Idoburgish

General information
Idoburgish is a (probably) West Germanic language by The Kaufman, and yes, I'm kinda mocking Limburgish è.


 * Historical sound changes which are as regular and as up-to-date as Prussian landwehr.

Consonants
The Idoburgish consonant inventory is pretty conservative, with some innovations most of which have been introduced by the end of Proto-Idoburgish (i.e. by the time of tribes entering the central south of modern Germany).

Vowels
Long vowels distinguish tone based on their height: high vowels (i.e. higher than mid) get a falling tone and low vowels get a drag tone, which is noticeably weaker than the falling tone and is technically a weak rising tone.

If a tone is present on a short vowel, it's indicated with an acute or a grave for drag and falling tone respectively.

There is also a grapheme <ë>, for further information on it see.

Morphophonology
Idoburgish has a few simple morphophonological rules.
 * All nouns with root ending with  replace that  with  and get a zero ending in genitive.
 * Likewise, all nouns with root ending with  replace that  with  before , both in declensions and compounds.
 * After such , all endings with -i- change the -i- to -e-. E.g. the genitive ending -is becomes -es.
 *  and other liquids become doubled between short vowels.

T-deletion
The process of t-deletion is pretty simple: can't occur word-finally after an obstruent, e.g. *wahtj (imp. of waoten, waht- "wait") > wách.

If the obstruent preceding the is one of, it's palatalized.

If the sound preceding the t-sound is , it's hardened to .

and assimilate into the preceding  word-finally, becoming and  after it, e.g. *sjtrömtj, *sjtrömd become sjtrömp, sjtrömb "it flows, y'all flow" respectively.

Certain verbs harden a  or  to  in forms affected by the t-deletion, that is, in 3sg pres. ind., 2pl pres. ind., 1/2/3sg past. ind. and 2nd person imperatives, e.g. séhjen (root sáh-) becomes ségk in 3sg pres. and singular past and ságk in 2nd person plural and imperative. All of those verbs are of 1st weak class and had a -g(i)janą infinitive ending in Proto-Germanic.

Umlaut
On a regular basis, Idoburgish uses only one type of umlaut: the common I-umlaut. It occurs if an unstressed <i> is present in a syllable which follows a syllable with any of. The effect of this umlaut is a change of those vowels to <ä ö ö äö öö öö> respectively. Also, all verbs employ a regular I-umlaut in 1st and 3rd person indicative present and certain other environments (the latter being an innovation).

Non-consistent uses of umlaut (such as the ) will be explained.

Allophony
Idoburgish has a moderate amount of allophony, mainly in vowels, which has been influenced by neighboring Limburgish.

Consonant allophony
One thing is certain: <h> is [x] intervocalically and before consonants and [h] word-initially.

<g> is realized as [j~ʝ] word-initially and, of course, before front vowels such as <i>.

Regular intervocalical voicing happens.

Stress
The vowel that is affected by stress the most is /e/ - it commonly becomes centralized to [ə~ɜ] in any unstressed position (although not in pre- or postpositions) and lowered to [ɐ] word-finally.

All vowels become slightly centralized in any unstressed position.

Colloquially, word-final back and front nasal vowels get reduced to [ą ę] respectively.

Pharyngealization
Pharyngealization is a feature in Idoburgish picked up rather recently from the German dialects. It occurs only in back vowels and, centralizes the latter, and is indicated by <r> and <ë> after back vowels and respectively.

For example, noord and eeësj ("north" and "first" respectively) are pronounced [no:ˤt] and [ə:ˤʃ] respectively.

If <ë> occurs after a single front vowel <i> or <e>, it's pronounced as a short schwa, e.g. eelich /e:lɪç/ "like, similar to" vs. eëlich /eəlɪç/ "every".

Personal pronouns
The personal pronouns are, surprisingly, the least irregular part, The 3rd person pronouns hie, sie are used only when referring to people.

Nouns
Oh the endless declension classes and the declension conservativity... *disregards* I'll say I wanted it to be as irregular and messed up as humanly possible.

Most noun declensions are divided into 2 varieties: hard (non-changing) and soft (palatalizing; itself distinguishing initially non-palatalized and initially palatalized). A root's variety is detected in a really simple way - initially non-palatalized soft roots end in J, initially palatalized soft roots end in Jʲ and hard roots end in any other consonant (stems ending in are initially palatalized soft stems). The declension differences between these two are very subtle.

