Borchennymendi

General information
Borchennymendi is the native language spoken by approximately 3,200,000 inhabitants of the Kingdom of Borchennymi, situated in the Atlantic Ocean, to the south of the Azores and to the west of the Canary Islands. The island country has been a constitutional monarchy since 1253. Its name means: 'mainland in the ocean', although it is never spoken of as 'Sealand'. Borchennymendi is a language isolate, featuring complex verbal constructions. Its orthography retained an archaic character, while its modern pronunciation is the result of a clearly phased development under the influence of the Portuguese tongue in the 15th and 16th centuries and the English language in the late 17th and early 18th, although Borchennymi was never colonized. A British attempt to do so in 1768 failed after 44 years, when the foreign oppressors were expelled after a short and rather peaceful insurrection in 1812. The Borchennymendi vocabulary shows some Latin influences as an effect of missionary activities from Gaul as early as the 5th century and from the British Isles in the 9th. A few words are derived from the Portuguese.

Alphabet
The alphabeth consists of only seventeen letters:

a b c d e g i (h only in digraphs) l m n o p r s t

Digraphs:æœ bh ch dh gh lh mh nh ph rh sh th

In books printed in Borchennymi h looks like ß, ſ is used for s except at the end of a syllable, q represents the digraph ch, and h at the end of a word looks like an undotted j. Uncial scripts and fonts are widely used. Capitals are not in use. There is only one punctuation mark (. ) or.

Phonotactics
The Portuguese and English influences caused several and considerable changes in the pronunciation of medieval Borchennymendi. Before the 15th century it already lost all palatal, velar and uvular plosives and fricatives (except the uvular fricative often represented by rh in written texts). The velar plosives k and g were gradually replaced with lateral fricatives. The Portuguese merchants, who settled predominantly in the southern coastal regions, introduced the further nazalisation of vowels followed by the digraphs mh and nh. Influences from the English pronunciation may be seen in the elision of end-consonants like gh and dh and in the treatment of the dental fricatives th and dh, wich used to be aspired plosives.

Important characteristics of modern Borchennymendi are the modification of consonants by following vowels and the modification of vowels by subsequent consonants. The correct pronunciation, however, is fairly irregular and can be represented by the following tables, which are only indicative. Exceptions are as numerous as the rules.

The tables indicates the pronunciation of every possible VC combination within one syllable. The column on the rightmost side represents the modification of the original sound of c (k), when it precedes one of the combinations in the rows left of it. In the right column of each pair the regular pronunciation is indicated according to IPA.

Table 1
Vowels not modified by subsequent consonants.

Table 2 Modification of vowels by subsequent consonants and digraphs within syllables.

Table 3
Vowels modifying precedent consonants.

Table 4
Modification of consonants.

First Reader
In the twentieth century, something like McGuffey's First Reader has been published:

The Borchennymendi texts appeared in the traditional alphabeth. ß is the sign for h; the sharp s takes the place of the normal s within or at the outset of a syllable and h is written with a decorative curl at is tail at the end of a word.

The words generally are of considerable length, because Borchennymendi is an agglutinative language, although it has some flexions.

Read aloud, this text sounds like:



Gender
There is no grammatical gender, neither in nominal, nor in verbal constructions. In the second and third persons of the verbal conjugation, a distinction is made between concrete and abstract categories. This will be explained in the section dealing with nouns.

Number

Borchennymendi involves a three-way number contrast between singular, dual and plural.

In the sentence:

The apple is fresh - almhaen paertearotganes:

the subject almha- takes the suffix of the nominative -en, because paertearotg-, denoting both the adjective ‘fresh’ and the verb ‘to be fresh’, is in this case considered to be an intransitive verb. Two suffixes have to be attached to the radix: -an- for the common present and -es for the third person singular for concrete items.

In: The apples are fresh - almhaemen paertearotganeshem:

the suffix -em for the plural number appears twice: in the penultimate position of almhaemen and as the final suffix of the verbal construction, as the grammatical number is an agreement category. The distinction between abstract and concrete nouns is a category of the same type.

