Gromavish

Gromavi [ɡɹəʊ'mɑ:vi] (Gromavi: Grumäävskish lingska [ɡrʊ'mæ:v.skɪʃ 'lɪŋ.ska]) is a language spoken by approximately 600,000 people in the Gromavi Republic (Gromavia), an archipelago nation in the Northern Sea. Gromavi is also spoken by minor communities elsewhere in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

Classification
Gromavi is a language of the Indo-European family, in which it occupies an independent branch, similar to Albanian and Armenian. It is the sole descendant of Proto-Gromavi, a language spoken in the archipelago that now comprises Gromavia.

It shares many features with Indo-European languages of other branches such as the synthetic typology, the nominative-accusative alignment, the subject-object-verb syntax for basic clauses and a great deal of its vocabulary.

Over the course of the its history, Old Gromavi has been highly influenced by other languages, mainly by the Germanic and the Romance languages. It has also has some extent of influence from the Celtic, Balto-Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages.

Dialects
Modern Gromavi is the official language of Gromavia, which is the result of the standardisation of the dialect spoken in the capital, Guninburgh, at the beginning of the 20th century. This is the form used in the government, public media and education. However, there is dialect continuum throughout the country reflecting the influence of different languages in the syntax and the vocabulary.

There are a 9 formal dialects: North Gromavi, Northeast Gromavi, East Gromavi, Southeast Gromavi, South Gromavi, Southwest Gromavi, West Gromavi, Northwest Gromavi and Central Gromavi, which is the base for the standard dialect. Linguists have concluded that if these dialects had been allowed to evolve independently, they would have become separate languages.

History
Proto-Gromavi evolved to Old Gromavi, which became the dominant language of the Gromavi Archipelago. The evolution of Old Gromavi has been determined by the contact with other languages through trade, religion and invasions. Gromavs were traders by excellence, having routes to many destinations on the coasts of the Northern Sea and the Baltic Sea. Some trade routes extended as far as the Cantabrian Sea.

The constant Viking invasions brought components of German paganism to the country along with many words of North Germanic origin. Trade with the British Isles brought components of Celtic paganism along with words of Celtic origin. Trade with the Finnic, Baltic and Slavic peoples brought components of their shamanic and pagan religions along with words of Finnic, Baltic and Slavic origin. Trade with the Roman Empire and its successors brought components of Roman paganism and words of Romance origin. Trade with the Iberian peninsula brought words of Basque and Arabic origin as well. The introduction of Christianity to the country by the Danish during the 9th and 10th centuries brought even more vocabulary of North Germanic origin.

Gromavia has been under the rule of different nations. It was under Carolingian rule during the 7th and 8th centuries. Then it was Danish rule during the 9th-12th centuries. Then it was under British rule during the 13th-18th centuries. Napoleon Bonaparte conquered the islands at the beginning of the 19th century, bringing French rule. After the fall of Napoleon, the newly independent Kingdom of Belgium took control over the islands. During the mid 19th century the orthography was reformed for the first time, giving place to Middle Gromavi. The language was influenced by the languages of the superpowers of that time, including English, French, Dutch, German, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish.

At the beginning of the 20th century, after almost a century of Belgian rule, the Gromavi Republic declared its secession from the Kingdom of Belgium in 1919, after the end of World War 1. The war resulted in the immigration of people from different parts of Europe and Asia. These people brought their customs, including their languages, adding vocabulary to Gromavi. The influx of new words to the language made its dialects more diverse the boundaries between dialects more blurred than before. Besides, during the Anglo-Irish War, many people from Ireland and Wales emigrated to Gromavia, bringing heavy Celtic influence.

In 1920, prime minister Olaf Kuval founded the Gromavi Language Academy (GLA). This new regulatory institution was in charge of the process of standardisation of Gromavi as well as a new reform of the orthography, thus Modern Gromavi surged. This standard version of the language assimilated many loanwords from sundry origins, including Ugric and Turkic languages. Furthermore, after World War 2, the influx of people from the Soviet Union, Germany, Spain, Italy and the Balkins brought vocabulary of Iberian, Italian, East Germanic, East and South Slavic, Greek, Albanian and Hebrew origin.

