Astinian

Classification and Dialects
Being spoken in the Astinian Commonwealth as the official language, Astinian is an Eastern Germanic language, heavily influenced by its Slavic neighboring languages, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian. It is a fusional and highly inflected language with a case system and a complex verb system. Furthermore, it is the only Germanic language which uses the Cyrillic script. As in Belarusian and Russian, vowel reduction (especially the akanye and the ikanye) is present in Astinian.

Vowels
Vowel reduction is a very present phenomena in Astinian. The first vowel reduction is called the akanye, which defines the reduction of the vowels /a/ and /ɔ/ to /ɐ/, when unstressed, e.g. : в о ґзаль /v ɐ gzaʎ/ (=train station). The second vowel reduction is called the ikanye, which is the reduction of the vowel /ɛ/ to /ɨ/, when unstressed, e.g. : стрегн е цië /strjɛgɲ ɨ cjijɐ/ (=decision). The ikanye can only apply, if there are already two /ɛ/-vowels in the words stem. The first /ɛ/ will always be the stressed vowel and the other /ɛ/-vowels will follow the ikanye rule. However, the ikanye does not apply for grammatical endings (e.g. : for nouns, the /ɛ/-vowel stays even if unstressed and for verbs, it stays too or follows a new vowel reduction, the okanye, which will be discussed when talking about conjugations).

Two non-iotified vowels, whether stressed or unstressed, induce palatalization, notably /ɛ/~/ɨ/ represented by the letter е and /i/ represented by the letter i. Mostly the palatalization resumes by adding a /j/ to the consonant followed by e or i, but the more advanced iotations are :


 * n --> ɲ
 * k --> c
 * g --> ɟ
 * tʃ --> tɕ
 * ʃ --> ɕ
 * ʒ --> ʑ
 * h --> ç
 * l --> ʎ

Iotified vowels, whether stressed or unstressed, induce of course palatalization too.

Writing System
* The letter Ъ is used for three purposes :