Luthic: Difference between revisions

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Luthic is the result of a prolonged contact among members of both regions after the [[w:Goths|Gothic raids]] towards the [[w:Roman Empire|Roman Empire]] began, together with the later [[w:Germanic peoples|West Germanic]] merchants’ travels to and from the [[w:Western Roman Empire|Western Roman Empire]]. These connections and the conquest by the Germanic tribes of the Roman Empire slowly formed a [[w:Creole language|creole]] for mutual communication.

====''De Studio Linguæ Luthicæ''====

====Book 1, ''De grammatica''====

As in most European countries, the minority languages are defined by legislation or constitutional documents and afforded some form of official support. In 1992, the Council of Europe adopted the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages to protect and promote historical regional and minority languages in Europe.

[[File:Spoken Luthic Ravenna.png|thumb|Luthic geographical distribution in the commune of Ravenna]]

Luthic lexicon is discrepant from those of other Romance languages, since most of the words present in Modern Luthic are ultimately of Germanic origin. The lexical differentiation was a big factor for the creation of an independent regulatory body. There were many attempts to assimilate Luthic into the Italian [[w:Dialect continuum|dialect continuum]], as in recent centuries, the intermediate dialects between the major Romance languages have been moving toward [[w:Language death|extinction]], as their speakers have switched to varieties closer to the more prestigious national standards. That has been most notable in [[w:France|France]], owing to the French government’s [[w:Language policy in France|refusal to recognise minority languages]]. For many decades since Italy’s unification, the attitude of the French government towards the ethnolinguistic minorities was copied by the Italian government. A movement called “Italianised Luthic Movement” (Luthic: ''Movimento Lûthicai Italianegiatai''; Italian: ''Movimento per il Lutico Italianeggiato'') tried to italianase Luthic’s vocabulary and reduce the inherited Germanic vocabulary, in order to assimilate Luthic as an Italian derived language; modern Luthic orthography was affected by this movement.

[[File:Lang Status 80-VU.svg|thumb|Luthic is classified as Vulnerable by the [[w:Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger|UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger]]]]

Luthic has a shallow orthography, meaning very regular spelling with an almost one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. In linguistic terms, the writing system is close to being a [[w:Phonemic orthography|phonemic orthography]]. The most important of the few exceptions are the following (see below for more details):

* The spelling qu and gu always represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/.

The Luthic alphabet is considered to consist of 22 letters; j, k, w, x, y are excluded, and often avoided in loanwords, as ''tacċi'' vs ''taxi'', ''cċenophobo'' vs ''xenofobo'', ''geins'' vs ''jeans'', ''Giorque'' vs ''York'', ''Valsar'' vs ''Walsar'':

** The overdot is also used over ⟨c, g⟩ to indicate [[w:Palatalization (sound change)|palatalisation]].

* The [[w:Diaeresis (diacritic)|diaeresis accent]] is used to distinguish from a [[w:Digraph (orthography)|digraph]] or a [[w:Diphthong|diphthong]].

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[[File:Luthic keyboard.png|thumb|A Luthic computer keyboard layout.]]

===Phonology===

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![[w:Close vowel|Close]]

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![[w:Close-mid vowel|Close-mid]]

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![[w:Open-mid vowel|Open-mid]]

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![[w:Open vowel|Open]]

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