Reardish: Difference between revisions

Having developed alongside Old English, Reardish experienced many of the same sound changes as Old English, though it lacks several that would allow it a classification closer to Old English, it cannot even be classed as [[w:West Germanic|West Germanic]] due to it lacking some of the family's distinctive sound changes. As such, it must be placed in its own branch, typically one called the "Reardic" branch. It is unclear whether Reardic as a family is valid due to the early form still largely being intelligible with the modern language, thus leading most linguists to simply place Reardish as a divergent descendant of Proto-Germanic, rather than giving it a specific familial classification.

Today, Reardish is typically written in the Latin alphabet, still using the Insular script, the alphabet is near-identicle to that of Old English. In many artistic works, and quite often in elders, Anglo-Frisian runes are still used. Efforts to reinstate runes have been successful, leading to nearly all government issued writings (letters, signs, documents, etc) being offered in both scripts.

Reardish can be roughly split into three stages, those being ''Archaic Reardish'' (Also called Proto-Reardish, or, informally, Pseudo-West Germanic), ''Anglic-Reardish'' (This stage has several names, none of which are considered standard, most linguists will default to ''Middle Reardish''. ''Anglic-Reardish'' will be used here due to its parallel development to Old English), and ''Modern Reardish'' (Many, especially English-speaking peoples distanced from the Reardish-speaking population, may call this ''Pseudo-Anglo-Saxon'' or ''Pseudo-Old-English'', these terms are rejected in academic circles by scholars of history and linguists alike due to the language's, and the people's, unique history and development, as well as the potentially demeaning undertones of such terms implying that they and their language are simply "fake English")

Pronouns decline largely the same as nouns, except for having a duel in the first and second persons. The plural third person pronouns have been entirely leveled, so the masculine, feminine, and neuter third person plurals decline identically, though a formal "Archaic masculine" is retained, and has been shifting to have the usage of a formal third person plural. In casual speech, this "Archaic masculine" is instead used as an inanimate pronoun, effectively shifting it to an animacy distinction.