Sprik: Difference between revisions

|region = six towns in France, Europe

|fam4 = [[w:Low Franconian languages|Low Franconian]] <!-- just guessing, fix :P  -->

Verbs have two kinds of prefixes, separable and inseparable. Inseparable prefixes, like ''un-'', simply become part of the verbal stem and do not change what case the verb takes if it is transitive (the default is the accusative). Separable prefixes are prepositions in their own right, and the verb once thus prefixed will take whatever case the preposition does (usually the dative). The most common such prefix is ''fer-''', which as an independent preposition means “for” but as a prefix renders an intransitive verb transitive; we shall use ''fersprikin'' (“to tell”) as an example. The prefix is removed from the front and placed after the verb in all the conjugated forms to produce ''mij sprek fer hooi'' (“I tell him”) and ''et sprich fer hooi'' (“it tells him”). The past participle places ''ge-'' between the prefix and the stem, as in ''fergesprikt''. If one wanted to say “he speaks for him”, it would be necessary to put the object in the genitive (and if it is a pronoun, to substitute the appropriate possessive adjective for the nonexistent genitive) as ''hij spricht fer hijn''.

The definite article is ''dij'', ''dei'', ''den'', ''dei''. The indefinite article is ''ij'', ''ei'', ''ei'', ''ei''. If the next word begins with a vowel, or if the article is the last word of a sentence or standalone statement, ''-n'' will be added to the indefinite article to produce ''ijn'', ''ein'', ''ein'', ''ein''. Many speakers will not decline the articles in rapid or informal speech, instead using the forms ''de'' and ''e(n)'' (rarely written, so the spelling may vary). The indefinite article is also used for the number one, in which case it is always fully pronounced and declined. No other numbers decline. The cardinal numbers one to twenty are ''ij''(''n''), ''tvei'', ''trie'', ''fer'', ''fief'', ''zij'', ''zefin'', ''ijcht'', ''nefin'', ''tijn'', ''ijten'', ''tveten'', ''treten'', ''ferten'', ''fiften'', ''zijten'', ''zeften'', ''ijchten'', ''neften'', ''tveintik''. In the towns, where the digraph ''ch'' is pronounced more softly, it is common to hear ''ijkten'' for eighteen to avoid confusion with ''ijten''. There is no word for zero, but ''nijn'' (“none”) is commonly accepted in such use. The ordinals are regularly declining adjectives.

Sprik has no agreed-upon phonology, in part because of the lack of a standard prestige dialect, and in part due to lack of study. Recordings have only been made of male speakers in the northwest sector, specifically from the town of Mont St. Gerard, and are reported to resemble “if you got a Dutch guy, and an Australian guy, and tried to make them compete to see whose vowels could overpower the others” (Christian James Meredith).  

That said, there is in fact one extant phonological analysis that merits repetition here, not for its accuracy (one can be assured that there is no speaker who realizes his or her phonemes anything like this, and important features like glottal stops are completely ignored) but simply as a general guide. Below is a table that shows correspondences where a grapheme and phoneme are not identical in broad IPA, although one should remember that although <a> and <r> are represented in this analysis as /a/ and /r/, they are more likely closer to [ɑ] and [ɻ] to most speakers, at least in the northwest. Also, final voiced consonants are regularly devoiced, with the exception of /z/.

;Orthography – Broad IPA

<e> – /ɛ/  (regularly /ə/ when unstressed)<br>

<ch> – /ç/ or /h/<br>

<nowiki><i></nowiki> – /ɪ/ (tending to /ə/ when unstressed)<br>

<nowiki><u></nowiki> – /ø/<br>