Bastarneian language

Bastarneian
Bastjaniska
Pronunciation	[bastjanʲɪskɐ]
Native to	Bastarneia, Ukraine
Ethnicity	Bastarneians
Native speakers	c. 3.2 million L2: c. 200 thousand (2018)
Language family	Indo-European Germanic North Germanic Gothic Bastarneian
Early form	Gothic dialects
Dialects	Ulich
Writing system	Latin (Bastarneian alphabet)
Official status
Official language in	Bastarneia
Regulated by	Bastarneian Academy
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

Bastarneian (/bæstɑː(ɹ)nɪən/; Bastarneian: Bastjaniska pronounced [bastjanʲɪskɐ]) is an East Germanic language spoken in Bastarneia. Along with the recently-extinct Crimean Gothic, it constitutes the only group of East Germanic languages to have survived into the modern era.

Most modern Germanic languages have greatly reduced levels of inflection, particularly in the realm of noun declension. In contrast, Bastarneian retains a four-case synthetic grammar comparable to but significantly more conservative and synthetic than German. The conservatism of the Bastarneian language and its resultant near-isomorphism to Gothic means that modern Bastarneians can easily read Gothic texts such as the Wulfila Bible and the Skeireins.

The majority of Bastarneian speakers live in Bastarneia, though nearly 419 thousand live in Ukraine, 162 thousand live in Romania, and a further 156 thousand reside in Russia. Smaller diaspora communities can be found throughout the CIS as well as in the United Kingdom and United States.

The state funded Bastarneian Academy serves as a centre for preserving medieval Bastarneian manuscripts and studying the language and its literature.

Legal status and recognition

The 1989 state language law of the former Bastarneian Soviet Socialist Republic declared that Bastarneian, written in the Latin script, was the sole state language, intending it to serve as a primary means of communication among all citizens of the republic. Until 1989 Bastarneian was written in the Cyrillic alphabet in official and public contexts.

In 1991, the Declaration of Independence of Bastarneia named the official language as Bastarneian; the 1994 Constitution of Bastarneia establishes Bastarneian as "the official language in Bastarneia".

Dialects

Standard Bastarneian (Reikjabastjaniska) is the language based on the dialects spoken in and around the capital of Kisjanaus. Unlike many other languages, Bastarneian does not have more than one regional speech norm within Bastarneia itself. Nearly 25% of the population resides in the capital city, and most government agencies, institutions, and major businesses keep their main offices in Kisjanaus, which has resulted in a very homogeneous speech norm.

Bastarneian dialects can be divided into the traditional dialects, which differ from modern Standard Bastarneian in both phonology and grammar, and the Bastarneian accents or regional languages, which are local varieties of the standard language distinguished mostly by pronunciation or local vocabulary coloured by traditional dialects.

Bastarneian traditional dialects are divided into three main dialect areas:

• Bessarabian (Basarabiska), which includes much of the area of modern Bastarneia as well as the varieties along both banks of the Dniester. The Standard Variety is based on Bessarabian with little input from the other traditional dialects.
• Ulich (Uliska or Podolska), also known as Ukraino-Bastarneian or Podolian, covering those traditional dialects spoken in the region of Podolia in modern Ukraine.
• Budjak (Aspironska or Budjaska), spoken in the southern part of Bastarneia and the Ukrainian oblast of Odessa.

The Bessarabian and Budjak dialects largely overlap and form a relatively smooth continuum; the Ulich dialect, however, is heavily divergent and is quite difficult for speakers of the Standard variety or the other two traditional dialects to understand.

Verbal aspect

One major difference between Standard Bastarneian and classical Gothic is in the handling of verbal aspect; in modern standard Bastarneian, the perfect aspect is formed periphrastically using the past participle and the auxiliary verb haban "to have" for most verbs and wisan for verbs of motion, such as hlaupan, swimman, and reidan ("leap", "swim", and "ride).

• Ik haba qiþan. — "I have spoken"
• Ik hada qiþan. — "I had spoken"
• Ik im hlaupan. — "I have leapt." (Literally, I am leapt)
• Ik was hlaupan. — "I had leapt." (Literally, I was leapt)

This is also how the perfect is treated in the traditional dialects of Bessarabia and Budjak. In the Ulich dialect, however, the prefix ga- is used to distinguish perfective versus imperfective verbal roots.

• Ik qiþa. — "I speak" or "I am speaking"
• Ik qaþ. — "I spoke"
• Ik gaqiþa. — "I have spoken"
• Ik gaqaþ. — "I had spoken"

This is not only a preservation but an expansion of the classical Gothic aspectual system, and likely developed under the influence of Slavic languages.

Nominal cases

Accusativism

A common feature of colloquial speech throughout the urban Bastarneian language area is the syncretism of the nominative and accusative cases, resulting in a merged nominative-accusative case that behaves morphologically identically to the accusative. This is most common in urban areas and is considerably more common in Ulich traditional dialect than in the other two traditional varieties.

Genitive/Dative merger

The Budjak traditional dialect has undergone syncretism of the genitive and dative cases, with the dative overtaking the genitive. This is a typical feature of the Balkan language area.

Phonetic divergences

Elision of final /n/ and /m/

A salient feature of the Ulich dialect is the deletion of word-final nasals when preceded by a vowel. This was the result of a process of lenition by which a final vowel+nasal stop assimilated to a nasal vowel, after which the nasal quality on the vowel was later lost. Speakers of the Ulich dialect will generally reflect this in writing by either:

• simply dropping the lost nasal consonant, as in wisa ("to be", standard Bastarneian wisan) or
• indicating the lost nasal by adding an ogonek, as in wisą

The former is common among uneducated speakers who are unfamiliar with the standard spelling as used in Bastarneia; the latter is common for poetry and prose written in the Ulich dialect, though it isn't used in any official capacity.

Writing system

The Bastarneian alphabet is notable for its addition of Þ, þ (þaurnus, "thorn"). In historical spelling, the letter Ƕ, ƕ (hwair or ƕair) can also be found, although both standard Bastarneian orthography and general usage prescribe the digraph hw for the corresponding sound [hʷ] or [ʍ]. The complete Bastarneian alphabet is:

Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
A	B	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	W	X	Z	Þ
Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
a	b	d	e	f	g	h	i	j	k	l	m	n	o	p	q	r	s	t	u	w	x	z	þ

Along with Icelandic, Bastarneian is one of only two living languages to utilise the letter Þ, þ.