The two apples are fresh - almhasoidhnen paertearotganeshough:

In the dual, nouns normally are classified by -soidhn, whereas the verbtakes the suffix -ough. The plural classifier is -em for the noun as well as for the verb. Some nouns form their dual through apophony or phonetic modification: two - steidhm four (two times two) - staedhm. This type of nouns may appear in a second dual form: staedhmsoidhn (2 x 2 x 2) - eight.

The dual of almha is formed in the normal way, but sechoedhr, a lady’s shoe, shows apophony in the dual: seachadhr. sechoedhren uibhshetloeianes: - The shoe is black; seachadhren uibhshetloeianeshough: - The pair of shoes is black. ‘Two pairs of shoes’, seachadhsoidhn, make up four shoes, so that the double dual for the noun requires a plural form in the verb:

seachadhsoidhn uibhshetloeianeshem:

and not: seachadhsoidhn uibhshetloeian eshough :

A collective noun is a word that designates a group of objects or beings regarded as a whole, such as "flock", "team", or "corporation". In Borchennymendi, just as in English, they may be interpreted as plural or incidentally when their meaning is that of a couple consisting of two items, persons or concepts (e.g. auth - ‘a pair’, aidhreguige - ‘a married couple’, aothmeraidh ‘duality, ambiguity’) as dual, which affects the conjugation of the verb according to the above mentioned rules. In Borchennymendi, phrases such as ‘The committee are meeting’ are even more common than in British English. The so-called agreement in sensu (i.e. with the meaning of a noun, rather than with its form) is highly favoured. This type of construction varies with the level of formality.

Person
For verbal constructions, six persons are distinguished: Gender being no category in Borchennymendi, there are no distinct suffixes for 'he', 'she' and 'it' for animate creatures.In the second and third persons concrete and abstract agents of the verb require different sufiixes. Concrete are really existing persons, animate and inanimate objects. Abstract are all the others. The categories, however, are interchangeble to a certain extent. omenh as a concrete noun means 'a human being', so it takes the third person concrete in a verbal construction of which it is the subject. As an abstract noun it means 'mankind', so its suffix will be that of the third person abstract.

Originally concrete animals or items that have existed but have ceased to do so are regarded as belonging to the abstract category. This semantic shift affects the choice between the two possibilities in the second and third person.

The apple is fresh - almhaen paertearotganes:

implies that the fresh apple is still present. About a stolen or consumed apple that has been fresh one should say:

almhaen paertearotgechaithesth:

while

almhaen paertearotgechaithes:

would imply that the apple is still there and once had been fresh, but now has lost its original quality.

Prudence is called for when adding the suffixes -adh (2sg. abstr.), -esth (3sg. abstr.), -adhough, -esthough (dual.), -adhem or -esthem (plur.) to a verbal radix if a person is the subject. Very often it implies pejorative appellations. It is not customary to speak about deceased persons as if they were abstract notions, not even when their demise happened centuries ago. Such usage would express a considerable doubt about their historicity. 'Saint Nicolas' as a 4th century bishop, although he might be somewhat legendary, is concrete, but 'Santa Claus' safely may be regarded as an abstract noun by those who do not believe in his real existence. (Mind the children!) In the context of litterary fiction the names and designations of non-historical personalities are treated as concrete nouns. Fairies, gnomes etc.are abstract; angels are so for non-believers, but religious people regard them as concrete beings. When a living person is the subject, special precautions must be taken in the third person singular of the spoken language, as in practically all instances the difference between abstraction and concreteness is indicated merely by the stressed syllable: 'he/she is afraid' - uidhranes - ˈ ʌɹɐn ɛ ʃ ; 'it (abstr.) is afraid' - uidhranesth - ʌɹɐ ˈ n ɛ ʃ. The use of the abstract form for living people shows undisguised contempt. A concrete woman is a lady, an abstract one is a tramp.

The fourth person refers to a nondescript member of a class. The fifth includes all members of that class, while the sixth indicates that the class is void.

