Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

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Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by ixals »

Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

What if the Romance languages were derived from Proto-Germanic instead of Vulgar Latin? Inspired by current experimental projects like Lao Kou's Japoné語 I decided to make a thread about this what-if-scenario I've had in my head for a long time now. Of course I was also inspired by how the Frankish loanwords in French changed and I wanted to see how French would look like if every word came from Frankish ... or well, Proto-Germanic in this case.

To begin with, I made some rules for myself on how to derive the vocabulary of the Germanic Romance languages:
  • 1. If a word derives from (Vulgar) Latin, it is derived from Proto-Germanic in this scenario.
  • 2. If a word has been (re)borrowed from Latin, it is borrowed from Proto-Germanic.
  • 3. If a word has been borrowed from a different language, it is borrowed as well and is not derived from Proto-Germanic.
  • 4. If a word from (Vulgar) Latin has a suffix (or prefix) attached to it, a suffix (or prefix) is added in the Proto-Germanic form as well.
  • 5. If a word with a different original meaning changes its meaning, it changes its meaning in this scenario as well.
If this part sounds confusing, feel free to ask!

In this scenario, this new set of Germanic languages spreads throughout Europe the same way the current Germanic languages did. Thus, these languages are spoken in Central Europe, Skandinavia and the British Isles. The only part I had to think about was where to place the single languages, so I assigned each major Germanic language a Romance equivalent which looks like this:
Spoiler:
Image
As you can see, each major Germanic language has a Romance equivalent. Since the major Iberian Romance languages (Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan) are quite similar just like the Skandinavian languages, the Iberian Romance languages are the equivalent of the Skandinavian languages. I choose Spanish for Swedish because they're both the most spoken ones of the three, I choose Portuguese for Norwegian because they're both the farthest away from Central Europe and I choose Catalan for Danish because they're both close to the most spoken languages and they're both close to another big language that seperated themselves by a lot of sound changes, aka French and German. Therefore French is the equivalent of German because they're the most spoken ones in general and they changed a lot compared to the rest of the languages (High German consonant shift etc.). Both France and Germany have a big minority language on one side of their country, Occitan and Low German, so these language are equivalents as well. I choose Italian for Dutch because both languages are a widely spoken language in a country that's quite positioned in the centre of their language family (and as well because they had been the only languages left). Romanian is the equivalent of English because both languages are seperated from the rest of the language family by other countries or the sea. They're both surrounded by a lot of languages of a different language family as well. I'm not sure about Sardinian being the replacement for Icelandic though, but they're both spoken on an Island and haven't changed a lot so I think it kinda fits.

But in this scenario it's quite hard for Germanic Spanish to import loanwords from Basque, so what is the solution to that problem? Exactly! Giving all influencing languages equivalents as well!
  • Vulgar Latin [->] Proto-Germanic
  • Germanic [->] Latin
  • Celtic [->] Slavic
  • Slavic [->] Celtic
  • Basque [->] Finnic
Needless to say, every Romance word derived from (Vulgar) Latin is now derived from the respective Germanic word and of course the other way round. The Celtic words that sneaked into French or Spanish are now Slavic words because they're spoken next to Germanic French and it's not too far away from Scandinavia as well. And since Germanic Romanian is spoken on the British Isles, the loanwords are coming from Celtic languages for sure. And Finnish or other Finnic languages are the only languages left that are spoken next to Germanic Spanish, these language are the Basque of this scenario. All the other loanwords coming from Greek etc stay the same. The only problem I have are the Arabic loanwords in the Iberian languages and the Hungarian/Turkic loanwords in Romanian because I think I need a equivalent for them so maybe someone on here has an idea for that.

From Proto-Germanic to Vulgar (?) Germanic

Proto-Germanic and Latin have a different phonology, but luckily they're not too different and Proto-Germanic has more phonemes than Latin, so I just need to merge some consonants to get to the phonology of Latin. (I think most people on here know the basic phonologies of Proto-Germanic and Latin so I won't list them here)

Consonants:

ɸ, θ, x [->] f, d/t, h
β, ð, ɣ [->] b, d, g
[->] w/kʷ
z [->] s

Vowels:

[->] V
ɑ [->] a
ɛː ɛːː [->]
ɔː ɔːː [->]
ɑ, ɑu, ɑi [->] a, au, ai
eu, iu [->] o

The last sound change might look a bit weird but that's the only way to have a short o in Vulgar Germanic thanks to that damn o/a-merger in Proto-Germanic. And I really needed the short o. No short "o"s, no Spanish "ue"s and what would Spanish be without it's "ue"s? The change of /θ/ to /d/ or /t/ as well as the change of /xʷ/ to /w/ or /kʷ/ are irregular and I'll choose the one that fits the most to make it sound more Romance-ish (e.g. /xʷ/ to /kʷ/ in every question word). And here's an example of the sound changes and one of the rules mentioned at the beginning:

/tuŋɡɔːniz wiːdiːnɔːːz*/ <tungōniz wīdīnôz> [->] /tuŋgoːnis wiːdiːnoːs/ <tungōnis vīdīnōs> = "Latin Languages"

*wīdīnôz is the equivalent of latīnum. Since latīnum is derived from Latium which is most likely derived from latus ("wide"), wīdīnôz is derived from Wīdiją/wīdaz ("wide"). I haven't found a good equivalent for Romance yet because I - obviously - still need a Germanic city for Rome that will be the base for the word.

