Kostish

General information
Evonisk (Eng. Evanish) is a West-Germanic language, related especially to Old English, but also Dutch, English, German, and with some borrowings from North-Germanic languages, especially scandinavian "-r" plurals. The idea behind it is that it might have been a hypothetical language to develop from Old English if some of the Anglo-Saxons had traveled to an island more northward and thus had their language more influenced by North-Germanic rather than Latin and French influences(and I must say, it is much more clear than Modern English). At the moment, Evanish is being carefully constructed and for the most part grammar is being worked out, along with prefixes and suffixes to be used in compound words that are in place of Romance words. Many things may still change like adding the genders of common and neuter, and I make edits and additions to this page about once a day, but as it develops more, the updates might become less frequent.

Alphabet
It's a modified Latin alphabet. Soon, there will be a way to write in the Elder Futhark, but for now this serves its purpose:
 * A, B, C, D, Ð, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N O, P, Þ, R, S, T, U, V, W, Y, Z
 * a, b, c, d, ð, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, þ, r, s, t, u, v, w, y, z

Grave vowels
Additionally, the vowels might have graves to express even more kinds of sounds. One should only use the digraphs if there is no alternative:

Sentence Structures
^The punctuation is what the sentence ends with only, all sentences begin with a capital(if not writing in the Elder Futhark).

^^An imperative sentence is O-V with the understood subject of 2nd person singular, but may be S-O-V if specified with 2nd person plural or singular.

Articles
Articles in Evanish come before all nouns except names and infinitives.

Negation
When negating a verb "ne" is added before the verb, that is all. Double negatives mean a positive as in saying "I did not see nobody" would be "I saw someone".

Verb Conjugation
A progressive present form may be added, or one might have to use simple present like Swedish and Spanish.

Participles don't work quite like English. They are written before the noun and add "-en" for the passive (past) participle and "-ind" for the present. Here's for an example of "slàon"(pronounced slay-on) meaning "to slay":

Describing Words
All describing words and phrases come before what they describe, which might sound strange in English.

Adjectives
They generally end in -isc(pronounced as English "-ish"). Adjectives are never written post-positively. In this example "foreign" modifies the word "man" Predicative Adjectives are used with the verb "beon" meaning "to be". An example: "The man will be foreign " would be written "Se manna werð beon walisc ". For comparative and superlative, see above. Note that there are two different future tenses for different purposes, and it is not wise to use this as a model for each.

Adverbs
They generally end in -lik. The grammar is the same as adjectives.

Never post-positively
Adjectives and Adverbs cannot be written post-positively, that is, they never follow nouns. An example of post-positive in English would be "tell me something interesting " would have to be written in Evanish as "tell to me an interesting something", note that an article (an) is used, articles must follow every noun and pronouns with the exception of names(and infinitives).

Pronouns
Note that pronouns are already declined for case, and are subject to change, esp. 3rd person singular. Negative is used for "nobody". Interrogative is for questions like "who" and "whom".


 * 1) Never use third person plural reflexive for negative reflexive as in "Nobody hurt themselves", it must be written as "Nobody hurt nobody's self".
 * 2) If a pronoun is capitalized it is either at the start of a sentence, or for showing respect(used to be reserved for gods and lords, but as people's faiths seperated the rule is now more general and can be applied to anyone).
 * 3) Remember, "à", "ì", and "è" can be replaced with digraphs.
 * 4) 4th person positive is the "generic you" or "one" as in a person. Negative is nobody, and interrogative is "who, whom, whose" and the like.

F

 * fyr- of or pertaining to fire [from OE "fyr"]

G

 * ga- together/with (cognate with syn) [CG]

I

 * -isc (pronounced as amer. eng. "ish")added to the end of nouns to form adjectives to mean "ways of or similar to".
 * -ig added to mean "full of or characterized by" [CG]
 * -isk is the older form from which isc derives added now only to the end of languages (e. g. Evon isk )

L

 * -lyk added to the end of words generally to form adverbs cognate "Eng -ly"[from Old. Fris. "-lik"]

M

 * -man added to verb stems to form workers of the task [from Ger "mann"]
 * mund- of or pertaining to the mind [CG]

U

 * ur- proto [from Ger "ur"]

D

 * Dag - day [from OE "dag"]

F

 * Froend - friend [from OE "freond", Ger "freund"]
 * Fyr - fire [from CG, OE "fyr"]

K

 * Katt - cat [from Du "kat"]

L

 * Loft - air [from OE "loft", Ger "luft"]

M

 * Mann - man [from OE, Ger "mann"]

G

 * Galiek - similar [from Ga + liek]

W

 * Walisc - foreign

Verbs
Verb list