Lemobrogian language

Common Lemobrogic
sar Muþosuyoöŋ Rixevindeël
Pronunciation	[säɹ muˈθo̞sujo̞ːŋ ɹiˈʃe̞vinde̞ːl]
Native to	Lemobrogia
Native speakers	~ 43,791,300 (2024)
Language family	Sidurian Lemobrogic Common Lemobrogic
Early forms	Ancient Lemobrogic Classical Lemobrogic Vulgar Lemobrogic
Dialects	Central Lemobrogic Northern Lemobrogic Southern Lemobrogic
Writing system	Lemobrogian alphabet Lemobrogian Braille
Signed forms	sar Moþu Deël
Official status
Official language in	Lemobrogia Nerveiík-Iárus-Daláyk Region (Gylias)
Regulated by	ber Ciḱe ne sar Deël
Language codes
ISO 639-1	rv
ISO 639-2	rv
ISO 639-3	rv

Common Lemobrogic (sar Muþosuyoöŋ Rixevindeël, [säɹ muˈθo̞sujo̞ːŋ ɹiˈʃe̞vinde̞ːl]) is a Sidurian language of the Lemobrogic branch, spoken by the vast majority of the population of Lemobrogia and by ethnic Lemobrogians outside of the country; it is the official language of Lemobrogia, and it is also official in the Nerveiík-Iárus-Daláyk Region of Gylias - the heart of the historical Nerveiík Kingdom, itself the last incarnation of Xevden, a state founded in present-day Gylias by the ethnically Lemobrogian Ŋež tribe. It is a highly analytic, subject–object–verb word order koiné language, that arose as the result of the contact, mixing and simplification of the languages belonging to the Lemobrogic dialect continuum; even though it is easily comprehensible and largely intelligible by the vast majority of Lemobrogia's 43,791,300 inhabitants, up to and including those whose native tongue is not part of the Lemobrogic dialect continuum, most people in the country do not speak it as their first language.

Classification

The Lemobrogic languages form a dialect continuum, in which neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but widely separated varieties are not; Common Lemobrogic is a koiné language, that arose as the result of the contact, mixing and simplification of the languages belonging to the Lemobrogic dialect continuum, and that became the lingua franca of the nation by the early 1500s. The Lemobrogic languages in general, that can be subdivided into central or midland, northern or lowland and southern or highland varieties, share several key features with the Gylic languages in general, especially those spoken by the Yaskans and Zinerans, and with reconstructed Proto-Gylic in particular; for this reason, several linguists have postulated the existence of a language family that would include all Gylic languages and all Lemobrogic languages, provisionally named Sidurian - whose dialects and languages are characterized by a highly analytic typology, a SOV sentence structure and a (C)V(C) syllable structure.

History

The earliest historical linguistic evidence of the language, as the Ancient Lemobrogic spoken during the First Community era, dates back to around 3100 BCE, in the country's Bronze Age, when those corporate groups that had clustered near each other in Lemobrogia's first city-states developed the logographic Ancient Script in order to keep track of the exchanges of goods and services that served as the potlatch-like basis of their society, whose main center was the city of Icqu; as soon as the nation began experiencing a cultural and societal decline, from around 1100 BCE, as a result of internecine warfare and resource overexploitation, and the First Community dissolved, Ancient Lemobrogic diverged into several separate dialects, and the Ancient Script diverged into several separate branches, often cursive or syllabic variants of the earlier logographic script. Due to the logographic nature of the Ancient Script, the phonology of Ancient Lemobrogic can not be reconstructed with absolute certainty.

By around 700 BCE, the nation was reunified under the Second Community by the members of a philosophical school founded in 1728 BCE by Ciḱe Leňi, who believed that their founder and precursor had hypothesized or even prophesied the collapse of Lemobrogia's Bronze Age civilization; the script used and the tongue spoken by the members of Ciḱe Leňi's philosophical school, based on those of the city of Ðoleë in which it was located, formed the basis of Classical Lemobrogic and of the Classical Script, a cursive and syllabic descendant of the Ancient Script. As Ciḱe Leňi's philosophy turned into a religion, Virocredia, knowledge of Classical Lemobrogic and of the Classical Script spread to all corners of society; since the prestige and status of the priest-queens that headed the political and religious life of the bands, clans and tribes of Lemobrogia in the Second Community era hinged on their generosity and liberality, they erected schools and hired teachers for their subjects, giving birth to a golden age of literature and science.

