Thiedish

Thiedish is a direct descendant of Middle English and a sibling to English and Scots. Unlike English, it preserves most of the original lexis inherited from Old English. Comparable to Scots, Thiedish has moderate influences from Old Norse, Low German, French and Latin. Old English and Modern English both exert considerable influence upon new vocabulary.

Setting
The language developed as a scholarly lingua franca under the auspices of the English Academy whose primary objective was to establish grammar rules and standardisation for the newly burgeoning Saxon tongue throughout Mediaeval Britain.

Alphabet
Thiedish uses the Frankish/Carolingian alphabet, a descendant of the Latin, in conjunction with some Old English letters. Combinations of letters can be used to produce single phonemes, as in English.

Phonotactics
Consonant clusters are common, and phonotactic rules for Thiedish are the same as Old and Middle English. Clusters 'kn-', 'gn-', 'fn-', etc. are pronounced as they are written.

Typology
Thiedish is a Subject Verb Object (SVO) language, and specifically, a V2 language.

Gender
There are three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. All common nouns are neuter, except where the sex is clearly discernable. Words such as: mann, boi, bull, draak, fader, sun, cock, kining ("king") are masculine. Feminines nouns are: wimman, wijf, læddiȝ, girl, muoder, swester, henn, quien ("queen"), etc. Many words can take either a masculine or feminine gender depending on the sex of the person or object being referred to, like: baker, larjow ("teacher"), hund ("dog"), fugel, dier ("animal"). In such a case, "ðe larjow" would be "the male teacher", while "ða larjow" would be "the female or lady teacher".

Articles
Articles are similar to those in other West Germanic languages.

Definite Articles ("The")
The neuter switch-forms ðe and ðet operate in the same way that English a and an do: when the following noun begins with a consonant, the form ðe is used ("ðe land"), otherwise ðet is the default article ("ðet æppel"). Definite articles are not declined, except in the genitive case as in ðe buok ðes manns ("the book of the man/the man's book"), and for number ða æppels ("the apples").

Example text
The Lord's Prayer in Thiedish

Ouser Fader,

ðie art in hevens

ȝehálged sij ðijn naam.

Ðijn rijche cum, ðijn will werþ duon, on erþ�as hit is in hevens.

Ouser dæȝliche bread ȝiv ous tuodǽȝ, ond forȝív ous ouser schilds as wie forȝíveþ ouser schildands.

Ond lead ous noaght intuo costning, ok alíes ous from ivel.

Ðann ðijn is ðe rijche ond ðe meaght ond ðe wulder foréaver. Forsúoþ.