Varangian

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Varangian

Post by Ælfwine »

Varangian is a thought experiment on what would happen if Proto-Norse, and not Proto-Slavic, had become the language spoken by the medieval Russians, and later became the lingua franca of Russia. First starting out as a dialect of Old Swedish, Varangian would sharply diverge from the Old Norse of its time and become highly influenced by Late Proto-Slavic and neighboring languages such as Estonian and Finnish. The idea came to me after a few attempts at playing around with sound shifts for *ʀ and I later synthesized some of my ideas with the ideas presented by Artaxes in this thread, of which a great deal of debt is owed. I've also been influenced from other conlangs like Novegradian. The conlang is still under construction as there are currently a lot of decisions I am currently wrangling with, but I think enough can be established for this thread so far. I'll update this thread at least once every two weeks, or whenever substantial progress is made.

A couple shout outs first of all — first to Ephraim, who spent a lot of his personal time answering a lot of my questions through PMs, Elector Dark of the Conlang wiki who answered many questions and help me get rid of a lot of bugs, and Shimobaatar who had assisted me also in PM with a few questions.

The layout has been shamelessly stolen from Dormouses' Silvish.

I. Abbreviations
B = Back Vowels
C = Consonants
E = Front Vowels
F = Fricatives
L = Liquids
N = Nasal Consonants
S = Semivowels
U = Ultrashort Vowels (or the yers)
V = Vowels
Ṽ = Nasal Vowels
@ = Syllable
# = Word Boundary
$ = Stem Boundary
% = Syllable Boundary

1. Phonology
1.1 Consonants
/m~mʲ n~nʲ/ <m n>
/p~pʲ b~bʲ t~tʲ d~dʲ k~kʲ g~gʲ/ <p b t d k g>
/ts~tʃ dz~dʒ ʈʂ~tɕ ɖʐ~dʑ/ <c ӡ č ǯ>
/f~fʲ v~vʲ s~ʃ z~ʒ ʂ~ɕ ʐ~ʑ/ <f v s z š ž>
/j/ <j>
/l~lʲ/ <l>
/r~rʲ/ <r>

1.2 Vowels
1.21 Monophthongs
/a æ e i o u (ɨ)/ <a ä e i o u y>

1.22 Diphthongs
/ja je jo ju wa we/ <ia ie io iu ua ue>

Many other diphthongs may arise across word boundaries in casual speech – these will be marked with a linking [‿].

1.3 Syllable Structure
(C)(C)(L)V(C)(C)(C)

Varangian takes a distinctly Norse approach to syllables where primary stress falls on the root stem, except in compounds, where it falls on the second stem.

In most cases semivowels tend to pattern as consonants and can appear in heavy consonant clusters.

1.4 Allophony
1.41 Consonantal allophony

All consonants – except for /j/ – come in two pairs: palatalized or "soft" consonants and velarized or "hard" consonants. Consonants and vowels tend to mutually affect each other in Varangian; a soft or palatalized consonant generally produces a fronted realization of the vowel before it, and a phonemic front vowel generally palatalizes the preceding consonant. Consonants can also soften or harden other adjacent consonants. At the end of words, consonants that have a voiceless pair are always devoiced.

The syllable onset comprises an optional consonant, however the syllable coda and nucleus are always influenced by the consonant before it across word boundaries. (E.g. if a word ends in a soft consonant, this will affect the vowel of the next word as if it were CʲV)

1.42 Vowel allophony
/ɑ o u/ → [ɑ o u], CVC ! [ɐ~ə ɐ~ə ʊ] [-stress]
/ɑ o u/ → [ä ɵ ʉ], CVCʲ~CʲVC ! [ɪ ᵿ ᵿ] [-stress]
/ɑ o u/ → [æ ø y], CʲVCʲ ! [ɪ ʏ ʏ] [-stress]
/æ e/ → [e], CʲVCʲ~CVCʲ~CʲVC ! [ɪ] [-stress]
/æ e/ → [æ ɛ], CVC ! [ɪ] [-stress]
/i/ → [i} CʲVCʲ~CVCʲ~CʲVC ! [ɪ] [-stress]
/i/ → [ɨ] CVC ! [ᵻ] [-stress]
/ɨ/ → [i} CʲVCʲ~CVCʲ~CʲVC ! [ɪ] [-stress]
/ɨ/ → [ɨ] CVC ! [ᵻ] [-stress]

