Lowan: A Germanic conlang

[Jashan]

After brainstorming over in C&C Quickies, I decided this wasn't much of a quicky anymore. I've come up with a bit of history and some developments, and I'll be posting on this as I continue. Feedback, complaints, raving praise, and the like all very welcome.


The Lowan People - A Brief History

The Ancient Roman historian Claudius Ptolemy described, in his work Geographia, the island of Scandia. This island, located to the northeast of the Cimbrian penninsula (present day Denmark), is now known to be not an island at all, but rather the southern area of the Scandinavian peninsula: specifically, Sweden. The western area of Scandia was inhabited by the Chaedini; the eastern region by the Favonae and Firaesi; the northern region by the Finni; the south by the Gutae, and Dauciones; and the central area by the Levoni and Hill-Levoni.

The name Levoni is likely a corruption of the Proto-Lowan endonym (*Luvmannī), which is in turn believed to have come from Proto-Germanic *Lubanmanniz (from luban ‘praise, honor’ + ‘men’) or *Lubjanmanniz (lubjan ‘magician, alchemist’). Lowan origin-myths suggest the latter.

Outside of Ptolemy’s Geographia, little is known of the ancient Levoni. A single mention of the Lufmannas in a surviving fragment of Gothic runic inscription suggests that at least part of the Levoni left Scandia around 150-250 C.E. along with their southern neighbors. Although Lowan clearly cannot be classified as an East Germanic language, it does show a some similar characteristics which may support the claim of extended contact with the East Germanic Goths.

The ancient Levoni did not, however, become far-wandering nomads as did the East Germanic tribes. Although they are lost from historical record, we can surmise that soon after their arrival in continental Eastern Europe, the Levoni split from the Goths and Vandals. The lack of Slavic and Baltic borrowings in the language suggests they did not stay long in the East, where they would have undoubtedly encountered the Veneti, Polans, and Sorbs (all Balto-Slavic tribes). Instead they migrated westwards, eventually settling down in the flat and fertile lowlands among other Germanics. The powerful Franks conquered the area in the late 5th and early 6th centuries C.E., forcing the Lowan people out of the area -- but not before they left behind a permanent marker of their presence. The Belgian city of Leuven (French: Louvain, German Löwen) bears their name to this day.


The Lowan Language - A Phonemic Introduction

The Lowan language is a Germanic language, but does not belong to the established branches of East, West, or North Germanic. Several unique sound changes, and a lack of shared characteristics with the other branches, suggest that Lowan split off on a distinct path very early in its development. Proto-Lowan in particular (the period of the language from Common Germanic to approximately 500 C.E.) has a number of distinctive features:

• The development of initial /N/ from Proto-Germanic *gn and *hn (*)
• The development of /b/ into /v/ via an intermediate bilabial voiced fricative
• A-umlaut affecting high and mid-high vowels
• The loss of /d/ and /T/ in intervocalic contexts before /r/ and /s/ respectively

(*) Blatantly stolen from Herra Ratatoskr's West Saxon, with a very small modification

Proto-Lowan shares some interesting features with Eastern Germanic languages that suggest that, while it is not East Germanic, that the East Germanic and Lowan peoples had an extended period of contact. Among these are:

• The transformation of initial /f/ to /T/ before /l/ and /r/ (in Gothic, this only occurred in syllables ending in /x/; in Proto-Lowan, it was universal)
• Lack of rhotacism of Proto-Germanic /z/ (in Gothic, /z/ -> /s/ or remained /z/; in Proto-Lowan, /z/ became /h/ and often dropped. A later stage of the language saw intervocalic /s/ > /z/ > /r/ in a separate development)
• Lack of i-umlaut (Gothic: fōtus, fōtjus and Proto-Lowan fōt, fōdī vs. English foot, feet or Icelandic fótr, fœtr)

Later -- especially in the stage of "Old Lowan" (approximately 500 C.E. to 950 C.E.), numerous other sound changes would serve to set Lowan firmly in its own place on the Germanic family tree. Most notable of these are the so-called Old Lowan Consonant Shifts and Old Lowan Vowel Shifts:

• /d/ -> /T/ when non-geminate and non-initial
• /t/ -> /d/ when non-geminate and non-initial
• /f/ -> /w/ (and subsequent loss of /w/ before a consonant when non-geminate)
• /hj/ and /sj/ -> /sx/ (via intermediate /S/)
• /tj/ -> /s/
• /i/ -> /Ei/ (via intermediate /Ai/) and subsequent merging with /E/ -> /Ei/
• /u:/ -> /i:/ (via intermediate /y:/)
• /u/ -> /E/ (via intermediate /9/)
• /o:/ -> /u:/
• /Q/ -> /o/ (although this shift occurred in early Middle Lowan, it is usually included with the Old Lowan Vowel Shifts for convenience)

Coming up next: Getting the sound changes worked out through Modern Lowan; figuring out current endo/exonyms; notable grammatic/syntax features. I won't post a complete list of sound changes unless someone's just dying to see them all. Also, modern Lowan runic script. Any specific requests?

