North Germanic in Ireland and Scotland

[Travis B.]

The pronoun declension is quite conservative, with there being the following personal pronouns:

1st sg. eg meg mér mín
2nd sg. tú teg tér tín
Reflexive - seg sér sín
1st pl. ué os os uór
2nd pl. é idar idar idar
3rd sg. m. han han hónam hans
3rd sg. f. hón hón heinne hennar
3rd sg. n. tad tad tuí tes
3rd pl. m./f. té té tém térra
3rd pl. n. tó tó tém térra

(Note that eg, meg, teg, and seg are pronounced with actual /g/.)

[Travis B.]

I figure that long sonorants - except final ones - are going to survive longer in the language than long lenis obstruents or long fricatives, so they will be represented orthographically, as shown by heinne and hennar. However, they will shorten before the present.

I also I am going to stray from Irish orthography by representing /h/ with <h> under the influence of other Germanic languages orthographies, especially as it is not seen as an aspirated counterpart to /s/ (as Irish Norse has no mutations).

Orthographically, the schwa will be written <a> if preceded and followed by no palatalized consonants, <e> if preceded but not followed by palatalized consonants, <i> if preceded and followed by palatalized consonants, and <ai> if followed but not preceded by palatalized consonants.

<i> is written after a vowel if a vowel other than /i iː/ is followed by a palatalized consonant

<e> is written before /a aː o oː/ when preceded by a palatalized consonant.

<i> is written before /u uː/ when preceded by a palatalized consonant.

/g ɣ/ are separate phonemes, written <g gh>.

[Travis B.]

Possessive determiner conjugation

min

sg. m. nom./acc. min
sg. f. nom./acc. mína
sg. n. nom./acc. mit
sg. m. dat. mínam
sg. f. dat. minne
sg. n. dat. mína
sg. m. gen. míns
sg. f. gen. minnar
sg. n. gen. míns
pl. nom./acc. míner
pl. dat. mínam
pl. gen. minna

(Replace /mʲ/ with /tʲ/ for tín and /ʃ/ for sín.)

[Travis B.]

I have revised the vowel system to have a tense-lax distinction, making it /ɪ iː ɛ eː a aː ɔ oː ʊ uː/. I decided to not include nasal vowels simply because of a lack of ON (read: Old Icelandic) resources that represent it.

I also decided to include vowel allophony conditioned by adjacent broad and slender consonants, such that vowels are fronter when adjacent to slender consonants, moreso if between slender consonants, and are backer when adjacent to broad consonants, moreso if between broad consonants, with front vowels between broad and slender consonants being somewhat backed, back vowels between broad and slender consonants being somewhat fronted, and low vowels between broad and slender consonants being central.

I also made /ɪ iː/ palatalize following consonants unless, prior to vowel reduction, /ɔ oː ʊ uː/ had followed those consonants.

Another change is that /stj skj/ and /st sk/ both before a front vowel and after /ɪ iː/ and not followed by /ɔ oː ʊ uː/ become /ʃtʲ ʃc/ not /ʃ/.

[Nortaneous]

It doesn't make much sense to just, as you put it, take Old Icelandic and feed it through the Irish soundchanges; that's not how sound changes work. Your initial language isn't the same as Old Irish, so its changes will be different. Instead, aim to borrow individual sound changes where appropriate, and to aim in the direction of the same features. For instance, your language might develop a broad/slender distinction to match that of the Irish around it, without necessarily using the exact same sound changes. Likewise, you could certainly have mutations if you wanted them - the concept of mutations can be borrowed even if the exact sound changes aren't.

Right -- this is how sound changes work. I'm not sure about borrowing mutations, but generally in cases of significant areal influence you get similar results by different means. See here: http://journals.lib.washington.edu/inde ... /3690/3102

[Travis B.]

I don't like the idea of borrowing mutations because they just don't seem to fit in with the phonology of a Germanic language and are dependent upon treating multiple words in a row as if they were one word.

Palatalization is a different story, since palatalization is already present in North Germanic (it is not written in Old Norse, but considering that it is found basically everywhere in modern North Germanic implies it may date back that far), it is not a stretch to extend it a bit further in particular North Germanic varieties, and to remodel it under the substratum influence of Irish.

Also, changing Old Norse's vowel system into /ɪ iː ɛ eː a aː ɔ oː ʊ uː ə/, even though the result is essentially identical to that of modern Irish minus two diphthongs, does not seem strange, since it is just monophthongization (found in East Norse, understandable here due to influence from Irish, which has lost most of its diphthongs except for two North Germanic never had), front vowel unrounding (found in Icelandic, understandable here due to influence from Irish, which lacks rounded front vowels), merging open-mid and close-mid vowels (something that had occurred at various points in North Germanic languages), rounding, backing, and raising /aː/ (an extremely common change in North Germanic), stressed open syllable lengthening (an extremely common change in North Germanic), vowel reduction (found throughout almost all of Germanic), and short vowel laxing (found throughout almost all of Germanic).

These are all sound changes that very well could have occurred in isolation, without any influence from Irish, but where influence from Irish likely helped influence their resulting form.

[Travis B.]

