zompist bboard

The idea for a conlang derived from Gothic has been in my mind since I first started studying Gothic. Inspired by Ill Bethisad's ill-detailed and my class on the history and culture of medieval Spain this semester, I went with Spain as a setting. Its existence is predicated on the Visigoths' doing more to create/expand their own culture, as opposed to adopting wholesale the Roman culture of Spain. I am not yet sure whether they will still convert to Catholicism, but either way, Gothic is more than a liturgical language at the time of the Umayyad invasion. Subsequently, one of the Christian polities that arises in the north is Arian and Gothic-speaking; there are also possibly arabized Gothic-speakers in the south, comparable to the Mozarabs.

Long story short, a descendant of Gothic survives at least into the late medieval period. It is in some ways a , in that I started by applying many of the developments from classical Latin characteristic of vulgar Latin to Gothic, but I expanded on things some from there. Much though I love the Gothic alphabet, I adopted the Latin alphabet with spelling conventions that are a mix of the conventions of several of the Iberian languages.

"Phonology" and Orthography
This is basically just going to be a phoneme inventory — thus the scare quotes.

Plosives: /p b t d k g/ <p b t d c/q g/gu>*
Fricatives: /B f T D s z S Z h/ <v f th dh s z x j/lh** h>
Nasals: /m n J/ <m n nh>
Affricates: /tS dZ/ <c/tx g/dj>º
Other consonants: /l r j/ <l r y>
Vowels: /a e i o O u/ <a e i o u>

Two diphthongs merit attention: /je/ and /we/ are spelled <ie/yeºº> and <ue> respectively.

/g/ is realized as [G] intervocalically

* <q> is used where /k/ descends from Gothic /k_w/; likewise <gu> is used when /g/ descends from Gothic /g_w/
** <lh> is used where /Z/ descends from Gothic /l/; <j> is used otherwise
º <c g> are used for /tS dZ/ when they descend from Gothic /k g/ palatalized before /e i/; <tx dj> are used otherwise
ºº <ye> word-initially, <ie> otherwise

Stress falls on the first syllable, although prepositional verbs (e.g. aflitha "leave", conjugated litha af, from Gothic af-leiþan) are stressed on the first syllable of the root rather than the preposition.

I'm probably missing or overlooking some things — it is sometimes difficult to keep track of things in my notes, especially since I seem not to have removed some sound changes from the Grand Master Plan despite having ignored them later. At any rate. Some words:

mari "ocean" /"mari/
volf "wolf" /"Bolf/
hierdas "shepherds" /"hjerdas/ (probably [Cerdas])
gevos "gifts" /"dZeBos/
griba "grasp" /"griBa/
aflitha "leave" /af"liTa/

I realize this isn't much to go on, but I need to figure out how to present the rest of the information I have.

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agus tha mo chluasan eòlach air a’ mhac-talla fhathast / às dèidh dhomh dùsgadh
(mona nicleòid wagner, “fo shneachd”)

hitler

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Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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agus tha mo chluasan eòlach air a’ mhac-talla fhathast / às dèidh dhomh dùsgadh
(mona nicleòid wagner, “fo shneachd”)

Northern Dekavurian is also a bogolang form Gothic with Spanish-like sound changes.

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agus tha mo chluasan eòlach air a’ mhac-talla fhathast / às dèidh dhomh dùsgadh
(mona nicleòid wagner, “fo shneachd”)

Masculine and neuter jo-stems. They're not actually all that complicated. Their singular ending (both masculine and neuter) is -i; the masculine plural is -as, the neuter plural -a. However, the plural forms will diphthongize the vowel in the previous syllable, adding -/i/, if they can. Examples: hari, hayras "host, army"; nethi, neythas "kinsman"; gascohi, gascoyha "pair of sandals". The diphthongization is blocked in three circumstances: if the vowel of the previous syllable is already a diphthong (e.g. ie, ue), if there are two or more consonants between the ending and the preceding vowel (e.g. hierdi, hierdas "shepherd"), and if the vowel of the previous syllable is /i/.

In some nouns (e.g. andbati, andbata "service"), the diphthongization is blocked for etymological reasons — andbati descends from Gothic andbahti.

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agus tha mo chluasan eòlach air a’ mhac-talla fhathast / às dèidh dhomh dùsgadh
(mona nicleòid wagner, “fo shneachd”)

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agus tha mo chluasan eòlach air a’ mhac-talla fhathast / às dèidh dhomh dùsgadh
(mona nicleòid wagner, “fo shneachd”)

Verbal Morphology: Introduction
I'm going to start with an overview of the Gothic verb, then talk about how the Hispanic Gothic verb differs from the Gothic verb.