Next steps:
  • Deriving the vocabulary
  • Applying the sound changes
  • ?
That's it for now. Thanks for reading and I hoped you enjoyed it! [<3]
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by qwed117 »

I'm unsurprised at the fact that Sardinia is in the corner, in Iceland. I can't wait to see what comes of this. It sounds interesting
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Anwelda »

Awesome project you have here. I'm also very interesting to see how all this will go.
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Creyeditor »

I really really really like it ♪ ♫
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Egerius »

Creyeditor wrote:I really really really like it ♪ ♫
Me too.
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by shimobaatar »

I can only echo what others have said; I can't wait to see more of this fascinating idea!
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Sumelic »

Interesting idea. I like the idea of giving each language in the real world an "equivalent" alternate in your conworld.

What resources are you looking at for the sound changes between Vulgar Latin and Romance languages?
ixals wrote: eu, iu [->] o
The last sound change might look a bit weird but that's the only way to have a short o in Vulgar Germanic thanks to that damn o/a-merger in Proto-Germanic. And I really needed the short o. No short "o"s, no Spanish "ue"s and what would Spanish be without it's "ue"s?
Yeah, it does look quite weird to me... I wouldn't expect a diphthong to develop to a short vowel. I don't like that sound change. Most Germanic languages seem to have regained short o anyway; maybe you could look at the various sources for this rather than just using an arbitrary sound change to get the right inventory? I think another alternative you should look at is conditional sound changes; all of the ones you've listed so far seem to be universal, which is not actually that common in my experience. It seems like it would be natural for [ɑ] to be rounded to [ɔ] in labial/pre-nasal/velar contexts, or for to be lowered to [ɔ] in some contexts (maybe next to /r/?).

But anyway, maybe you don't want to spend much time working out the details of this first change; it might be more interesting to work on the later developments.

What are your plans for grammatical development, such as case and verb conjugations? Will this also parallel Romance?
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Shemtov »

When I saw this thread I thought it was going to go in different direction: What if the Roman borders didn't extend as far as they did, allowing Germanic languages to take hold in those regions instead of Romance ones?
If I had resources on Proto-West-Germanic, I would do something like, say, Gallia Belgae was not conquered in the Gallic Wars, and thus a Germanic 'Belgian" language exists, spoken not only in Walloonia, but also in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Picardy, and North Champagne, which would not be part of France. Do people think that's a good idea, and if so, could I be pointed in the direction of resources on West Germanic history?
(Sorry, ixals, for "hijacking" your thread. I do really like this idea, and will be following it.)
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Ælfwine »

And I must say you'll get a lot of support from me on this project. It is interesting because the reverse of this has been attempted (to an extent) with the conlang Þrjótrunn. So I'd definitely take a look at that.
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Lambuzhao »

:rom: :rom: The perfect :con: Summer Project... for the next ten true summers!
[:P] :mrgreen: [<3]
All the other loanwords coming from Greek etc stay the same. The only problem I have are the Arabic loanwords in the Iberian languages and the Hungarian/Turkic loanwords in Romanian because I think I need a equivalent for them so maybe someone on here has an idea for that.
:idea:
As much as I [<3] :ell:, and The Byzantine Empire/Culture was such a linchpin back then, I might suggest :rom: Romany? I was thinking Armenian/some Indo-Aryan satem language, but that's too far East.... maybe the Rom :rom: ? :wat:

Or Hittite [}:D] [B)]

For Arabic's replacement, why not the Huns? Or, at least, Magyar/Turk replacements, since they were the big foreign invading force from the East, as compared to Arabic's invading force from the South{west: Morocco} into Spain. ???

Hungarian/Turkic loanwords into Romanian [->] Arabic (?) {flipping the compass 'round a bit)

Mebbe too simplistic?

Still, a wonderful thought experiment!
GREAT luck with this one!
[:D]

I - obviously - still need a Germanic city for Rome that will be the base for the word.
:idea:
Well, Rome's name is based on the semi-divine set of twins Romulus and Remus.
While my first thought were the god-brothers who survive Ragnarok - Höðr and Baldr, but that seemed too epichoric to be Proto-Germanic.

Here are some {prolly more plausible} Germanic possibilities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcis_(gods)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hengist_and_Horsa
:?: :?: :?:

If you chose one of the above twins, then you'd have stallions or elk as the totem, rather than the wolf (‽) [o.O]

Two Tarpans
http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com/ ... pscale.jpg

Two Elk
http://images.fineartamerica.com/images ... -monke.jpg
Last edited by Lambuzhao on 04 Jul 2016 09:46, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Lambuzhao »

:idea:

Maybe Bulgar or Chuvash might be closer to the Hunnic (?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuvash_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgar_language

:?:
:wat:
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Shemtov »

ixals wrote:. The only problem I have are the Arabic loanwords in the Iberian languages and the Hungarian/Turkic loanwords in Romanian because I think I need a equivalent for them so maybe someone on here has an idea for that.