[WeepingElf]

Nice stuff. You may want to join the League of Lost Languages.

[Herra Ratatoskr]

Yay, it's here! I'm looking forward to seeing more stuff about it. The background is interesting, though I'd like to know where they ended up. I'm also flattered at the little diachronic "homage" to West Saxon. Keep it coming!

[Civil War Bugle]

I was following the other thread and would like to register my interest. Glad to see this has advanced.

[Jashan]

(Random author's note: The Old Lowan sound changes make the language look like it's on crack.)

A History of the Lowan People - 600 C.E. to 1200 C.E.

Old Lowan

The end of the 'Proto-Lowan' period is generally dated at around 350 C.E., if not somewhat sooner -- the guestimated time at which the Lowan people went separate ways from the Goths. 'Old Lowan', the time of the greatest phonological change in the language, is dated from approximately 350 C.E. to approximately 800 C.E. It was during this period that the Lowan people settled in the present-day area of Vlaams-Brabant and the city now known as Leuven, and were subsequently driven out by the Frankish tribes in the 500s.

Whether the Lowan people fled on foot or via sea is debated. Whatever the method, they are next found in the historical record living among Britain's Anglo-Saxons in approximately 800-900 C.E. Due to the paucity of written records in Old and even Middle Lowan, it is impossible to say with certainty whether the Celtic and Latinate loanwords present in the modern language were adopted in the Old period (via contact with the Celtic tribes in Gaul and the Roman Empire, should the Lowan people have migrated westwards over land), or if they originated from contact with Celtic Britons, the Romantic influence of the Norman Conquest of 1066, and the Latin of the early Christian churches in England.

Old Lowan is marked by extreme phonological instability and shift, resulting in the language becoming incomprehensible to other Germanic tribes and a unique branch of the Germanic family. It still retained most of the cases of Proto-Germanic: nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive, along with a fifth case which resulted from the merger of Proto-Germanic vocative and instrumental. Although phonologically innovative, the language remained grammatically conservative for quite some time, with the loss of case distinction on nouns only beginning in the Late Middle Lowan period (approximately 1200-1600) and not completing until the Modern period. Similar behavior can be seen in verbs as well.

Early Middle Lowan

Middle Lowan is split into two stages: Early Middle (approximately 800 C.E. to approximately 1200 C.E.) and Late Middle (approximately 1200 C.E. to 1600 C.E.). Late Middle Lowan gives us the beginnings of a true corpus of written Lowan, although the majority of Lowan speakers devoted their pens to the dominant languages of French and English. Despite this, Lowan's unique character -- already incomprehensible even to other Germanic speakers for nearly 800 years -- have served to keep it relatively free of contamination from the surrounding languages. Lowan speakers were by and large fluent in their neighbor's language, but rarely vice versa: the much larger and more socially-dominant Anglo-Saxons and Normans had little to no reason to learn the 'gibberish' of a handful of small villages numbering likely less than 10,000 inhabitants at their peak.

Cultural and geographic differences also served to help the Lowan people avoid assimilation and extinction. The Lowan people lived by and large on the Isle of Wight and coastal areas of Wessex nearest by on the mainland, alongside the Jutes, with whom they had good relations. The Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England did not reach the Isle until 661 C.E., when Wulfhere of Mercia invaded and forcibly converted its inhabitants -- who promptly returned to their pagan ways when he departed again some years later. Having already been invaded and forced from their homeland once by invading tribes, the Lowan people reacted to this attempted annexing with disdain and open defiance. According to the records of St. Bede, when Caedwalla of Wessex invaded in 686 C.E.:

...he took also the Isle of Wight, which till then was entirely given over to idolatry, and by merciless slaughter, endeavoured to destroy all the inhabitants thereof, and to place in their stead people from his own province.

Most of the population of the Isle -- both Lowan and Jutish -- were destroyed. Those who survived were forced to (at least nominally) convert to Christianity and adopt West Saxon as their language. The Writ of Hate (a personal letter written in Lowan and partially preserved, dated from approximately 720 C.E. and so named due to its author's clear and unabashed language regarding the Kingdom of Wessex) states, however, that both the Jutes and the Lowan people retained their languages -- and their pagan beliefs -- in the privacy of their homes, as a "way to honor [our]selves and shame [Caedwalla's] cowardice." (This 'cowardice' is thought to refer to the slaying not only of battle-ready men, but also the execution of women, children, and elderly which took place.)

The fate and fortune of the Lowan people and their Jutish neighbors is lost again until approximately 1200 C.E., well after William of Normandy conquered the England, and when the Late Middle period of Lowan begins.