By 246 BCE the Second Community had entered a declining phase and, by 843 CE, it had been fully partitioned between the Rideva in the south and Symmeria in the north; Classical Lemobrogic diverged, again, into several separate dialects, influenced in the north by Greek and in the south by Sanskrit, and the Classical Script was replaced in the north by the Greek alphabet and in the south by Devanagari, with characters retained from the Classical Script for those sounds not covered by either of these writing systems. When this era of foreign rule over Lemobrogia came to an end, between 1305 CE and 1333 CE, the dialects that, by then,  were spoken in the country - the Vulgar Lemobrogic languages - had diverged enough from each other that, by the early 1500s, two separate bridge languages had emerged, one closely modeled after Classical Lemobrogic that served as the language of the faith and of the state, that is, Formal Lemobrogic, and a koiné language that served as the lingua franca of itinerant workers, traveling merchants and wandering entertainers, that is, Common Lemobrogic.

For the next several centuries, a language conflict ensued; even though, in 1333 CE, the Third Community adopted Formal Lemobrogic - as codified by the scholars of the university of the city of Buþir - as the country's new written standard, it was a compromise measure made necessary by the pluricentric nature of Common Lemobrogic, a pluricentrism that extended to the kind of script used by the language: even though the central varieties of the vernacular had retained the use of the syllabic Classical Script, its northern varieties had adopted the Greek alphabet, while its southern varieties had adopted the Devanagari abugida. The gulf between Common Lemobrogic and Formal Lemobrogic became even greater from 1504 CE onwards - as the nation became a protectorate of Acrea in exchange for Acrea's help in defeating the Xevdenite threat, the influence of Acrea's several languages on Common Lemobrogic's disparate varieties made the vernacular drift even further apart from the literary and stately register of Formal Lemobrogic.

By the early 20th century, however, these disparate varieties had converged upon a single standard, easily comprehensible and largely intelligible by the vast majority of Lemobrogia's inhabitants, regardless of their native dialect or language, the end result of the contact, mixing and simplification of the languages belonging to the Lemobrogic dialect continuum over the course of the previous centuries; in 1920, the Futurist party made Common Lemobrogic the new official language of the country, with a written standard heavily based on Acrean spelling conventions. This decision proved to be popular enough that, even after the end of Futurist rule in 1968, it was not reversed during Ðovu Žuro's tenure, even though the establishment of the Fourth Community was marked by several breaks with the old government - such as the relocation of the nation's capital to the city of Gevaõn; the only change to the written standard was a spelling reform, that simplified its orthography in order to make it more phonemic.

Despite the obvious influence that the Gylian languages reform of 1958–1959 had on this development, there were no further changes to the written standard; even though several other reforms modeled after Gylias' own were proposed, none of them were approved by the Assembly of Delegates; to this day, Common Lemobrogic, unlike the Gylic languages, retains the use of grammatical gender and a T–V distinction, as well as the use of several words of Acrean, Syaran and Tennaiite origin that are often associated with monotheistic religions - in fact, the urban slang of the northern or lowland varieties of the Lemobrogic dialect continuum in general, and of those spoken in the Ŋežvin country in particular, has absorbed plenty of Salvationist and Xevdenite influences over the course of the last half century. The Classical Script has recently seen a revival for calligraphic and decorative purposes; there have been several proposals to modernize the syllabary, in order to make writing Common Lemobrogic words easier.