May I suggest switching Finnic for Saamic as the Basque equivalent (makes more sense given the geographical distribution of Saamic before Germanic expansion See this map, where the yellowish areas are the historical distribution of Saamic: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _map_4.PNG), then make Finnic the Arabic equivalent
As for Turkic/Hungarian influence on "English", what's being spoken across the channel, in "France"? You could also make Brythonic, specifically, the Slavic equivalent, and have the Godeilic languages be the Turkic/Hungarian of the English Romanian
It would also be cool to have a large Jewish population in Sweden, as that's Spain, thus producing a Ladino equivalent.
And what about having a Rhaeto-Romance equivalent in the Frisian speaking areas?
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by ixals »

Comments (I hope I didn't miss any!)
Spoiler:
qwed117 wrote:I'm unsurprised at the fact that Sardinia is in the corner, in Iceland. I can't wait to see what comes of this. It sounds interesting
Anwelda wrote:Awesome project you have here. I'm also very interesting to see how all this will go.
Creyeditor wrote:I really really really like it ♪ ♫
Egerius wrote:Me too.
shimobaatar wrote:I can only echo what others have said; I can't wait to see more of this fascinating idea!
I want to thank everyone of you for those nice comments! [<3] I hope it'll stay interesting!
Ælfwine wrote:And I must say you'll get a lot of support from me on this project. It is interesting because the reverse of this has been attempted (to an extent) with the conlang Þrjótrunn. So I'd definitely take a look at that.
Thank you! Oh yeah, I already now Þrjótrunn and I really like it. It's been an interesting read! [:D]
Sumelic wrote:Interesting idea. I like the idea of giving each language in the real world an "equivalent" alternate in your conworld.

What resources are you looking at for the sound changes between Vulgar Latin and Romance languages?
Thanks! My first choice is definitely the Index Diachronica, followed by some pages on Wikipedia because they're quite detailed in describing some sound changes. I also use documents I find on the internet. I remember a good one on Portuguese sound changes but I still have to find it again. [:(]
Sumelic wrote:Yeah, it does look quite weird to me... I wouldn't expect a diphthong to develop to a short vowel. I don't like that sound change. Most Germanic languages seem to have regained short o anyway; maybe you could look at the various sources for this rather than just using an arbitrary sound change to get the right inventory? I think another alternative you should look at is conditional sound changes; all of the ones you've listed so far seem to be universal, which is not actually that common in my experience. It seems like it would be natural for [ɑ] to be rounded to [ɔ] in labial/pre-nasal/velar contexts, or for to be lowered to [ɔ] in some contexts (maybe next to /r/?).

Well, I thought it could go like this and I think this makes it look more likelier?
/iu/ [->] /eu/ [->] /ø/ [->] /o/
I know Germanic languages gained /o/ when /u/ followed an /a/ so I could do that. Maybe I'll do both? Because both ways aren't producing a lot of short o's so adding both of them increases the number of short o.
Sumelic wrote:What are your plans for grammatical development, such as case and verb conjugations? Will this also parallel Romance?
The cases will disappear for sure, except in languages like Romanian which retained two cases. I still have to think about what cases will be the base for the Romance forms though! The verb on the other hand have to get way more tenses to mimic the Romance languages and I'll try my best to do it. But if it doesn't work out, there will be less tenses.
Shemtov wrote:(Sorry, ixals, for "hijacking" your thread. I do really like this idea, and will be following it.)
I have no problem with that since it didn't turn my thread into a discussion about your idea. [xP] But I saw that you already worked on that Germanic "Belgian" and other Romance-ised (?) Hellenic conlangs! I'm happy to see that I have inspired someone. [:$] [<3]
Shemtov wrote:May I suggest switching Finnic for Saamic as the Basque equivalent [...], then make Finnic the Arabic equivalent.
[...] You could also make Brythonic, specifically, the Slavic equivalent, and have the Godeilic languages be the Turkic/Hungarian of the English Romanian.
Great ideas! I already thought about changing Finnic to Saamic for the Basque equivalent but I didn't come up with Finnic for Arabic. [:'(] I also like the ideas with Brythonic/Godeilic but I have to see if I find enough resources on that.
Shemtov wrote:It would also be cool to have a large Jewish population in Sweden, as that's Spain, thus producing a Ladino equivalent.
And what about having a Rhaeto-Romance equivalent in the Frisian speaking areas?
I don't believe I'll be able to do every minor Romance language but I can least say where they could/should be spoken. And yes, I already put the Rhaeto-Romance languages into the Frisian speaking areas but I didn't add that on the map because they're too small languages and I wanted to focus on the bigger ones at first!
Lambuzhao wrote::rom: :rom: The perfect :con: Summer Project... for the next ten true summers!
[:P] :mrgreen: [<3]
[...]
Still, a wonderful thought experiment!
GREAT luck with this one!
[:D]
Thank you so much! [:$] [<3]
Lambuzhao wrote::idea:
As much as I [<3] :ell:, and The Byzantine Empire/Culture was such a linchpin back then, I might suggest :rom: Romany? I was thinking Armenian/some Indo-Aryan satem language, but that's too far East.... maybe the Rom :rom: ? :wat:

Or Hittite [}:D] [B)]
Hm, I don't know a lot about those languages but isn't the Roms vocabulary heavily borrowed from other languages? That might make it hard to borrow stuff from there. I think I'll stay with Greek for now because of the available resources. :P
Lambuzhao wrote:For Arabic's replacement, why not the Huns? Or, at least, Magyar/Turk replacements, since they were the big foreign invading force from the East, as compared to Arabic's invading force from the South{west: Morocco} into Spain. ???

