik''', '''gyudayin''', '''gyudayin pasex''', '''vov yud''', '''xof''', ('''xof dageš''',) '''lamed''', '''mem''', '''nun''', '''samex''', '''ayen''', '''pey''', '''fey''', '''cadek''', '''kuf''', '''reyš''', ('''sin''',)  '''šin''' (, '''tav''', '''sav''').

{| {{Table/bluetable}}

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| '''אָ'''

| '''אֱ'''

| '''אֳ'''

| '''אֲ'''

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 have unique forms that show part of speech.  Like German, articles inflect.  The "genders" of Weddish are actually noun classes, a system taken from Basque.  People, animals, and things that can move on their own are "animate", while plants and other objects are "inanimate".  Independent third person singular personal pronouns have gender, as system like English's "he/she/it".  Adjectives do not inflect unless substantive, and there are not many adjectives.

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.

By default, all nouns are in the ''absolutive'' case.  But, if they are placed '''''before''''' the verb, then they are said to be in the ergative case, though their morphology is unchanged. Linguists call these two case the "core cases" of a language, since they are fundamental.  There are five additional cases --- called "non-core" cases --- in Weddish that are also very important.  Unlike many languages that have ''suffixing'' case marking, Weddish has ''prefixing''.  This is because they are derived from Hebrew Inseparable Prepositions (IP's).  Phrases in the non-core cases either relate to the verb (and are hence, adverbial), or are in a noun phrase.  In relation to nouns, the core cases are all seen as greater specificity ''within'' the genitive case.

Non-core cases all fall under the umbrella term "genitive".  The generic genitive is not a case ''per se'', but a preposition (meaning, a separable preposition).  An expression like '''דאַס לינע פֿונ געלט/dos line fun gelt'''/''the love of money'' is even more ambiguous in Weddish than in English.  It may mean ''the love belonging to money'' (?), ''the love in/by money'', ''the love from/composed of money'', or ''the love as/according to money''.  After a genitive phrase has been established or is implicitly understood, the phrase may incorporated be into a compound noun using the "head-second" structure.

Weddish verbs do not conjugate for tense, only aspect.

! Perfective || Imperfective

| -ei- || -i-  

| -au- || -ai-

| -ou- || -u-

| -e- || -a-

| -o- || -oi-