W-umlaut
The W-umlaut (marked +W) is a recent introduction, involving lengthening of root vowels in plurals (much like the umlaut in German). Because of its recent introduction, it's applied after any other umlaut.

The effect of the W-umlaut is lengthening of short vowels (see the vowel table). affected by the W-umlaut acquire the semivowel <ë> after themselves.

The second W-umlaut (marked +WD) converts the V:ë sequences <eeë ieë> and long vowels into long vowels and diphthongs respectively.

The third W-umlaut (marked +Wd) converts all diphthongs and long vowels resulting from the previous W-umlaut processes into short vowels.

Palatal/consonant stems
Those evolved from a wide variety of stems in Proto-Germanic, including the a-stems.

Hard
An example hard palatal stem noun is ölf, "wolf". Endings: * If the root ends in -f- or a -LF- sequence, the root-final fricative becomes a corresponding plosive.

Soft
An example soft palatal stem noun is peetj, "boat". Endings: * If the root ends in -t, resulting become <sj>, e.g. peet-is, breed-is > peesj, breesj

If a root ends in -d, it's modified to -j in plural and declined like that of soft consonant stems.

Hard
The hard consonant stems don't employ the W-umlaut in any form.

An example hard consonant stem noun is fel, "shape" Endings:

Soft
The soft consonant stems do seldom employ the W-umlaut, in the same regular pattern. That will be indicated in the lexicon.

An example soft consonant stem noun is brööd, "bread" Endings:

o-dative nouns
These have evolved from the Proto-Germanic ō-stem nouns.

Hard
Those include the stems ending in -h-.

An example hard o-dative noun is peni, "road; convict" Endings:

Soft
The soft o-dative nouns do seldom employ the W-umlaut, in the same regular pattern. That will be indicated in the lexicon.

An example soft o-dative noun is bedj, "sentence, condemnation" Endings:

Consonant/-i stems
Those nouns have evolved mainly from Proto-Germanic consonant stems.

Hard
An example hard consonant/-i stem noun is tur, "door". Endings:

Soft
An example of a soft consonant stem noun is eek, "oak". Endings: ** Doesn't employ palatalization.

Articles
There are two kinds of articles in Idoburgish: een (indefinite) and je (definite), een being used only in singular. They decline as follows: These articles are rarely used in any case other than nominative or genitive.

The article je often remains je in plural nominative and accusative.

Adjectives
The adjective declension is largely the same as that of consonant-stem nouns. An -en suffix (from *jainaz) is added before the case ending to make an adjective strong, with same case endings applied.

An example adjective is pöös "ill".

Verbs
So I'm honestly a newb in these. And no less a newb in describing things. (grin)

Anyways.

The verbs in Idoburgish are typically Germanic, having just one extra mood, the jussive (which is identical to a subjunctive with a tone change in most cases), most probably borrowed from neighboring Meuse-Rhenish languages.

Most conjugation features have been pathetically cribbed from influenced by neighboring languages, High and Low German oddly being the primary influences.

Auxiliaries, irregulars, etc.
Idoburgish employs a typical amount of auxiliary, usually suppletive and/or preterite-present verbs.

The (of course, irregular) copula in Idoburgish is wesan, and the conjugation is as follows:

(Note to self: the rounding of stressed <i> here was taken from Low German)

Weak
The weak verbs in Idoburgish follow a rather conservative conjugation pattern.

An odd feature is that some endings were realized as separate words during the sound changes.

The common endings for weak verbs are: * Imperatives involve a simple and regular tone change: regardless of vowel height, the root vowel acquires a rising tone.

** The 2nd plural imperative ending is always -d, regardless of the quantity of preceding consonants.

Class 1
The class 1 weak verbs have descended from the namesake class 1 verbs and class 3 -ja- verbs and have the ending -jen, from *-(i)janą. Those have a -j- infix in subjunctive forms.

An example class 1 weak verb is sjtrömjen "to flow".

Class 2
The class 2 weak verbs have the ending -en, a long way from *-ōną. These verbs have the base of R-e before all endings except infinitive and 2nd person plural imperative.

An example class 2 weak verb is halen, "to get, receive"

Class 3
The class 3 weak verbs have the ending -an, from *-āną, -aną. These verbs employ regular i-umlaut in all present indicative forms, unlike the other classes which only employ it in 1st and 3rd person present indicative forms.