Hungarian/Turkic loanwords into Romanian [->] Arabic (?) {flipping the compass 'round a bit)
Uh, I like those ideas! I think it's possible for the Hungarians to reach Scandinavia. But as much as I like the "Hungarian/Turkic [->] Arabic" idea, I'm not sure if the Arabs could go so far north in real life ... well, but this scenario isn't the most realistic one so I think the Arabs can totally do that in this scenario :roll:
Lambuzhao wrote: :idea:
Well, Rome's name is based on the semi-divine set of twins Romulus and Remus.
[...]
If you chose one of the above twins, then you'd have stallions or elk as the totem, rather than the wolf (‽) [o.O]
Lambuzhao wrote::idea:

Maybe Bulgar or Chuvash might be closer to the Hunnic (?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuvash_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulgar_language

:?:
:wat:
Wow, thank you for all your suggestions! [<3] I always thought it was a myth that the name was actually based on them. [:D] But to be honest, I really like elk as the totem. [xD]


Vulgar Germanic Verbs: Present and Future

To be honest, verbs are already the first big problem in this project. Germanic has only two tenses with both indicative and subjunctive mood and a passive voice which is practically useless because the Romance languages lost the original passive verb forms. Latin on the other hand, has way more tenses than Germanic which is only a problem if I want to have the Romance Germanic languages to have that many tenses as well ... and I kinda want that. [:'(] And if I apply the sound changes from Proto-Germanic to Vulgar Germanic, the persons and even the tenses in some cases start to merge. Therefore I could use some help in the future to come up with ways to derive the tenses, but for now I start with the present tense Proto-Germanic already has and the future tense, which will be derived the same way as it was in Vulgar Latin.

[hr][/hr]
Present

In Proto-Germanic, the weak and the strong verbs had slightly different endings attached to it. But due to the sound changes to Vulgar Germanic, these differences in conjugation were smaller than before. In this post, I feel like I tend to use a rather western version of Vulgar Latin (or an eastern version of Vulgar Germanic [B)]) regarding the sound changes.

The strong verb endings for present tense were the following:
-ō, -izi, -idi, -amaz, -id, -andi [->] -ō, -is, -id, -amas, -it, -ant [->] -o, -es, -e, -ˈa.mas, -e, -an

While for the weak verbs different endings existed depending on the class:
class 1: -(i)jō, -īsi, -īþi, -(i)jamaz, -īþ, -(i)janþi [->] -iō, -īs, -īd, -iamas, -īt, -iant [->] -jo, -is, -i, -ˈja.mas, -i, -jan
class 2: -ō, -ōsi, -ōþi, -ōmaz, -ōþ, -ōnþi [->] -ō, -ōs, -ōd, -ōmas, -ōt, -ōnt [->] -o, -os, -o, -ˈo.mas, -o, -on
class 3a: -(i)jō, -aisi, -aiþi, -(i)jamaz, -aiþ, -(i)janþi [->] -iō, -aes, -aed, -iamas, -aet, -iant [->] -jo, -ɛs, -ɛ, -ˈja.mas, -ɛ, -jan
class 3b: -ō, -aisi, -aiþi, -āmaz, -aiþ, -ānþi [->] -ō, -aes, -aed, -āmas, -aet, -ānt [->] -o, -ɛs, -ɛ, -ˈa.mas, -ɛ, -an
class 4: -nō, -nōsi, -nōþi, -namaz, -naþ, -nanþi [->] -nō, -nōs, -nōd, -namas, -nat, -nant [->] -no, -nos, -no, -ˈna.mas, -na, -nan


I have to add that I added a sound change that deletes word-final i so the verb is stressed on the root most of the time (plus it does looks more Latin).

In every conjugation except for the weak class 4, the second person singular and plural have merged into one. To prevent this, my first thought was to add the second person plural pronoun *jūz/*jīz at the end, but then I remembered that there was this handy Proto-Germanic thing called dual. The second person dual also resembles the Latin second person plural more so here is their development:

-adiz, -(i)jaþiz, -ōþiz, -(i)jaþiz, -āþiz, -naþiz [->] -adis, -iadis, -ōdis, -iadis, -ādis, -nadis [->] -ˈa.es, -ˈja.es, -ˈo.es, -ˈja.es, -ˈa.es, -ˈna.es

The difference between the weak class 3 verbs and the strong verbs is quite small overall. The only difference is the /j/ added before some endings that's not even there in all weak class 3 verbs and the height of /e/ and /ɛ/, so I'll merge the ending of these verbs into one. The weak class 4 verbs will be reanalysed so that the /n/ belongs to the ending and their conjugation will change to one of the other conjugations. This leaves three main conjugations for the present tense in Vulgar Germanic which are named after their vowel in the second person singular ending for the moment.

e-conj.: -o, -es, -e, -ˈa.mas, -ˈa.es, -an
i-conj.: -jo, -is, -i, -ˈja.mas, -ˈja.es, -jan
o-conj.: -o, -os, -o, -ˈo.mas, -ˈo.es, -on

Of course they are irregular verbs. For example "to be" (which is non-existant yet because Proto-Germanic has two present tenses for two be and I have to pick which ones to use [xP]) or a lot of the common preterite-present verbs of Proto-Germanic as well as "to have" which already exists! And it's the only verb to do so! Hurray! The Vulgar Germanic word for "to have" derives from *habjaną, an original weak class 3a verb. Therefore the expected forms for this verb would be:

abjo, abɛs, abɛ, abjamas, abɛ, abjan [->] abjo, abes, abe, abjamas, abjaes, abjan

But in Vulgar Germanic, certain forms were shortened in normal speech just like they were in Vulgar Latin. The singular person as well as the third person plural had a shorter while the rest of the plural didn't. These shortenings yield the following present tense conjugation of the verb "to have":

to have: ai/au, as, a, abjamas, abjaes, an

Funnily enough, the shortened forms are exactly the same as in Vulgar Latin. So it's safe to say that "I have" in Germanic Italian is ho and that "they have" in Germanic Portuguese is hão (well, not exactly since it'll kind of get replaced) for example. I have to add that the first person singular wasn't shortened according to one site but it looks like it was in the daughter languages in two different ways.