Geographic distribution

Even though most people in the country do not speak Common Lemobrogic as their first language, and speak either one of the languages belonging to the Lemobrogic dialect continuum (72% of the population) or a language that does not belong to the Lemobrogic dialect continuum, often an Acrean, Syaran or Tennaiite dialect (28% of the population), Common Lemobrogic is easily comprehensible and largely intelligible by the vast majority of the nation's inhabitants; therefore, it serves as Lemobrogia's lingua franca, used in the country's chief institutions and official documents. Traditionally, the Lemobrogic languages have been subdivided into central or midland, northern or lowland and southern or highland varieties; the status of the Gylic dialect spoken by those Ŋež that left Gylias for Lemobrogia, and their descendants, is a subject of debate: scholars are divided on whether it's a Gylic dialect with a North Lemobrogic substrate, a Lemobrogic dialect with a South Gylic superstrate, or a transitional dialect.

Phonology

The phonology and phonotactics of Common Lemobrogic are fairly plain and regular, sharing several key characteristics with those of the Gylic languages; the language consists of 30 consonant phonemes and 6 vowel phonemes, and its syllable structure follows a strict (C)V(C) standard: the nucleus of any syllable is always a vowel - either short or long - or a diphthong, that can be preceded by an optional initial consonant in the onset, or followed by an optional final consonant in the coda. Moreover, consonant clusters and vowel sequences are entirely forbidden, with the exception of coda/onset consonant sequences across syllable boundaries; word stress is fixed, always falling on the third from last syllable in words with three or more syllables, and on the first or only syllable in other words. The phonology of the languages belonging to the Lemobrogic dialect continuum, is characterized by the presence of several ejective consonants, three of which, [pʼ], [tʼ] and [kʼ], are also found in the Common Lemobrogic koiné language.

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	m			n		ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	pʼ p b			tʼ t d			kʼ k g	ʔ
Sibilant affricate					ʧ ʤ
Sibilant fricative				s z	ʃ ʒ
Non-sibilant fricative		f v	θ ð					h
Approximant				ɹ		j	w
Lateral approximant				l		ʎ

Monophthongs

	Close	Central	Back
Front	i iː		u uː
Mid	e̞ e̞ː	ə əː	o̞ o̞ː
Open		ä äː

Diphthongs

	Close	Central	Back
Front	i̯ä i̯e̞		u̯ä u̯o̞
Mid	e̞i̯ e̞̯ä		o̞u̯ o̞̯ä
Open		äi̯ äu̯ äe̞̯ äo̞̯

In total, Common Lemobrogic has 30 consonants and 24 vowels, that are subdivided into 6 short vowels, 6 long vowels, 6 closing diphthongs and 6 opening diphthongs. While the six-vowel system of the Lemobrogic languages is very closely related to the six-vowel system of the Gylic languages, in which the original [ə] turned into [ɨ], their consonantal inventories have diverged to a greater degree, due to the influence of different superstrate languages on their parent tongue: in addition to the [pʼ], [tʼ] and [kʼ] phonemes mentioned above (it has been argued that the decreased air pressure found in highland areas, such as Lemobrogia, makes ejectives easier to produce), in the languages belonging to the Lemobrogic dialect continuum in general, and in Common Lemobrogic in particular, the nasals [ɲ] and [ŋ], the plosive [ʔ] and the approximants [ɹ] and [ʎ], that the Gylic languages lack, can be found, while the Lemobrogic languages lack the phonemes [d͡z], [ɸ], [r], [ts] and [x].

Grammar

Common Lemobrogic is a highly analytic subject–object–verb word order language: no part of speech is inflected, and content words can be adjectives, adverbs, nouns or verbs depending on their position in the sentence, and depending on the function words they are preceded by; nouns have to be preceded by function words denoting their case, gender and number, in this exact order, while verbs have to be preceded by function words denoting their mood, tense and voice, in this exact order - moreover, adjectives and adverbs have to follow the function words tied to the noun or verb they depend on, but have to precede said noun or verb. A T–V distinction is present, characterized by the use of the third person by the individual perceived as superior, and by pronoun avoidance by the individual perceived as subordinate; there is one first person pronoun, one second person pronoun and one third person pronoun - just like the noun, the personal pronoun has to be preceded by function words denoting its case, gender and number, in this exact order.