The Gothic verb inflects for three finite moods (indicative, optative, and imperative), two non-finite moods (infinitive, participle), two voices (active, passive), two tenses (present, preterite), three persons, and three numbers (singular, dual, plural). Verbs fall into one of five categories: strong verbs (characterized by ablaut, further subdivided into seven classes by ablaut type), weak verbs with -d- preterites (non-ablaut verbs with preterite stems formed by affixing -d-, further subdivided into four classes by present conjugation), weak verbs with -t- preterites (non-ablaut verbs with preterite stems formed by affixing -t-), preterite-present verbs (verbs whose presents conjugate as strong preterites and preterites as weak preterites), and irregular verbs (wisan "be" and wiljan "wish, want").

This Hispanic Gothic verb has made significant simplifications to this system. The preterite optative has been lost, except fossilized and vestigial forms. The passive voice survives only as a fossilized impersonal form (e.g. her lithada af, loosely "exit here"; Hispanic Gothic exit signs say H.L.A.). Some of the weak -t- preterites have regularized as -d- preterites (e.g. vuerceda "I worked" vs. Gothic waúrhta). The dual has dropped out entirely.

Each verb has several principle parts, which show its various stems.

Strong verbs have four: infinitive (present stem), first person singular preterite indicative, first person plural preterite indicative, and past participle (e.g. a aflitha "leave": a aflitha, leth af, letho af, aflethana)
Weak -d- verbs have three: infinitive, first person singular present indicative, first person singular preterite indicative (e.g. a haba "have": a haba, haba, habieda)
Weak -t- verbs have three: infinitive, first person singular preterite indicative, past participle (e.g. a thonqya "seem": a thonqya, thota, thota)
Preterite-present verbs have five: infinitive, first person singular present indicative, first person plural present indicative, first person singular preterite indicative, and past participle (e.g. a cona "know (person)": a cona, can, cono, contha, contha)

Prepositional verbs, e.g. a afletha (< Gothic af-leiþan), which in Gothic behaved as single units (except for stress), now operate similarly to German separable-prefix verbs; once I have worked out more of the syntax I will tell you more specifically how they work.

More to follow when I get home and have time/motivation to put together conjugation tables.

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agus tha mo chluasan eòlach air a’ mhac-talla fhathast / às dèidh dhomh dùsgadh
(mona nicleòid wagner, “fo shneachd”)

It is funny because a great part of the words are so similar to Swedish that I have no problem understanding them.

Great work, btw!

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If I stop posting out of the blue it probably is because my computer and the board won't cooperate and let me log in.!

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agus tha mo chluasan eòlach air a’ mhac-talla fhathast / às dèidh dhomh dùsgadh
(mona nicleòid wagner, “fo shneachd”)

I think the name "Iberian Gothic" sounds cooler.

This is EPIC! Keep it up!

Looks great! It's funny how much of it seems fairly understandable.

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χʁɵn̩
gʁonɛ̃g
gɾɪ̃slɑ̃

This rocks. An East Germanic diachronic conlang, and a well-crafted one. I like this. There are so many possibilities where an East Germanic language could have survived, alas, none did in the real world. I also have an East Germanic conlang on the back burner.

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...brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Tha cvastam émi cvastam santham amal phelsa. -- Friedrich Schiller
ESTAR-3SG:P human-OBJ only human-OBJ true-OBJ REL-LOC play-3SG:A

Woah, I'm popular all of a sudden!

I think I said the consonant assimilation thing without having actually come up with its rules, but I'm doing that now. Fortunately, they're all the same as Liturgical Gothic:

- final -b, -v and -d devoice to -f, -f, and -th, respectively, in the preterite singular
- before final -t in the second person singular, -t and -th (including from stem-final -d) become -s-

So, some paradeigmata:

a beya (stem bed-, "ask", strong V)
beth, best, beth, bedo, bedoth, bedon

a geva ("give", strong IV)
gaf, gaft, gaf, gevo, gevoth, gevon

a fratha ("understand", strong VI)
froth, frost, froth, frotho, frothoth, frothon

That said, I've let the project go for the time being, though I may come back to it eventually.

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agus tha mo chluasan eòlach air a’ mhac-talla fhathast / às dèidh dhomh dùsgadh
(mona nicleòid wagner, “fo shneachd”)

Keep up the good work!

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If I stop posting out of the blue it probably is because my computer and the board won't cooperate and let me log in.!

Where did this go? It's like it just died all of a sudden. Which is a shame, since this sounded, and looked, really kickass! Is Arunaza even here anymore?

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, my conlang blog
, my one-man-band. Demo goes online November 11!

Economic Left/Right: -6.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.77