[hr][/hr]
Future

And now that I have the present tense of "to have", I can create the Romance future tense quite easily. Romance languages formed the future tense by combining the infinitive of a verb with the present tense of "to have". At first this meant "to have to" but then it turned into the future tense. I'll do the same in Vulgar Germanic although I'm not quite sure if this construction would actually work in Proto-Germanic because English adds a to and German as well (zu + infintive). Anyways, we'll pretend it just works this way in Vulgar Germanic. [;)]

*habjaną + *habaisi = "You have to have" = "You will have"

There are multiple possibilties for adding these two words together which come out mostly the same in Vulgar Germanic. The nasal vowel at the end of the infinitive will either turn into a combination of a vowel and a nasal, or it will lose its nasalisation. It could also disappear at all because the two syllables sound too similar (-aną- > -anan- > -an). But I think I'll go with the second version. The vowel will simply lose its nasal quality.

*habjanahabaisi [->] habianahabaes [->] abjanaabɛs [->] abjanas [a.bjaˈnas]

The first and second person plural will shorten in this case and only their endings will be added. If the /j/ of these two forms will remain, has to be decided yet. There would be interesting changes with /j/ but I think without /j/ it's more regular and therefore more fitting since the actual Romance forms are regular as well. Here is an example of the Vulgar Germanic future tense of "to have":

*habjaną + *habjō [->] abjanai/abjanau
*habjaną + *habaisi [->] abjanas
*habjaną + *habaiþi [->] abjana
*habjaną + *habjamaz [->] abjan(j)amas
*habjaną + *habjaþiz [->] abjan(j)aes
*habjaną + *habjanþi [->] abjanan


Due to the infintives of Proto-Germanic, there are only two sets of "conjugations" in the future tense. The e-conjugation and the i-conjugation of the present tense merge into one while the o-conjugation remains seperate.

e/i-conj: -anai/-anau, -anas, -ana, -an(j)amas, -an(j)aes, -anan
o-conj.: -onai/-onau, -onas, -ona, -on(j)amas, -on(j)aes, -onan

[hr][/hr]
That's it for this post! Well, kinda. I thought about giving the languages some names and abbreviations so I don't have to write them out all the time. What do you think about them? [:$]
Spoiler:
CG = Classical (Latin) Germanic
VG = Vulgar Germanic
Gmc. = Germance = Romancised Germanic family
Germuguês = Germanic Portuguese
Germañol = Germanic Spanish
Germalà = Germanic Catalan
Germitan = Germanic Occitan
Germançais = Germanic French
Germiano = Germanic Italian
Germardu = Germanic Sardinian
Germână = Germanic Romanian

Thanks for reading and I hoped you enjoyed it! [<3]
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by shimobaatar »

ixals wrote: To be honest, verbs are already the first big problem in this project. Germanic has only two tenses with both indicative and subjunctive mood and a passive voice which is practically useless because the Romance languages lost the original passive verb forms. Latin on the other hand, has way more tenses than Germanic which is only a problem if I want to have the Romance Germanic languages to have that many tenses as well ... and I kinda want that. [:'(] And if I apply the sound changes from Proto-Germanic to Vulgar Germanic, the persons and even the tenses in some cases start to merge. Therefore I could use some help in the future to come up with ways to derive the tenses, but for now I start with the present tense Proto-Germanic already has and the future tense, which will be derived the same way as it was in Vulgar Latin.
Perhaps repurpose the passive voice forms and use periphrastic constructions to create new distinctions and reinforce old distinctions, similar to what you've done here with the future tense?
ixals wrote: That's it for this post! Well, kinda. I thought about giving the languages some names and abbreviations so I don't have to write them out all the time. What do you think about them? [:$]
Spoiler:
CG = Classical (Latin) Germanic
VG = Vulgar Germanic
Gmc. = Germance = Romancised Germanic family
Germuguês = Germanic Portuguese
Germañol = Germanic Spanish
Germalà = Germanic Catalan
Germitan = Germanic Occitan
Germançais = Germanic French
Germiano = Germanic Italian
Germardu = Germanic Sardinian
Germână = Germanic Romanian
Thanks for reading and I hoped you enjoyed it! [<3]
They look good to me! In fact, all of this looks good to me! I greatly enjoyed reading what you've posted so far, and I can't wait for more. Sorry I don't have anything more specific to say; you present things quite straightforwardly and clearly.
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Ephraim »

Sumelic wrote:
ixals wrote: eu, iu [->] o
The last sound change might look a bit weird but that's the only way to have a short o in Vulgar Germanic thanks to that damn o/a-merger in Proto-Germanic. And I really needed the short o. No short "o"s, no Spanish "ue"s and what would Spanish be without it's "ue"s?
Yeah, it does look quite weird to me... I wouldn't expect a diphthong to develop to a short vowel. I don't like that sound change. Most Germanic languages seem to have regained short o anyway; maybe you could look at the various sources for this rather than just using an arbitrary sound change to get the right inventory? I think another alternative you should look at is conditional sound changes; all of the ones you've listed so far seem to be universal, which is not actually that common in my experience. It seems like it would be natural for [ɑ] to be rounded to [ɔ] in labial/pre-nasal/velar contexts, or for to be lowered to [ɔ] in some contexts (maybe next to /r/?).
Most Germanic languages developed a new /o/ from a-umlaut of *u, probably starting in the first century. It seems reasonable that Vulgar Germanic would have this change, although maybe not all dialects (compare the difference in vowel developments in the Romance family).