Nouns

Case		Gender		Number
Nominative	∅	Feminine	ber	Singular	∅
Accusative	ma
Genitive	ne	Masculine	vol	Dual	ek
Dative	ka
Locative	ro	Neuter	sar	Plural	ot
Instrumental	ta

Nouns in Common Lemobrogic have six cases: the nominative indicates the subject of a verb, while the accusative and dative indicate, respectively, the direct object and the indirect object of a verb. The genitive indicates the possessor of another noun, while the locative indicates a physical or temporal location; finally, the instrumental indicates not only a means or tool used to carry out an action, but also those present while the action is carried out. Common Lemobrogic has a pervasive gender system; the particles ber, vol and sar indicate, respectively, the feminine gender, the masculine gender, and the neuter gender. The feminine gender is usually assigned to biologically female beings or animate things, the masculine gender is usually assigned to biogically male beings or inanimate things, and the neuter gender is usually assigned to abstract concepts and intangible ideas, with exceptions being rooted in culture and religion; moreover, Common Lemobrogic distinguishes between the singular, dual and plural numbers.

Verbs

Mood		Tense		Voice
Indicative	∅	Past	cin	Active	∅
Subjunctive	kə
Inferential	ri	Present	nul	Middle	im
Optative	bə
Hortative	lu	Future	sən	Passive	uþ
Imperative	də

Verbs in Common Lemobrogic have six moods: the indicative is used for factual statements and positive beliefs, while the subjunctive and optative are used for, respectively, discussing imaginary or hypothetical events, and indicating hopes and wishes regarding a given action; the inferential is used to report unwitnessed events without confirming them, while the imperative and hortative are used for commands and encouragements, that exclude the speaker in the imperative, but include the speaker in the hortative. There are three tenses, past, present and future, and three voices, active, middle, and passive; moods, tenses and voices are indicated by particles that precede the verb, and any given word can be a verb if at least one of these particles, the one indicating tense (as the indicative mood and the active voice of the verb, just like the nominative case and the singular number of the noun, are not marked) is present. Vice versa, any given word can be a noun if, instead, at least the gender particle is present.

Pronouns

Person
First	nes
Second	mot
Third	bas

Personal pronouns, in Common Lemobrogic, are preceded by the same exact function words denoting case, gender and number as nouns; they can therefore act as possessive pronouns, if preceded by the particle indicating the genitive case, and they can refer to the dual or plural first person, the dual or plural second person, or the dual or plural third person, if preceded by the appropriate number particle. Use of the third person by the individual perceived as superior, and pronoun avoidance by the individual perceived as subordinate, characterizes its T-V distinction. Moreover, there are several other sets of pronouns; for example, as in several other languages, the sets of relative and interrogative pronouns are nearly identical, while the demonstrative pronouns are characterized by a three-way deictic system that distinguishes between proximal (objects near the speaker), medial (objects near the addressee) and distal (object far from both the addressee and the speaker) demonstrative pronouns.

Vocabulary

72% of the vocabulary of Common Lemobrogic is of native origin, with most of said native vocabulary consisting of words that have cognates in at least one Gylic language, often a Yaskan or Zineran dialect; that said, while reconstructed Proto-Gylic and reconstructed Proto-Lemobrogic are mutually intelligible, modern Gylic languages and modern Lemobrogic languages are not, due to divergent semantic changes and sound shifts, and neither are Common Lemobrogic and the Gylic koiné. The remaining 28% of the language's vocabulary largely consists of words taken from Proto-Erani-Eracuran during the Bronze Age: while words of Greek, Nordic or Sanskrit descent are characteristic of the dialects spoken in, respectively, the lowland north, the midland center or the highland south of the country, their role in Common Lemobrogic is taken up by words of native origin, or by compound words coined from those words of native origin that are shared by most of the country's languages.

