Nord-Brutlandese Language

Nord-Brutlandese (Nordèbrutelliense) is the official language of the United Kingdom of Brutland and Norden. There are about 750 million speakers of the language, mostly from Brutland and Norden.

Origins

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The original settlers that populated Brutland and Norden spoke a native language, Proto-Nordbrutlandic (PNB), of which no sizable manuscript survived. This language assimilated and absorbed a huge amount of Germanic features and words from the Norse language spoken by the Nordic settlers who came in waves to the islands of Brutland and Norden. While the natives assimilated into the Nordic population, the Nordic population assimilated the native language. The longest tract of Proto-Nordbrutlandic, the Lepontina Stones, which contain only short words, attest to the fact that Proto-Nordbrutlandic and the Norse language were different and that Proto-Nordbrutlandic absorbed many of the features of Norse. Thus, the Brute saga Targanskåblagdet, thought to be written in an archaic, isolated form of Norse, was actually written in heavily Norse-influenced Proto-Nordbrutlandic, aptly called Norse Nordbrutlandic.

The second, and longer-lasting, influence came from the Romans, who turned the islands into client kingdoms. These client kingdoms soaked up Roman influences, and its population looked up to the Roman Empire as the cultural center. Latin words seeped into Norse Nordbrutlandic, replacing old words with new ones and introducing several syntactic concepts, notably, that qualifiers should come after their referents (hence, in Nord-Brutlandese, adjectives and adverbs come after the words they modify). This influence continued well past the decline of the Roman Empire, as Brutland and Norden looked to Europe as its cultural center. This language was called Pre-Modern Nordbrutlandic.

As the islands disintegrated into petty kingdoms, several dialects gained prominence, mirroring the rise of the kingdoms where it was prevalent. Brutlandese in Brutland and Nordener in Norden were the two major official languages, but both are mutually intelligible.

After unification of the two Kingdoms, the government, in the early part of the 19th century, decided to ‘create’ an official language, Nord-Brutlandese. But given the history of the language, the ‘creation’ entailed only standardization and modernization of the alphabet, and some words. The citizens quickly accepted Nord-Brutlandese, and most believed that the change was just the name of the language they were speaking.

Classification

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Nord-Brutlandese is currently classified within the Nordbrutlandic language family, the only language in its family. It has long been classified under Romance languages, or as a Romance-Germanic hybrid. It has been described as a “curiosity” as an extension of the “Romance-Germanic boundary in the South Pacific”.
This longstanding view first disputed by Nord-Brutlandese linguist Bruno Damaschino in 1895. Damaschino noted that while much of the vocabulary of Nord-Brutlandese is derived from Latin, and to some extent, Old Norse, the language’s syntax is derived from a different, unknown language, possibly the language of the original settlers of Brutland and Norden. Nord-Brutlandese does not meet the criteria for being classified as a Germanic or as a Romance language. Damaschino also noted that there was a lack of evidence to classify Nord-Brutlandese. Damaschino’s ideas were fiercely criticized during his time, but his view eventually gained adherents. The prevailing view, that Nord-Brutlandese is a language with a Germanic syntax with a Romance vocabulary, was debunked in 1957 by comparative linguist Pierfranco DioGuardi’s seminal book Lingúe Nordèbrutelliense: Quo tu do tessereco? (“Nord-Brutlandese: Where do you belong?”). DioGuardi argued that Nord-Brutlandese’s well-developed semantic system that can endlessly shift words from class to class by affixing is not a feature of either Romance or Germanic languages. The agglutinative-synthetic nature of Nord-Brutlandese semantics, declension, and conjugation must have come from somewhere, and it was tempered by Indo-European influences to the point that Nord-Brutlandese became a semi-analytic language.

DioGuardi was backed up by historical linguist Fabrizio di Sint’Brullizio, in his Sasane di la Lingúe Nordèbrutelliense (“History of the Nord-Brutlandese Language”) published in 1963. Di Sint’Brullizio examined historical manuscripts and inscriptions throughout Brutland and Norden and described the evolution of the Nord-Brutlandese language. Di Sint’Brullizio noted that as the manuscripts get younger, new words from foreign influences were simply included and assimilated into the language. The syntax of a sentence in 1st century BC Norse-influenced Brutland was similar to the syntax of a sentence in 1st century AD Roman-influenced Brutland. But the vocabulary was far different. It was also Di Sint’Brullizio’s work that confirmed that Nordener and Brutlandese were two ausbau languages that were superseded by a Dachsprache when the two countries united.

Currently, the prevailing view was that Nord-Brutlandese descended from an original native language, which was heavily influenced by Norse (Germanic) and Latin (Romance). Evidence cited for the original native language is the unique syntax and semantics, the agglutinative-synthetic methods of word formation, and the presence of non-Romance non-Germanic words in the vocabulary, such as sasane (“history”), loggie (“health”), craitte (“come”), sporche (“dirty”), bratte (“teenage”) and sispie (“suck”).