2. Diachronic Sound Shifts
2.1 800CE to 1000CE
r → ʀ / i_
ʀ → 0 / [+dental]_
Cː → C
C → Cʲ / _V[+front]
Cʀ → Cʲ
C → Cʲ / _Cʲ
ǐ *ǔ → 0 / _[-stress]

2.2 1000 CE to 1200 CE
k g → ʈʂ ɖʐ / _{e,ē,i,ī,eă,eŏ,eŭ}
æi ɒu → ē ō
ø ǿ y ý → e é i ī
k g → ts dz / _{e,ē,i,ī}
f → v / #_
θ → f
ð ɣ → ∅ / V_#
ð ɣ → d g
sts sʈʂ → sː ʂː
sː zː ʂː ʐː → s ʂ

2.3 1200 CE to 1400 CE
w hw hj → v v j
h → ∅
∅ → j w / _{e,o}
eă eŏ eŭ → ja jo ju
sj zj tsj dzj → ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ
ʂj ʐj ʈʂj ɖʐj → ɕ ʑ tɕ dʑ

...and that's all for now! Feel free to ask any questions and I should get to you fairly quickly, as I am usually browsing this website every day now. My next update should establish Varangian's orthography, and perhaps provide you with some noun declensions as well.
Edit: 8/5/16: Added a part under Allophony on word final devoicing and the assimilatory palatalization in consonant clusters and split Allophony between a consonant and vowel section.
8/6/16: More minor tweaks and fixes.
9/22/16: Added (major) diachronic sound shifts.
1/28/17: Updated diachronic sound shifts into a cleaner format. Removed some parts of the phonology due to changes in the sound laws.
Last edited by Ælfwine on 26 Jun 2017 02:57, edited 16 times in total.
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Re: Varangian

Post by Ælfwine »

*Reserved just in case*
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Re: Varangian

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Looks good. Have you ever tried non-Indo-European a-posteriori conlanging?
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Re: Varangian

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I like the allophony so far and I'm looking forward to seeing the diachronic changes [:)]
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Re: Varangian

Post by Ælfwine »

Frislander wrote:Looks good. Have you ever tried non-Indo-European a-posteriori conlanging?
I've tried a close descendent of the Koreanic language family that I later reformed into a simple dialect of modern Korean, but it didn't go anywhere and I lost much of the information after my computer fried. Outside of Indo-Europeanistics I think the Sami and Inuit languages are the most interesting, although they are way beyond my league for now.
Creyeditor wrote:I like the allophony so far and I'm looking forward to seeing the diachronic changes [:)]
Thanks! I might make that the next addition to the lang, even though it's less developed than allophony and noun declensions. (The palatalization is killing me.)
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Re: Varangian

Post by Frislander »

Ælfwine wrote:
Frislander wrote:Looks good. Have you ever tried non-Indo-European a-posteriori conlanging?
I've tried a close descendent of the Koreanic language family that I later reformed into a simple dialect of modern Korean, but it didn't go anywhere and I lost much of the information after my computer fried. Outside of Indo-Europeanistics I think the Sami and Inuit languages are the most interesting, although they are way beyond my league for now.
Eskimo-Aleut shouldn't be too hard-it seems to be a matter of what phonological proccesses you want at the end and the semantics of the inflectional/derivational suffixes (the boundary between the two is very thin in those languages). The problem is finding a good reconstruction - I haven't been able to find one for Eskimo-Aleut, or Algonquian either (though there's some scattered info on the latter floating about). The same probably goes for Sami.
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Re: Varangian

Post by gach »

If you are considering a Saamic derived conlang, very good resources woul be Sammallahti's The Saami Languages - An Introduction for the descriptions of the grammatical system and historical developments and Lehtiranta's Common Saamic lexicon for the core vocabulary, though the latter one you have to use together with a Finnish dictionary.
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Re: Varangian

Post by Viorp »

Sounds very good so far.

Will you be taking as refference the real life Novegian -Swedish - Russian piginlanguage?

It seems to have lot in coomon with oyur idea except it had a vocabulary of only 600 words which were around 50 - 50 Nordic and Russian.
On top of that after analyzing the grammar it seems that the parts whch were not common to russian and nordic languages were most simmilar to finnish.