Personal names in the Lemobrogic languages in general and in Common Lemobrogic in particular are matronymic, in that they reflect the immediate mother of the child, and not the historic family lineage - the last name of a child and the given name of their mother are one and the same. Ŋež personal names are a partial exception to this rule: since at least the 14th century, Ŋež males have been given patronymics, while Ŋež females have been given matronymics. Common Lemobrogic is also characterized by its duodecimal number system, that probably originated as a system of finger counting based on the knuckle bones of the four larger fingers. Historically however, the Lemobrogic languages, as well as Common Lemobrogic, did not treat arm, finger and hand as separate appendages: a single term denoted the whole limb, a common occurrence in those languages spoken by foraging societies that did not wear tailored clothing; compound words have since been coined for arm, finger and hand as separate appendages.

Writing system

While Ancient Lemobrogic was written in a native logographic script, and Classical Lemobrogic was written in a cursive and syllabic descendant of the previous script, the Vulgar Lemobrogic dialects eventually adopted the Devanagari abugida (in the south) and the Greek alphabet (in the north), with characters retained from the Classical Script for those sounds not covered by either of these writing systems. While the Classical Script was brought back into use after the adoption of Formal Lemobrogic as the country's official language in 1333 CE, by then the gulf between spelling and pronunciation had grown, and it would widen even further over the course of the following centuries; because of this, a version of the Latin alphabet heavily based on Acrean spelling conventions was eventually adopted in 1920, when Common Lemobrogic was adopted as the new written standard. A further spelling reform took place in 1968, that simplified the orthography of the above version of the Latin alphabet in order to make it more phonemic.

Alphabet

Letter	IPA	Letter	IPA	Letter	IPA
A a	[ä]	K k	[k]	R r	[ɹ]
B b	[b]	Ḱ ḱ	[kʼ]	S s	[s]
C c	[ʧ]	L l	[l]	T t	[s]
D d	[d]	Ľ ľ	[ʎ]	T́ t́	[tʼ]
Ð ð	[ð]	M m	[m]	Þ þ	[θ]
E e	[e̞]	N n	[n]	U u	[u]
Ə ə	[ə]	Ň ň	[ɲ]	V v	[v]
F f	[f]	Ŋ ŋ	[ŋ]	W w	[w]
G g	[g]	O o	[o̞]	X x	[ʃ]
H h	[h]	P p	[p]	Y y	[j]
I i	[i]	Ṕ ṕ	[pʼ]	Z z	[z]
J j	[ʤ]	Q q	[ʔ]	Ž ž	[ʒ]

The present-day orthography is characterized by a one-to-one relationship between its graphemes and phonemes, if diacritics are used; even though the chief influence on Common Lemobrogic's spelling reform was the Gylian languages reform of 1958–1959, said spelling reform incorporated influences from several other languages, especially from those Slavic languages that employ the Latin alphabet, but also from ancient and modern Greek - Common Lemobrogic's use of the diaeresis and tilde to indicate, respectively, long vowels and diphthongs is based on (but not identical to) their use in Hellenistic orthography - and even from languages such as Chinese (the grapheme X stands for the phoneme [ʃ], as in the Hanyu Pinyin romanization system) or Maltese (the grapheme Q stands for the phoneme [ʔ], that is, the glottal stop). Moreover, there have been several proposals to modernize the syllabic Classical Script, by now a rather defective script, in order to make writing Common Lemobrogic words easier.

Examples

The following is a sample text in Common Lemobrogic of Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Common Lemobrogic
Sar ot deyi jise ta sar leĩyu ara moũri ro sar navərþas ara vəxdaŋkəl nul uþ žala. Bas ot ta sar cileëvim ara dusoörun uþ jana, ara ro sar ecəmeĩ ne sar osaňoũ de nul im xəŋə.
IPA
[säɹ o̞t ˈde̞ji ˈʤise̞ tä säɹ ˈle̞i̯ju ˈäɹä ˈmo̞u̯ɹi ɹo̞ säɹ ˈnävəɹθäs ˈäɹä ˈvəʃdäŋkəl nul uθ ˈʒälä] [bäs o̞t tä säɹ ˈʧile̞ːvim ˈäɹä ˈduso̞ːɹun uθ ˈʤänä ˈäɹä ɹo̞ säɹ ˈe̞ʧəme̞i̯ ne̞ säɹ ˈo̞säɲo̞u̯ de̞ nul im ˈʃəŋə]
English
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.