Gothic and Gutnish lacks a-umlaut but they do have a lowering of /u/ before /r/. In Gutnish, the lowering only occurs before rC.
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by ixals »

Comments:
Spoiler:
shimobaatar wrote:Perhaps repurpose the passive voice forms and use periphrastic constructions to create new distinctions and reinforce old distinctions, similar to what you've done here with the future tense?
Repurposing the passive forms sounds like a possible idea. Do you know how such a shift in meaning could happen?

I will most likely use such constructions for most of the other tenses but it's quite hard to find good verbs to use for those because I don't like the sound of the majority. [:'(]
shimobaatar wrote:They look good to me! In fact, all of this looks good to me! I greatly enjoyed reading what you've posted so far, and I can't wait for more. Sorry I don't have anything more specific to say; you present things quite straightforwardly and clearly.
Oh thank you again, shimo! [:D] It's good to see that I explained everything good enough so there aren't any questions!

Vulgar Germanic Adjectives and Adverbs

While the verbs were driving me to despair the last days, I focussed on the rather simpler adjectives and adverbs. This will be a rather short part because they don't need a big explanation, so I'll just start. And again, I'll be concentrating more on the Western Romance languages for now because I'm more familiar with them.

Adjectives

Proto-Germanic had three types of adjectives (a-stems, u-stems and i-stems) whose only differences were mostly in the nominative and accusative forms while the other three cases were the same in all three types. The a-stem was the most common declension, while u- and i-stems were fairly rare so in the Germance languages some of those stems were changed to a normal a-stem. Additionally, a single adjective could have two declensions with one having a definite meaning (weak) and the other one having an indefinite meaning (strong). In Vulgar Germanic however, the weak declension fell out of use in favour of the strong declension. Here is an example of the a-stem adjective *gōdaz:

NOM: gōdaz, gōdai [->] gōdas, gōdae [->] godas, godɛ
ACC: gōdanǭ, gǭdanz [->] gōdanō, gōdans [->] godano, godas
GEN: gōdas/-is, gōdaizǫ̂ [->] gōdas, gōdaesō [->] godas, godɛso
DAT: gōdammai, gōdaimaz [->] gōdammae, gōdaemas [->] godammɛ, godɛmas
INS: gōdanō, gōdaimiz [->] gōdanō, gōdaemis [->] godano, godɛmes


The problem here is that due to the sound changes, the cases didn't merge as much as they did from Latin to Vulgar Latin. Some of this can be fixed by replacing the cases by prepositions that use more common cases like the dative or the accusative while the instrumental falls out of use just by being very rare. The first grammatical in VG however is the merger of nominative and accusative. These cases are the same in feminine and neuter adjectives after the sound changes (-o, -os for female; -a, -o for neuter). Masculine adjectives take the suffix -as in both singular and plural. Now the analogical changes kick in. On the basis of female adjectives, male adjectives lose their final /s/ in the singular and neuter adjectives gain an /s/ in the plural.

m: -a, -as
f: -o, -os
n: -a, -os

The other three cases (genitive, dative and instrumental) merge into one as well with the dative being the base form for this new case because the instrumental has been lost and been replaced by prepositions and the genitive is replaced by prepositions as well but also by this new merged case.

m: -amɛ, -ɛma
f: -ɛso, -ɛma
n: -amɛ, -ɛma

As you can see, the masculine and neuter forms are the same in this case. In the daughter languages, this and the identical nominative singular will strengthen the merger of masculine and neuter adjectives as well as nouns. "Western" Germance languages will lose the dative-based case and will only use the nominative/accusative-based case while Germanic Romanian keeps on using both cases for its nominative/accusative and genitive/dative system.

The former i-stems will be declined the same as the a-stems with the only diffence being an -e as the ending for the nominative/accusative singular and an added /j/ in front of all the other suffixes. U-stems will be declined like an i-stem in the genitive/dative case and the plural nominative/accusative case whereas the singular of that case ends in -o in every gender.

I'll end this section with some basic Vulgar Germanic adjectives so there's at least some vocabulary and not just grammar. [:P]
Spoiler:
goda (a) - good
oβ(e)la (a) - bad
or: falo (u) - bad
ɛta (a) - hot
kalda (a) - cold
alda (a) - old
nɔja/neβja (a) - new
jonga (a) - young
alla (a) - all
ardo (u) - hard
grone (i) - green
Every adjective is listed in its singular nominative/accusative neuter form.

Adverbs

This part was fairly easier than the one before. Romance languages form most of their adverbs by combining the female version of an adjectives with a suffix stemming from Latin mentem (mind). This procedure happens in VG as well, just not with the respective word for "mind" because *mundiz, *gaistaz and *gaminþiją don't yield too good results in my opinion. Now there are two ways I could use to derive adverbs from adjectives. One way is doing it like English does with adding -ly from PG *-līkaz. The other way would be using a seperate noun that indicates manner and adding that to the adjective, just like VL basically does. Many Germanic languages use a descendant of PG *wīsō (Swedish -vis, German -(er)weise, English -wise) for that so that's what I'll be using too. At first, this adverbial construction was used in instrumental but since the instrumental and the nominative of *wīsō are identical, the nominative form of the adjective became preferred.