[Jashan]

A History of the Lowan People - 1200 C.E. to Present

Late Middle Lowan

As the use of English as a literary medium increased in the centuries following the Norman Conquest, so did Lowan. Although the population of speakers remained extremely small, more and more of them were literate. For the first time we begin to see Lowan written in Romanized orthography, alongside the traditional runic script (rēdstavs). Spelling, however, was far from standard. Most writers used the slowly-emerging standards of English as a guide for their own orthography; some attempted to transliterate the rēdstavs into Roman letters; some mixed and matched the two. The majority of the surviving corpus are mythological stories and folktales, believed to have been committed to ink by authors who believed, or feared, that the lingering Lowan pagan beliefs would die out due to ever-increasing pressure of Christianization. A few personal letters also survive.

The Late Middle period of the language first demonstrates the reduction and erosion of final vowels and nasal endings, which would result in the near-total loss of grammatical case in the Modern Lowan period. It also is the first period to show word-terminal stop/fricative alternations and the loss of final /t/ in multisyllables.


Modern Lowan

The Modern Lowan period begins around 1600 C.E., and is marked by Roger Wyghtham's Yrre Gælfe Raaþ ("Our Noble Language" [1608]), a treatise on the decline of the Lowan language (now apparently spoken only in a few villages on the Isle of Wight itself), and an impassioned defense of why it should not be abandoned. Wyghtham's work did little to inspire the Lowan public, but it did inspire Edmund Isley to pen his Raaþs Raaþes ("Rules of Language") in 1617 C.E. Raaþs Raaþes was the first attempt at a grammar of the Lowan language. Isley intended his book to be a type of "learner's grammar", informing the reader of the best practices of the language, proper pronunciation, avoiding Anglicisms, and so forth -- both for native speakers and others. Once again, however, the idea of a language revival failed to catch on.

By the early 19th century, Lowan was nearly extinct. John Litton Lewis (1803-1856) recalled in his memoirs that his fascination with the language began with the lullabies that his grandmother would sing to him as a child. Lewis' mother had died during the birth of her second child (Mary); the two were cared for by their maternal grandmother while their father, a fisherman, spent most of the day out to sea. Upon John's insistence, his grandmother taught the young boy common words and simple phrases: household items and words such as 'eat', 'drink', and 'go wash up'. Mary Lewis apparently never shared her brother's interest in their heritage. Lewis notes that his grandmother regarded his curiosity with "warm bemusement" and as a "the odd pastime of an odder boy." She passed away in 1816, when John was thirteen.

Lewis spent the rest of his life seeking out and learning from the surviving Lowan speakers -- none of which, he recorded, were of his own generation, and few of which were of his parents'. By age 20, Lewis had become the only fluent speaker under the age of 50. He married a Lowan woman (Elizabeth, surname unknown) in 1826 at the age of twenty-three and ultimately fathered six children, two of which were stillborn. The four surviving children were all raised bilingual in English and Lowan; the two youngest (Samuel Lewis and an unnamed older brother) learned Lowan as their mother tongue.

He published two books of collected stories and songs in Lowan between 1828 and 1834. At some point he discovered a copy of Edmund Isley's original Raaþs Raaþes and published an updated version in 1841 based on his own experience and learning. Lewis' re-standardization of Lowan spelling is still used to the present day. Around 1843 Lewis began organizing lessons in Lowan for interested parties, traveling from village to village. Although initially met with little enthusiasm, his unflagging and passionate drive to revive Lowan eventually met with success. By 1854, according to Lewis' journals, three villages had regular weekly meetings for Lowan speakers, and there were roughly a dozen new semi-fluent to fluent speakers.

The revival continued through the late 1800s, supported by a handful of Lewis' most dedicated students (among which were several of his own children). Although the death of the older generations took with it a great deal of historical and cultural knowledge, much had also been disseminated to the new generation of Lowan speakers. In particular, Caedwalla's invasion and subsequent genocide of the Isle of Wight grew into a type of folk-mythology polarizing the native Lowan population against the 'foreign' English, and further encouraged the (re-)development of a unique cultural and linguistic identity. This atmosphere was supported by the various nationalization movements in Europe at the time.

The revival ground to a halt in the early 1900s due to the outbreak and aftermath of the two World Wars. Local pride took a backseat to the national crisis; adult (male) speakers were all too often lost to the trenches of continental warfare. By the end of WWII, Lowan had stagnated once more. However, the interest in revitalizing Celtic languages (Irish, Welsh, Cornish, and Manx in particular) in the late 20th century led to a similar interest in revitalizing Lowan. While no singular 'leader' has emerged in this stage, Lowan is nonetheless growing steadily. According to the Lēvnisc Rāþsgalþosgār (Lowan Language Preservation Society), in an informal survey taken in 2005, there are an estimated 200-300 conversational and/or fluent speakers (most of whom still reside in Britain), with another 300-500 with at least some passive understanding of the language.

[Cedh]

That history sounds quite plausible and very interesting. Looking forward to seeing more of this project!

By the early 19th century, Lowan was nearly extinct. John Litton Lewis (1803-1856)

Your dates seemed a bit off; this is what you probably meant to write.

