Lowan: A Germanic conlang

[Jashan]

Looks intriguing. Keep up the good work. I'd like to know what the names of the major gods and goddesses of Lowan paganism were.

Germanic historic linguistics is a lifelong passion of mine, as you can guess from my signature.

Betty Cross

I haven't gotten that far yet. I'm still debating what to do with Lowan paganism, with two main options:

1) Keep a rather Norse-like paganism, due to Lowan history (their ethnonym is descended from a Proto-Germanic word meaning 'magician, priest', so I envision them as originally being a priestly caste / highly religious tribe, kinda like the tribe of Levi in Judaism) and due to their extensive contact with the Vikings around the 950-1050s.

2) Come up with a twisted form of Christo-paganism, on the theory that they actually did pick up Christian elements quite early in history, but rather than converting, they syncretized (sp? - merged) these with paganism with a result that clearly isn't either of its parents.

3) Throw all that crap out of the window and go the route of, "I was realistic with the language and history -- fuck realism in the religion!) and give them my personal belief system (which is tempting because then it gives me an excuse / reason to write down my beliefs rather than keep them in my head, and expand on them)

What I can offer are a few examples of what the 'traditional' Germanic gods would be, if they exist, in the Lowan language:

Tyr = Tē [te]
Odin = Waje [wa.jɛ]
Hel = Gal [xal]
Thor = þrur [θrur]
Frigg/Freya = þreij [θrɛ:] or þrē [θre]
Weland (the Smith) = Wān [wa:n]

And some critters:

elf = alh [alx]
dwarf = dwerk [dwɛrk]
nixie / nicor (water monster) = nig [nɪx]


And some tribal names, to round it off:

Lowan (n.) Lofan [lovan]
Saxon (n.) Sask [tsask]
Angle (n), Englishman (n.) Angl [aŋl̩]
Jute (n) Jut [jut]
Celt, Welsh, Briton (n.) Walh [walx] (adopted from Anglo-Saxon; Old Lowan uses native felh or Latin borrowing galh, likely descended from Belgicae and Gallus respectively)
Goth (n.) Gat [xat]
Vandal (n.) Wal [wal]
Frank (n.) þrag [θrax]

The adjective forms of these are regularly formed -- in the singular, at least -- by adding the suffix -esc, pronounced [ɛs] and often reduced to [s]. Thus Lofanesc [lovans], Anglesc [angles], etc.

[Herra Ratatoskr]

Lookin' good. Is there some reason why the r in þreij isn't pronounced? Or is that just a typo?

[Jashan]

Lookin' good. Is there some reason why the r in þreij isn't pronounced? Or is that just a typo?

It's a typo! Corrected Also, corrected a few of the ethnonyms (forgot to take into account the time-period in which the people would have been met by the Lowans, thus affecting the sound changes.)

[Zontas]

Found this while randomly searching my bookmarks. This is so awesome , that I feel like giving up conlanging and worlding for good.

How did you make this project so amazing!!!???

[Duaseron]

Does Lowan preserve the ablaut ?

Great conlang, by the way. I am from Belgium and I like the alternative origin of Leuven. There is some discussion among toponimists about the origin of Leuven :
1) Leuven is derived from two Germanic words : lo (forest) and ven (swamp). Leuven means 'forest in the swamp'.
2)A toponym descending from an extinct non-Indo European language.
3)Leuven is derived from 'Altyd God loven' (To always praise God). Some say there was located a temple of Mars in the area in the Roman era located .
4)Leuven is a descendant from the proto-germanic word lubanja-, which means 'the loved one' (Eng : love Dutch : liefde German : Liebe)
5) your theory

[Cedh]

5) your theory

I used to assume it had something to do with lions, based on the German version of the name (Löwen)... but that's probably nothing but a folk etymology.

In any case, I'd love to read more about Lowan sometime. Jashan, are you still working on this language?

[Jashan]

Hi there,

I was pretty surprised to see new posts on this thread after so long! I don't stop in much any more (I think this is my first time since August-ish), because I've been super busy with career stuff, but... yeah, here I am.

Am I still working on Lowen? Yes, off and on. Has there been much progress? No. I keep deciding that I don't like this one particular way the grammar works and rewriting that part, which conflicts with another part, and... yeah. (aka the Curse of the Perfectionist)

Currently although the conlanging bug keeps biting me, I've been swatting it away and focuses on getting my Project Management certification for work. However, today is a headache day (= bad for studying), so I might actually conlang tonight!

[Zontas]

What's the phonology and orthography for this lang?

@Jashan We can't just forget about a well-done conlang that's supposed to exist in RL. The most recent thing that's even paralleled Lowan is Zayk's Seqel.

[Ser]

Lowan has long since lost grammatical gender on its nouns, but the feminine/masculine forms of (strong) adjectives remain distinct (per sound changes) into Modern Lowan. They have the same vowel / consonant alternations as some of the nouns, which I think is cool, so I'd like to preserve them somehow... but I'm not sure how to justify it, historically. Without gender on nouns, gender on adjectives doesn't make sense. And saying "Well, there ARE masculine and feminine nouns, but the difference only shows up in adjectives" seems weird (any real languages that do this?)

What do you even mean by nouns having no gender...? If adjectives agree in gender with them, then surely the nouns have gender!

(Actually wait... French does that! Although I'll have to see how the determiners turn out, regarding gender.)

French does what?

[Neek]

She's stating that French possesses a large number of words that don't have any indication of gender other than in spelling (but are not distinguishable in speech). This implies that Lowan has grammatical gender that is implied in nouns, but morthologically absent in nouns, but not in adjectives (and gendered pronouns, articles, etc.) I doubt this to be a problem, however highly unstable of a system. It would be interesting if, like French, gender was retained in spelling. But create a sharp distinction that in civil, religious, or any other official use of the language the spelling is mandated, but in colloquial usage, is not preserved at all.

[Jashan]

Watch in horror as the zombie thread rises from its grave....!

So, I just copied/pasted this whole thing into Word file where I can go through and try to consolidate stuff. Main problem is that I can't find my original version of sound changes, so my dictionary might have to change a bit to get going again. Regardless, I like the project, so I'm going to try to resurrect it (and keep it alive!) one more time...

I'm still wrestling with the paradoxical desire to make it "not typically Germanic" vs. "making it very recognizably Germanic", but... eh.

Maybe I'll create a new thread with something substantial here in the next month or so

[Grunnen]

Maybe I'll create a new thread with something substantial here in the next month or so

I hope you do, it's a really interesting project!

[R.Rusanov]

4)Leuven is a descendant from the proto-germanic word lubanja-, which means 'the loved one' (Eng : love Dutch : liefde German : Liebe)
5) your theory

"lubanja" is probably also cognate to slavic "Любена" /ljubena/ meaning the same thing, which is also a name!

I guess it comes from *lewbʰ + en + (j) + eh₂ which is an i-infix (in Germanic, absent in Slavic) n-stem attributive with a feminine augment?

[Jashan]

FYI, for those interested, I've started the Lowan Scratchpad, which focuses much, much more on current linguistic development and translations. Feel free to chime in over there, too

[jal]

Bumping, to see if Jasjan is still alive...


JAL