Also instead of using proto-slavic as influence on proto-nordic I propose you use Old Church Slavonic.
It is basically a Proto-Slavic, and as the language of the Church it logicaly should have a huge influence naturarly.
(modern russian is actually a descendant of literay "middle-speach" where high speach was Church Slavonic and low speach was the Russian people spoke. It is a mix of those two)

there are also many more resources on Old Church Slavonic as it is still being used by the Ortodox Church.
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Re: Varangian

Post by Ælfwine »

Frislander wrote:
Ælfwine wrote:
Frislander wrote:Looks good. Have you ever tried non-Indo-European a-posteriori conlanging?
I've tried a close descendent of the Koreanic language family that I later reformed into a simple dialect of modern Korean, but it didn't go anywhere and I lost much of the information after my computer fried. Outside of Indo-Europeanistics I think the Sami and Inuit languages are the most interesting, although they are way beyond my league for now.
Eskimo-Aleut shouldn't be too hard-it seems to be a matter of what phonological proccesses you want at the end and the semantics of the inflectional/derivational suffixes (the boundary between the two is very thin in those languages). The problem is finding a good reconstruction - I haven't been able to find one for Eskimo-Aleut, or Algonquian either (though there's some scattered info on the latter floating about). The same probably goes for Sami.
Well I'll definitely keep my eyes open for a good reconstruction, that same problem I encountered with Old Koreanic. It's a shame too.
gach wrote:If you are considering a Saamic derived conlang, very good resources woul be Sammallahti's The Saami Languages - An Introduction for the descriptions of the grammatical system and historical developments and Lehtiranta's Common Saamic lexicon for the core vocabulary, though the latter one you have to use together with a Finnish dictionary.
Brilliant, thank you. I might reserve it for a lostlang idea. And of course this would be a good source for a few Varangian loanwords...
Viorp wrote:Sounds very good so far.

Will you be taking as refference the real life Novegian -Swedish - Russian piginlanguage?

It seems to have lot in coomon with oyur idea except it had a vocabulary of only 600 words which were around 50 - 50 Nordic and Russian.
On top of that after analyzing the grammar it seems that the parts whch were not common to russian and nordic languages were most simmilar to finnish.

Also instead of using proto-slavic as influence on proto-nordic I propose you use Old Church Slavonic.
It is basically a Proto-Slavic, and as the language of the Church it logicaly should have a huge influence naturarly.
(modern russian is actually a descendant of literay "middle-speach" where high speach was Church Slavonic and low speach was the Russian people spoke. It is a mix of those two)

there are also many more resources on Old Church Slavonic as it is still being used by the Ortodox Church.
I have read a bit about Russenorsk actually. I was so far thinking of borrowing some of its own grammatical innovations. For example, in Russenorsk the verb is moved to the final position when the sentence has adverbs.

I'm not sure, the conlang originates in northern Russia and then spreads south into Kiev, would OCS have had enough time to influence it? Assuming this is the 9th century.
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Re: Varangian

Post by Ephraim »

Looks good so far! I don't have much to add at this point, since I've already left some comments via PM, but I will be keeping an eye on this thread.
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Re: Varangian

Post by shimobaatar »

Ælfwine wrote:Varangian is a thought experiment on what would happen if Proto-Norse, and not Proto-Slavic, had become the language spoken by the medieval Russians, and later became the lingua franca of Russia.
Yay, I'm so excited for this! Everything looks great so far, and I can't wait for more!
Ælfwine wrote:and Shimobaatar who had assisted me also in PM with a few questions.
I'm glad to have been able to be of some assistance.
Ælfwine wrote: /m~mʲ n~nʲ/
/p~pʲ b~bʲ t~tʲ d~dʲ k~kʲ g~gʲ/
/ts~tʃ dz~dʒ ʈʂ~tɕ ɖʐ~dʑ/
/f~fʲ v~vʲ s~ʃ z~ʒ ʂ~ɕ ʐ~ʑ x~xʲ ɣ~ɣʲ/
/j/
/l~lʲ/
/r~rʲ/
So, just to clarify, the "hard" and "soft" pairs aren't separate phonemes?
Ælfwine wrote: /a e i o u (ɨ)/
Why is /ɨ/ in parentheses?
Ælfwine wrote: (C)(C)(C)(L)V(C)(C)(C)
Ælfwine wrote: In most cases semivowels tend to pattern as consonants and can appear after consonant clusters - including clusters with liquids. This is a deviation from Old Norse which usually did not allow a semivowel to appear after other liquids. This also affected Old Norse breaking – /j/ could appear after /w,r,l/ if broken from *e. However, breaking is still prohibited after palatal consonants.
At some point, could you possibly elaborate more on the language's phonotactics?
Ælfwine wrote: At the end of words, consonants are always devoiced.
All consonants?
Ælfwine wrote: /ɑ o u/ → [ɑ o u], CVC ! [ɐ~ə ɐ~ə ʊ] [-stress]
Sorry, I know I should know this, but what does the exclamation point signify?
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Re: Varangian

