Yudith

Yudith
Χιυδισκα
Created by	Aggelos Tselios
Date	2024
Native to	Greece, Albania (North Epirus), small communities elsewhere
Native speakers	approx. 300 thousand (2011)
Language family	Indo-European Germanic South Germanic Germano-Pindian Dialects Yudith
Early forms	Proto-Indo-European Proto-Germanic Proto-South-Germanic
Dialects	Ionian Pindian Yenderan †
Official status
Official language in	Vojvodina

The Yudith language (Autoglossonym: Χιυδισκα [çyˈðiska]) is a South Germanic language spoken in much of Northern Greece and South Albania descended directly from Proto-Germanic. The language arrived in its present territory at circa 200 BCE, when Germanic settlers emigrated from the modern region of Bavaria in the Balkans. It is the southernmost Germanic language in Europe and the only extant member of the South Germanic languages (The other South Germanic language, Untherjudiskáth, went extinct in the 18th century).

Yudith, as a Germanic language, is related to many other languages in Europe such as Norwegian, English, German, Swedish and Saxon. The differences between Yudith and English, if lexical borrows are to be excluded, is similar to that of Italian and Spanish. Yudith is most closely related, outside of the South Germanic languages, to Gothic, an East Germanic language, having split at around the same time.

Etymology

The language’s name comes from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz (Of the people), and, as such, is cognate with words like “Dutch” and “Deutsch” (In German). The name itself was borrowed from another South Germanic conlang as the initial /ç/ cannot be explained with the sound changes that took place in Yudith.