[Civil War Bugle]

How many of those 200-300 are natives? May we safely assume almost none due to the mentioned huge massacres of 1900-1950?

[Herra Ratatoskr]

I like the history; it seems a little analogous to what happened with Cornish (at least in the recent times). Some questions, thought. First, how long did paganism linger in the Lowan population? Did it survive at all as superstition alongside Christianity? Was there ever a period of "fond remembrance" sort of like with Iceland and it's views of paganism post-conversion, when a lot of the Eddas were written? How did English policy during the early modern period (like the Act of Uniformity) affect the status of the language? Was there ever anything like the Prayer Book Rebellion? Could you give a timeline of the language's decline, maybe with average number of speakers at any given time?

Sorry for the question blitz. Feel free to take your time answering them.

[Jashan]

That history sounds quite plausible and very interesting. Looking forward to seeing more of this project!

By the early 19th century, Lowan was nearly extinct. John Litton Lewis (1803-1856)

Your dates seemed a bit off; this is what you probably meant to write.

Yup, you're right. Editted to correct.

How many of those 200-300 are natives?

"Native" meaning ethnically Lowan as opposed to native speakers? Or native meaning native speakers?

If you mean "ethnically Lowan", probably none -- at least not purely. The amount of time that the Lowan, Anglo-Saxons, and Jutes lived in close quarters would have promoted a fair bit of interbreeding, especially among the Jutes and the Lowan who lived together on good terms on the (very small) Isle of Wight.

If you mean native speakers, I'd guess that of the 200-300 estimated fluent speakers in 2005, about half would be native. My reasoning is that there was a good amount of linguistic ground gained between 1850 and 1914, and while adult male speakers would have been sent off to war, the elderly, women, and children would have stayed behind to maintain the language. While active revitalization efforts would have slowed to a crawl, the speaker base wouldn't have shrank that much, and the resulting baby booms after WWI and WII would have done much to restore the lost speakers. Also, the fact that there were already children and families using the language again as a daily language would maintain and promote language growth more easily than the first part of the revitalization (which was getting ethnic but not-even-passively-competent speakers to become fluent speakers).

Let me know if you think I'm thinking wrong


@Herra - Thanks for all the questions! I'll get to them in the next few days I hope

[sasasha]

First, how long did paganism linger in the Lowan population? Did it survive at all as superstition alongside Christianity? Was there ever a period of "fond remembrance" sort of like with Iceland and it's views of paganism post-conversion, when a lot of the Eddas were written?

Yeah, this is what I was interested in. You imply that the Mercian and West Saxon conquests of the seventh century created a good deal of antipathy against these polities; this, coupled with the stark linguistic distinction, since Lowan and Old English were mutually unintelligible in the seventh century, would probably have been enough to forge a robust Lowan ethnic identity in this period. (This sounds like an obvious statement to make, but 'English' ethnic identity wasn't really consolidated until much later). I can well imagine that this might yield really interesting attitudes to Christian culture, and to the preservation of non-Anglo-Saxon elements of culture (parallel to the antiquarianism of 13th century Icelandic writing, Herra's "fond remembrance") and in one sense it's understandable therefore that "the majority of the surviving corpus are mythological stories and folktales, believed to have been committed to ink by authors who believed, or feared, that the lingering Lowan pagan beliefs would die out due to ever-increasing pressure of Christianization." Indeed, I wish this had happened, then we might be blessed with another great repository of Germanic mythology.

I think the influence of Christian culture on the development of the Lowan identity and language is important for you to think about - without the church, there would of course be no books and no writing (save runic inscriptions) at all, and all the earliest vernacular writing is certain to have a Christian context, so you can't do away with Christianity and still have a written language established enough to support a document like the Writ of Hate in 720. A monastery or religious house on Wight is the most likely venue for the earliest Lowan literature to be written, again barring runic inscriptions. IIRC, there's some quite interesting ecclesiastical history concerning Wight in this period to play with: Caedwalla gave Wilfrid a quarter of the island in 688 in return for Wilfrid's efforts to convert it; when Wilfrid went back to Northumbria, he passed on the mission to his nephew, so there was plenty of centralised Christian activity in Wight. The literary atmosphere which allowed the Eddas to be penned was very different indeed, since the church didn't have an iron grip on Icelandic culture in the same way it had on early Anglo-Saxon culture - in Iceland until the late 13th century (IIRC), farmers controlled the churches and therefore farmers could commission books on any subject they wished.

Just food for thought. But generally speaking, well done, I think it's really nice work.

[Jashan]

Thanks for all the feedback! Definitely given me a lot to think about.

...without the church, there would of course be no books and no writing (save runic inscriptions) at all, and all the earliest vernacular writing is certain to have a Christian context, so you can't do away with Christianity and still have a written language established enough to support a document like the Writ of Hate in 720. A monastery or religious house on Wight is the most likely venue for the earliest Lowan literature to be written, again barring runic inscriptions.

In the conhistory...

