Borish language

Borish language
Borishe spreake, borishe spraak
Pronunciation	[ˈbɔːɾɪʃə ˈspɾɛːkə/ˈspɾɑːk(ə)]
Native to	parts of Borland
Native speakers	c. 4.8 million c. 2 million
Language family	Euclean Nordano-Weranic Weranic Borish language
Standard forms	Rÿkshuis standard Borish Helman standard Borish
Writing system	Borish alphabet (Solarian script)
Official status
Official language in	Borland Euclean Community
Regulated by	Rÿkshuis Institute for the Borish language (of the Linguistic Faculty of the University of Newstead), advisory
Language codes
ISO 639-1	bo
ISO 639-2	bor
ISO 639-3	bor

The Borish language (/ˈbɔːrɪʃ/; natively: borishe spreake, borishe spraak/sprake or just borish [ˈbɔːɾɪʃ]) is a language belonging to its own branch within the Weranic languages. It is the primary official language of Borland, where it is spoken predominantly in the yends of North Hethland, Maynes-Yord and Midlands as well as parts of Lowlands-South Hethland. It is also one of the official languages of the Euclean Community.

Classification

Borish is usually classified as belonging to its own branch of the Weranic languages. Historically, it was often seen as belonging to the Estmero-Azmaran branch, although this is disputed due to the absense of some major features shared by all (other) Estmero-Azmaran languages, most prominently the palatalization of historic /k/ and /ɡ/ (compare Borish dagh with Estmerish day or Borish brigge to Estmerish bridge).
Whilst it was, historically, often argued that Borish is a dialect of Estmerish that must be descended from Old Estmerish and that split during the Middle Estmerish period, as Modern Borish and Middle Borish are remarkably similar in many ways, the fact that Old Borish writings are much more similar to Middle Estmerish and Modern Borish (and at times, in fact, to Modern Estmerish) than to Old Estmerish speaks against that.

History

The question of where Old Borish, Middle Borish and Modern Borish start and end, respectively, is very blurry, as the Borish language has remained very conservative since its split from the other Weranic languages, with Old Borish still being largely intelligible to modern speakers, both in its written and spoken forms. The general consensus is that the Old Borish period spans from before the first written record of Borish until the unification of the Borish Kingdom in the 1050s, as it correlates with an explosion of Borish-language literature which had previously been sparse as well as with the change of certain common spellings through the standardization of the language. Middle Borish would then go on to be the written standard between around 1050 and the decline of Borish literature and identity during the beginning of the personal union with Estmere, starting around 1650 and being mostly finalized by around 1720. With Modern Borish only being considered a language in its own right again by the early 20^th century, with an official standard only being introduced in 1937, the general time frame between the end of Middle Borish and the beginning of Modern Borish was characterized by a blend of Middle Borish and contemporary Estmerish spelling conventions and is often referred to as intermediary Borish or transitional Borish.
Upon Independnece, only about 24% of Borish claimed to speak primarily Borish, although 39% claimed it to be their native language.

Standardization

The standardization of Borish orthography was officially discussed and decided upon in 1936, with two main orthographies having many proponents: the conservative standard of the Rÿkshuis Borish Dictionary and the more reformative Helman standard. Among the deciding elites, the former was preferred, although it was altered in the official orthography, for example by adding the letter ⟨þ⟩, choosing the digraph ⟨hv⟩ over ⟨wh⟩ or ⟨hw⟩ and completely removing the letter ⟨j⟩ as it was not used at all within the frameworks of Borish orthography.
In a 1940 spelling reform, the letter ⟨x⟩ and the digraph ⟨qu⟩ were replaced with the trigraph ⟨cks⟩ and the digraph ⟨kv⟩, respectively, in native words and words loaned from other Weranic languages. Following this, the only thing officially changing within Borish spelling itself was the digraph ⟨qu⟩ being changed to ⟨qv⟩ in analogy to ⟨kv⟩ and ⟨hv⟩.

Rÿkshuis Standard

The Rÿkshuis standard is based on the writing conventions and rules found in the works of pre-independence Borish author and politician Yoghen Rÿnman with features like a greater number of Weranian loan words and grammatical structures as well as Borish archaïcisms being (re)introduced. A prominent feature found in texts adhering closely to the Rÿkshuis standard is the similarity to Weranian declension rules on both indefinite and definite articles (an(er)/ane/an(et) and þer/þe//þet) and adjectives, including the partial presence of grammatical gender (compare the phrase ein großes Haus with an(et) greatet hus).

Helman Standard

The Helman standard is based on the spoken language of Borland. As such, declension is largely limited to verbs and nouns, with adjectives having two forms (for some writers merely one) and articles showing no declension at all.
Additionally, the pre-1936 Helman standard featured the complete removal of the letters C, X and Z as well as the digraphs QU, PH, RH and TH, as these were only used in loan words. In this regard, it followed the Rÿkshuis standard closely after 1936.

