Talk:Fjallandskt

Nasal Vowels
What do you guys think? Should I add nasal vowels or not?

Ælfwine (talk) 00:08, July 19, 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, sure! I mean, I saw that you wanted it to resemble Faroese and Icelandic and neither of those have nasal vowels, but I think you could do some interesting stuff with them, especially in terms of ablaut and morphology, if Proto-Norse allows that.

Maxseptillion77 (talk) 01:20, July 19, 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it should definitely resemble Faroese and Icelandic, although at the same time it has had other influences. Perhaps the language should look like a compromise been the continental and insular Old Norse? Probably it should be closest to a western or northern Norwegian dialect if it were isolated, sort of like a Norwegian version of Elfdalian, with some low german influences I might include in the grammar. With this line of thinking I might abolish the genitive case but keep the nominative, accusative, and dative cases, with some influence of German in it's verbal forms (Proto-Norse had the prefix ga- marginally, but low german influence could spread it to new forms.)

The biggest thing about this conlang is probably it's vowel harmony, which I'll expand on soon. It'll be derived from Old Norwegian vowel harmony which harmonized the unstressed vowels depending on the height of the stem vowels, and still be productive. It'll also affect the svarabhakti-u in some cases, e.g. sing. nom. hestur > hestor "horse."

Orthographically, I'm thinking that nasal vowels could be distinguished by an ogonek for short vowels and a tilde for long vowels, although I'd have to make seperate characters for the ringed letters å e̊ ı̊. It might be a b*tch to type, but it'd also look cool.

Ælfwine (talk) 05:01, July 19, 2016 (UTC)

The first thing you want to do when constructing a natlang (or a language derived from a native language) is to find out the location roughly. Like, is fjallandskt going to exist on some Danish island (because of influence from Proto-Norse and Low German), inside of some Norwegian fjord, &c if you want it to have some realism. Also, roughly, you want to know the time frame, because that could influence the grammar and vocabulary due to history in the region, blah, blah, blah. Then, you can figure out what influences can arise.

Vowel harmony sounds like some good shit!! It'd definitely be pretty interesting. ED's more than willing to help you if you want some good info on Old-Norse (hopefully, you can find him in the chat), he knows that stuff like the back of his hand, if you want answers to continental vs. insular and such.

You should absolutely use an ogonek, rings looks hella ugly (no offense, Swedish). And lastly, you can swear here, just be mindful not to be excessive.

Maxseptillion77 (talk) 06:02, July 19, 2016 (UTC)

Fjallandskt exists on a sort of alternate earth where there exist analogies of real life nations and their languages, but at the same time they aren't like what we know of them. However for all intents and purposes I am drawing from the real world. I guess the closest analogy would be a mixture of northern and western Norwegian (think Sognamål) with heavy Hanseatic League influences (and the fact that in the AU a german speaking nation is invariably below Fjalland, not of my decision when I originally wanted to be Icelandic speaking.) Insular influences also exist, as I am taking a bit from (Ny)norn and Faroese. Fjallandskt will be spoken in the modern day.

I have already chatted with ED and he has provided me with a lot of interesting sources (right now I am reading about Norwegian vowel height harmony - see this for example.)

Personally, I like the use of rings - they denote roundness in this conlang, but will be paired with either tildes or ogoneks depending on whether the vowel is long or short respectively. And I'll be mindful of that, thanks.

Ælfwine (talk) 06:29, July 19, 2016 (UTC)

So after a bit of a break, I've decided to resume Fjallandskt with a new idea in mind. I've decided to make the language a mixture of both the West and North Germanic languages, as well as it's own independent sound shifts, particularly later during the Middle Ages and early Old Norse times.

Some of my ideas include:

-West Germanic Gemination, including a possible shift *hj > *h:j > *g:j, possibly in analogy with Holtzmann's law

-Preserving *w before rounded vowels. In addition, the regular outcome of *we is *wo. E.g. kwenǭ > kvonną, nom. sing. "woman.” (I initially wanted a regular shift to *ø but I realized it would most likely be before i-umlaut.)

-The assimilation of *nhw > *mm and *nh > *nn. (Unsure about this one.)

-An early merger of the diphthongs *au and *eu, whom both become *jō. E.g. jōga “eye.”

-Hyper-corrective reversal of the sound shift nnʀ > ðʀ, so that all ðʀ become nnʀ, regardless of etymology

-A fourth u-umlaut from epithetic /u/ between /r/ and a consonant. E.g. mannur, “man” > mönnur.

I’m looking for Germanicists to help me generate ideas! At the moment I am attempting to piece together sound shifts while searching for resources on all the sound shifts from PG to West Germanic and PG to North Germanic.

Ælfwine (talk) 02:51, September 3, 2016 (UTC)