Ŕønnåsk

Introduction
Ŕønnåsk is a North Germanic language related to Norwegian, Faroese, Icelandic, Swedish, and Danish. It descends from Old Norse, though neither a descendant from Old East or West Norse, though it has features from both of them. Like many Scandinavian languages, Ŕønnåsk is a tonal language similar to that of Norwegian. Ŕønnåsk roughly means "Rowan tree language" referring to the abundance of the Rowan trees of Northern Scandinavia to which the Ŕønni tribe is native. It is believed that a myth from Norse mythology gave name to the now modern-day language:

In Norse mythology, where the goddess Sif is the wife of the thunder god Thor, who has been linked with Ravdna. According to Skáldskaparmál, the Rowan is called "the salvation of Thor" because Thor once saved himself by clinging to it. It has been hypothesized that Sif was once conceived in the form of a Rowan to which Thor clung. Because of this, the Rowan tree is celebrated in Ŕønni culture every Midsommar when it flowers.

Consonants
1 The rhotic consonants may either be trills [r̝ r] or taps [ɾ̞ ɾ], depending on the speaker.

2 May also be realised as a plain lateral approximant /l/ in some dialects.

3 /ɖ/, the voiced retroflex plosive, may be replaced by /ɽ/ in some dialects.

Pitch Accent
Ŕønnåsk is a pitch-accent language with two distinct pitch patterns, like Swedish and Norwegian. They are used to differentiate two-syllable words with otherwise identical pronunciations. For example, the word balen ('the ball [danse event') is pronounced using the simpler tone 1, while balen ('the nest') uses the more complex tone 2. Though spelling differences can differentiate written words, minimal pairs are often written alike, since written Ŕønnåsk has no explicit accent marks. Accent 1 uses a low flat pitch in the first syllable, while accent 2 uses a high, sharply falling pitch in the first syllable and a low pitch in the beginning of the second syllable. In both accents, these pitch movements are followed by a rise of intonational nature (phrase accent) — the size (and presence) of which signals emphasis or focus. That rise culminates in the final syllable of an accentual phrase, while the utterance-final fall common in most languages is either very small or absent.

The pitch accents give the Ŕønnåsk language a "singing" quality that makes it easy to distinguish from other languages.

Grammar
Ŕønnåsk is an inflected language with four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. Ŕønnåsk can have one of three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine or neuter. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are declined in four cases and two numbers, singular and plural.

Morphology
Ŕønnåsk morphology is typical of other Germanic/Indo-European languages. Nouns are declined for case, number, definiteness and gender; adjectives for case, number, gender and definiteness with weak and strong inflections.

Ŕønnåsk possesses definite and indefinite articles. The definite article is usually a suffix added to the noun, however, definite inflection of adjectives plus den, dea, det and dei can also be used. Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood, person, number and voice. There are two voices: active and medio-passive. There are only two simple tenses, past and present, along with a number of auxiliary constructions, some of which may be regarded as tenses, others as aspects.

Nouns
Ŕønnåsk nouns are declined in four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. They belong to three main noun classes (masculine, feminine, neuter) and can be inflected for number (singular, plural) and definiteness (definite, indefinite). The following table shows four examples of strong declension. The gender of a noun can often be deduced by looking at the ending of the word:


 * Masculine nouns — often end in -ur, -nn -het.
 * Feminine nouns — often end in -a, -ing.
 * Neuter nouns — usually have no ending or have a final accented vowel.

Articles
Ŕønnåsk has both indefinite articles (a/an in English), and definite articles (the in English) and is usually joined to the end of the word. The table below shows the different suffix forms for the three genders in the nominative. There are, however, some exceptions in every case. The examples below show three nouns, one for each respective gender, declined in the nominative:


 * masculine: en pojkur— "a boy" becomes pojkuren—"the boy"
 * feminine: ea jenta— "a girl" becomes jentan—"the girl"
 * neuter: ett barn — "a child" becomes barnit—"the child"

Personal
The personal pronouns in Ŕønnåsk are as follows:

Ŕønnåsk possesses a reflexive pronoun, functioning in much the same way as German sich. The nominative case does not exist. For example,


 * hann þvættar seir — he washes himself,

as opposed to being bathed by another,


 * hun klæðir sej — she dresses herself,

as opposed to being dressed. The pronoun does not distinguish gender or number.

Possessive
Modern Ŕønnåsk has only possessive pronouns for the first- and second-person singular and plural as well as the third-person reflexive. They are as follows, where the three columns for each person represent masculine, feminine and neuter genders respectively: Minn means mine, dinn means (singular) yours and sinn (which is a reflexive possessive pronoun) means his, her, its or theirs.

