Gromavish

Gromavi [ɡɹəʊ'mɑ:vi] (Gromavi: Grumäävskish lingska [ɡrʊ'mæ:v.skɪʃ 'lɪŋ.ska]) is a language spoken by approximately 600,000 people in the Gromavi Republic, an archipelago nation in the Northern Sea.

Classification and Dialects
Gromavi is a language of the Indo-European family, in which it occupies an independent branch. However, it's been highly influenced by other branches throughout its history, mainly from Germanic and Romance languages. It has also borrowed vocabulary from the Celtic, Balto-Slavic and Finnic languages.

There is a standardised form, based on the dialect spoken in the capital, Gunindburgh. This is the form used in the government, public media and education. However, there is dialect continuum throughout the country from east to west and from north to south, reflecting the influence of different languages in the syntax and the vocabulary.

Phonology
Gromavi phonology is very rich and complex, reflecting the centuries of contact with other languages. Standard Gromavi has 31 formal consonants, 3 semivowels and 20 vowel, 10 short and 10 long. However, there are several allophones of the formal consonant phonemes which follow specific rules of pronunciation.

Colloquial Gromavi is richer and more complex than the standard form, with variations in many consonant sounds. This variations depend on the dialect, the speakers' preference and the speakers mother tongue (in the case of immigrants and their offspring).

Consonants
0) The plosives and affricates are sometimes aspirated /ph/, /bɦ/, /th/, /dɦ/, /ch/, /ɟɦ/, /kh/, gɦ/, t͡sh/, d͡zɦ/, t͡ʃh/, d͡ʒɦ/ depending on the dialect and the speakers' preference. E.g., native speakers of Germanic languages as well as Chinese and Korean usually aspirate the voiceless plosives, while native speakers of Hindo-Aryan, Dravidian and some Iranian and Austronesian languages tend to aspirate both voiced and voiceless plosives and affricates.

1) The bilabial fricatives /ɸ/ and /β/ are allophones of /f/ and /v/ respectively before plosives and affricates.

2) The labio-dental nasal /ɱ/ is an allophone of /m/ before labio-dental fricatives.

3) The approximant /ɹ/ and uvular /ʀ/ are allophones of the standard trill /r/ depending on the dialect and in some cases speakers' preference depending on their native language. E.g., native English speakers prefer the approximant /ɹ/; while native French, Portuguese, German, Danish and some Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian as well as Hebrew speakers prefer the uvular /ʀ/.

4) The alveolar nasal /n/ and alveolar lateral aproximan /l/ become palatalised (/ɲ/ and /ʎ/) or velarised /ŋ/ and /ɫ/ when they come before palatal or velar plosive, fricative or affricate.

5) The voiced liquids /r/, /ɹ/, /ʀ/, /ɻ/, /l/, /ɭ/ and /ʎ/ become devoiced to /r̥/, /ɹ̥/, /ʀ̥/, /ɻ̊/, /l̥/, /ɭ̊/ and /ʎ̥/ when they come before voiceless phonemes.

6) The retroflex /ɳ/ and /ɭ/ are allophones of the alveolar /n/ and /l/ before retroflex fricatives and affricates allophones.

7) The phoneme clusters /rn/, /rt/, /rd/, /rs/, /rz/, /rt͡s/, /rd͡z/, /rt͡ʃ/, /rd͡ʒ/, /rl/ change to the retroflex allophones /ɳ/, /ʈ/, /ɖ/, /ʂ/, /ʐ/, /ʈ͡ʂ/, /ɖ͡ʐ/ and /ɭ/ in some dialects. In the standard form, the alveolar /r/ becomes the retroflex approximant /ɻ/, making the following phoneme retroflex too.

8) The retroflex /ʂ/, /ʐ/, /ʈ͡ʂ/ and /ɖ͡ʐ/; and the palatal phonemes /ɕ/, /ʑ/, /ç/, /ʝ/, /t͡ɕ/ and /d͡ʑ/ are allophones of the post-alveolar /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /t͡ʃ/, /d͡ʒ/ and the velar /x/ and /ɣ/ depending on the dialect and the speakers' preference. E.g., the native Russian and Belorussian speakers prefer the retroflex allophones, while the native Polish, Czech, Slovak, Swedish, Norwegian and some Danish, Dutch and German speakers prefer the palatal sounds.

9) The uvular /χ/ and /ʁ/ are allophones of /x/ and /ɣ/ depending on the dialect and the speakers' preference. E.g., some native German, Danish and French speakers prefer the uvular sounds.

10) The uvular /ɴ/ is an allophone of /n/ before uvular fricatives.

