User:Kvasir/Fyksian language
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Fyksian (Vaijskäskhä pronounced [ˈf---sk]) is the official language of Fyksland and the mother tongue of the Fyksian people. It is spoken by 16.5 million in Fyksland and about 200,000 abroad. There are considerable amount of loan words from Old Norse, Old Irish to modern Dutch. While the language may resemble other North Germanic languages, grammar and etymology suggest Fyksian may be in fact an isolated language. Fyksian's uniqueness is demonstrated in the extensive case system and the agglutinative morphology. The linguistic origin and classification of the Fyksian language remain as highly contested and unsolved issues in the linguistic and archaeological communities.
[edit] History
[edit] Origin
[edit] Standardisation
The Fyksian language is now regulated by the Official Languages Agency.
[edit] Classification
The classification of the Fyksian language is uncertain and disputed at present time. Even though Fyksian may resemble other North Germanic languages in appearance and have considerable influence from Old Norse and Old Irish, most linguists now agree that Fyksian is not part of the Indo-European language family. Historical linguists have not solved whether Fyksian is a language isolate or if it is related to other living or extinct languages. Since linguists cannot link Fyksian with Gaulish -- the oldest inscriptions found in Fyksland -- it appears a proto language existed on Fyksland when early settlers from continental Europe arrived in the 1st century AD. At present, proto-Fyksian is just as mysterious as prehistoric Fyksland. Archaeologists and linguists have not yet successfully related this proto language with prehistoric archaeology using the comparative method.
The impossibility of linking Proto-Fyksian with its Indo-European neighbours in Europe made many scholars search for its possible relatives elsewhere. Besides many pseudoscientific comparisons, the appearance of long-range linguistics gave rise to several attempts at connecting Fyksian with geographically very distant language families.
Many hypotheses on the origin of Fyksian are considered controversial, and the suggested evidence is not generally accepted by most linguists. For example, a long-disregarded Creole Hypothesis proposed Fyksian as a creole language developed from Old Norse and Old Irish. This hypothesis however does not explain how Fyksian acquire its drastically differernt grammatical and morphological system that are not found in neither of the parent languages.
[edit] Geographic distribution
The vast majority of Fyksian speakers live in Fyksland. 72% of the population in Fyksland consider Fyksian as their mother tongue while another 24% can sufficiently speak Fyksian as a second language. Officially, statistics only count Isfjordic as a separate language unlike other Fyksian dialects. Outside Fyksland, Fyksian speakers reporting sufficient knowledge of the language are estimated in the 200,000 mainly spoken by older and recent migrants, and foreign learners. Almost 45% of which reside in the Americas while 35% reside elsewhere in the European Union. Population of Fyksian speakers outside of Fyksland has reached an equilibrium for the last couple of decades as the natural decline of migrant population has roughly been equal to the rate of emmigration.
[edit] Official status
Fyksland is the only territory where Fyksian enjoys official status. The language is regulated by the Official Languages Agency. Fyksland is a member of Nordic Council and European Union, as such Fyksian has official status in the two organisations.
Under the Nordic Language Convention, since 1987, citizens of Fyksland have the opportunity to use Fyksian when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable to any interpretation or translation costs. The Convention covers visits to hospitals, job centres, the police and social security offices. However, the Convention is not very well known and is mostly a recommendation. The countries have committed themselves to providing services in various languages, but citizens have no absolute rights except for criminal and court matters.
[edit] Fyksian as a foreign language
[edit] Dialects
[edit] Sounds
[edit] Vowels
[edit] Consonants
[edit] Writing system
The oldest preserved alphabetic inscriptions discovered on Fyksland are found on dozens of Gallic artifacts dated between 1st century BC and 1st century AD indicative of settlement or trade with Gauls. These inscriptions are now what deemed to be Gaulish written in Greek alphabet. By 4th century, monks from Ireland brought with them Old Irish and the Latin alphabet. Viking invaders and settlers introduced runic letters in the 9th century. The eventual spreading of Christianity in Fyksland popularised the use of Latin alphabet as early as the end of 10th century.
The Fyksian alphabet has 22 letters, 18 of which are common to the basic Latin alphabet. The Fyksian alphabet is notable for its retention of the runic letter Þ (þorn, anglicised as "thorn") which is only used in one other living language -- Icelandic. Like the Danish and Norwegian alphabet, Æ, Ø, and Å are sorted at the end in that order, and before Þ. The complete Fyksian alphabet is:
| Majuscule Forms (also called uppercase or capital letters) | |||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | D | E | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | R | S | T | U | V | Æ | Ø | Å | Þ |
| Minuscule Forms (also called lowercase or small letters) | |||||||||||||||||||||
| a | d | e | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | r | s | t | u | v | æ | ø | å | þ |
B, C, F, Q, W, X, Y, and Z are used in loan and foreign words. Traditionally these foreign letters have been rendered into Fyksian spellings.
The Fyksian alphabet is also unique in that it also includes usage of trema over the vowels "a" and "o". "ä", "ö" are not considered separate letters but denote sound modification. The function of dviløn, as it is called in Fyksian, differs from that of trema, umlaut or diaeresis in that it does not mark only one type of sound modification. These includes marking unstressed syllables, release of final consonant, and diaeresis. Whether as a result of grammatical inflection, noun compounding or appearance in the root word, "ä", "ö" never appear in the beginning of a word and theoretically does not have the uppercase form unless the whole word is capitalised.
[edit] Orthography
[edit] Gradation
[edit] Historic orthographic changes
[edit] Grammar
Fyksian verbs and noun inflection is agglutinative in which functional suffixes are compounded after the root word.
[edit] Verbs
Fyksian verbs are conjugated according to voice, mood, tense, gender, and number. Verbs can be strong, weak or neuter. Strong and weak verbs follow different conjugation rules while neuter verbs have separate meaning when used as a strong verb or a weak verb.
There are three voices in Fyksian: active, passive and middle. Each voice has three moods: indicative, interrogative, and subjunctive. Each mood has 11 tenses, divided among present, past and future. Of the 11 tenses, five are simple and six are compound, making use of auxiliary verbs.
The active and passive voices are similar to usage in their English counterparts. English speakers may already be familiar with active and passive voices. The middle voice mainly denotes reflexive and reciprocal senses. Conditions are expressed with modal verbs, where only the modals verbs are conjugated.
For weak verbs, conjugation suffixes are agglutinatively added in the following order after the root: gender, number, tense, mood, voice. For strong verbs, conjugation suffixes are added to the root in the reverse order with sometimes different functional suffixes.
[edit] Cases
Equally, Fyksian nouns are richly inflected by cases and number. A noun is usually expressed in one case. It is possible for a noun to be expressed in multiple cases. Case suffixes are then compoundly added to the root. Plural suffix is added at the end.
[edit] Word order
[edit] Vocabulary
[edit] Reference standards
reference standards are reviewed and approved prior to publication. Bilingual or multilingual references such as translation dictionaries are exempted. Approved Fyksian reference
[edit] Dictionary
[edit] Grammar
conjugation cases