Current Situation

During the middle and the latter half of the 20^th century, the situation of the Borish language has stabilized, the language now being spoken natively by around 4.8 million (ca. 68%) people within Borland itself, with a further 20,000 to 30,000 speakers in Azmara and an unknown number of speakers in both Estmere and Werania, largely from emigration during the last century. According to some estimates, there might be as many as 5.5 million native speakers of Borish worldwide, although more conservative estimates put the number closer to 5 million. The number of L2 speakers in Borland is estimated to be at around 2 million (with varying levels of competence), with no data on L2 speakers outside of Borland.
In parts of Westhaven and across many parts of Norland (especially in Stunhill), where the majority of the population claim to speak Estmerish, there was a clear shift towards vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar more closely resembling Borish during the last decades. This resembles an earlier trend in the area around Ledge and Olham, which switched from predominantly Estmerish to predominantly Borish between the 1960s and 1990s in a similar manner.
Contemporary Borish, both informal and formal, is characterized by a mix of both the Rÿkshuis and the Helman standards. To some extent, this has been “loaned into” the spoken forms of Borish, such as the widespread usage of not only universal þe, but rather singular þer/þe//þet.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Borish

	Labial		Dental		Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m				n						ŋ
Plosive	p	b			t	d					k	ɡ
Fricative	f	v	θ		s	z	ʃ	ʒ			x	ɣ	h
Affricate					ts		tʃ	dʒ
Rhotic						r
Approximant		w				l				j

Following a stressed open syllable with a short vowel, the consonants /m n b d g p t k s l/ are geminated by many speakers, including in the standard variety. However, this phenomenon is less common for /m b d g/ than for the other sounds. In most instances, this correlates with the doubling of the respective consonant in spelling.

The Borish rhotic which is commonly transcribed with the symbol ⟨/r/⟩ most commonly is pronounced as an alveolar tap [ɾ], with a true alveolar trill [r] being a rare variant. Another common variant is the wikipedia:Alveolar approximant [ɹ] which is used by some speakers across the country in free variation with the tap, although it is the most common pronunciation around Yord, along parts of the border with Azmara and in South Hethland. A somewhat rarer allophone is the retroflex approximant [ɻ], which is usually found in syllable-final position in coastal Hethlandic dialects, which otherwise use a tap or an alveolar approximant.
Syllable-final /r/-dropping is a very widespread phenomenon in all dialects of Borish. Although it can be compared to rhotic and non-rhotic Estmerish, its occurence is much more inconsistent in Borish.

The lateral of Borish comes in two varieties: a plain alveolar lateral [l] and a velarized lateral [ɫ]. For some speakers, the latter occurs only in syllable-final position, though many speakers at least sometimes velarize the /l/ sound intervocalically. A minority of speakers only have the unvelarized /l/.

It is disputed whether or not /x/ and /ɣ/ really count as two separate phonemes, as they occur in complementary distribution with only few exceptions. Whilst the voiceless velar fricative occurs at the start of words, before voiceless consonants and between vowels if it is in the onset of a stressed syllable, the voiced velar fricative occurs at the end of words (sometimes devoiced to /x/), between vowels in unstressed syllables or if following a stressed syllable and, for some speakers, before most voiced consonants.
Exceptions to this rule are usually loan words, such as blech [ˈblɛx] or loch [ˈlɔx]. In fact, outside of dialectal borrowings and loan words, [x] only occurs between vowels and voiceless consonants (e.g. light [ˈlixt]), where it could also be analysed as underlying /ɣ/ which got devoiced.

The voiced alveolar fricative [z] is not usually analysed as phonemic, but rather an allophone of the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ in intervocalic positions. Some speakers pronounce the letter ⟨z⟩ in loan words as [z], although this is usually regarded as a case of spelling pronunciation.
For a small set of speakers, this is, arguably, contrastive, although intervocalic [s] for these speakers usually is [sː~s.s] in standard Borish.
Similar to this, some speakers voice intervocalic /θ/ to [ð], although this never is contrastive. For some speakers, both of these allophones can also occasionally occur in other positions.

All affricates occur primarily in loan words and are realized as fricatives by some speakers. Similarly, /ʒ/ also occurs only in loan words, merging with its voiceless equivalent for some speakers.

In the common clustrers /kw/ and /hw/, the /w/ commonly is somewhat or fully fricated, leading to the characteristic [kf] or [xw~xf] clusters.

Vowels

The vowels of Borish can be divided into short and long vowels and can be analysed either as /ɪ ʊ ɘ ə ɛ ɔ ɑ/ and /iː yː uː eː øː oː ɛː ɔː ɑː/, respectively. In unstressed syllables, long vowels are pronounced as short vowels (e.g. automobil /ˈaʊ̯toːmoːˌbiːl/ [ˈaʊ̯tomoˌbiə̯ɫ]).

Both short high vowels of Borish, /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, can be lax [ɪ ʊ] or tense [i u], depending on the speaker and the dialect, often occuring in more or less free variation. The tense realization of these vowels is a feature that is mostly associated with the dialects of Outhall and Newstead and is often associated with a higher register, eventhough it is much more widespread than that.

