Kostish

 



General information
Gastisk (Modern English "Gastish") is a West-Germanic language immediately descended from Old English with no interruption of French, but is is also related to Dutch, English, German, and Swedish. The idea behind it is that it might have been a hypothetical language to develop from Old English if some of the Anglo-Saxons had traveled to an island more northward("Gastland") and thus had their language more influenced by North-Germanic rather than Latin and French influences.

At the moment
Gastish is massively inflectional, and at the moment it is being carefully constructed with affixes to be in compound words that are in place of Romance words. The language has strict grammar and a huge range of sounds. I will probably be working on this for years to come, but as it develops more, the updates might become less frequent.

Plans

 * possibly merge masculine and feminine into common gender
 * add negative indefinite article
 * more words
 * rewrite dictionary with correct vowels.
 * runic set
 * verb conjugations (classes)

Phonology
There are common occurences from the development of Old English:
 * ǣ --> ee
 * ēo --> ee
 * ō --> eo
 * Syncopes were lost, e. g. the plural of Engel is Engelas, not Englas.
 * Velar Fricatives became velar stops

Other Digraphs
These "double letters" are very important, the language won't truly make sense without them.
 * ch - originally a voicless velar fricative or voicless palatal fricative, now pronounced as the voicless velar stop, "k" in the initial position or a voicless labio-dental fricative "f" in the final position
 * gh - originally a voiced velar fricative, now pronounced as the voiced velar stop, "g" in the initial position or a voiced labio-dental fricative "v" in the final postion
 * n(g) / n(k) - velar nasal(same as English "ng") plus the final consonant
 * sc - voicless postalveolar fricative(English "sh", German "sch" Old English "sc")
 * zj - Voiced postalveolar fricative(an example in the English word fi ss ure)
 * ts - ts
 * dz - dz

Vowels
the official pronunciation of vowels is maintained as so:

Punctuation
Punctuation is almost the same as English with the only exception that, like German, all nouns are capitalized, not just proper nouns. Relative clauses are also set off with commas much like apposative phrases.

Conjunctions
They connect clauses as with English.

Adjectives This is the simplest of all declensions.

comparative

follow with the particle "ðæn" meaning and pronounced the same as"than". It can then be followed by a word in whichever case. The word is then being compared to the other word of the same case in the sentence.

Adverbs
They generally end in -lic. Use the equivalent of "more" and "most" (mora & most respectively) to denote comparative and superlative degrees. The comparative grammar applies here as well.

Determiners
This is probably the hardest of all declensions.

Articles
Articles come before all nouns and gerunds except proper nouns and pronouns. The article's gender agrees with its noun; there is no negative definite article. One simply negates the verbs and uses the definite article.

Demonstratives
The proximal demonstrative in English is the word "this" The distal demonstrative in English is the word "that"

<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">The interrogative demonstrative in English is the word "which"

Gender
Masculine, Neuter, Feminine, Plural; determiners are inflected to show gender. Gender may change based on certain affixes.

<h3 style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">Nouns <p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">Derives from Ænglisc weak and strong nouns, Ænglisc three gender system, and some Scandinavian declension or other foreign declension. All nouns which follow a preposition are in the dative case. The preposition "bei" expresses instrumental meaning. There are also a number of archaic cases: instrumental, locative, and vocative.

Demonstratives
Use noun declension with the demonstrative determiner adjectives to form these.

<h4 style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">Personal pronouns <p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">Always capitalized. As with English, the norse third person plural took over. The dual pronouns of second person and first person in the object case became the accusative case. The plural pronouns of second person and first person in the object case became the dative case.

Genitive pronouns
Use noun declension with the possesive determiners determiners to form these.

Relative pronouns
þe (from Old English "þe") always sets off relative clauses with commas. The clause comes before the noun it modifies, after the determiner.

Word Order
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">This is a basic guide for the word order, but it is not very necessary because words are declined for case. Basically everything that describes something else comes before that something else.

Verbs
<h4 style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Negation There are two methods of negation. Double negatives formed using the negative particle and the negative indefinite article as in "I did not see no one" would be posititve as in "I saw someone".

The particle "necht" is added before the verb, this method of negation is used with definite articles because there are no negative definite articles. The negative definite articles can also be used and a listed under articles.

Conjunctions
<h3 style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">Noun List

<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">The noun count is at 72:

Prepositions
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">prepositions tend to have only one single meaning and cannot be easily translated therefore from Modern English.

<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">The preposition count is at 31:

<h3 style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">Verb list The verb count is at 77:

Example text
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">...