One of the characteristic features assimilated from Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages was vowel harmonyundefined, a phonological phenomenon also found in some Indo-European languages, namely the Iberian languages. However, Gromavi also has consonant and consonant-vowel harmony, which follow specific rules described below.

Phonology
Gromavi phonology is very rich and complex, reflecting the centuries of contact with other languages. Standard Gromavi has 31 formal consonants, 3 semivowels and 20 vowel, 10 short and 10 long. However, there are several allophones of the formal consonant phonemes which follow specific rules of pronunciation.

Colloquial Gromavi is richer and more complex than the standard form, with variations in many consonant sounds. This variations depend on the dialect, the speakers' preference and the speakers mother tongue (in the case of immigrants and their offspring).

Consonants
Gromavi has consonant harmony according to phonation and place of articulation. Sometimes they are just allophones and other times, the orthography changes. Gromavi has also consonant-vowel harmony. Retroflex consonants can only form syllables with back vowels and palatal consonants can only form syllables with front vowels.
 * 1) The plosives are sometimes aspirated /ph/, /bɦ/, /th/, /dɦ/, /ʈh/, /ɖɦ/, /ch/, /ɟɦ/, /kh/, gɦ/ depending on the dialect and the speakers' preference. E.g., native speakers of Germanic languages as well as Chinese and Korean usually aspirate the voiceless plosives, while native speakers of Hindo-Aryan, Dravidian and some Iranian and Austronesian languages tend to aspirate both voiced and voiceless plosives.
 * 2) The approximant /ɹ/ and uvular /ʀ/ are allophones of the standard trill /r/ depending on the dialect and the speakers' preference depending on their native language. E.g., native English speakers prefer the approximant /ɹ/; while native French, Portuguese, German, Danish and some Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian as well as Hebrew speakers prefer the uvular /ʀ/.
 * 3) The tap/flap /ɾ/ is an allophone of /r/ after plosives and fricatives. E.g., br /bɾ/, pr /pɾ/, thr /θɾ/, dhr /ðɾ/ and so forth.
 * 4) The retroflex fricatives /ʂ/ /ʐ/ and affricates /ʈ͡ʂ/ /ɖ͡ʐ/ and uvular fricatives /χ/ /ʁ/ are sometimes allophones of the postalveolar /ʃ/ /ʒ/ /t͡ʃ/ /d͡ʒ/ and the velar /x/ /ɣ/ with back vowels, respectively. Retroflex sounds are more common in Slavic influenced dialects and speakers of Slavic languages, while uvular sounds are more common in Germanic influenced dialects and speakers of East Germanic and North Germanic languages and Hebrew.
 * 5) The alveolo-palatal fricatives /ɕ/ /ʑ/ and affricates /t͡ɕ/ /d͡ʑ/ and the palatal fricatives /ç/ /ʝ/ are sometimes allophones of the postalveolar /ʃ/ /ʒ/ /t͡ʃ/ /d͡ʒ/ and the velar /x/ /ɣ/ with front vowels, respectively. This more common in Germanic and Slavic influenced dialects and speakers of East Germanic, North Germanic and Slavic languages.
 * 6) The uvular nasal /ɴ/ is an allophone of /n/ before the uvular trill and fricatives.
 * 7) The velarised lateral approximant /ɫ/ is an allophone of /l/ depending on the dialect and the speakers' preference. E.g., native speakers of English, Portuguese, Catalan, Albanian, Arabic and Slavic and Finnic laguages tend to pronounce /ɫ/ instead of /l/, especially in codas.
 * Nasals and liquids in codas agree with succeeding plosives, fricatives and affricates according to place of articulation. Liquids preceding nasals also agree in this way. E.g. mb /mb/ but mhf /ɱf/, ndzh /nd͡ʒ/ but njkj /ɲç/ and nhg /ŋg/, ld /ld/ but lwdw /ɭɖ/ and ljnj /ʎɲ/
 * Nasals and liquids change to their voiceless allophones when they are before voiceless plosives and affricates. Thus /r/ → /r̥/, /ɹ/ → /ɹ̥/, /ʀ/ → /ʀ̥/, /ɻ/ → /ɻ̊/, /l/ → /l̥/, /ɭ/ → /ɭ̊/ and /ʎ/ → /ʎ̥/. They are voiced before fricatives. E.g.: mp /m̥p/, nt /n̥t/ but ns /ns/, rk /r̥k~ɹ̥k~ʀ̥k/ but rkh /rx~ɹx~ʀx/, lt /l̥t/ but lsh /lʃ/ and so forth.
 * There cannot be either two plosives together or two fricative phonemes together. The second sound must be the opposite. Thus /p/ ↔ /ɸ/, /b/ ↔ /β/, /t/ ↔ /θ/, /d/ ↔ /ð/, /ʈ/ ↔ /ʂ/, /ɖ/ ↔ /ʐ/, /c/ ↔ /ç/, /ɟ/ ↔ /ʝ/, /k/ ↔ /x/, /g/ ↔ /ɣ/. In the case of affricates, they can only be followed by plosives