The central vowels /ɘ/ and /ə/ occur in complementary distribution, with /ə/ occuring in unstressed syllables and /ɘ/ in stressed positions. In colloquial Borish, /ɪ/ and /ɘ/ often merge.

The vowels /eː/ and /oː/ undergo breaking to [eɪ̯~ɛɪ̯] and [oʊ̯~ɔʊ̯] in most coastal dialects in some words, whilst being raised to [iː] and [uː], respectively, in some of them. Geographically unrelated, a similar sound change occurs for some speakers in Stunhill, just with a more centralized [ʉː]. Orthographically, this is represented by a single letter ⟨e⟩ or ⟨o⟩ in contrast to two letters ⟨ee⟩ or ⟨oo⟩.

For almost all speakers, the vowels /eː øː oː/ are lowered to [ɛː œː ɔː] before coda-/r/, with some speakers extending this to /l/. Oftentimes, this comes with a more or less noticeable diphtonization (e.g. stool [ˈstoə̯ɫ]), although the diphthongization of vowels before liquids is also present with other vowels.

Across Borish dialects, /a/ varies between a front [a], a centre [ä] and a back [ɑ]. Generally, the closer one moves to the Estmerish border, the more /a/ is a front vowel, and the closer one moves to the Azmaran border, the more it is a back vowel.

Orthography

Borish is almost exclusively written using an Estmerish-based Solarian alphabet, though occasional instances of other writing systems being used to write the language can be observed within some social circles. Most texts nowadays use an alphabet consisting of 28 letters (the 26 letters that are also found in the Estmerish alphabet, except for j, but with the addition of the letters Ë, Þ and Ÿ), though older texts often used ⟨i⟩ and/or ⟨e⟩ where modern texts use ⟨ë⟩, with ⟨ei/ey⟩ abd ⟨th⟩ having been a common replacement for ⟨ÿ⟩ and ⟨þ⟩, respectively. Some texts use ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨œ⟩ (sometimes represented by the digraphs ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩, respectively) in loan words and some dialectal vocabulary, although their usage is not widespread. It has to be noted that Y is sorted in dictionaries where J would be sorted in other languages. Thus, the Borish alphabet goes as follows: A B C D E Ë F G H I Y Ÿ K L M N O P Q R S T Þ U V W X Z.

Additionally, the letters ⟨à⟩ and ⟨ç⟩ are used in limited circumstances in Borish, although they are treated as variants of the letters ⟨a⟩ and ⟨c⟩, respectively. While ⟨ç⟩ is at least somewhat widespread, being used for /s/ in loan words of Solarian origin where otherwise, Borish spelling would suggest /k/, the letter ⟨à⟩ is only used in one native word (àn “at, on, towards”) in order to distinguish it from a homonym (an “a”). Besides that, it is occasionally used for measurements as in Estmerish.

There are a multitude of digraphs that are used in the Borish language. These include vowel digraphs for long vowels (aa, ee, ea, oo, oa, ou, ui) and for diphthongs (ai, au, ei, eu, ie, oi, ow). At the end of words and between vowels, the ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ get respelled to ⟨y⟩ and ⟨w⟩, respectively (thus ai, au, ei, eu, oi, ui → ay, aw, ey, ew, oy, uy). This does not apply to ou and ow, as these represent different sounds (/uː/ and /ɔʊ̯/, respectively). In loan words, the diphthong /iə̯/ is spelled ⟨ië⟩, while native words use the spelling ⟨ie⟩ instead.
The digraph ⟨ei⟩ in particular is rather rare although the sound it represents (/ɛɪ̯/) is the most common diphthong in Borish. This is because, usually, the letter ⟨ÿ⟩ is used for this sound. However, when ⟨ÿ⟩ is not available or to cumbersome to type, ⟨ei⟩ is used as a substitute digraph. The same goes for ⟨þ⟩ and ⟨th⟩.

The digraph ⟨dg⟩ and the trigraph ⟨tch⟩ are used for the postalveolar affricates in all positions, although they are almost entirely absent from Borish with the exception of loan words. In the official spelling, it is recommended to always respell foreign words to use ⟨dg⟩ and ⟨tch⟩, although many Borish do not necessarily consistently abide to this rule (e.g. spelling tchillen and dgungel as chillen and jungel). Other consonant digraphs are CH GH PH RH SH TH ZH. HV also is commonly counted as a digraph in Borish. It often is transcribed as ⟨/hw/⟩, though it can represent a variety of different sounds, depending on the dialect. These range from [xf] to [xv] and [hw] to [xw] in most dialects, which is mirrored in local Estmerish dialects. ⟨hv⟩ often corresponds to ⟨wh⟩ in Estmerish. ⟨kv⟩ is a similar digraph, represented by ⟨qv⟩ in loan words. There is no clear consensus on whether or not NG could be considered a digraph as its phonemic status is disputed.