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

Lemobrogian (Xabèþasèn, [ʃaˈbɛθasɛn]) is a Siduric 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 an isolating, 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; Lemobrogian is a koiné language, that arose as the result of the contact, mixing and simplification of the languages belonging to this 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 Siduric - whose dialects and languages are characterized by an isolating typology and a SOV sentence structure.

History

The earliest historical linguistic evidence of the language, as the Old Lemobrogian spoken during the First Federation 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 a pidgin language in order to facilitate the exchanges of goods and services that served as the potlatch-like basis of their society; 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 Federation dissolved, Old Lemobrogian - by then, a creole language rather than a pidgin language, and the native language of a significant part of the populace - diverged into several separate dialects. However, due to the logographic nature of the script with which Old Lemobrogian was written, its phonology can not be reconstructed with absolute certainty.

By around 700 BCE, the nation was reunified under the Second Federation by the members of a philosophical school founded in 1728 BCE by Danè Méva, who believed that their founder and precursor had hypothesized or even prophesied the collapse of Lemobrogia's Bronze Age civilization; the language spoken by the members of Danè Méva's philosophical school formed the basis of Classical Lemobrogian. As Danè Méva's philosophy turned into a religion, Virocredia, knowledge of Classical Lemobrogian 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 Federation 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. Moreover, during this period, the ancient logographic script was replaced by a syllabic script; certain extensively used logographic characters were however retained.

By 246 BCE the Second Federation 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 Lemobrogian diverged, again, into several separate dialects, influenced in the north by Greek and in the south by Sanskrit, and the syllabic script with which it was written was replaced by the scripts used in said countries. 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 had diverged enough from each other that, by the early 1500s, while neighboring varieties of this Vulgar Lemobrogian register were mutually intelligible, widely separated varieties were not; while Classical Lemobrogian continued to serve as the language of the faith and of the state, itinerant workers, traveling merchants and wandering entertainers developed a koiné language of their own.

For the next several centuries, a language conflict ensued; even though, in 1333 CE, the Third Federation re-adopted Classical Lemobrogian as the country's official language, it was a compromise measure made necessary by the pluricentric nature of Vulgar Lemobrogian. The gulf between Classical Lemobrogian and Vulgar Lemobrogian 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 Vulgar Lemobrogian's disparate varieties made the vernacular drift even further apart from the literary and stately register of Classical Lemobrogian. However, by the early 20th century 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, also due to the influence of several leading figures in the country's 19th century popular culture.

This register, 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, was declared to be the official language of the country by the Futurist leadership in the 1920s, 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 Jòda Þaló's tenure, even though the establishment of the Fourth Federation was marked by several breaks with the old government - up to and including the relocation of the nation's capital; the only change to the written standard was a spelling reform, based on the one that took place in Gylias during the Gylian languages reform of 1958–1959, that simplified its orthography, in order to make it more phonemic. The old syllabic script has recently seen a revival for calligraphic and decorative purposes, and there have been several proposals to modernize it for daily use.

Geographic distribution

Even though most people in the country do not speak Lemobrogian 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), Lemobrogian 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 Lemobrogian are fairly plain and regular, sharing several key characteristics with those of the Gylic languages; Lemobrogian has however preserved certain Siduric consonant clusters, while developing a distinctive contrast between ejective and voiceless plosives on one hand (it has been argued that the decreased air pressure found in highland areas makes ejective consonants easier to produce) and breathy and voiced plosives on the other hand (a clear Indo-Aryan influence, and a relatively recent innovation), as well as an equally distinctive vowel inventory with only one close vowel and only one open vowel, but four contrasting mid vowels (that is nonetheless quite balanced, as three of these vowels are rounded, and another three of these vowels are unrounded). In total, Lemobrogian has 30 consonant phonemes and 6 vowel phonemes, that can be either short or long; word stress is fixed, always falling on the third from last syllable of a word.

Consonants

	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal
Plosive	pʼ p b bʰ	tʼ t d dʰ	kʼ k g gʰ
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Trill		r
Fricative	ɸ β	θ ð s z ʃ ʒ	x ɣ
Approximant	w	ɹ	j
Lateral Approximant		l

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close		ʉ
Mid	e ɛ		ɔ o
Open		a

The nucleus of a syllable is always a short or long vowel; the nucleus can be preceded by an onset consisting of one consonant, or by a non-approximant consonant and an approximant consonant: in this case, the nasals /m/, /n/ and /ŋ/ and the trill /r/ can only be followed by the glides /j/ and /w/, unlike the other non-approximant consonants, that can also be followed by the liquids /l/ and /ɹ/. Medially, the nucleus can only be followed by the nasals or by /r/, while at the end of a word it can be followed by a coda consisting of one consonant, or by a nasal and a fricative or plosive: in this case, /m/ and /ŋ/ can only precede labial or dorsal plosives, respectively, while /n/ can precede any coronal fricative or plosive. Medially, geminate consonants can occur, too; they are typically analyzed as the end result of the assimilation of a syllable-final nasal or trill to the syllable-initial consonant following it. Moreover, all sequences of 2 short vowels are allowed, as long as they involve at least one close or open vowel.

Grammar

Lemobrogian is an isolating, subject–object–verb word order language: content words can be nouns, adjectives, verbs or adverbs depending on their position in a sentence, and they are not inflected in any way; to express grammatical relationships between these, Lemobrogian utilizes derivational affixes and function words. Several of these function words - such as, but not only, articles and pronouns - have preserved gender and T-V distinctions that have become obsolete in the Gylic branch of the Siduric language family, especially after the Gylian languages reform of 1958–1959; as is typical for subject-object verb word order languages, Lemobrogian uses postpositions rather than prepositions, while adjectives, demonstratives, genitives, numerals, possessives and relative clauses precede the nouns they modify. Moreover, Lemobrogian places auxiliary verbs after action verbs, proper names before titles and honorifics, and uses a a time–manner–place ordering of adpositional phrases.

Vocabulary

72% of the vocabulary of Lemobrogian 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 Lemobrogian 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 Lemobrogian 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 Lemobrogian 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. Lemobrogian 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 Lemobrogian, 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 Old Lemobrogian was written in a logographic script, and Classical Lemobrogian was written in a syllabic descendant of the previous script - that nonetheless retained certain extensively used logographic characters - the Vulgar Lemobrogian dialects eventually adopted the Devanagari abugida (in the south) and the Greek alphabet (in the north). While the earlier syllabic script was brought back into use after the re-adoption of Classical Lemobrogian 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 the 1920s, when the current register of the Lemobrogian language was adopted as the official 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	[a]	G̣ g̣	[gʰ]	R r	[r]
B b	[b]	Ɣ ɣ	[ɣ]	Ř ř	[ɹ]
Ḅ ḅ	[bʰ]	H h	[x]	S s	[s]
C c	[k]	J j	[j]	T t	[t]
Ċ ċ	[kʼ]	L l	[l]	Ṫ ṫ	[tʼ]
D d	[d]	M m	[m]	Þ  þ	[θ]
Ḍ ḍ	[dʰ]	N n	[n]	V v	[β]
Ð ð	[ð]	Ŋ ŋ	[ŋ]	W w	[w]
È è	[ɛ]	Ò ò	[ɔ]	X x	[ʃ]
É é	[e]	Ó ó	[o]	Y y	[ʉ]
F f	[ɸ]	P p	[p]	Z z	[z]
G g	[g]	Ṗ ṗ	[pʼ]	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.