Old church germanic

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HinGambleGoth
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Old church germanic

Post by HinGambleGoth »

What if the Germanic peoples were Christians much earlier? and thus developed a productive literary language already during the migration period? That is the idea here, it is not as much a con-lang as it is a con-orthography, the actual languages are medieval Germanic languages like OE and ON.

Lets assume that some Germanic mercenary got educated and baptized, and that he wanted to convert his pagan kin by translating the bible to vernacular Germanic circa 400 ad, and later that this language split up into the different languages (that developed their own spelling conventions in our timeline) that kept the archaic spelling based on un-syncopated NW-Germanic without umlaut, that later be read with pronunciation rules, much like modern Greek and french. Then you could have a higher archaic register with obsolete grammatical features like instrumental nouns and passive verbs.

Some ideas:

Umlaut is not represented in writing, for instance i-umlaut is inferred from orthographic <i> that makes vowels "soft", this works much like yer in slavic.

Verner's law is marked with diacritics on the following vowels, for instance OE mara ON meira is spelled <maisó>, final /z/, later /r/ or Ø is written <ś>

medial <h> is mostly silent, lengthening vowels, much like <gh> in modern English.

Final vowels are often silent, for instance in neuter nouns like OE/ON hus <husa>, these silent vowels often "protect" final consonants much like in french.

The "standard" language, that is the language of the bible translation, would mix grammatical features from different dialects, like Northern adjectives and Ingveonic pronouns.

What do you think? Deep Germanic orthography already in the middle ages.
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Esneirra973
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Re: Old church germanic

Post by Esneirra973 »

I like this idea!
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Egerius
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Re: Old church germanic

Post by Egerius »

HinGambleGoth wrote:medial <h> is mostly silent, lengthening vowels, much like <gh> in modern English.
More like German: <Naht> [naːt] ‘seam’ <Ähre> [ɛːʀə] ‘grain ear’ <Ehre> [eːʀə] ‘honour’ <Ohr> [oːɐ] ‘ear’ <Uhr> [uːə] ‘clock’ <Möhre> [møːʀə] ‘carrot’ <Hühner> [hyːnɐ] ‘hens’
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Zythros Jubi
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Re: Old church germanic

Post by Zythros Jubi »

Maybe something like Wulfilan Gothic?
Lostlang plans: Oghur Turkic, Gallaecian Celtic, Palaeo-Balkanic
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