Post by qwed117 »

shimobaatar wrote:
Ælfwine wrote: /ɑ o u/ → [ɑ o u], CVC ! [ɐ~ə ɐ~ə ʊ] [-stress]
Sorry, I know I should know this, but what does the exclamation point signify?
Exclamation means except
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Re: Varangian

Post by Ælfwine »

Spoiler:
Ephraim wrote:Looks good so far! I don't have much to add at this point, since I've already left some comments via PM, but I will be keeping an eye on this thread.
Of course. Feel free to raise any concerns there.

shimobaatar wrote:I'm glad to have been able to be of some assistance.
No problem!
shimobaatar wrote:
Ælfwine wrote: /m~mʲ n~nʲ/
/p~pʲ b~bʲ t~tʲ d~dʲ k~kʲ g~gʲ/
/ts~tʃ dz~dʒ ʈʂ~tɕ ɖʐ~dʑ/
/f~fʲ v~vʲ s~ʃ z~ʒ ʂ~ɕ ʐ~ʑ x~xʲ ɣ~ɣʲ/
/j/
/l~lʲ/
/r~rʲ/
So, just to clarify, the "hard" and "soft" pairs aren't separate phonemes?
No...well, they can be seen as separate phonemes in some interpretations, but for the most part they are treated as allophones.
shimobaatar wrote:
Ælfwine wrote: /a e i o u (ɨ)/
Why is /ɨ/ in parentheses?
It's debatable whether it is its own phoneme or an allophone of /i/.
Ælfwine wrote: (C)(C)(C)(L)V(C)(C)(C)
Ælfwine wrote: In most cases semivowels tend to pattern as consonants and can appear after consonant clusters - including clusters with liquids. This is a deviation from Old Norse which usually did not allow a semivowel to appear after other liquids. This also affected Old Norse breaking – /j/ could appear after /w,r,l/ if broken from *e. However, breaking is still prohibited after palatal consonants.
shimobaatar wrote:At some point, could you possibly elaborate more on the language's phonotactics?
Sure - what is it you would like to see?
shimobaatar wrote:
Ælfwine wrote: At the end of words, consonants are always devoiced.
All consonants?
I should of added, "all consonants with a voiceless pair."
shimobaatar wrote:
Ælfwine wrote: /ɑ o u/ → [ɑ o u], CVC ! [ɐ~ə ɐ~ə ʊ] [-stress]
Sorry, I know I should know this, but what does the exclamation point signify?
An exception.
Creyeditor wrote:I like the allophony so far and I'm looking forward to seeing the diachronic changes [:)]
You have asked and I have answered...sort of.

A short update on a lazy Sunday afternoon, so lazy that I can't even show you all of what I wanted to show you today. However, hopefully this will be tasty enough for some of you. There's of course much more than these few sound shifts but these are a few of the far reaching ones:

Pleophony
Sequences of *æR and *ɔR become *eRe and *oRo respectively.

Example: *ɔrn (Is. örn (< PGmc. *arô) > ɔrɔn > oron > oro

Varangian First Palatalization
The Varangian First Palatalization is a sound change that resulted in the regressive palatalization of the velar consonants. The first palatalization operated on all velar consonants before the Proto-Norse vowels *e/ē/i/ī and the diphthongs *eă/eŏ/eŭ/.

Example: *kelda (Is. kelda) > ʈʂelda

Monophthongization and other Vowel Changes
The Old East Norse diphthongs *æi and *ǫu are monophthongized to /ē/ and /ō/ respectively.

At around the same time, the front rounded vowels *ø and *y were reanalyzed as fronted allophones of *o and *u respectively.

Example: *dø̄mą (Is. dæma (< PGmc. *dōmijaną) > dōmą > domą > domją > domja

Varangian Second Palatalization
The Varangian Second Palatalization arose as a response to the monophthongization of the diphthong /æi/ →/ē/. The second palatalization affected all velar consonants before front vowels, including /æ/.