If one is to indicate possession for a person and number not amongst these pronouns (e.g. non-reflexive his, hers, its and theirs) the genitive of the corresponding (same person and number) personal pronoun is used.

Definite Articles
Denni "this", tann "that"

Adjectives
hyggeligur

Verbs
There are four moods in Ŕønnåsk: indicative, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive.

Tenses
Strictly speaking, there are only two simple tenses of the indicative in Ŕønnåsk, simple present and simple past. All other tenses are formed using auxiliary constructions (some of these are regarded as tenses). For example, the present continuous tense is formed similarly to English, thus:


 * væra + present participle
 * Jeg er lærende
 * I am learning

This construction, however, is not usually used with stative verbs. For example, to sit would not use this construction. Instead, the simple present should be used (jeg sitter).

The compound tenses are:


 * Conditional = formed by conjugating the verb skula in the past tense + infinitive
 * Future = formed by conjugating the auxillary verbs muna (will), værða (will be), skula (shall; intend to) into the present tense + infinitive
 * Past
 * continuous = væra in past tense + present participle
 * perfect = ha in past tense + supine
 * Present
 * continuous = væra in present tense + present participle
 * perfect = ha in present tense + supine
 * Future = formed by conjugating the auxillary verbs muna (will), værða (will be), skula (shall; intend to) into the present tense + infinitive
 * Past
 * continuous = væra in past tense + present participle
 * perfect = ha in past tense + supine
 * Present
 * continuous = væra in present tense + present participle
 * perfect = ha in present tense + supine
 * continuous = væra in present tense + present participle
 * perfect = ha in present tense + supine

In the infinitive, most verbs end in -a. Some exceptions include a few verbs ending in -å, such as må ('may'); slå ('hit'); flå ('flay'). Other exceptions include the auxiliaries; and a verb borrowed from Danish, ske (happen). There are three main groups of weak verbs in Ŕønnåsk: -ar, -ir, and -er, referring to the endings that these verbs take when conjugated in the third person singular present. The strong and weak (irregular) verbs (auxiliaries, ri-verbs and valda) are separate. Take the infinitive tala ('to talk'), for example:

Present Indicative

Past Indicative

Voice
Ŕønnåsk possesses the middle voice in addition to both the active and passive. Verbs in the middle voice always end in -st; this ending can be added to both the infinitive and conjugated verb forms. For the conjugated forms, second and third person endings (i.e. -(e)r, -ð and -rd) must be removed, as must any dental consonants (ð, d and t). Compare the verb bryta ('to break') to its medio-passive forms, for example: The medio-passive voice is generally used in the following situations to express:


 * Reflexivity — The middle voice form of a verb may be used in lieu of a reflexive pronoun, for example: Þor klæðir sej ⇒ Þor klæðis ('Þor gets dressed')
 * Reciprocity — Here the medio-passive voice is used to mean 'each other', for example: Þor talar till Stefan okk Stefan talar till Þor ⇒ Þor okk Stefan talar med alkandra ⇒ Þor okk Stefan talast ('Thor and Stefan talk to each other')
 * The passive — In certain situations, the medio-passive voice may express an idea for which English would use the passive. For example, the phrase, Biluren ses ikke, translates as 'The car cannot be seen'. Most often the medio-passive voice is used in this context when there is no direct reference to any grammatical person.

Subjunctive Mood
Like many other Indo-European languages, Ŕønnåsk has the subjunctive mood. It is often used to refer to situations with a degree of hypotheticity, but more specifically in the following situations:


 * In reported speech—It is used with the verb siga in the following sense: Jon segir att hun kommi ('Jon says that she's coming').
 * To express uncertainty—Used after the verbs våna ('to hope'), øska ('to wish'), halda ('to believe'), bua till ('to expect'), øttas, væra ræddur om ('to fear') and mistænka ('to suspect'): jeg vånar att hun blivi bettre ('I hope that she gets better')
 * Interrogative sentences—Specifically after the verb spørja ('to ask'): Jon spørjer vort du skulir att æta með oss ('Jon asks whether you're going to eat with us')
 * With conjunctions—The subjunctive is used after the conjunctions nema ('unless'), þo att ('although'), svå att ('so that'), til dess att ('in order to')

Vowels

 * Vowel length can usually be deduced from the spelling based on the rule that short vowels are followed by two or more consonant letters, while long vowels are followed by at most one consonant letter. There are, however, certain exceptions to this rule where vowel length must be memorised.
 * In those cases where the same letter can represent two different vowel qualities, the first given vowel is by far predominant (for example, short o is usually /ɔ/, long o is usually /oː/).

