Idoburgish

General information
Idoburgish is a West Germanic language formerly spoken in an isolated village in western Germany. The name "Idoburg(ish)" doesn't come from the language itself, instead it comes from the contemporary adaptation of the village's name.

So, the speakers were migrants who were reportedly exiled and travelled to the area near Selfkant, Germany, on the border with the Dutch Limburg. The local languages (namely Limburgish and, to lesser extent, Dutch and Ripuarian) have influenced the language both grammatically and lexically, and several other languages (Old High German, Old Saxon, Old Dutch) contributed only (or mainly) to its vocabulary.


 * Historical sound changes

Consonants
The Idoburgish consonant inventory is pretty conservative, with some innovations most of which have been introduced by the end of Proto-Idoburgish (i.e. by the time of tribes entering the central south of modern Germany).

Vowels
All short vowels except <ö> distinguish nasality.

Long vowels distinguish tone based on their height: high vowels (i.e. higher than mid) get a falling tone and low vowels get a drag tone, which is noticeably weaker than the falling tone and is technically a weak rising tone.

If a tone is present on a short vowel, it's indicated with an acute or a grave for drag and falling tone respectively.

There is also a grapheme <ë>, for further information on it see.

Morphophonology
Idoburgish has a few simple morphophonological rules.
 * All nouns with root ending with  replace that  with  and get a zero ending in genitive.
 * Likewise, all nouns with root ending with  replace that  with  before , both in declensions and compounds.
 * After such , all endings with -i- change the -i- to -e-. E.g. the genitive ending -is becomes -es.
 *  and other liquids become doubled between short vowels.

T-deletion
The process of t-deletion is pretty simple: can't occur word-finally after an obstruent, e.g. *wahtj (imp. of watǫ, waht- "wait") > wách.

If the obstruent preceding the is one of, it's palatalized.

and assimilate into the preceding  word-finally, becoming and  after it, e.g. *sjtrömtj, *sjtrömd become sjtrömp, sjtrömb "it flows, y'all flow" respectively.

Umlaut
On a regular basis, Idoburgish uses only one type of umlaut: the common I-umlaut. It occurs if an unstressed  is present in a syllable which follows a syllable with any of. The effect of this umlaut is a change of those vowels to <ä ö ö äö öö öö> respectively. Also, all verbs employ a regular I-umlaut in 1st and 3rd person indicative present and certain other environments (the latter being an innovation).

Non-consistent uses of umlaut (such as the ) will be explained.

Allophony
Idoburgish has a moderate amount of allophony, mainly in vowels, which has been influenced by neighboring Limburgish.

Consonant allophony
TBD.

Vowel allophony
The vowel that is affected by stress the most is /e/ - it commonly becomes centralized to [ə~ɜ] in any unstressed position (although not in pre- or postpositions) and lowered to [ɐ] word-finally.

All vowels become slightly centralized in any unstressed position.

Colloquially, word-final back and front nasal vowels get reduced to [ą ę] respectively.

Pharyngealization
Pharyngealization is a feature in Idoburgish picked up rather recently from the German dialects. It occurs only in back vowels and, centralizes the latter, and is indicated by  and <ë> after back vowels and respectively.

For example, noord and eeësj ("north" and "first" respectively) are pronounced [no:ˤt] and [ə:ˤʃ] respectively.

Personal pronouns
The personal pronouns are, surprisingly, the least irregular part,

Nouns
Oh the endless declension classes and the declension conservativity... *disregards* I'll say I wanted it to be as irregular and messed up as humanly possible.

Most noun declensions are divided into 2 varieties: hard (non-changing) and soft (palatalizing; itself distinguishing initially non-palatalized and initially palatalized). A root's variety is detected in a really simple way - initially non-palatalized soft roots end in J, initially palatalized soft roots end in Jʲ and hard roots end in any other consonant (stems ending in are initially palatalized soft stems). The declension differences between these two are very subtle.

W-umlaut
The W-umlaut (marked +W) is a recent introduction, involving lengthening of root vowels in plurals (much like the umlaut in German). Because of its recent introduction, it's applied after any other umlaut, as in tur > *töri > tööri.

The effect of the W-umlaut is lengthening of short vowels (see the vowel table). affected by the W-umlaut acquire the semivowel <ë> after themselves.

The second W-umlaut (marked +WD) converts the V:ë sequences  and long vowels into long vowels and diphthongs respectively.

The third W-umlaut (marked +Wd) converts all diphthongs and long vowels resulting from the previous W-umlaut processes into short vowels.

Palatal/-i stems
Those evolved from a wide variety of stems in Proto-Germanic, including the a-stems.

Hard
An example hard palatal stem noun is ölfi, "wolf". Endings: * If the root ends in -f- or a -LF- sequence, the root-final fricative becomes a corresponding plosive.

Soft
An example soft palatal stem noun is peetj, "boat". Endings: * If the root ends in -t, resulting become , e.g. peet-is, breed-is > peesj, breesj

Hard
The hard consonant stems don't employ the W-umlaut in any form.

An example hard consonant stem noun is fel, "shape" Endings:

Soft
The soft consonant stems do seldom employ the W-umlaut, in the same regular pattern. That will be indicated in the lexicon.

An example soft consonant stem noun is brööd, "bread" Endings:

o-dative nouns
These have evolved from the Proto-Germanic ō-stem nouns.

