Vestlandic

Classification and Dialects
Vestlandic is a North Germanic language spoken in the Vestlandic Confederation. Unlike Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, it retained like Icelandic and Faeroese its case system inherited from Old Norse, as the settlers did not come in contact with the Hanseatic League and its elite speaking Low German and leading ultimately to the lost of cases in the continental Scandinavian languages. Being a daughter language of Late Middle Danish and being heavily influenced by Modern Danish (having been a Danish colony up until 1864, the Danish language was the sole language of administration and education), Vestlandic contains a lot of Danish words, but also words from other Germanic languages like Low German, Dutch and Upper German (due to the migration of people coming from the German and Dutch speaking world).

Writing System

 * The letter E is pronounced /ɛ/ if it's stressed (mostly in the first syllable of the word) and if unstressed, it becomes /ə/, e.g. : e getlíg / ɛ jətlɛj/ (=actually)
 * The letter G is pronounced /g/ if it is preceded by the vowels A, O, U, Ø, Ó or Ý or if it's in initial position. If preceded by any other vowel or if in final position, it changes to /j/, e.g. : gang /gaŋ/ (=hallway) vs. jeg /jɛj/ (=I)
 * The letter combination HJ induces the sound /ç/, e.g. : hjøjt /çøjt/ (=height)
 * The letter combination NG induces the sound /ŋ/, e.g. : gang /gaŋ/ (=hallway)
 * If the letter R is in final position, it becomes /ɐ/, e.g. : dáur /dawɐ/ (=dew)
 * The letter combination SJ induces the sound /ʃ/, e.g. : sjýv /ʃyw/ (=seven)
 * The letter V in final position becomes /w/, e.g. : sjýv /ʃyw/ (=seven)
 * The letter Ð preceded by a consonant lengthens the previous consonant, e.g. : ho n ð /hɔn:/ (=dog)
 * The letter É is only used, if the word contains /ɛ/ in an unstressed syllable, e.g. : pr e sidént /pr ɛ sidɛnt/ (=president)

Noun declension
Inherited mostly from Late Old East Norse, the Vestlandic nouns show a variety of case endings. There are in total four cases : nominative (subject case - who?), accusative (direct object case - whom?), dative (indirect object case - whom to?) and genitive (possessive case - whose?). There are also three genders : masculine, feminine and neuter ; the noun must be learnt with its gender, because rules allowing to identify the gender of a noun are non-existent. The indefinite article einn, ei, eitt does only exist in the singular form, e.g. : einn man (=a man) vs. mæner (=men). The plural form of monosyllabic nouns induces the umlaut-change of some vowels, as it follows :


 * a changes into æ
 * o changes into ø
 * u changes into ý
 * ó changes into ø
 * oy changes into øy