This I can definitely already address. I mentioned two possible etymologies of the Proto-Lowan people in the first post: the Lubjanmanniz, or 'magicians/alchemists'; and the Lubanmanniz, or 'noble/honored men' I favor the first, and see the Lowans as having begun as a sort of shamanic/priestly people, likely part of a larger tribe (similar, perhaps, to the tribe of Levi among the Israelites in the Bible). The runic writing system was a huge part of their culture and religious affairs, and was maintained throughout history continously. To the Lowan, writing is an act of magic, almost: speech and writing are seen as acts of power, ordering the universe and expressing one's will to it (and to the gods). So writing something down -- a prayer, a curse, etc. -- is a religious and magical act, in a way.

Even after the neighboring tribes began writing in Roman letters, the Lowan would have maintained their runic system in religious and ceremonial contexts -- likely even in the crafting of laws and decrees. I would imagine that a distinction would arise in Lowan culture between the "unimportant" or "non-magical" use of the Roman letters, versus the powerful runic inscriptions.

Regarding the Writ of Hate, given the time period and the subject matter, I would suspect that it's a mixture of Roman orthography (for narrative passages -- i.e. "This happened, then that happened"), and runic orthography (for emotional passages -- i.e. "May Caedwalla be known throughout eternity as a child-slayer and coward upon the battle field; may Woden's ravens pluck his intestines from his bloated gut; and may his sons' manhoods rot and shrivel!") The idea again being that writing something in runes is to give it the power to actually order and set the universe forth in that manner (make it come true).

So, the Lowans wouldn't have had books without the church spreading Roman-based literacy and the idea that things can be written down which are not, per se, holy or powerful, but they did have a written tradition of their own prior (and after) Christianity.


In the development process...

All of the above is totally accidental, but neat. I started with the tribal name "Lowan" and worked backwards to come up with something in Proto-Germanic which would roughly fit the sound changes to end up with "Lowan" by the 400-500 C.E. period. Both Lubjanmanniz and Lubanmanniz fit and had cool meanings.

I pulled the extended history from earlier more or less out of my rear, with the desire for some manner of isolation in a small place being my drive for placing the Lowans on the Isle of Wight. After I decided that, I of course had to look up the history of the Isle of Wight, which is when I came across the fact that it was Christianized late in the game and by force. That nicely explained why there are so few Lowan speakers now (the massacres) and why those who did survive hung on to their language/culture with such tenacity.

While I was writing that, I came up with two words in order to name Isley's book Raaths Raathes -- from Proto-Germanic *raidaz "arranged, determined' => Lowan "standard, rule, law" and P.G. razdō "language, voice" => Lowan "language, speech". The fact that these words ended up being almost identical in Middle Lowan (and in Modern Lowan, likely are identical) was the inspiration for the cultural idea that speech-acts and writing are in and of themselves powerful and can "arrange" or "determine" the universe and the world around you.

I already knew they had a runic alphabet which they maintained into a very late stage of history (compared to the other Germanic tribes). That, combined with the Isle of Wight's status as the "last bastion" of paganism in England, happened to fit very nicely with all of the above. So.... that's how it is.


Lastly.... the runes

Sorry for the pic; I wrote it on notebook paper and snapped a pic. The runes are derived from the Elder Futhark and made into more handwriting-friendly forms. A few major Lowan sound changes are already reflected: the rune fehu (f) now represents the sound /w/; the rune berkanan (b) now represents the sound /v/, etc. However, not all sound changes (especially not in the vowels) are reflected; I'm not sure whether I'll change this or not. (I figure I can get away with not adapting much of it, since the runes were held to be magical and powerful and thus wouldn't just be changed on a whim.)

Where two runes appear next to each other, they're variant forms of the same rune. When two sounds are given for the rune, they're two sounds represented by the same rune. So the line for the sound "i,j", for example, are two variant forms for the same rune (not two different runes), which is used to represent two different sounds.

And obviously there's some influence from Roman writing and Anglo-Saxon in there a bit --- gotta expect that after so many years of contact.

[Jashan]

Lowan Paganism

Despite Caedwalla's invasion and forcible conversion of the Isle of Wight population to Christianity in the late 600s, the majority of Lowans retained their pagan belief systems until several hundred years later. There were many factors which enabled this:

1) Their unique cultural and linguistic identity, already markedly different and distinct from that of their neighbors.
2) Their relative geographic isolation
3) Their reaction against the West Saxon invasion (that reaction being to regroup, strengthen, and solidify their cultural identity into an us vs. them dynamic).
4) The Viking invasions of the Isle of Wight

The Viking invasions were of particular importance. In the raids of 998-999, the Vikings initially sacked the Isle of Wight. However, their pillaging and looting was focused not on small villages, but on the larger land estates of West Saxon lords and the lavishly decorated Christian churches. The Lowans found allies in their far-removed Viking cousins, and in many cases used their knowledge of the local lands to aid in coordinating the raids.