Vowels
In Gromavi, there are 10 short vowels with their corresponding long vowels, making a total of 20 vowels. The long vowels are closer (or higher) than their short equivalent. Following the principle of vowel harmony, vowels are grouped in front or back vowels. The phoneme /a:/ is treated as back since its short equivalente is back, while the phoneme /ɐ/ is treated as front since its long equivalent is front. The central phonemes /ɨ:/ and /ɪ̈/ are considered back.

The basic uninflected and inflected words can only contain vowels from one group. The phoneme /ə/ (schwa) functions as a conector in compound words when the morphemes have vowels of different groups. The result is the following patterns of vowels: When compound words inflect or affixes are added to them, the vowel will be front or back depending on the backness of the vowel of the adjacent syllable.
 * Front only
 * Front-Connector-Back
 * Back only
 * Back-Connector-Front

Diphthongs
In Gromavi, diphthongs are classified in closing and opening. They follow a strict set of rules:
 * Closing diphthongs are falling and opening diphthongs are rising. The semivowels (j, w, y) are always treated as consonants.


 * Closing diphthongs begin with a low or a mid vowel (a, ä, e, ë, o and ö)
 * Opening diphthongs begin with a high vowel vowel (i, ï, u and ü)
 * Low vowels (a, ä) form diphthongs only according to backness. The more central /ɐ/ form diphthongs with front rounded and back unrounded high vowels. While the more peripheral back /ɑ/ forms vowels with the front unrounded and the back rounded high vowels.
 * Mid vowels (e, ë, o and ö) form diphthongs according to backness and roundness. These vowels can also form diphthongs with low vowels of the opposing backness and roundness.

Phonotactics
Possible syllables in Gromavi are (C)(L)(S)V(V)(L)(C)(C). The nucleus is always a vowel. Syllable initials may be a single consonant, a consonant cluster with a liquid or a semivowel. Medials can be a short vowel, a long vowel or a diphthong. Codas can be a single consonant or a consonant cluster (which may include a liquid or a fricative as its first component). As a rule, words cannot begin with retroflex consonants.

Rhythm
Modern Gromavi has a syllable-timed rhythm which fits with vowel harmony and its regular orthography and syntax. In contrast, Old Gromavi had a stressed-timed rhythm, with many ways of reducing the vowels. Linguists infer that Proto-Gromavi had a stressed-timed rhythm too. This rhythm lasted due the heavy influence of Germanic languages. Old Gromavi started to shift to a more syllable-timed rhythm during the French rule and Belgian rule (the Belgians spoke a more syllable-timed dialect of Dutch). Finally, with the heavy influx of speakers of Romance, Finno-Ugric and Turkic languages, the Gromavi Language Academy chose the syllable-timed rhythm for the standard version. However, in the daily basis, foreign speakers of stressed-timed languages usually reduce unstressed vowels.

Writing System
Gromavi used to be written with runes until the introduction of the latin script during the middle ages. Up until the 18th century, the runic script was sill in use by farmers, traders and artisans as they considered the latin script as a foreign practice. The Latin script was used by the royalty, the nobility and high tier professionals, e.g.: accountants, bankers, lawyers, scriveners and government personnel.