Example: *kæną (Is. kenna (< PGmc. *kannijanan) > tsæną > tsena

Varangian Third Palatalization
This type of palatalization was triggered by the switch from falling to rising diphthongs which affected *eă and *eŏ (which were originally broken from stressed e before a/ō and u) and PGmc. *eŭ. This caused these diphthongs to become a rising /ja/, /jo/ and /ju/. Velar consonants that were palatalized before these diphthongs previously would now palatalize a second time, assimilating with /j/. It affected all velar consonants and /j/.

Example: *keărni (Is. kjarni < PGmc. *kernō) > ʈʂeărni > ʈʂjarni > tɕarni /ʈʂʲarni/

Fate of the Short Stems
The short stems - the ultrashort vowels notated here as *ǐ and *ǔ - are dropped.

Example: *gæstĭʀ (Is. gestur (< PGmc. *gastiz) > dzæstǐʀ > dzæstʀ > dzest

>>more to be added later<<
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Re: Varangian

Post by imperialismus »

Viorp wrote: Will you be taking as refference the real life Novegian -Swedish - Russian piginlanguage?

It seems to have lot in coomon with oyur idea except it had a vocabulary of only 600 words which were around 50 - 50 Nordic and Russian.
On top of that after analyzing the grammar it seems that the parts whch were not common to russian and nordic languages were most simmilar to finnish.
Russenorsk only has a corpus of 150-200 words, and they include a bunch of words from English and Low German which were common in sailor jargon at the time. It has been argued that Russenorsk was nothing more than Norwegians speaking Norwegian with a bunch of Russian/Russianized words, and similarly Russians speaking Russian with Norwegian(ized) words. It barely has any grammar to speak of - the most obvious characteristic is the way verbs take the ending -om. It has no obvious influence from Finnish or Sámi.
Ælfwine wrote: A short update on a lazy Sunday afternoon, so lazy that I can't even show you all of what I wanted to show you today. However, hopefully this will be tasty enough for some of you. There's of course much more than these few sound shifts but these are a few of the far reaching ones:

Pleophony
Sequences of *æR and *ɔR become *eRe and *oRo respectively.

Example: *ɔrn (Is. örn (< PGmc. *arô) > ɔrɔn > oron > oro

Varangian First Palatalization
The Varangian First Palatalization is a sound change that resulted in the regressive palatalization of the velar consonants. The first palatalization operated on all velar consonants before the Proto-Norse vowels *e/ē/i/ī and the diphthongs *eă/eŏ/eŭ/.

Example: *kelda (Is. kelda) > ʈʂelda

Monophthongization and other Vowel Changes
The Old East Norse diphthongs *æi and *ǫu are monophthongized to /ē/ and /ō/ respectively.

At around the same time, the front rounded vowels *ø and *y were reanalyzed as fronted allophones of *o and *u respectively.

Example: *dø̄mą (Is. dæma (< PGmc. *dōmijaną) > dōmą > domą > domją > domja

Varangian Second Palatalization
The Varangian Second Palatalization arose as a response to the monophthongization of the diphthong /æi/ →/ē/. The second palatalization affected all velar consonants before front vowels, including /æ/.

Example: *kæną (Is. kenna (< PGmc. *kannijanan) > tsæną > tsena

Varangian Third Palatalization
This type of palatalization was triggered by the switch from falling to rising diphthongs which affected *eă and *eŏ (which were originally broken from stressed e before a/ō and u) and PGmc. *eŭ. This caused these diphthongs to become a rising /ja/, /jo/ and /ju/. Velar consonants that were palatalized before these diphthongs previously would now palatalize a second time, assimilating with /j/. It affected all velar consonants and /j/.

Example: *keărni (Is. kjarni < PGmc. *kernō) > ʈʂeărni > ʈʂjarni > tɕarni /ʈʂʲarni/

Fate of the Short Stems
The short stems - the ultrashort vowels notated here as *ǐ and *ǔ - had dropped word finally.