11) The velarised /ɫ/ is an allophone of /l/ depending on the dialect and the speakers' preference. E.g., native English, Portuguese, Catalan, eastern Slavic languages, Albanian and Arabic speakers tend to pronounce the velarised /ɫ/.

Diphthongs
Falling diphthongs are more frequent than the rising ones and the 1st class diphthongs are more frequent than the de 2nd class. The 2nd class diphthongs occur mostly in loanwords.

Phonotactics
Possible syllables in Gromavi are (C)(L)(S)V(V)(L)(C)(C). The nucleus is always a vowel. Syllable initials may be a single consonant, a consonant cluster with a liquid or a semivowel. Medials can be a short vowel, a long vowel or a diphthong. Codas can be a single consonant or a consonant cluster (which may include a liquid or a fricative as its first component). As a rule, words cannot begin with retroflex consonants.

C: consonant

L: liquid consonant

S: semivowel

V: vowel

Writing System
Gromavi used to be written with runes until the introduction of the latin script during the middle ages. Up until the 18th century, the runic script was sill in use by farmers, traders and artisans as they considered the latin script as a foreign practice. The Latin script was used by the royalty, the nobility and high tier professionals, e.g.: accountants, bankers, lawyers, scriveners and government personnel.

However, it changed by the time of the industrial revolution. Farmers, traders and artisans were in the need of better communication to process and sell their their goods and export them to the other countries, so they started to use the latin letters more in the their daily basis. During the next centuries, the latin script almost replaced the runic script, the latter being used in few religious texts and landmarks. Nevertheless, the latin script for the Gromavi language was not standardised.

Some letters derived from the runic script were used to represent some sounds such as the letters 'thorn' (Þ þ) and 'eth' (Ð ð) for the phonemes /θ/ and /ð/, respectively. Many other letters derived from the Cyrillic script such as the plosive Ґ ґ /ɟ/ and C c /c/, the fricative Ж ж /ʒ/, Г г /ɣ/, Ш ш /ʃ/ and X x /x/ and the palatal Њ њ /ɲ/ and Љ љ /ʎ/. The velar nasal /ŋ/ was represented by Ŋ ŋ, a derivative of the Latin letter N n. Other letters included ligatures such as æ, ꜵ, œ, ᵫ and ꭡ for the phonemes /ɐ ~ æ:/, /ʌ ~ ɤ:/, /œ ~ ø:/, /ʏ ~ y:/ and /ɪ̈ ~ ɨ:/, respectively.

During the mid 19th century, the Gromavi ortography underwent a reform which aimed to replace the Cyrillic graphemes with variations of Latin graphemes with inverted circumflex: Š š /ʃ/, Ž ž /ʒ/

In the regions with heavy Old Norse influence, the letters ' Å å ', ' Ə ə ', ' Ɨ ɨ ', ' Ø ø ' and ' Y y ' were used instead of the ligatures. The long vowels were represented by doubling the short vowel or writing the letter 'h ' after the short vowel (e.g., aa = ah, ee = eh, ii = ih, oo = oh, uu = uh).

It all changed when at the beginning of the 20th century when the language was standardised by prime minister Ölaf Kuväl. He used the phonology of the dialect spoken in the capital, Gunindburgh and also reformed the writing system to better fit the standard phonology. The reform consisted in the simplification of the script with the use of consonant clusters to represent sounds not found in the latin script.
 * Runic and Cyrillic letters were dropped and replaced by new consonant clusters comprising a plosive and the letters ' h ' to represent alveolar phonemes and the letter 'j ' to represent palatal phonemes. The velar nasal /ŋ/ is represented by the cluster 'nh '. Africates were made by adding a plosive before a fricative cluster.
 * The vowels represented by ligatures or Old Norse letters were replaced by their diacritic Latin equivalent and in order to represent the long vowel, the short vowel is doubled. Long vowels are represented only by doubling their equivalent short vowel.

The result was the following alphabet with 28 letters in total:

A a Ä ä B b D d E e Ë ë F f G g H h I i Ï ï J j K k L l M m N n O o Ö ö P p R r S s T t U u Ü ü V v W w Y y Z z

Syntax
Gromavi has a basic Subject-Verb-Object word order, like the Romance, Slavic and Finnic languages.

It is thus more useful to describe Luluvo as having a topic-comment-verb order. In poetry and colloquial speech, however, the grammatical cases allow Luluvo to have a highly flexible word order.

Questions
Questions are formed following the Verb-Subject-Object word order, as in the Germanic, Romance, Celtic and Slavic languages.

n situ; the word order of a sentence is not reversed when changed into a question. For yes-no questions, the sentence-final particle tu is used, while interrogative determiners are used for other questions.