Ŕønnåsk

Consonants
1 The rhotic consonants may either be trills [r̝ r] or taps [ɾ̞ ɾ], depending on the speaker.

2 May also be realised as a plain lateral approximant /l/ in some dialects.

* /ɖ/, the voiced retroflex plosive, may be replaced by /ɽ/ in some dialects.

Pitch Accent
Ŕønnåsk is a pitch-accent language with two distinct pitch patterns, like Swedish and Norwegian. They are used to differentiate two-syllable words with otherwise identical pronunciations. For example, the word balen ('the ball [danse event') is pronounced using the simpler tone 1, while balen ('the nest') uses the more complex tone 2. Though spelling differences can differentiate written words, minimal pairs are often written alike, since written Ŕønnåsk has no explicit accent marks. Accent 1 uses a low flat pitch in the first syllable, while accent 2 uses a high, sharply falling pitch in the first syllable and a low pitch in the beginning of the second syllable. In both accents, these pitch movements are followed by a rise of intonational nature (phrase accent) — the size (and presence) of which signals emphasis or focus. That rise culminates in the final syllable of an accentual phrase, while the utterance-final fall common in most languages is either very small or absent.

The pitch accents give the Ŕønnåsk language a "singing" quality that makes it easy to distinguish from other languages.

Grammar
Ŕønnåsk is an inflected language with four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. Ŕønnåsk can have one of three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine or neuter. Nouns, adjectives and pronouns are declined in four cases and two numbers, singular and plural.

Morphology
Ŕønnåsk morphology is typical of other Germanic/Indo-European languages. Nouns are declined for case, number, definiteness and gender; adjectives for case, number, gender and definiteness with weak and strong inflections.

Ŕønnåsk possesses definite and indefinite articles. The definite article is usually a suffix added to the noun, however, definite inflection of adjectives plus den, dea, det can also be used. Verbs are conjugated for tense, mood, person, number and voice. There are two voices: active and passive. There are only two simple tenses, past and present, along with a number of auxiliary constructions, some of which may be regarded as tenses, others as aspects.

Nouns
Ŕønnåsk nouns are declined in four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. They belong to three main noun classes (masculine, feminine, neuter) and can be inflected for number (singular, plural) and definiteness (definite, indefinite). The following table shows four examples of strong declension. The gender of a noun can often be deduced by looking at the ending of the word:


 * Masculine nouns — often end in -ur, -i, -nn -het.
 * Feminine nouns — often end in -a, -ing.
 * Neuter nouns — usually have no ending or have a final accented vowel.

Articles
Ŕønnåsk has both indefinite articles (a/an in English), and definite articles (the in English) and is usually joined to the end of the word. The table below shows the different suffix forms for the three genders in the nominative. There are, however, some exceptions in every case. The examples below show three nouns, one for each respective gender, declined in the nominative:


 * masculine: en pojkur— "a boy" becomes pojkuren—"the boy"
 * feminine: ea jenta— "a girl" becomes jentan—"the girl"
 * neuter: ett barn — "a child" becomes barnit—"the child"

Personal
The personal pronouns in Ŕønnåsk are as follows:

Ŕønnåsk possesses a reflexive pronoun, functioning in much the same way as German sich. The nominative case does not exist. For example,


 * hann þvættar seir — he washes himself,

as opposed to being bathed by another,


 * hun klæðir sej — she dresses herself,

as opposed to being dressed. The pronoun does not distinguish gender or number.

Possessive
Modern Ŕønnåsk has only possessive pronouns for the first- and second-person singular and plural as well as the third-person reflexive. They are as follows, where the three columns for each person represent masculine, feminine and neuter genders respectively: Minn means mine, dinn means (singular) yours and sinn (which is a reflexive possessive pronoun) means his, her, its or theirs.

If one is to indicate possession for a person and number not amongst these pronouns (e.g. non-reflexive his, hers, its and theirs) the genitive of the corresponding (same person and number) personal pronoun is used.

Definite Articles
Denne "this", tann "that"

Verbs
There are four moods in Ŕønnåsk: indicative, imperative, conditional, and subjunctive.

Tenses
Strictly speaking, there are only two simple tenses of the indicative in Ŕønnåsk, simple present and simple past. All other tenses are formed using auxiliary constructions (some of these are regarded as tenses). For example, the present continuous is formed thus:


 * væra + att + infinitive verb
 * Jeg er att læra
 * I am learning (literal translation) I am to learn

This construction, however, is not usually used with stative verbs. For example, to sit would not use this construction. Instead, the simple present should be used (jeg sitter).

The compound tenses are:


 * Conditional
 * Future
 * Past
 * continuous
 * perfect
 * Present
 * continuous
 * perfect

In the infinitive, most verbs end in -a. Some exceptions include a few verbs ending in -å, such as må ('may'); slå ('hit'); flå ('flay'). Other exceptions include the auxiliaries; and a verb borrowed from Danish, ske (happen). There are three main groups of weak verbs in Ŕønnåsk: -ar, -ir, and -er, referring to the endings that these verbs take when conjugated in the third person singular present. The strong and weak (irregular) verbs (auxiliaries, ri-verbs and valda) are separate. Take the infinitive tala ('to talk'), for example:

Present Indicative

Past Indicative

Voice
Ŕønnåsk possesses the middle voice in addition to both the active and passive. Verbs in the middle voice always end in -st; this ending can be added to both the infinitive and conjugated verb forms. For the conjugated forms, second and third person endings (i.e. -(e)r, -ð and -rd) must be removed, as must any dental consonants (ð, d and t). Compare the verb bryta ('to break') to its medio-passive forms, for example: The medio-passive voice is generally used in the following situations to express:


 * Reflexivity — The middle voice form of a verb may be used in lieu of a reflexive pronoun, for example: Þor klæðir sej ⇒ Þor klæðis ('Þor gets dressed')
 * Reciprocity — Here the medio-passive voice is used to mean 'each other', for example: Þor talar till Stefan okk Stefan talar till Þor ⇒ Þor okk Stefan talar med alkandra ⇒ Þor okk Stefan talast ('Thor and Stefan talk to each other')
 * The passive — In certain situations, the medio-passive voice may express an idea for which English would use the passive. For example, the phrase, Biluren ses ikke, translates as 'The car cannot be seen'. Most often the medio-passive voice is used in this context when there is no direct reference to any grammatical person.

Subjunctive Mood
Like many other Indo-European languages, Ŕønnåsk has the subjunctive mood. It is often used to refer to situations with a degree of hypotheticity, but more specifically in the following situations:


 * In reported speech—It is used with the verb siga in the following sense: Jon segir att hun kommi ('Jón says that she's coming').
 * To express uncertainty—Used after the verbs våna ('to hope'), øska ('to wish'), halda ('to believe'), bua till ('to expect'), øttas, væra ræddur om ('to fear') and mistænka ('to suspect'): jeg vånar att hun blivi bettre ('I hope that she gets better')
 * Interrogative sentences—Specifically after the verb spørja ('to ask'): Jon spørjer hvort du aetlir að borða með okkur ('Jón asks whether you're going to eat with us')
 * With conjunctions—The subjunctive is used after the conjunctions nema ('unless'), þo att/þott ('although'), svo að ('so that'), til þess att ('in order to')