Consonants

 * Any other combinations of letters plus the semi-vowel j, are pronounced as separate phonemes.


 * Some consonant letters in Ŕønnåsk are silent - the G is silent in the suffixes -ig, -lig and in some other words like selg ("sell!").

Basic word order
Ŕønnåsk word order is generally SVO (subject–verb–object), with the subject and verb inverted in questions and when a sentence begins with an adverb. However, the inflectional system allows for considerable freedom in word order. For poetical or emphatic purposes, every combination is possible, even the rare OSV which can be found in certain phrases like va siger du? ("what say you") instead of the usual va sigert du? and svarg gav hann ikkert ("answer gave he none").

Despite this, certain rules of syntax are relatively inflexible. For example, the finite verb must always be the second constituent of declarative sentences (this is a feature known as V2 word order, as is common to many Germanic languages). Take the example below (subject in yellow, verb in blue, object in red):


 * Folkemengden var 1.500 — The population was 1,500

Here the element var (the past tense third person singular form of the verb vaera, 'to be', i.e. 'was') is the second constituent of the sentence. If we change the sentence, however:


 * Årit 2000 var folkemengden 1.500 — In 2000, the population was 1,500 (lit. The year 2000 was the population 1,500)

Here, var is still the second constituent of the sentence, despite the fact that it is not the second word in the sentence. The prepositional phrase årit 2000 counts as one constituent, and so for the verb to be the second constituent, it must come after 2000 and not after årit. The subject and object of the verb then follow. An exception to this rule arises when forming questions by inversion:


 * Stefan er svangur—Stefán is hungry

and when turned into a question:


 * Er Stefan svangur?—Is Stefán hungry?

Here the subject and verb have been inverted to form a question, meaning the verb is the first constituent in the sentence as opposed to the second. This method of forming questions is used in many languages, including English.

Questions
As we have seen, questions can be easily formed by rearranging the order of the sentence from subject–verb–object to verb–subject–object. For example:


 * Du talar Ŕønnåsk. — You speak Ŕønnåsk.

can be made into a question as follows:


 * Talar du Ŕønnåsk? — Do you speak Ŕønnåsk? (lit. Speak you Ŕønnåsk?)

The inversion rule still applies when interrogatives are involved, which are simply added to the front of the sentence. The interrogatives in Ŕønnåsk are:


 * Va?—what
 * Va ert du gerende?—What are you doing? (lit. What are you to do?)
 * Vilken?—which/what?
 * Vilken hundur?—What dog?
 * Vem?—who?
 * Vem ert du?—Who are you?
 * Vernig?—how?
 * Vernig havur du det?—How are you? (lit. How have you it?)
 * Vernig mye makser det?—How much does it cost?
 * Vor/Veråt/Vaðan?—where/whither/whence?
 * Vor ert du?—Where are you?
 * Veråt ert du farande?—Where are you going? (lit. Whither are you to go?)
 * Vaðan kommer du?—Where do you come from? (lit. Whence come you?)
 * Venær?—when?
 * Venær kommer du?—When do you come? (lit. When come you?)
 * Vorfor?—why?
 * Vorfor ikke?—Why not?
 * Vort?—whether/which?
 * Vort hann kommi, veit jeg ikke.—I don't know whether he's coming or not. (lit. Whether he comes, know I not.)
 * Vort vilt du?—Which do you want? (lit. Which want you?, implying a choice between two alternatives.)

Causatives
Ŕønnåsk has a causative construction that can feel quite alien to English speakers (but which is similar to constructions in other languages). The word låta is used to mean "let" or "make". In one use, it is quite similar to English.


 * Hun lette mej byggva husit. — She made me build the house.

However, in another use, the intermediate subject is left out, but the second verb is still in the infinitive.


 * Hun lette byggva husit. — She had the house built. (lit. "She made build the house"; however, compare correct French 'Elle a fait construire la maison' and Dutch 'Ze liet het huis bouwen')

The syntax here seems somewhat similar to a use of the verb help in English, when speakers say She helped build the house.

Question words

 * what = va
 * what time = vilken tid
 * where = vor
 * when = venær
 * who = vem
 * why = vorfor
 * which = vilken
 * whether = vort
 * how = vernig
 * how much/many = vernig mye/månger