Aarlaansk

Aarlaansk or Aarlaanzik is a language spoken in The Aarlaans, a country that, in a different reality, inclues The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, a part of our Germany and a part of our France. It has been created by Llyn, imagining how the Latin would have evolved, if the Romans had conquered that territory and had imposed the use of Latin language. Llyn was inspired by Brithenig language and by Wenedyk language.

The term aarlaansk is a contraction of aarlaanzijk that means "the language of the Aarlaans". The origin of the ethnonym hasn't been completely explained yet: the most probable hypothesis explains that "Aarlaans" is a contraction of "Aarvers plaans", that is "plains of the tree", aarvers is an archaic genitive case of the term aarver, "tree", and plaans is the plural form of the term plaan, "plain". The fact that in old documents, the ethnonym Aarlane is also found and that the word "plaan" has got an archaic plural form plane, supports this hypothesis.

But why should the Romans have given this place the name of "plains of the tree"? The explanation was found only in 2609 ab U.c. (that is circa 1856 of our era): during an archaeological excavation it was found a table that dates back to 867 ab U.c. (circa 114 of our era), on this table was written the anecdote of the defeat of Germanic Tribes in a Northern territory by the Roman army of Trajan. According to this narration, the emperor had a prophetic dream: the Roman army would have won, only if it had attacked the Germanic tribes far from the forest, in an endless plain. The sign that would have shown the right place would have been a solitary tree, the only one within this immense plain. History teaches us that in the Battle of Vloerijgen (866 ab U.c. - 113 d.C.) the future country of Aarlaans became a part of Roman Empire.

Classification
Aarlaansk is a Romance language that descends from Vulgar Latin, even if, in spite of other languages of the same family, in Aarlaansk many common terms derive from Classical latin.

The lexicon is almost completely of Latin origin (99% of Aarlaansk words derive from Latin words).

Alphabet
The Aarlaansk alphabet contains 22 letters and 1 digraph that is considered a distinct letter: When the consonant are found in final position, they are devoiced and become voiceless. Letters g, z and v can be pronounced respectively [χ], [s] and [f] when at the beginning of a word, this pronounciation is not compulsory and is rather dialectal.

Consonants
In Aarlaansk the following consonantic phonemes are found:

Vowels
Here are the vowels of Aarlaansk: The short a is articulated rather in the front of mouth, while the long a is pronounced rather in the back of mouth.

Diphthongs, false diphthongs and vowel length
In Aarlaansk there are only two diphthongs:

There are also other "vocalic combinations" that represent a long vowel instead, thus they are called false diphthongs or just long vowels:
 * ei [ɛɪ];
 * ou [ɔʊ];
 * ui [œy].

The diphthongs, the false diphthongs and the letter ij (that really indicates the same diphthong as ei) are always long in Aarlaansk, while the letter is always short. The letters a, e, o, and can be both short and long, instead. To indicate the vowel length of these 4 vowels, this language uses a special system that is based on the kind of syllables.
 * eu [ø:];
 * ie [i:];
 * oe [u:].

There are two kind ov syllables: they can be both open and closed. A syllable is open when it ends with a vowel (so ma, te, ko, su are all open syllables); a syllable is closed when it ends with a consonant (so mat, tek, kos, sum are all closed syllable).

The rules to indicate the length of a, e, o, u and says that:

«When a long vowel is found in an open syllable, it is written once, whereas if it is found in a closed syllable, it is written twice.» 

That is to say that short vowels are never found in open syllables, but only in short ones and in this case they are written once, because if a vowel is written twice in a shor syllable, it is long, ex.:


 * in ma and maat the a's are long; in mat the a is short;
 * in te and teek the e's are long; in tek the e is short;
 * in ko and koos the o's are long; in kos the o is short;
 * in su and suum the u's are long; in sum the u is short.

Digraphs and trigraphs
Aarlaansk has got only a digraph, that is  and is read [χ], and only a trigraph, that is and is read [ʃ].

The accent
In Aarlaansk the accent is almost always found on the last but one syllable, but also on the last one, in this grammar it will be indicated if the accent falls on a different syllable than the last but one by underlining the syllable where the accent falls on.

Nouns, gender and number
Nouns in Aarlaansk can be both common or neuter: the previously masculine and feminine genders have merged into the common gender, whereas the neuter has remained the same. Nouns have got two forms: singular, that indicates one object, person, animal, concept, and so forth, and plural, that indicates more than one object, person, animal, concept, and so forth.