Hard
Those include the stems ending in -h-.

An example hard o-dative noun is peni, "road; convict" Endings:

Soft
The soft o-dative nouns do seldom employ the W-umlaut, in the same regular pattern. That will be indicated in the lexicon.

An example soft o-dative noun is pedj, "sentence, condemnation" Endings:

Consonant/-i stems
Those nouns have evolved mainly from Proto-Germanic consonant stems.

Hard
An example hard consonant/-i stem noun is tur, "door". Endings:

Soft
An example of a soft consonant stem noun is eek, "oak". Endings: ** Doesn't employ palatalization.

Articles
There are two kinds of articles in Idoburgish: een (indefinite) and je (definite), een being used only in singular. They decline as follows: These articles are rarely used in any case other than nominative or genitive.

Adjectives
Due to the extensive sound changes and their effect, the adjectives have lost the prominent gender distinction and their declension has been greatly simplified and generalized. And no, I'm not too lazy to make everything.

The adjectives in Idoburgish, like in most other Germanic languages, have a strong and a weak declension.

An example adjective is pöös, pöösj "full"

Verbs
So I'm honestly a newb in these. And no less a newb in describing things. (grin)

Anyways.

The verbs in Idoburgish are typically Germanic, having just one extra mood, the jussive (which is identical to a subjunctive with a tone change in most cases), most probably borrowed from neighboring Meuse-Rhenish languages.

Most conjugation features have been pathetically cribbed from influenced by neighboring languages, High and Low German oddly being the primary influences.

Auxiliaries, irregulars, etc.
Idoburgish employs a typical amount of auxiliary, usually suppletive and/or preterite-present verbs.

The (of course, irregular) copula in Idoburgish is wesą, and the conjugation is as follows:

Weak
The weak verbs in Idoburgish follow a rather conservative conjugation pattern.

An odd feature is that some endings were realized as separate words during the sound changes.

The common endings for weak verbs are: * Imperatives involve a simple and regular tone change: regardless of vowel height, the root vowel acquires a rising tone.

** The 2nd plural imperative ending is always -d, regardless of the quantity of preceding consonants.

Class 1
The class 1 weak verbs have descended from the namesake class 1 verbs and class 3 -ja- verbs and have the ending -į, from *-(i)janą. Those have a -j- infix in subjunctive forms.

An example class 1 weak verb is sjtrömmį "to flow".

Class 2
The class 2 weak verbs have the ending -ǫ, from *-ōną. These verbs have the base of R-e before all endings except infinitive and 2nd person plural imperative.

An example class 2 weak verb is halǫ, "to get, receive"

Class 3
The class 3 weak verbs have the ending -ą, from *-āną, -aną. These verbs employ regular i-umlaut in all present indicative forms, unlike the other classes which only employ it in 1st and 3rd person present indicative forms.

An example class 3 weak verb is armą, "to have mercy, adopt; to give money to a beggar" The verbs ending in -jį belong to the 3rd class as well and are peculiar in neutralizing the -e- in certain forms which do employ the -e- in all other conjugations. The conjugation of one such verb, pööjį, "to build", is presented below:

Strong
Ah, the 7 Ignominious Classes. Let's boogie! (c)

All strong verbs have the ending -ą, from *-aną, the vowel gradation is reduced to 3 principal parts (general present, past indicative and past subj./participles/imperatives respectively) and the conjugation is following:

Class 1
The class 1 strong verbs are inherited from namesake class 1 in Proto-Germanic and exhibit the following variation: A sample 1st class strong verb is gieną, "to put back to operation"

Class 2
The class 2 strong verbs have been inherited from the namesake class in Proto-Germanic, with regular and anomalous verbs merged.

The vowel variation in those is as follows: An example class 2 strong verb is sjöödą, "to shoot".

Class 3
The class 3 strong verbs have been inherited from the classes 3 and 4 in Proto-Germanic.

The vowel variation in those is as follows: An example class 3 strong verb is tsjesjį (< *tsjesj-ą), "to thresh".

Class 4
The class 4 strong verbs have been inherited from the class 5 in Proto-Germanic.

The vowel variation in those is as follows: An example class 4 strong verb is tsjepą "to massacre".

Class 5
The class 5 strong verbs have been inherited from the class 6 in Proto-Germanic.

The vowel variation in those is as follows: An example class 5 strong verb is wadą "to limp".

Nouns
An ordinary noun phrase in Idoburgish consists of a noun itself and optional adjectives and/or an article. Adjectives precede the nouns, and articles precede the adjectives, like in English or most other Germanic languages, e.g. een sjerp saos "a sharp knife". All compounds are to be treated as single words (nouns), e.g. metsjer(i)s sjerp saos "butcher's sharp knife" vs. een sjerp metsjer(-)saos "a sharp butchering knife" (lit. a sharp butcher(-)knife)

Prepositions always go before articles and cause the noun they modify to decline for either dative or nominative case. The case applied to nouns modified by a preposition will be indicated in the lexicon, +N indicating nominative case and +D indicating dative.

Possessives (or nouns in genitive case) are essentially adjectives in, well, everything. Like adjectives (or English -'s constructs or possessives in NGermanic), they follow the articles and precede the nouns, though they come first if there are other adjectives in the noun phrase, as evident from aforementioned phrase metsjer(i)s sjerp saos "butcher's sharp knife".