Kostish

 



General information
Gastisk (Modern English "Gastish") is a West-Germanic language immediately descended from Old English with no interruption of French, but is is also related to Dutch, English, German, and Swedish. 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("Gastland") and thus had their language more influenced by North-Germanic rather than Latin and French influences.

At the moment
Gastish is massively inflectional, and at the moment is being carefully constructed with affixes to be in compound words that are in place of Romance words. The language has strict grammar and a huge range of sounds. I will probably be working on this for years to come, but as it develops more, the updates might become less frequent.

Plans

 * add macrons for long vowels
 * more words
 * irregular verb conjugations

Phonology
There are common occurences from the development of Old English:
 * Anglian smoothing (certain vowels changed)
 * Many valeolar stops in the final position became dental fricatives as seen in Norse (many a T and D at the end of words became Þ and Ð respectively)
 * Syncopes were lost, e. g. the plural of Engel is Engelas, not Englas.
 * Velar Fricatives became velar stops

Other Digraphs
These "double letters" are very important, the language won't truly make sense without them.
 * dh - optional replacement for Ð, ð
 * kh - originally a voicless velar fricative, now pronounced as the voicless velar stop, "k" or a voicless labio-dental fricative "f"
 * gh - originally a voiced velar fricative, now pronounced as the voiced velar stop, "g" or a voiced labio-dental fricative "v"
 * hw - optional replacement for ƕ
 * ng - velar nasal(same as English "ng")
 * sc - voicless postalveolar fricative(English "sh", German "sch" Old English "sc")
 * zj - Voiced postalveolar fricative(an example in the English word fi ss ure)
 * th - optional replacement for Þ, þ
 * ts - ts
 * dz - dz

Vowels
the official pronunciation of vowels is maintained as so:

Articles
Articles come before all nouns and gerunds except proper nouns and pronouns, the articles gender agrees with its noun, there is no negative definite article, once simply negates the verbs and uses the definite article. Articles aren't random, there is a way determining which gender a noun is. If the noun is a foreign (non-germanic) word, the noun is common. Else if the noun begins with a voicless consonant, it is feminine, if it begins with a voiced consonant, it is masculine. If it begins with a vowel, it is neuter.

Describing Words
'''All describing words and phrases come before what they describe, which might sound strange in English. '''Many end in -ish. Adjectives are never written post-positively.

Comparative
After the comparative adjective/adverb, next is the particle "ðæn" meaning and pronounced the same as"than". It can then be followed by a word in the nominative and the accusative, each with a specific meaning, If the word is in the nominative, it is being compared to the subject, if in the accusative, it is being compared to the object. To understand exactly, follow this example.

nominative

"He jumped the fence quicker than I" would mean "He jumped the fence quicker than I [jumped the fence]"

accusative
"He jumped the fence quicker than me" would mean "He jumped the fence quicker than [he jumped] me"

Adjectives

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

<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">get - yet

Never post-positively
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">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 " which would have to be written as "tell to me an interesting something", note that an article (an) is used, articles must follow every noun, including gerunds,with the exception of pronouns and names.

Gender
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">There are 4 genders, masculine, neuter, feminine, and plural has its own particles in certain cases. Nouns are not inflected to show their gender, however articles, possessive pronouns, demonstratives, and other particles are inflected for the gender of their noun.''' If a noun is inflected for singular, yet has the plural particle, they are in the fourth "common" gender, which is what all non-native words fall under. '''Masculine are native germanic words that begin with a voiced consonant. Feminine are native germanic words that begin with a voiceless consonant. Words beginning with vowels fall into neuter. Loan words take the common case, they use plural articles while being inflected for singular, Words may also change gender based on suffixes

<h3 style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">Nouns

<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">The noun declension derives from a mixture of sources: Old English weak and strong nouns, its three genders, and some Scandinavian declension or other foreign declension. All nouns which follow a preposition are in the dative case. Instrumental holds its own case as well. This is the basic noun declension, however there are irregular verbs. Articles show gender, but gender can be often reasoned from patterns in the noun. The archaic vocative, case is represented by the morphmemes: "O-", and "-us".

<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">There are irregular declensions, but these are the regular ones:

Demonstrative pronouns
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">The proximal demonstrative in English is the word "this" <p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">The distal demonstrative in English is the word "that"

Personal pronouns
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">Pronuns, as are common nouns, always capitalized. The possessive pronouns are capitalized, but genitive adjectives are not. As with English, the norse third person plural took over. The original Old English plural is retained in Common gender. The dual pronouns of second person and first person in the object case became the accusative case. The plural pronouns of second person and first person in the object case became the dative case

Punctuation
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">Punctuation is the same as English with the only exception that, like German, all nouns are capitalized, not just proper nouns.

Word Order
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">This is a basic guide for the word order, but it is not very necessary because words are declined for case.

Verbs
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Negation There are two methods of negation. Double negatives formed using the negative particle and the negative indefinite article as in "I did not see no one" would be posititve as in "I saw someone". The particle"neit" is added before the verb, this method of negation is used with definite articles because there are no negative definite articles. The negative definite articles can also be used and a listed under articles.

Common sayings & Interjections
Ƕun scælseg Ðeu? - What will you say? ("How do you respond?")

Prepositions
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">prepositions tend to have only one single meaning and cannot be easily translated therefore from Modern English.

<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">The preposition count is at 31:

<h3 style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">Noun List

The noun count is at 67:

Verb list
The verb count is at 77:

Example text
<p style="border-style: initial; border-color: initial;">...