Arvernian

Arvernian ( English: /ˈɑɹvɛrniən, -vɝniən/, Arvernian:  [arˈverna]), also known as lengua arverna ( Arvernian:  [leŋwa arˈverna]) by its native speakers, is a Romance language spoken in southeastern France, Monaco, and northwestern Italy, as well as northern Cuba and the southeastern United States (particularly Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas); collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to as Arvernia (L'Arvernia).

Arvernian is one of the official languages of the United State. For this reason, the aforementioned states are known as L'Acila, or colloquially by English-speakers as Arverica. The situation is often referred to as "America's Quebec." Despite the distance and time between dialects of Arvernian, they remain entirely intelligible with one another and the differences have been compared to British and American accents. However, because Arvernian enjoys no official status in France and negligible recognition elsewhere, American Arvernian has become the global standard and the regulatory body, L'Academia da Lengua Arverna (ALA), is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

American Arvernian (Arverna americana)
American Standard Arvernian (Arvernian Standard de America), or ASA, is the official standard of the language by virtue of having the largest number of speakers by far. Despite this official status, which primarily applies to spelling conventions and other formalities, colloquial American Arvernian contains a number of loans, especially from English and the indigenous languages (Cherokee and Muskogee, primarily), as well as some neologisms, which are not considered standard by L'Academia. Some examples of these include: American Arvernian also takes a number grammatical structures from American English, which are not found outside of the United States and are proscribed by the ALA. Unlike the aforementioned examples, these grammatical developments are considered a part of the larger American Standard. For example, the T-V distinction in ASA is much less important than in European varieties. The vò pronoun is used primarily for strangers, bosses (though this is falling out of favor), military commanders, and professionals. It is never used to address family members, however old or distinguished, people that are well-known to the speaker, or in mass communication, such as advertisements or PSAs (Portà to masqua, not Portà vustra masqua, BUT Portà vustrà masque is okay). Virtual assistants like Siri and phone language settings now have an option to change from the default vò to tu after users expressed discomfort at being viewed so formally. Learners are often taught the humorous adage "If it's meeting two, you'd better use tu."

Mediterranean Arvernian (Arverna del Meiterràneo)
Mediterranean Arvernian is not under any standard, but does typically follow ALA conventions. As prescribed by the ALA's internal constitution, 20% of its staff must be European or Caribbean speakers, though only 4% are Caribbean compared to 19% European. Like colloquial American Arvernian, Mediterranean Arvernian dialects diverge from the standard in vocabulary. Generally speaking, while earlier borrowings were from northern Italian dialects and Occitan, modern Mediterranean Arvernian takes mostly from standard French and, to a lesser extent, standard Italian. Some examples of these differences include:

Writing System
[1] Very rare in native words, usually found in loans or recent Latin additions.

[2] The /ɫ/ phoneme is found in all positions in American Arvernian.

Nouns
Arvernian nouns have two possible genders (masculine and feminine) and two numbers (singular and plural) and nouns often follow their natural gender. Gender only determines adjective and/or article agreement. Consider the following table, which divides the words into their pluralization paradigms, rather than by gender (with the definite article).