Generally the plural is formed with the terminations:

1) -s, if the noun ends with a vowel or -el, -em, -en, -er or if it is of common gender;

2) -e, if the noun ends with a consonant (except -l, -m, -n, -r preceded by ) or is of neuter gender.

Obviously there are also exceptions to this rule, ex.: vijl, son, has got a plural form vijls, sons.

The substantives that end with -f or -s and take a plural form in -e, mutate f into v and into z, ex.: zilf, wood, forest, has got a plural zilve, woods, forests, but it is of common gender, even if it takes the plural end -e!

Some nouns with their plural form and their meaning
Here is a short list of substantives with their plural form, their gender and their meaning: Some nouns show some changes in their structure:


 * lup > luppe;
 * zilf > zilve;
 * oor > ore;
 * baas > baze.

This is due to the phonetic rules: in the word lup, the u is short, if just the end of plural were addes, it would become *lupe, but in this word the would be found in an open syllable (lu-pe), so it would be long. Except for some irregular nouns, a short vowel remains short and cannot become long, so, to avoid this situation, the consonant is doubled and in the word luppe, the is found once again in a closed syllable (lup-pe).

In the word zilf, the f becomes voiced due to its position between a voiced consonant and a vowel, so zilf becomes zilve.

The word oor becomes ore, because the o is long, so in a closed syllabe (oor) it is written twice according to the phonetic rules, whereas in an open syllable (o-re) it is written just once.

The last word, baas, shows a change in the written form of the long vowel and at the same time a voicing of the last consonant.

These changes aren't needed with only long vowels and diphthongs (ei, eu, ie, ij, oe, ui, ecc) and with the only short vowel i, ex.: vijl is a closed syllable, the ij is long though; in the word o-ri-kel the i is found in an open syllable, but it is short.

Articles
In Aarlaansk there are two kinds of article: definite article and indefinite article. The first is used to talk about things, people, concepts that are already known by both the speaker and the listener, whereas the indefinite article introduces concepts, things, people that are new.

The indefinite article is just onw: uin and it is used with both common and neuter nouns, it hasn't got a plural form, so the only way to make an indefinite plural is to avoid the article, ex.: uin masie, a house, masies, houses, but also some houses.

The definite article has got a gender differentiation in the singular but a common form in the plural:

Adjectives
The adjectives always precede the noun they are referred to and they have a special "declension": it is added an -e when the noun is in its plural form, the singular noun is preceded by a determiner (the indefinite article is NOT a determiner), and when the singular common gender noun is preceded by no article or by indefinite article. The adjectives remain uninflected when the noun is a singular neuter gender nound preceded by no article or by indefinite, and when a noun (both common and neuter) is preceded by nul (no, any), om (each), kwenk (every), kwaal (what), uin taal (such a), pook (little, few), muut (many, much).

Some examples with grand, big, great, and gauvin, yellow:


 * Uin grand e kat > A big cat (kat is a common gender noun);
 * El grand e kat > The big cat;
 * Gauvin oor > Yellow gold (oor is a neuter gender noun);
 * Lud gauvin e oor > The yellow gold;
 * Nul grand kat > No big cat.

Comparative and superlative
The lower degree comparative is formed with the pattern min + adjective + de + 2nd term (in the same case of the first, if it is a pronoun), ex.:


 * Noes zon min vormoes de toe > We are less beautiful than you.

The same degree comparative is formed with the pattern tam + adjective + kwant + 2nd term (in the same case of the first, if it is a pronoun), ex.:


 * Noes zom tam vormoes kwant toe > We are as beautiful as you.

The higher degree comparative is formed with the pattern pluis + adjective + de + 2nd term (in the same case of the first, if it is a pronouns), ex.:

The superlative is formed with the pattern wou(d) + adjective, ex.:
 * Noes zom pluis vormoes de toe > We are more beautiful than you.


 * Toe est wou vormoes > You are most beautiful.

If it is used as a relative superlative, wou(d) is substituted for el/lud pluis + adjective + de, ex.:


 * Toe est el pluis vormoes de el mund > You are the most beautiful in the world.

Some adjectives: koud (hot), vrijcht (cold), zimplek (simple), vakkel (easy), veed (ugly), zakker (sacred), verroek (fierce), kruidiel (cruel).

There are also adjectives that have got irregular higher degree comparative and superlative: The higher degree comparatives are always used with de, ex.:
 * Toe est mellier de eg > You are better than I.