-aizō wīsō [->] -aesō vīsō [->] -ō vīsō [->] -oviso


Thanks for reading! [<3]
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Learning: :gbr:, :chn:, :tur:, :fra:

Zhér·dûn a tonal Germanic conlang

old stuff: Цiски | Noattȯč | Tungōnis Vīdīnōs
Ephraim
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Ephraim »

If you use a more speculative reconstruction of PG, you can have more tenses. Even though all attested Germanic languages, as far as we can tell, have a simple Present:Preterite system of synthetic tense–aspect combinations (from the PIE present and perfect respectively), I don't think it's out of the question that some further PIE verb forms survived into the Proto-Germanic period. It's quite possible that the reduction of the tense system was caused by the loss of many unstressed vowel in the early Germanic languages.

Modern reconstructions of Proto-Germanic, like Ringe's (on which Wiktionary/Wikipedia seems to rely to a large extent) retain most vowels of late PIE. Final high vowels and vocalized laryngeals have been lost. This means that the PIE primary and secondary endings would have been (mostly) distinct if they survived into the PG period.

However, all attested Germanic languages (possibly exluding a few early inscriptions) had already lost short vowels in the second syllable of inflectional endings (or rather the third syllable of a word, but inflectional endings were apparently analogically restored). And with the exception of Early Runic/Proto-Norse (were the corpus is rather limited), all attested Germanic languages have gone even further in the loss of unstressed vowels. This would have caused most secondary endings to merge with the perfect or primary endings. But they could have remained before that.

Kortland speculates that an imperfect and a pluperfect might have existed in Germanic, formed from the present and perfect stems respectively, with the addition of secondary endings. Kortland traces some West Germanic past endings (which differ from North and East Germanic) to the pluperfect.
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstr ... sequence=1

So this way you get a counterpart of the Latin present, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect. You could perhaps form a future perfect (which survived as a future subjunctive in Spanish and Portuguese) from the perfect stem with primary endings.

You may still run into problems if you lose a lot of vowels, which may cause a lot of mergers.
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by shimobaatar »

ixals wrote:Repurposing the passive forms sounds like a possible idea. Do you know how such a shift in meaning could happen?

I will most likely use such constructions for most of the other tenses but it's quite hard to find good verbs to use for those because I don't like the sound of the majority. [:'(]
I may be wrong, but doesn't the passive take on past-tense connotations in some languages?

I'm sorry to hear that.
ixals wrote: While the verbs were driving me to despair the last days, I focussed on the rather simpler adjectives and adverbs. This will be a rather short part because they don't need a big explanation, so I'll just start. And again, I'll be concentrating more on the Western Romance languages for now because I'm more familiar with them.
[:'(] Regarding the verbs, but hooray for adjectives and adverbs!

As usual, everything's been presented very well, and I don't have any real questions. However, would it be possible to see some examples of adjectival declension using some of the vocabulary words?
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by ixals »

Comments:
Spoiler:
Ephraim wrote:If you use a more speculative reconstruction of PG, you can have more tenses. Even though all attested Germanic languages, as far as we can tell, have a simple Present:Preterite system of synthetic tense–aspect combinations (from the PIE present and perfect respectively), I don't think it's out of the question that some further PIE verb forms survived into the Proto-Germanic period. It's quite possible that the reduction of the tense system was caused by the loss of many unstressed vowel in the early Germanic languages.

Modern reconstructions of Proto-Germanic, like Ringe's (on which Wiktionary/Wikipedia seems to rely to a large extent) retain most vowels of late PIE. Final high vowels and vocalized laryngeals have been lost. This means that the PIE primary and secondary endings would have been (mostly) distinct if they survived into the PG period.

However, all attested Germanic languages (possibly exluding a few early inscriptions) had already lost short vowels in the second syllable of inflectional endings (or rather the third syllable of a word, but inflectional endings were apparently analogically restored). And with the exception of Early Runic/Proto-Norse (were the corpus is rather limited), all attested Germanic languages have gone even further in the loss of unstressed vowels. This would have caused most secondary endings to merge with the perfect or primary endings. But they could have remained before that.

Kortland speculates that an imperfect and a pluperfect might have existed in Germanic, formed from the present and perfect stems respectively, with the addition of secondary endings. Kortland traces some West Germanic past endings (which differ from North and East Germanic) to the pluperfect.
https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstr ... sequence=1

So this way you get a counterpart of the Latin present, imperfect, perfect and pluperfect. You could perhaps form a future perfect (which survived as a future subjunctive in Spanish and Portuguese) from the perfect stem with primary endings.

You may still run into problems if you lose a lot of vowels, which may cause a lot of mergers.
Thank you for this detailed comment! On one hand it was extremely helpful because it will make the whole tense-problem way easier but on the other hand it really confused me. I kind of get the main points but in the end I have no idea on what the Proto-Germanic verb forms would have looked like if they existed. (Do you know how that would look like? [:$] [:D]) So I can't derive them at the moment but I try to research a bit more. Thank you again!
shimobaatar wrote:I may be wrong, but doesn't the passive take on past-tense connotations in some languages?
Ah, ok, thank you! I don't have a lot of experience with passive forms but it sounds likely, I have to say!
shimobaatar wrote:However, would it be possible to see some examples of adjectival declension using some of the vocabulary words?
You might've already seen it, but there's a table further down! I hope that's what you wanted to see! [:D]

Since shimo asked for examples of adjectival declension, I made a table using one adjective for each declension class! [:D]

