Vellicosian language
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| Vellicosian | |
|---|---|
| Ƿendisch | |
| Pronunciation | [wɛndɪʃ] |
| Native to | Vellicosia |
Norto-Euronian | |
| 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 English, 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 two 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.