Example: *gæstĭʀ (Is. gestur (< PGmc. *gastiz) > dzæstǐʀ > dzæstʀ > dzest

>>more to be added later<<
Not to hijack your thread, but coincidentally I've been working on a North-Eastern branch of Germanic derived from PG, which has heavy influences from Common Slavic and ON. Could be cool to compare notes. I have the following palatalizations:

First Slavic Palatalization

*k > *kʲ > č / _F
*g > *gʲ > *dž > ž / _F

*geβo > ževō > (Norse e-breaking) > žjavō
*kinþiz > čintis

Third Slavic Palatalization

*k > ts / i(n)_
*χ > dz > z / i(n)_
*zs > ž

*aiks "oak" > aits
*taiχwō "toe" > taizwō
*miχstilaz "urinate" > *mizstilaz > mižtilas
*drinkanan "drink" > drintsan > drītsan

dj > dž > ž

*déwpaz "deep" > djūpas > župas cf. ON djúpr, OE dēop

ti tj > č except when preceded by consonant
*lūti "few" > luč

hl lj > ɫ thus leuhsaz > ljösas > ɫösas

h > č / F_V

*fehu (livestock, nom.sg.) > föhu > föče > föč

Your examples:

*kernǭ > čjarnō
*kannijanan > kannjan
*dōmijaną > dōmjan
*gastiz > gastis
kelda (loan) > čjalda
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Re: Varangian

Post by Creyeditor »

Ælfwine wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:I like the allophony so far and I'm looking forward to seeing the diachronic changes [:)]
You have asked and I have answered...sort of.
Well, thank you [:)]

I have a question though. Do you use the symbol /ʂ/ for a post-aveolar non-palatal sibilant or for a genuine retroflex sibilant? The second would seem unlikely to me, because I really do not see the connection between front vowels and (phonetically) retroflex consonants.
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Re: Varangian

Post by Ælfwine »

imperialismus wrote:
Spoiler:
Viorp wrote: Will you be taking as refference the real life Novegian -Swedish - Russian piginlanguage?

It seems to have lot in coomon with oyur idea except it had a vocabulary of only 600 words which were around 50 - 50 Nordic and Russian.
On top of that after analyzing the grammar it seems that the parts whch were not common to russian and nordic languages were most simmilar to finnish.
Russenorsk only has a corpus of 150-200 words, and they include a bunch of words from English and Low German which were common in sailor jargon at the time. It has been argued that Russenorsk was nothing more than Norwegians speaking Norwegian with a bunch of Russian/Russianized words, and similarly Russians speaking Russian with Norwegian(ized) words. It barely has any grammar to speak of - the most obvious characteristic is the way verbs take the ending -om. It has no obvious influence from Finnish or Sámi.
Ælfwine wrote: A short update on a lazy Sunday afternoon, so lazy that I can't even show you all of what I wanted to show you today. However, hopefully this will be tasty enough for some of you. There's of course much more than these few sound shifts but these are a few of the far reaching ones:

Pleophony
Sequences of *æR and *ɔR become *eRe and *oRo respectively.

Example: *ɔrn (Is. örn (< PGmc. *arô) > ɔrɔn > oron > oro

Varangian First Palatalization
The Varangian First Palatalization is a sound change that resulted in the regressive palatalization of the velar consonants. The first palatalization operated on all velar consonants before the Proto-Norse vowels *e/ē/i/ī and the diphthongs *eă/eŏ/eŭ/.

Example: *kelda (Is. kelda) > ʈʂelda

Monophthongization and other Vowel Changes
The Old East Norse diphthongs *æi and *ǫu are monophthongized to /ē/ and /ō/ respectively.

At around the same time, the front rounded vowels *ø and *y were reanalyzed as fronted allophones of *o and *u respectively.

Example: *dø̄mą (Is. dæma (< PGmc. *dōmijaną) > dōmą > domą > domją > domja

Varangian Second Palatalization
The Varangian Second Palatalization arose as a response to the monophthongization of the diphthong /æi/ →/ē/. The second palatalization affected all velar consonants before front vowels, including /æ/.

Example: *kæną (Is. kenna (< PGmc. *kannijanan) > tsæną > tsena

Varangian Third Palatalization
This type of palatalization was triggered by the switch from falling to rising diphthongs which affected *eă and *eŏ (which were originally broken from stressed e before a/ō and u) and PGmc. *eŭ. This caused these diphthongs to become a rising /ja/, /jo/ and /ju/. Velar consonants that were palatalized before these diphthongs previously would now palatalize a second time, assimilating with /j/. It affected all velar consonants and /j/.

Example: *keărni (Is. kjarni < PGmc. *kernō) > ʈʂeărni > ʈʂjarni > tɕarni /ʈʂʲarni/

Fate of the Short Stems
The short stems - the ultrashort vowels notated here as *ǐ and *ǔ - had dropped word finally.

