Varangian

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Ælfwine
roman
roman
Posts: 940
Joined: 21 Sep 2015 01:28
Location: New Jersey

Re: Varangian

Post by Ælfwine »

I have decided to base my Old Norse conlang on Old Irish instead of Proto-Slavonic. Reason being is that I find I am able to do much more with the grammar, especially now that I pay attention much more to things than merely sound shifts. This conlang will carry over many traits of Varangian, such as soft and hard (or "slender" and "broad") consonants, considerable vowel allophony and palatalization. In addition, the conlang will have initial vowel mutations (i.e. į̇́ bók "in a book" > í w̃óg or í w̃óx, depending on how my lenition will work.)

Interestingly, a grammatical distinction is kept between Old Norse unstressed /i/ and /a u/ as a result of softening of preceding consonants, despite all unstressed vowels > ə. This likely results in the preservation of the subjunctive mood in verbal morphology (although not necessarily, as Faroese lost it.) Additionally, the accusative merges with the nominative due to the Mannish tendency to drop final -r and a vocative case is innovated, just like in Irish.

What I am going to do with "Varangian" instead is push back the date so I can have proper liquid metathesis, in addition to several series of palatalizations like I have now. Instead of Old Norse, it is likely the language would be more properly derived from Gothic (perhaps a dialect that survived in the area and became "Slavonized") I know there are a few similar conlangs already, but 1.) I think I can do it better and 2.) I'd like to try it for myself.
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