Image

Vulgar Germanic Personal Pronouns

All VG pronouns simply derive from the Proto-Germanic pronouns. For reference, these can be found here. I think this doesn't need a lot of explanation so I'll just say something about the pronouns with multiple forms in the table. The accusative forms showing variation between /e/ and /ɛ/ arise from the stressed and unstressed form of Proto-Germanics accusative forms. The Germance language will most likely inherit the unstressed forms (those ending in /e/) because in normal sentences, they usually don't receive stress. The nominative form of the first person singular also derives from stressed and unstressed forms as well from the form *eka which is listed in the respective Wiktionary article. This will only be used for Germance language in which *ɛ and *e don't yield good sounding results for the first person singular, one of the most used words (for example in French *cough* /wa/ and /je/ *cough*). The first person plural shows two different forms for stressed and unstresses situations as well. The second person plural from Proto-Germanic would be jus, but as in West Germanic I added alternatives with the same vowels as the first person plural pronoun. Another argument for that change was the similar sounding nos and vos in (Vulgar) Latin. The only difference in the other forms of the second person plural is the /u/ in the second syllable.

Image

The nominative forms of the third person don't exist yet, because I have to find a good equivalent for VLs illa, illo etc in VG.

Questions

No, not on how to form questions but some questions for the reader because I'd like to have some opinions/help on some things! [:D] I'd be happy if some people could help me here.

1. When changing Proto-Germanic words to make them sound more Latin, I have a sound change that changes /θ/ to either /d/ or /t/ depending on which sounds better for the word. I had the idea to actually specify the rules for that. I'm thinking about changing it to /d/ at the beginning of a word and to /t/ everywhere else. Changing it to /t/ between two vowels for examples is better than to /d/ because of the loss of intervocalic /d/ in a lot of Romance languages. But then changing it to /t/ would revert previous Germanic sound changes so I'm not sure about this. Opinions?

2. I'm thinking about changing something about the infinitive. In Proto-Germanic it is *-aną most of the time and it would be -ana in VG. But I don't like the outcomes for the Germance languages because its too long in my opinion, so I'm thinking about changing it irregularlytoo *-ane in VG. So the ending in Germanic Spanish (or Germañol) would change from -ana to -án and in Germanic Portuguese (or Germuguês) from -am to -ão. Opinions?

3. Does anyone want to see vocabulary on some specific topics? I need some words to build some example sentences and I can't decide where I want to begin.

Thank you for reading again! [:)]
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Re: Tungōnis Vīdīnōs - Proto-Germanic goes Romance!

Post by Creyeditor »

ixals wrote: Vulgar Germanic Personal Pronouns

All VG pronouns simply derive from the Proto-Germanic pronouns. For reference, these can be found here. I think this doesn't need a lot of explanation so I'll just say something about the pronouns with multiple forms in the table. The accusative forms showing variation between /e/ and /ɛ/ arise from the stressed and unstressed form of Proto-Germanics accusative forms. The Germance language will most likely inherit the unstressed forms (those ending in /e/) because in normal sentences, they usually don't receive stress. The nominative form of the first person singular also derives from stressed and unstressed forms as well from the form *eka which is listed in the respective Wiktionary article. This will only be used for Germance language in which *ɛ and *e don't yield good sounding results for the first person singular, one of the most used words (for example in French *cough* /wa/ and /je/ *cough*). The first person plural shows two different forms for stressed and unstresses situations as well. The second person plural from Proto-Germanic would be jus, but as in West Germanic I added alternatives with the same vowels as the first person plural pronoun. Another argument for that change was the similar sounding nos and vos in (Vulgar) Latin. The only difference in the other forms of the second person plural is the /u/ in the second syllable.

Image

The nominative forms of the third person don't exist yet, because I have to find a good equivalent for VLs illa, illo etc in VG.
You could use the stressed forms for deriving emphatic pronouns as they occur e.g. in French <moi> vs. <je>.

ixals wrote: 1. When changing Proto-Germanic words to make them sound more Latin, I have a sound change that changes /θ/ to either /d/ or /t/ depending on which sounds better for the word. I had the idea to actually specify the rules for that. I'm thinking about changing it to /d/ at the beginning of a word and to /t/ everywhere else. Changing it to /t/ between two vowels for examples is better than to /d/ because of the loss of intervocalic /d/ in a lot of Romance languages. But then changing it to /t/ would revert previous Germanic sound changes so I'm not sure about this. Opinions?

2. I'm thinking about changing something about the infinitive. In Proto-Germanic it is *-aną most of the time and it would be -ana in VG. But I don't like the outcomes for the Germance languages because its too long in my opinion, so I'm thinking about changing it irregularlytoo *-ane in VG. So the ending in Germanic Spanish (or Germañol) would change from -ana to -án and in Germanic Portuguese (or Germuguês) from -am to -ão. Opinions?

3. Does anyone want to see vocabulary on some specific topics? I need some words to build some example sentences and I can't decide where I want to begin.
1. I think if you look at naturalistic sound changes, intervocalic /d/ and initial /t/ would be more natural if you view them as intervocalic lenition and word initial fortition. On the other hand having a intervocalic lenition apply twice would be a shame [:(]
Maybe there is some other possibility. /θ/ could become /t/ at the end of a word and /d/ in all other positions? I really don't know [:S]
2. I thought the infinitives in Germanic languages were shortened in every Germanic branch, so I think irregularly doing something to produce nicer outcomes is totally okay.
3. I like grammar more than vocabulary [:P]
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