An example class 3 weak verb is arman, "to have mercy, adopt; to give money to a beggar" Certain verbs ending in -jen belong to the 3rd class as well and are peculiar in neutralizing the -e- in certain forms which do employ the -e- in all other conjugations. The conjugation of one such verb, pööjen, "to build", is presented below:

Strong
Ah, the 7 Ignominious Classes. Let's boogie! (c)

All strong verbs have the ending -an, from *-aną, the vowel gradation is reduced to 3 principal parts (general present, past indicative and past subj./participles/imperatives respectively) and the conjugation is following:

Class 1
The class 1 strong verbs are inherited from namesake class 1 in Proto-Germanic and exhibit the following variation: A sample 1st class strong verb is kienan, "to put back to operation"

Class 2
The class 2 strong verbs have been inherited from the namesake class in Proto-Germanic, with regular and anomalous verbs merged.

The vowel variation in those is as follows: An example class 2 strong verb is sjöödan, "to shoot".

Class 3
The class 3 strong verbs have been inherited from the classes 3 and 4 in Proto-Germanic.

The vowel variation in those is as follows: An example class 3 strong verb is tsjesjen (< *tsjesj-an), "to thresh".

Class 4
The class 4 strong verbs have been inherited from the class 5 in Proto-Germanic.

The vowel variation in those is as follows: An example class 4 strong verb is tsjepan "to massacre".

Class 5
The class 5 strong verbs have been inherited from the class 6 in Proto-Germanic.

The vowel variation in those is as follows: An example class 5 strong verb is wadan "to limp".

Syntax
The syntax of Idoburgish isn't very strict, to say the least.

Nouns
An ordinary noun phrase in Idoburgish consists of a noun itself and optional adjectives and/or an article. Adjectives precede the nouns, and articles precede the adjectives, like in English or most other Germanic languages, e.g. een sjerp saos "a sharp knife". All compounds are to be treated as single words (nouns), e.g. metsjer(i)s sjerp saos "butcher's sharp knife" vs. een sjerp metsjer(-)saos "a sharp butchering knife" (lit. a sharp butcher(-)knife)

Prepositions always go before articles and cause the noun they modify to decline for either dative or nominative case. The case applied to nouns modified by a preposition will be indicated in the lexicon, +N indicating nominative case and +D indicating dative.

Possessives (or nouns in genitive case) are essentially adjectives in, well, everything. Like adjectives (or English -'s constructs or possessives in NGermanic), they follow the articles and precede the nouns, though they come first if there are other adjectives in the noun phrase, as evident from aforementioned phrase metsjer(i)s sjerp saos "butcher's sharp knife".

Verbs
A verb phrase consists of a simple or possessive noun phrase or a pronoun, a verb and an adverb that modifies it, either before or after the verb phrase. Simple as that.

Reflexive verbs are expressed by a normal verb phrase and reflexive pronoun, except in 1st person where it's expressed by a 1st person pronoun instead of a reflexive one.

Passive voice is expressed by the class 3 strong verb werdan and an e-prefixed past participle, with one of the parts or even the whole passive construction being often placed in the end of a sentence or a clause, e.g. dat wärdj Albion eheetedj, dat Albion eheetedj wärdj, dat eheetedj Albion wärdj "that was called Albion" are all possible.

The copula is mandatory and often placed in the end of a clause in clauses with an introductory word, e.g. wendj dat een aldj séching isj "because that's an old saying" (lit. because that an old saying is). That rule applies to all clauses with an introductory word.

The jussive stems, which usually mean either an imperative or an optative, mostly differ from plain verb stems in the tone of the root vowel (usually switched to the drag tone), and take only the subjunctive endings, e.g. wérdes du een tein "may you become a hero". Jussive phrases usually have the VSO order.

Independent
The independent clauses usually consist of a subject, verb and object. Extended independent clauses, excluding those with an indirect object, are relatively rare. The usual word order is V2, like in most Germanic languages, that is, either SVO or OVS, though the former is waaay more common. As mentioned earlier, the verb is frequently placed in the end of a clause.

If a pronoun or a noun which is an object of a clause was mentioned before, it's omitted in following clauses if the object is same.

The copula, wesan, is mandatory, except in interjections.