Vellicosian language

Vellicosian
Ƿendisch
Pronunciation	[wɛndɪʃ]
Native to	Vellicosia
Language family	Norto-Euronian
Writing system	Latin (Vellicosian alphabet)
Official status
Official language in	Vellicosia
Regulated by	Royal Vellicosian Language Council
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

Vellicosian (Ƿendisch [wɛndɪʃ] or Ƿendisch tung [wɛndɪʃ tʊŋ]), also called Wendish, is a Germanic language of the Norto-Euronian language family. It is spoken primarily in Vellicosia and serves as the native language of the Wends. It is most-closely related to Elbresian, its sister language with whom its phonetics are nigh-identical and words and concepts highly-comparable; and is also closely-related to Beatavician, Besmenian, Birnirian, Drambenburgian, Denzali, and Vœyetskan.

Vellicosian is an extremely linguistically-purist language, regulated heavily by the Royal Vellicosian Language Council (KǷS). The vocabulary is heavily-conservative, favoring native Vellicosian and Germanic roots, letters, words, and phrases. It creates new words for concepts and ideas not present in Old Vellicosian by forming compound words, reviving archaic words, and creating new words from Germanic and Old Vellicosian roots. It is the only language on Iearth to employ the use of the runic ƿ and one of the few to employ the use of þ, also from runic. The language is also notable for its relative-lack of a case system, retaining only vestigial genitive-endings for possessive nouns, thus resulting in minimal inflection.

The traditional 30-letter Vellicosian alphabet has seven additions (á, ð, í, ó, ú, ƿ, þ) to the basic 26-letter Latin alphabet while removing three (q, w, x). These three letters are not used in Vellicosian, instead replaced by the closest approximate letter or sound combination available, even in foreign loan words. The traditional set is comprised of 20 consonants and 10 vowels.

History

The history and development of the Vellicosian language is divided into two distinct periods: Old Vellicosian (OV), spoken from the early days of the Vellicosian state to the mid-to-late 1400's, and Modern Vellicosian (MV), which began in the late 1400's after a long transitionary period. The shift between OV and MV is sometimes referred to as Middle Vellicosian, though this term is not widely-accepted in the linguistic community. In a broad period from the late 1400's to the early 1700's occurred the Great Vowel Shift, a series of changes in pronunciation that crafted the phonetics observed today. This massive change in pronunciation, the final great shift from OV to MV, resulted in extensive orthography reforms in the late 1800's to reconcile the gap that had formed between orthography and vulgar pronunciation. During this period came a wave of Wendishism, a drive to rid the Vellicosian language of foreign loanwords and Germanize the language, spurred on by a rise in nationalism and a desire to see Vellicosia emerge as a significant regional power in east Euronia. Amidst the tumult of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rose the Royal Vellicosian Language Council (RVLC), appointed by William IV to serve as the official governing body of the Vellicosian language. From its founding onward, the RVLC's rulings on the language have been law, enshrining purist sentiments in grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, codifying the rules governing the language spoken today.

Phonology

Vowels

Monophthongs Front Back Close i u Near-close ɪ ʊ Open-mid ɛ ɔ Near-open æ Open ɑ

Diphthongs Front Back Close-mid eɪ Mid oʊ Open-mid ɔɪ Open aɪ, aʊ

Consonants

Consonants

	Labial	Dental	Alveolar	Post-Alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m		n			ŋ
Plosive	p b		t d			k g
Affricate				t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
Fricative	f v	θ ð	s z	ʃ		x	h
Approximant			l	ɹ	j	w

Orthography

Alphabet

The Vellicosian alphabet is notable for its retention of three letters that no longer exist in the Elbresian alphabet: Þ, þ (þorn, modern-Elbresian "thorn"), Ð, ð (eð, elbrecized as "eth" or "edh"), and Ƿ, ƿ (ƿynn, elbrecized as "wynn"), with þ and ð representing the voiceless and voiced "th" sounds (as in thin and this) respectively, and ƿ representing the voiced labial-velar approximant (as in Elbresian want or win). Both þ and ƿ come from futhark, the ancestor to modern Elbresian and Vellicosian spelling. The complete Vellicosian alphabet is:

Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
A	Á	B	C	D	Ð	E	F	G	H	I	Í	J	K	L	M	N	O	Ó	P	R	S	T	U	Ú	V	Ƿ	Y	Z	Þ
Miniscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
a	á	b	c	d	ð	e	f	g	h	i	í	j	k	l	m	n	o	ó	p	r	s	t	u	ú	v	ƿ	y	z	þ

The letters with diacritics, such as á or ú, are considered separate letters and not variants of their derivative vowels due to the uniformity of Vellicosian orthography. The letter é was officially replaced by the digraph ei in 1920, although it had been periodically-used in manuscripts from the 14th- to 18th-centuries. The letter x used to exist in the Vellicosian alphabet, but it fell out of style beginning in the early 15th-century and had completely vanished from common use by the 17th-century, replaced by the combination ks.

Sample Text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Vellicosian:

Ol men ár born frí and ályk in ƿerþschip and ryghts. Ðei ár begifted ƿiþ understandíng and myndfulnes and schuld díd túƿords íchóðer ƿiþ bróðerschip.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Elbresian:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.