However, it changed by the time of the industrial revolution. Farmers, traders and artisans were in the need of better communication to process and sell their their goods and export them to the other countries. Thus, they started to use the latin letters more in the their daily basis. During the next centuries, the latin script almost replaced the runic script, the latter being used in few religious texts and landmarks. Nevertheless, the latin script for the Gromavi language was not standardised.

Some letters derived from the runic script were used to represent some sounds such as the letters 'thorn' (Þ þ) and 'eth' (Ð ð) for the phonemes /θ/ and /ð/, respectively. Many other letters derived from the Cyrillic script such as the plosive Ґ ґ /ɟ/ and C c /c/, the fricative Ж ж /ʒ/, Г г /ɣ/, Ш ш /ʃ/ and X x /x/ and the palatal Њ њ /ɲ/ and Љ љ /ʎ/. The velar nasal /ŋ/ was represented by Ŋ ŋ, a derivative of the Latin letter N n. Other letters included ligatures such as æ, ꜵ, œ, ᵫ and ꭡ for the phonemes /ɐ ~ æ:/, /ʌ ~ ɤ:/, /œ ~ ø:/, /ʏ ~ y:/ and /ɪ̈ ~ ɨ:/, respectively.

During the mid 19th century, the Gromavi ortography underwent a reform which aimed to replace the Cyrillic graphemes with variations of Latin graphemes with accute accents and inverted circumflex: Š š /ʃ/, Ž ž /ʒ/, Č č /t͡ʃ/, J̌ ǰ /d͡ʒ/, Ḱ ḱ /c/,Ǵ ǵ /ɟ/, Ǩ ǩ /x/, Ǧ ǧ /ɣ/, Ń ń /ɲ/ and Ĺ ĺ /ʎ/. During this reform, the first two digraphs were introduced in the Gromavi orthography: Ts ts /t͡s/ and Dz dz /d͡z/. Furthermore, the vowel ligatures were replace by single graphemes: Å å, Ə ə , Ɨ ɨ , Ø ø and Y y were used instead of the ligatures. The long vowels were represented by writing the letter 'h ' after the short vowel.

It all changed at the beginning of the 20th century, when the language was standardised and the ortography was reformed again. The reform consisted in the simplification of the script with the use of consonant digraphs and two trigraphs to represent sounds not represented with the original Latin letters.

The new consonant digraphs comprised a plosive and the letters ' h ' to represent fricatives phonemes, ' j ' to represent palatal phonemes and 'w ' to represent retroflex phonemes.

s and the letter ' j ' to represent palatal phonemes. Africates /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/ were represented by trigraphs, which were made by adding a plosive before a fricative digraph. The velar nasal /ŋ/ is represented by the cluster 'nh '. The voiced glottal fricative /ɦ/ is represented by the letter H h, while its voiceless counterpart /h/ is represented by the digraphs Hh hh. The vowels represented by ligatures or Old Norse letters were replaced by their diacritic Latin equivalent. Long vowels are represented only by doubling their equivalent short vowel. The graphemes Ÿ ÿ represent the new conector vowel.

The result was the following alphabet with 29 letters in total:

A a Ä ä B b D d E e Ë ë F f G g H h I i Ï ï J j K k L l M m N n O o Ö ö P p R r S s T t U u Ü ü V v W w Y y Ÿ ÿ Z z Digraphs are used to represent other sounds:

Morphology
Proto-Gromavi was a highly fusional language following the typology of Proto-Indo-European. However, over the course of its history, many fusional features changed into agglutinative features. Moreover, since its standardisation in the 20th century, Gromavi has lost many synthetic features, becoming somewhat more analytical than its predecessors.

For example, nouns vary in gender, number, case and definiteness. Gender and number are shown fusionally, because the endings of the stem carry information about both gender and number. In constrast, some cases and definiteness are shown agglutinatively. Finally, the cases that were lost are represented analytically with preposition using the remaining cases.

