Skundavisk: Difference between revisions

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Shoundavish didn't take part in the High German consonant shift, and is overall one of the most conservative Germanic languages regarding the consonants. Because of its preservation of the sounds /θ/, /ð/ and /w/, along with a large common vocabulary, Shoundavish is one of the closest languages to English. However, both languages underwent very different vowel shifts over time, which makes them sound quite different. Besides, while English borrowed many words from the Romance languages (especially French), the Shoundavish vocabulary remained mostly Germanic, and very few words were borrowed from non-Germanic sources. Therefore, words like "biology" or "litterature" are built using Germanic roots instead of Latin or Greek ones. While being very conservative in its phonology and lexicon, Shoundavish didn't preserve the complex grammar of Proto-Germanic, and the medieval case system has been reduced to scattered remnants in the modern language.

By the 12th century the language had evolved significantly and was entering the Middle Shoundavish period, during which many vowels in unstressed syllables were reduced (ex. Old Shoundavish daga, sunno, friunds, drivan > Middle Shoundavish dag, sunne, friend, driven). The Middle Shoundavish vocabulary is quite close to that of Modern Shoundavish, but the pronunciation was different and the adjectives and articles were still inflected, like in Modern German. Middle Shoundavish wasn't a unified language, but rather a dialectal continuum, with the varieties of the five main Hanseatic cities (Flensburg, Kijl, Hamburg, Lyvig and Sweren) serving as loose written standards. The varieties of Kijl and Sweren also served as lingua francas inside the Hanseatic league, and had a huge impact on the Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian), whose modern vocabulary contains around 30% of Shoundavish loanwords, either Western Shoundavish (Kijlisk) or Eastern Shoundavish (Swerenisk). By the 15th century, the dialects of Shoundavish had diverged quite a lot from each other, and each dialect developed its own distinct pholonogial and grammatical characteristics.

While the other Germanic languages were adopting many new scientific and technical words, which were coined from Latin and Greek roots, Shoundavish coined its own scientific vocabulary using Germanic roots. For example, words like biology, physics or gene are translated as lijfkunde, byrdkunde and erfþe (literally "life-knowledge", "nature-knowledge" and "heritage" with a "-þe" suffix related to English "-th"). It is therefore possible to write a Shoundavish text dealing with science or technology without any loanword from Latin or Greek, as it is the case in Icelandic.

● '''ðe skåp''' = the sheep > '''ðes skåps''' = of the sheep

{| class="wikitable alternance  mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"

{| class="wikitable alternance  mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"

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  ! colspan="2" | infinitive

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  ! colspan="2" | present participle

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  ! colspan="2" | past participle

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  ! colspan="2" | auxiliary

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  ! rowspan="3" style="background-color:lightblue" | present

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  ! rowspan="3" style="background-color:lightgreen" | preterite

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  ! scope="row" style="background-color:lightyellow" | imperative

  ! style="background-color:lightgrey" |   

  ! style="background-color:lightgrey" |   

===Adjectives===

{| class="wikitable alternance  mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"

The non-Germanic loanwords present in Shoundavish can be divided in two main categories :

The phonological fitting process depends on the era when the word was borrowed. Consequently, for words borrowed during the Pre-Germanic times, Grimm's law applies, as can be seen on '''faver'''. For later loanwords, only unstressed vowel reduction and some further shifts are applied to yield natural-sounding Shoundavish words, as in '''kroktel''' and '''wijr'''. More information about Shoundavish vocabulary can be found on the Contionary website <ref name="ref3">{{cite web |url= https://linguifex.com/wiki/Category:Skundavisk_words|title=Shoundavish words on the Contionary website |author=Mohamed Kaseb |year=2018| accessdate= 2023-05-03}}</ref> .

The following text is a translation of Grimms' tale The Fox and the Geese.  

English translation :