Masculine strong nouns

sg. nom./acc. -/0/ dat. -/ʲə/ gen. -/s/
pl. nom./acc. -/ər/ dat. L -/əm/ gen. -/ə/

Long-stem palatalizing masculine strong nouns

sg. nom./acc. -/ʲə/ dat. -/ʲə/ gen. -/ʲəs/
pl. nom./acc. -/ər/ dat. L -/əm/ gen. -/ə/

Short-stem palatalizing masculine strong nouns

sg. nom./acc. -/0/ dat. -/ʲə/ gen. -/s/
pl. nom./acc. -/ʲər/ dat. L -/ʲəm/ gen. -/ʲə/

Feminine strong nouns

sg. nom./acc. L -/0/ dat. L -/0/ gen. -/ər/
pl. nom./acc. -/ər/ dat. L -/əm/ gen. -/ə/

Long-stem palatalizing feminine strong nouns

sg. nom. L -/0/ acc./dat. L -/ʲə/ gen. -/ər/
pl. nom./acc. -/ər/ dat. L -/əm/ gen. -/ə/

Short-stem palatalizing feminine strong nouns

sg. nom./acc. L -/0/ dat. L -/0/ gen. -/ʲər/
pl. nom./acc. -/ʲər/ dat. L -/ʲəm/ gen. -/ʲə/

Neuter strong nouns

sg. nom./acc. -/0/ dat. -/ʲə/ gen. -/s/
pl. nom./acc. L -/0/ dat. L -/əm/ gen. -/ə/

Long-stem palatalizing neuter strong nouns

sg. nom./acc. -/ʲə/ dat. -/ʲə/ gen. -/ʲəs/
pl. nom./acc. L -/ʲə/ dat. L -/əm/ gen. -/ə/

Short-stem palatalizing neuter strong nouns

sg. nom./acc. -/0/ dat. -/ʲə/ gen. -/s/
pl. nom./acc. L -/0/ dat. L -/ʲəm/ gen. -/ʲə/

Masculine weak nouns

sg. nom. -/ʲə/ acc./dat./gen. -/ə/
pl. nom./acc. -/ə/ dat. -/əm/ gen. -/ə/

Feminine weak nouns

sg. nom. -/ə/ acc./dat./gen. L -/ə/
pl. nom./acc. L -/ər/ dat. L -/əm/ gen. -/nə/

Neuter weak nouns

sg. nom./acc./dat./gen. -/ə/
pl. nom./acc. L -/ə/ dat. L -/əm/ gen. -/nə/

[hwhatting]

All the schwa plus consonant endings make it look a bit like German.
I like the idea of the language.

[Travis B.]

I am waiting until I receive my Old Norse grammar to really work on the language. Also, I need a better ON dictionary... even though the one I have (Geir T. Zoëga's) seems to be like the Old Icelandic dictionary. (It is sometimes hard for me to tell what declension nouns are or what conjugation verbs are.)

[Travis B.]

Definite marker

sg. m./f. nom./acc. hin -/ʲən/
sg. n. nom./acc. hid -/ʲəd/
sg. m. dat. hínam -/nəm/
sg. f. dat. hinne -/(nʲ)nʲə/
sg. n. dat. hína -/nə/
sg. m./n. gen. hins -/ʲəns/
sg. f. gen. hinnar -/(n)nər/
pl. nom./acc. hínar -/nər/
pl. dat. hínam -/nəm/
pl. gen. hinna -/(n)nə/

[Travis B.]

Strong adjectival declension

sg. m. nom./acc. -/0/
sg. f. nom./acc. L -/0/
sg. n. nom./acc. -/d/
sg. m. dat. L -/əm/
sg. f. dat. -/rʲə/
sg. n. dat. L -/ə/
sg. m./n. gen. -/s/
sg. f. gen. -/rər/
pl. nom./acc. -/ər/
pl. dat. L -/əm/
pl. gen. -/rə/

[Travis B.]

Weak adjectival declension

sg. m. nom. -/ʲə/
sg. m. acc./dat./gen. -/ə/
sg. f./n. nom./acc./dat./gen. -/ə/
pl. nom./acc./gen. -/ə/
pl. dat. -/əm/

Active participle declension

sg. m. nom. -/ənʲdʲə/
sg. m. acc./dat./gen. -/əndə/
sg. f. nom./acc./dat./gen. -/ənʲdʲə/
sg. n. nom./acc./dat./gen. -/əndə/
pl. nom./acc./gen. -/ənʲdʲə/
pl. dat. -/əndəm/

[Travis B.]

one m. nom./acc. én dat. énam gen. éns
one f. nom./acc. én dat. éinne gen. énnar
one n. nom./acc. éd dat. énam gen. éns
one pl. nom./acc. énar dat. énam ge. énna
two tué
three trí
four feór
five fim
six secs
seven seó
eight ótta
nine nía
ten tía
eleven elleu
twelve tólf

[Travis B.]

I have consolidated what I have written on írsc into a new blog, at http://travib.wordpress.com/.

[Herra Ratatoskr]

In your ending lists, what does the "L" mean? Did you explain it somewhere and I'm just blind?

[Travis B.]

In your ending lists, what does the "L" mean? Did you explain it somewhere and I'm just blind?

It means labial mutation of the root vowel.

[Herra Ratatoskr]

Oh, cool. I actually feel kind of silly now for not noticing it showing up where Old Norse showed u-umlaut. I guess I was having trouble breaking out of Old Irish mode, where I've seen L used to mark that a word triggers lentition, even though you said you weren't doing mutations.

[Travis B.]

Oh, cool. I actually feel kind of silly now for not noticing it showing up where Old Norse showed u-umlaut. I guess I was having trouble breaking out of Old Irish mode, where I've seen L used to mark that a word triggers lentition, even though you said you weren't doing mutations.

By labial mutation I meant u-umlaut; I was just using the term used in a book on ON that I am reading.

[Travis B.]

I have been moving my content onto my Neocities site, at here.