The Viking raiders were themselves only partially Christianized. Harald Bluetooth was the first Scandinavian king to officially accept Christianity, in the early or mid 960s. It was his son, Sweyn Forkbeard, who repeatedly raided England between 998 and 1013 C.E. Although Sweyn himself had been baptized Christian, he was extremely tolerant of the traditional Germanic heathenry, and the many still-pagan Vikings who came to reside on the Isle injected new life into Lowan pagan belief and practice.

Forkbeard drove the reigning English king, Aethelred the Unready, into exile in 1013 and was crowned King of England on Christmas Day of that same year. However, he died less than two months later, passing the crown to his son, Cnut the Great. Cnut was in turn driven out of England by Aethelred in 1014 C.E., only to return and reclaim the crown in 1016.

Cnut, too, had been baptized into the Christian church as a child, well before becoming king, but his devotion to the faith was questionable at best. Never once in his kingship did he make any official use of his Christian name (Lambert) -- not in documents, not on coins. He lived in sin by Christian standards, having not only married Ælfgifu of Northampton (to secure his claim to the Danelaw of northern England) but also Aethelred's widow Emma of Normandy (to secure his claim to the southern Kingdom of Wessex). His official royal skalds (bards) often showed respect to Norse mythology in their poetry. However, it can also not be denied that Cnut gave great concessions to the Christian church and went through pains to reconcile himself with the local clergy. Whether his Christianity was rooted in faith or in politics, we may never know.

Cnut's throne passed to his son, Harthacnut, upon his death. Harthacnut, who reigned until 1042 under the name Cnut III, was likewise of questionable piousness, despite being officially Christian. Harthacnut's unexpected death returned the English throne into Saxon -- and much more avidly Christian -- hands: namely, those of Edward the Confessor.

Regardless, the period of 1000-1050 C.E. injected new life into traditional Lowan paganism (as well as a good deal of Viking blood into the Lowan community). It was not until the end of the 11th century that Christianity was once again pressed upon the Lowans of the Isle of Wight, and once again it was met with resistance. Christianization progressed at a slow pace -- but it did progress. By 1300, it is estimated that less than half of the Lowan population still held pagan beliefs, and many of these were mixed or practiced alongside regular Christian practices. By the 1400s, only a few scattered elders still truly practiced heathenry.

However, the Christianity that came to exist in Lowan life would never be the official version preached in churches and monestaries. The world now contained demons and angels, but so too did it contain landwights, elves, and other strange beings. Prayer was an effective tool against demons, but only a dab of fresh honey would placate an offended house-sprite. Perhaps most interestingly, Lowan Christianity of the time was not even truly monotheistic: the Biblical god was seen as being the most powerful or most important, but hardly the only one. The old gods of Germanic paganism -- now reduced more to aspects of Jehovah, or even his helper-angels -- still lived on.

Not until the Enlightenment would these folk-beliefs once against be challenged and changed.

[jal]

Regardless, the period of 1000-1050 C.E. injected new life into traditional Lowan paganism (as well as a good deal of Viking blood into the Lowan community).

Any linguistic traces left?


JAL

[Herra Ratatoskr]

Nice history. It sounds plausible enough, and I'd be interested in seeing some more of the cultural impacts the pagan beliefs had (ie folk remedies and such, like the thing you mentioned with honey). Also, are there any records of the myths? It's something of a shame that English lost most of it's Germanic mythology after the Norman conquest (that's something I intend to "rectify" with West Saxon).

Also, I like the runes. Is there a cursive form?

[Jashan]

@jal -- Yes I'm still working on the details of the linguistics stuff, since most people have been more interested in / asking more questions about the cultural aspects (and so that's where I've been focusing). But I'll get there!

@Herra -- I'm planning on developing those eventually, but for the next few weeks I'm going to be focusing more on the grammar and language so that I can get that at least as far as I've gotten the culture -- in particular, working out how the Viking and Saxon influences affected things. But remind me later and I'll see what I can conjure up for you

[Jashan]

Modern Lowan - Noun Declensions

In some ways the Lowan language has a very typical nominal structure; in other ways, not so much.

Grammatical Case and Gender

Although Lowan retained grammatical gender until the "Middle" stage, Modern Lowan has not maintained grammatical gender at all. Nor has it retained a distinction between 'strong' and 'weak' noun declension (although it has retained this in adjectives and verbs). Lowan retains (traditionally) four cases: the Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, and Dative. However, some grammarians argue for only three cases (the Common, Genitive, and Dative), since Lowan merged the nominative and accusative cases as far back as Old Lowan and maintains the distinction between the two sheerly as a matter of academia borrowed from the grammars of Old English, Latin, etc.

The influence of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse are significant in Lowan's nominal declensions: they are the primary reason why cases still exist at all. Going strictly by sound changes, Lowan should have lost all cases except for the genitive singular marker (which then, most likely, would have been lost by analogy), but maintained distinct singular/plural stems. However, their extensive contact with the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings seems to have halted this process. The similarity between the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon case endings served to pressure Lowan into retaining, rather than dropping, its own case endings, and as a result these have survived to the present day.