Example: *gæstĭʀ (Is. gestur (< PGmc. *gastiz) > dzæstǐʀ > dzæstʀ > dzest

>>more to be added later<<
Not to hijack your thread, but coincidentally I've been working on a North-Eastern branch of Germanic derived from PG, which has heavy influences from Common Slavic and ON. Could be cool to compare notes. I have the following palatalizations:

First Slavic Palatalization

*k > *kʲ > č / _F
*g > *gʲ > *dž > ž / _F

*geβo > ževō > (Norse e-breaking) > žjavō
*kinþiz > čintis

Third Slavic Palatalization

*k > ts / i(n)_
*χ > dz > z / i(n)_
*zs > ž

*aiks "oak" > aits
*taiχwō "toe" > taizwō
*miχstilaz "urinate" > *mizstilaz > mižtilas
*drinkanan "drink" > drintsan > drītsan

dj > dž > ž

*déwpaz "deep" > djūpas > župas cf. ON djúpr, OE dēop

ti tj > č except when preceded by consonant
*lūti "few" > luč

hl lj > ɫ thus leuhsaz > ljösas > ɫösas

h > č / F_V

*fehu (livestock, nom.sg.) > föhu > föče > föč

Your examples:

*kernǭ > čjarnō
*kannijanan > kannjan
*dōmijaną > dōmjan
*gastiz > gastis
kelda (loan) > čjalda
That's very interesting, actually. I quite like it. Do I see a Gothic resemblance in there somewhere?
hl lj > ɫ thus leuhsaz > ljösas > ɫösas
This is not /ɫ/, right? I just find it difficult for these clusters to go to /ɫ/, I'd think they'd sooner palatalize to /ʎ/.
Creyeditor wrote:
Ælfwine wrote:
Creyeditor wrote:I like the allophony so far and I'm looking forward to seeing the diachronic changes [:)]
You have asked and I have answered...sort of.
Well, thank you [:)]

I have a question though. Do you use the symbol /ʂ/ for a post-aveolar non-palatal sibilant or for a genuine retroflex sibilant? The second would seem unlikely to me, because I really do not see the connection between front vowels and (phonetically) retroflex consonants.
A post-aveolar non-palatal silibant, yes. Think Polish.

Varangian is actually more innovative than Polish and Russian, since it has four sets of palatals to their three. I've been having difficulties deriving things from /x/, which did not exist in Varangian in a pre-vocalic position, however I hope to find a solution soon.

I'll probably clean it up a bit and add the section on sound shifts. Hopefully I can skip to basic noun declensions next time.
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imperialismus
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Re: Varangian

Post by imperialismus »

Ælfwine wrote:
hl lj > ɫ thus leuhsaz > ljösas > ɫösas
This is not /ɫ/, right? I just find it difficult for these clusters to go to /ɫ/, I'd think they'd sooner palatalize to /ʎ/.
It's actually /ɽ/.
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Re: Varangian

Post by Void »

That's a great concept. Really looking forward to seeing some texts. It's also more realistic than mine; I just took Proto-Germanic and applied Polish sound changes onto it, basically stealing from Wenedyk.
Ælfwine
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Re: Varangian

Post by Ælfwine »

Konungr wrote:That's a great concept. Really looking forward to seeing some texts. It's also more realistic than mine; I just took Proto-Germanic and applied Polish sound changes onto it, basically stealing from Wenedyk.
Thanks! I'd like to see more of yours, actually (in another place.)

Realism is part of my end goal. Actually I am thinking of removing pleophony from the language. It just doesn't seem likely enough that Varangian would adopt it. I'm also thinking PN /ō#/ > /o#/ instead of /a#/, make it a bit more Slavic looking. This means traditional ON a-stems would actually be o-stems. Thoughts?

I will hopefully get this updated within the weekend. Stay tuned!
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Re: Varangian

Post by Void »

Ælfwine wrote:Realism is part of my end goal. Actually I am thinking of removing pleophony from the language. It just doesn't seem likely enough that Varangian would adopt it. I'm also thinking PN /ō#/ > /o#/ instead of /a#/, make it a bit more Slavic looking. This means traditional ON a-stems would actually be o-stems. Thoughts?
I'd go for it, it's what I'm doing. Or at least when it comes to neuter nouns; I think a more Slavic approach would still let feminine nouns keep /a#/.
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