THE HISTORY OF CENEMANIAN
Origins. Cenemanian has its origins in Latin, specifically the spoken Latin used by the island’s Roman colonists. Comparison with the other Romance languages suggests this variety was very similar to the Vulgar Latin spoken across the rest of the empire up until a very late date, perhaps the time when the Romans officially abandoned the island (AD 383). Before this time there must have been regular contact between the islanders and the rest of the empire.This is clear from the way Cenemanian developed in parallel with the other Romance languages. For instance, it has a perfect tense emplyed with avir ‘to have’ or ese ‘to be’ plus the past participle - a Vulgar Latin development not found in spoken Latin. It also uses some Vulgar Latin specific vocabulary, for example:
(1) poce ‘to carry’ (<portare)
joge ‘to help’ (<adiutare)
penze ‘to think’ (<pensare)
cumege ‘to eat’ (<comedare)
vegeru ‘old’ (<vetlus)
cesa ‘head’ (<testa)
boca ‘mouth’ (<bucca)
gama ‘leg’ (<gama)
mosu ‘boy’ (<musteus)
There is another important influence on Cenemanian, however, and that is the indigeneous language of the island, known as Pyratela. It is not known for sure how long Pyratela, a language isolate, continued to be spoken on the island. Some scholars have suggested it was already extinct by the time of the official Roman abandonment of the colony, and it is true that there are no surviving Pyratela inscriptions after this point (note, however, that Pyratela inscriptions are rare in all periods). Others have argued that the language was still spoken at this time, citing the fact that it might not have been expected to affect the local romance variety otherwise. In any case, it seems highly probable that the language was extinct by the time of the first literature in the Cenemanian vernacular.
The effect of Pyratela on Cenemanian was primarily lexical. Many old placenames were retained, e.g. Ererinces <Pyratela *arelynise ‘confluence’, Aranu <alan ‘barrow’ etc. The name Cenemania itself is from the first person plural pronoun ceniman, used by the indigeneous Cenemanian people to refer to themselves. More generally, some types of geographical feature are known in Cenemanian by their Pyratela names, e.g. miri ‘mountain’ (P.miryd ).
Two domains in which the Pyratela influence stands out in particular are mining and the world of women. The Romans came to Cenemania primarily in order to mine tin, enslaving the natives and forcing them work in the mines. Most immigrants were probably male, and took native wives. This explains why Pyratela is particularly influential in these areas.
(2) aba ‘shovel’ (<apa)
caga ‘pick’ (<caga)
mancagu ‘rock’ (<many)
du ‘seam’ (<*dor )
abera ‘tunnel’ (<*apela)
uncedu ‘cave’ (<oned )
(3) pegu ‘needle’ (<*pic)
avir ‘to sew’ (<*abis)
revir ‘to mend’ (<*rebis)
dore ‘to look after’ (<*duris)
pagir ‘to gossip’ (<*pacis)
veju ‘washing bowl’ (<*vary)
rem ‘pin’ (<*rem)