Grammatical Number

Unlike (any?) other Germanic languages, Lowan has a unique feature in its distinction between singular and plural nouns: stem ablaut. Historically, this can have originated in two ways. Firstly, Proto-Lowan went through a period of [ii]a-umlaut[/i] which lowered vowels which proceeded syllables containing /a/. This was, in most cases, never "corrected" in later stages, and the Proto-Germanic plurals (which frequently had /a/ in their case suffixes) are still reflected differently than Proto-Germanic singulars (which did not).

Secondly, Lowan has alternation between certain consonants at the ends of words. The most notable of these are:

1. t -> (ʔ) -> (null)
2. d -> (ð) -> θ _or_ (t) -> d -> t (dependent on environment)
3. v -> (f) -> p
4. k -> (ɣ) -> x

These arise primarily from historical voicing/fricativization between vowels and from devoicing of final obstruents (a recent development). The patterns are not always obvious as to how they should be "applied", since different sounds underwent the processes at different times with different results.


Case Endings

The 'typical' structure for nominal declension in Lowan is as follows:

Code: Select all

          Singular        Plural

Nom.       ----            [+V]
Acc.       ----            [+V]
Gen.       -s              -a
Dat.       ----            -em, -um 

The "[+V]" here indicates the "voiced stem" (gisongd vūk) -- the generic term for the ablauted or umlauted stem used in the plural (whether or not this actually changes the voicing status).


Sample Declensions

wōg - wolf

Code: Select all

          Singular        Plural

Nom.       wōg            wōg  /vo:x/
Acc.       wōg            wōg
Gen.       wōgs           wōga /vo:ɣa/
Dat.       wōg            wōgem

wūþ - foot

Code: Select all

          Singular        Plural

Nom.       wūþ            wūd  (/vu:t/ or /vu:d/)
Acc.       wūþ            wūd
Gen.       wūþs           wūda  (/vu:da/)
Dat.       wūþ            wūdem

gimm - follower, member, adherent, (tribes)man (Note: geminate consonants are orthographic only)

Code: Select all

          Singular        Plural

Nom.       gimm           gūm
Acc.       gimm           gūm
Gen.       gims           gūma
Dat.       gimm           gūmum

[jal]

Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon case endings served to pressure Lowan into retaining, rather than dropping, its own case endings, and as a result these have survived to the present day.

So what happened in detail? Did the sound changes just not apply to the case endings? That seems unlikely. Or did they borrow the case endings from Anglo-Saxon/Old Norse? Don't know whether something like that ever happened in a natlang, but it'd be cool.

Also, I've read (in an article about contact between Irish and Welsh) that in case of extensive (mutual) bilinguism, grammatical features are the most likely to be transfered, while in case of one dominant language, the other language is most likely to absorb vocabulary. What was the language contact situation between Lowan and Anglo-Saxon, and Lowan and Old Norse?


JAL

[Jashan]

Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon case endings served to pressure Lowan into retaining, rather than dropping, its own case endings, and as a result these have survived to the present day.

So what happened in detail? Did the sound changes just not apply to the case endings? That seems unlikely. Or did they borrow the case endings from Anglo-Saxon/Old Norse? Don't know whether something like that ever happened in a natlang, but it'd be cool.

Well, the actual nominal endings in Lowan, not surprisingly, were similar to those found in other Germanic languages like Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon (-s genitive sg, -um Dative pl, -a/e genitive pl, etc.) Normally, Lowan sound changes obliterated these through a combination of loss of final nasals (except /N/) and loss of final short vowels (and subsequent reduction of final long vowels -> short vowels).

However, because Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse both still preserved the endings (hadn't yet reduced / lost them) at the point when Lowan would have lost them, it ended up retarding / blocking the loss. The sound changes still occurred in other contexts, but in those specific grammatical contexts, hearing everyone ELSE around them still make the distinction, resulted in the Lowan speakers *also* continuing to make the distinction -- at least in the cases where Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon roughly 'agreed' on what that distinction should be. In areas where the languages didn't "gang up" on Lowan and had different endings, Lowan pretty happily ignored them and went on its merry little way.

Thus, for example, all three languages agreed that the genitive singular should be /-s/ (Old Norse masculine and neuter; Old English masc and neuter strong nouns; Old Lowan all nouns), the dative plural should be -um (all three languages, all nouns), etc. However, in the nominative plural, for instance, Old Norse could be -ar or null, depending on gender; Old English could be -as, -u, -a, or -an, depending on gender and strong/weak declension. Lowan had only (in some words) a residual -a or -e, and subsequently lost this during regular sound changes (loss of terminal vowel vowels in unstressed position); there was no "dominant" paradigm around to reinforce the form enough to retain it.

As a note, however, the retention and influence of Old Norse / Old English wasn't entirely complete. For instance, all three languages also "agreed" that the dative singular ought to end in some manner of vowel (-i, -u, or -e) -- but by this time Lowan had only the residual -e (/@/), and lost it despite the surrounding pressures. So the grammatical influence between the languages wasn't entirely uniform or predictable (but then, is it ever?)