The suffixes, placed at the end of the entire verbal construction, are:

Function
The functional suffix is the first to be added to the verbal stem, called radix. There are four of these functions: when the answer to a question is affirmative: 'Is this a tree? Yes, it is.' Borchennymendi has no equivalents for 'yes' and 'no'. When replying to a question, the verb is repeated with the affirmative suffix.If the answer would be of the type: 'Is this a tree? No, it is a plant.', the suffix: has to be attached to the radix in the first possible position, which is, generally (though there are exceptions) the one immediately after.
 * indicative, with no mark;
 * negative marked by -me;
 * affirmative, with to possible suffixes:
 * -es
 * -iointegh

The interrogative function is reached by adding to the radix.
 * -riaidh

Voice
There are five voices:

active, unmarked;

middle, with the suffix: indicating that the action or experience is to the benefit of the agens;
 * -moigh,

reflexive, reciprocal, with the suffix The reciprocal mood presupposes a dual or plural subject or a subject formally in singular, but semantically plural, like as 'people, class, cattle, police etc.'.
 * -er;
 * -epher.

Mood

The ten moods are: The first conjunctive mood is nothing more than a simple conjunction of two coordinate verbal constructions. As a rule, its suffix does not follow the radix, but finds itself at the end of an entire construction.

Tense

The next position in a verbal construct is taken by one of the fourteen tenses, if they are applicable:

The terms given in the second column of the table do not cover those of e.g. the Latin grammar. Tenses are defined by three criteria: the time when the action commences, the moment on which it takes place, and that on which it is or is likely to be terminated. Examples of their use are:

Aspect
The verbal aspects are quite numerous. Integration of a complete verbal radix in the penultimate position of a construction is possible. It would result in a more refined aspect than the abbreviated radices give. Aspects given by truncated radices are:

Initial aspects: Progressive aspects: Intentional aspects: Retrospective aspects: Jussive aspects: Cogitative aspects:

Nominalisation
Adjectives can be treated as intransitive verbs without the verb itself being nominalised. The sentences: ‘It is a house. The house is white.’ are verbal constructions:

chasanes: chasen chaindidhanes: (litt.: "It houses. The house whites.")

Conjugated verbs are transformed to nouns in five different ways:

Counting from one to twenty.
1 reainsoidhn (reainsoidhn is the dual of reain, which means: a half. The suffix for the regular dual is - soidhn.)

2 steidhm

3 chuidhnaelh

4 staedhm

(This is the irregular dual of steidhm. There are about twenty irregular dual forms. Some of them are ordinals, others refer to objects that appear in pairs, e.g. eyes, ears, hands, legs, shoes etc. These dual forms are more or less similar to English plurals like mouse-mice, woman-women etc., but their use is restricted to the dual.) 5 tledhl

6 chudhnalh

(The dual of chuidhnaelh, three.) 7 ertg

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">8 staedhmsoidhn

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">(This is the regularly formed dual of staedhm, which is the irregular dual of steidhm. Nouns with an irregular dual can take the suffix -soidhn for a second dual formation: sechoedhr: a (woman's) shoe, seachadhr: a pair of shoes, seachadhrsoidhn, two pairs of shoes). 9 tlaedhlreainsoidhnchuidh (= ten minus one. -chuidh is the suffix for the diminutive case.)

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">10 tlaedhl

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">(Another dual.) 11 tlaedhlreainsoidhnagh (= ten plus one. -agh at the end is the copula 'and', similar to the Latin -que.)

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">12 adhouidhsuin

<p style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;"> ("Twelve" is a peculiarity. adhouidhsuin is obviously borrowed from 'a dozen', because the hypothetic tlaedhlsteidhmagh is experienced as hard to pronounce and chudhnalhso in, very much alike in orthography and pronunciation, is a serious term of abuse. A legion of soccer supporters incidentally may be heard chanting 'Twelve, twelve' after an inappropriate decision made by the referee.)

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">13 tlaedhlchuidhnaelhagh

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">14 aertg

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">(The dual of ertg. You may notice that there are only five basic ordinals below 10, sc. 1/2 and the prime numbers 2, 3, 5 and 7. The words for 20, 100 and 1000 come from the Latin: leintg - viginti, gadhnt - centum, meighl - mille.) 15 tlaedhltledhlagh

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">16 tlaedhlchudhnalhagh

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">17 tlaedhlertgagh

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">18 tlaedhlstaedhmsoidhnagh

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">19 leintgreainsoidhnchuidh  (Analogue to the formation of "nine".)

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">20 leintg

<p style="margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">("Forty" is lantg, the dual of leintg; "Eighty" becomes lantgsoidhn: two pairs of 'twenties'.)