Nouns
Gromavi nouns decline according to gender, number, case and definiteness. Gender and number are shown by changing the ending of the noun. Case is represented by suffixes and definiteness, by prefixes. There are three genders (neuter, masculine and feminine) and three numbers (collective, singulative and plurative). Due to vowel and consonant harmony, there are different versions of the ending. The distinction of three numbers resembles the collective-singulative structure of Celtic languages.
 * Uncountable or mass nouns are always in the collective number
 * The collective number may refer countable nouns as a whole.

Definiteness is shown by articles, which are attached to the beginning of the word.

There are 4 cases in Modern Gromavi, although there were more in earlier versions of the language. Proto-Gromavi had the 9 cases of Proto-Indo-European. Due to the heavy influence of Finno-Ugric peoples, Old Gromavi had approximately 18 cases, which were reduce to the classical 9 cases in Middle Gromavi after the reform in the 19th century. Finally, after the standardisation in the 20th century, the number of cases dropped to 4, which are: Cases like vocative, locative, ablative, allative, instrumental, commitative and others merged with the remaining cases, thus the meaning is guessed using prepositions and propositional phrases. As in German, prepositions can govern the genitive, dative, or accusative, and none of these cases are exclusively associated to preposition.
 * Nominative - indicates the agent of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive verb; it is unmarked and serves as the lemma, or citation form, of the noun
 * Accusative - marks the direct object (patient) of a transitive verb.
 * Dative - marks an indirect object of a transitive ver, or the recipient of an action
 * Genitive - marks a noun as possessing another noun, or being the origin of something

In Proto-Gromavi, Old Gromavi and Middle Gromavi had different endings depending on the case, the number and the gender. However, Modern Gromavi uses suffixes which are added to the nouns. Due to vowel and consonant harmony, there are different versions of the suffixes.

If the last syllable is a vowel, here are the basic case suffixes. Vfu: unrounded front vowel (ä, ää, e, ee, i and ii); Vfr: rounded front vowels (ö, öö, ü and üü); Vbu: unrounded back vowel (a, aa, ë, ëë, ï and ïï); Vbr: rounded back vowel (o, oo, u, uu).

If the last syllable ends in a consonant, the first consonant of the markers also change following consonant harmony.

Cup: voiceless plosive consonant; Cvp: voiced plosive consonant; Cuf/ua: voiceless fricative or affricate consonant; Cvf/va: voiced fricative or affricate consonant.

Verbs
Gromavi verbs conjugate according to tense, person, number, mood, aspect and voice.

There are three persons (first, second, and third) and three numbers (collective, singulative and plurative).

The three moods are: There are six tenses, three of the imperfect aspect and three of the perfect aspect:
 * indicative - indicates that something is a statement of reality or a fact
 * subjunctive - used in dependent clauses to discuss hypothetical or unlikely events, as well as to express emotion, opinion, wishes, polite requests, and necessity; also used in conditional sentences for both the conditions and consequences
 * imperative - used for orders and requests; imperative used to govern the vocative case, but since the vocative merged with the nominative, imperative verbs align with the nominative case.
 * Present - indicates actions occurring at the time of speech
 * Imperfect - indicates actions occurring in the past
 * Future - indicates actions occurring in the future
 * Perfect - indicates actions completed by the present
 * Pluperfect - actions completed by a point in the past
 * Future perfect - actions completed by a point in the future

Copulative verbs
In contrast to Germanic languages, there are

two copulative verbs in Gromavi, as in the Celtic and most of the Romance languages. E.g.:

There are sundry semi-copulative verbs, all of which are intransitive verbs. E.g.:

to become, to get, to feel and to seem

Syntax
Gromavi has a basic SVO word order, like the English and the Romance, Slavic and Finnic languages. In poetry and colloquial speech, however, the grammatical cases allow Gromavi to have a highly flexible word order.

Questions
Both polar questions (yes-no questions) and non-polar questions (wh-questions) are formed following the VSO word order, as in Germanic, Romance, Celtic and Slavic languages. Polar questions are made with the interrogative particle gi.

Relative Clauses
Gromavi is non-rigid head-initial language. Most relative clauses are head-initial, except for verb phrases, which are head final.
 * Verb phrases are head final in the sentences, but are head initial if they are isolated.