I plan on extending this in some other areas as well (that there is influence, but not uniform influence), since I think a bit of haphazard borrowing / influence adds to the realism.

Also, I've read (in an article about contact between Irish and Welsh) that in case of extensive (mutual) bilinguism, grammatical features are the most likely to be transfered, while in case of one dominant language, the other language is most likely to absorb vocabulary. What was the language contact situation between Lowan and Anglo-Saxon, and Lowan and Old Norse?

I was planning on pretty much that, actually. Lowan was never a dominant language (even on the Isle of Wight itself, thanks to sharing it with the Jutes and later the Vikings), and it was different enough that I don't think either group (the socially dominant and more numerous Anglo-Saxons, and the invading, socially-insular Vikings) would have cause to learn Lowan unless in a small-scale, personal basis (i.e. you take a Lowan wife/husband, you work in a majority-Lowan village, etc.) I plan on Lowan adopting loanwords from both languages (although I'm not sure how I'm going to decide what comes from where, yet), and with minor grammatical influence (such as the retension of cases, perhaps some intermittant 'interruption' of sound changes -- for instance, in Lowan, /S/ becomes /sx/, while in Anglo-Saxon is stays /S/, which might result in loaned words with /S/ going one way or the other seemingly at random).

[Edit: Another example: Lowan also ended up adopting the past participle ge- marker from Old English, since sound changes eroded the native Past Part to the point that it wasn't distinct from other forms anymore. In Lowan it ended up as gi- [xI-], which it's retained even though English has since lost it.]

I'm basing my ideas of "who's dominant", btw, off this: the Anglo-Saxons controlled pretty much the entire island, while the Lowan population was small to begin with, so the Anglo-Saxons are not only more numerous but also have more land, more warriors, and more influence in general. The Vikings, when they came in, are known to have had the attitude that the Anglo-Saxons (and the Lowans, whom they initially viewed as simply a local tribe of Anglo-Saxons) as weak and unworthy of associating with. Even after they figured out that the Lowans were friendly towards (the enemy of my enemy is my friend), I imagine the Viking warriors would pretty much stay with themselves, except those few individuals who, again, ended up having some personal stake in the region that would encourage them to learn a language of no particular material or socio-economic value.

[TaylorS]

This is a very cool project! Keep it up!

[Civil War Bugle]

Any interesting differences between Lowan paganism and the other Germanic paganisms?

[Herra Ratatoskr]

Interesting looking developments. What rules (if any) determine whether the dative plural is -em or -um? It's looking a bit more recognizably Germanic, though still quite distinctive. I'm looking forward to the verbs!

[Jashan]

Just a small update to answer some questions:)

1) Differences between Lowan paganism and standard Germanic paganism: I don't know yet! I'll let you know when I figure it out, though. (I have a book on Asatru I'll be reading through when I get a chance, for some inspiration/education.)

2) The variation between dative plural -em and -um endings: The -um [ʊm] ending occurs when the preceding consonant is labial, whereas the ending -em [ɪm] (the orthography doesn't reflect the raising of [ɛ] > [ɪ] before nasals) occurs elsewhere. The labial consonants in Lowan are /v m p/ (/f/ is also present, but only as a devoiced allophone of /v/)

Hopefully I'll have another substantial update ready sometime this weekend.

[Edit:]

Actually, I have a help-request for those interested in Germanic languages and/or this project.

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?)

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

The weak adjectives are boring, so I'm thinking of ditching them all together -- not sure. So my three main options seem to be:

1) Retain strong and weak adjectives; retain gender distinction in strong adjectives even though nouns are not marked for gender in any other way.
2) Ditch the weak adjectives; retain gender distinction in the "strong" adjectives even though nouns are not marked for gender in any other way.
3) Ditch the weak adjectives; the roles of "weak" and "strong" adjectives are taken over by the former "masculine" and "feminine" forms of the strong adjectives.

In #3 specifically, the masculine strong adjectives maintain much more varied forms than the female strong adjectives, so it'd work.

[*Ceresz]

Very nice, indeed. I'll take my time reading through all the history later, I only had time to look it over quickly, but I like what I've seen so far.

[jal]

The weak adjectives are boring, so I'm thinking of ditching them all together -- not sure. So my three main options seem to be:

Personally, I'd go for 1, I can't see (granted, given the current limited information on the subject) why the weak adjectives would be "ditched" (and it'd make for more variation). "Gender" is an artificial grammatical concept: it would not be strange to have certain nouns use certain forms of certain adjectives, given its historical justification. I don't see that much of a difference with e.g. current day Dutch, that has two articles and minor variation in adjectives as only sign of "gender" (in fact, synchronic analysis doesn't use the term).

Also, think strong/irregular verbs - these forms stay in existence even though there is no synchronic "justification" for them.


JAL