Reardish: Difference between revisions

|nativename=''Reoþþisco · Reoððisco''

|ancestor3=Early Reardish (Or "Proto-Reardish")

'''Reardish''' ([[w:endonym|Autonym]]: ''Reoþþisco''; <small>Reardish: [[w:IPA chart|[reo̯ð.ðis.ko]]]</small>) is a [[w:Germanic language|Germanic language]] spoken throughout Britain. Its native population is mostly centered around southern to middle England. Though a descendant of Proto-Germanic, it developed alongside Old English, leading to its divergence.

Having developed alongside Old English, Reardish experienced many of the same sound changes as Old English, though it lacks several that would allow it a classification closer to Old English, it cannot even be classed as [[w:West Germanic|West Germanic]] due to it lacking some of the family's distinctive sound changes. As such, it must be placed in its own branch, typically one called the "Reardic" branch. It is unclear whether Reardic as a family is valid due to the early form still largely being intelligible with the modern language, thus leading most linguists to simply place Reardish as a divergent descendant of Proto-Germanic, rather than giving it a specific familial classification.

Today, Reardish is typically written in the Latin alphabet, still using the Insular script, the alphabet is near-identicle to that of Old English. In many artistic works, and quite often in elders, Anglo-Frisian runes are still used. Efforts to reinstate runes have been successful, leading to nearly all government issued writings (letters, signs, documents, etc) being offered in both scripts.

''Reoþþisco'', a compound of ''{{term|rāþþo}}'' and ''{{term|-isco}}'', roughly means "pertaining to language", though ''-isco'', the feminine singular of ''{{term|-isċ}}'', is largely used to mean 'of our people', which often replaces ''{{term|þēodisċ}}'', understanding this leads to the meaning "The language of our people", or more simply, "Our language".

''Reardish'', the English name, is a cognate based borrowing, with ''reard'' being the direct English cognate to ''rāþþo'' (the root of ''reoþþ'' in the native name)

| {{IPA|i iː}} || {{IPA|y yː}} || || {{IPA|u uː}}

| {{IPA|e eː}} || {{IPA|ø øː}} || || {{IPA|o oː}}

| {{IPA|æ æː}} || || {{IPA|ɑ ɑː}} ||

Nouns decline for five cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental. (A sixth case, the vocative, is highly contentious.); three genders: masculine, feminine, neuter; and two numbers; singukar, and plural (Reardish has a fully in tact duel declension, but it is only in pronouns and verbs).

Pronouns decline largely the same as nouns, except for having a duel in the first and second persons. The plural third person pronouns have been entirely leveled, so the masculine, feminine, and neuter third person plurals decline identically, though a formal "Archaic masculine" is retained, and has been shifting to have the usage of a formal third person plural. In casual speech, this "Archaic masculine" is instead used as a gender-neutral (or even genderless) pronoun.