Syntax

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Nord-Brutlandese syntax is also fairly complex. The basic sentence form is subject-verb-object, though instances of other syntactical forms may occur. Being an analytical language, Nord-Brutlandese's syntactic system is closest to English.

Phonology and Orthography

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Phonology

Nord-Brutlandese has six vowel and twenty-seven consonant sounds, but not all of the consonant sounds are represented by a letter.

Nord-Brutlandese is freely stressed; that is, most words could be stressed on any syllable without changing its meaning. The location of the stress typically distinguishes dialects.

Orthography
Nord-Brutlandese is written with the standard Latin alphabet. The traditional Nord-Brutlandese alphabet consists of 5 vowels and 17 consonants. It is similar to the English alphabet except that it lacks K, W, X, and Y. However, increased outside contact necessitated the addition of these five letters and the Nord-Brutlandese alphabet is the same as the English alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z.

Most of the letters are pronounced like their English counterparts, except the letter C, G, and J. Conversely, there are several sounds, such as the dialectal schwa (ə) and several consonant sounds, do not have their own letter.

The letter Q is used as in English. It must be followed with a u, but foreign loanwords containing a q followed by any letter except u such as qoph and Qatar, though usually taken ‘as is’ in English, is changed to K in Nord-Brutlandese: kof, Katar.

The letter C, its digraphs CH and CC, and its trigraph CCH represent various sounds depending on the vowel after it. The pronunciation of the letter C is one of the hardest aspect of Nord-Brutlandese a foreign language speaker should master, as it tends to occur regularly and mispronunciation can lead to a change in meaning. Other digraphs of C (SC, SCH) also differ in pronunciation depending on the vowel after it. The digraph CC is written C’ at the beginning of a word: c’orde (“concurrence”), and c’he (“so”).

The letter G is pronounced similar to Italian. When followed by E or I, it is “softened” into a voiced postalveolar affricate. To maintain its “hardness”, the diagraph GH is used. Otherwise, GH is pronounced in its component consonants. The letter J represents a voiced postalveolar affricate before A, O, and U, but turns into a voiceless velar fricative before E and I.

Doubled Letters
Doubled letters induce gemination of the letter, this is most noticeable in the digraph TT. However, gemination of letters depends on the dialect. Cortellese dialects typically geminate every doubled letter, giving their mode of speech “broken”. Trazians, on the other hand, geminate doubled letters rarely. There is a so-called “gemination continuum”: as one goes from northwest to southeast, gemination of doubled letters decreases. This applies to almost all letters except L, N, and Z.

The digraph NN is used for the voiced palatal nasal: unnone [uɲone] “union”. The digraph LL is used for the palatal lateral approximant: telle [teʎe] “talk”. The diagraph NG, though uncommon, is pronounced as a voiced velar nasal: bange “shot” [baŋe]. The digraph ZZ represents a voiced postalveolar fricative: sezzione "section" [seʒjone].

Note that this does not apply to proper nouns such as names of people or places, especially concerning NN and LL. Most Nord-Brutlandese also do not geminate proper nouns, and pronounce NN, LL, and ZZ as [n], [l], and [z], respectively.

Diacritics
Diacritics are also used in Nord-Brutlandese, only over vowels. But unlike other languages, they do not change the sound of the vowels. The acute accent is used to break vowel clusters which would otherwise be pronounced continuously. The break occurs after the accented vowel. For instance plóie “ploy” [plo-je] is differentiated from ploíe “employment” [ploj-e] by an accent mark.

The grave accent is also used, but it does not indicate a change in pronunciation. It is used in writing to indicate that the word is a compound word, formed by two different elements. Typically the accent is written over the joining vowel: véiculàro “aircraft” (from véiculo “vehicle” and aro “air”), fròltri “somewhere” (from fra “some” and oltri “where”), and Nordèbrutelliense “Nord-Brutlandese” (from Norden and Brutellia).

Vocabulary

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Nord-Brutlandese vocabulary is rich in foreign influences. In some way it is like Maltese, which is a Semitic language with a huge amount of Romance loanwords. However, the Romance loanwords in Nord-Brutlandese had penetrated into even commonly used words such as numbers (une, cente, mil), colors (rosse, azure, verte, negre), and body parts (ojo, mano, caro, capito).

It is estimated that Nord-Brutlandese vocabulary is 70% Romance, 5% Germanic, and 25% Nordbrutlandic. Germanic-descended Nord-Brutlandese words include strando (“beach”, cf. Modern Swedish strand), marcho (“land”, cf. German Mark, English March), rivero (“river”), and bianco (“white”). Nordbrutlandic words include serro (“ear”), moglio (“husband”), briolo (“locality”), strese (“monarchy”), ternato (“ridge”), and quíande (“side”).

Nord-Brutlandese also has a tendency to shift words from class to class by suffixing. Many words derived this way do not have English equivalents. This is where Nord-Brutlandese shows its agglutinative property.

For example, the noun defenze ("defense") describes something that was done to protect. Defenze is in the noun-abstract form. The noun-concrete form is defenzo, which is something physical that protects. From the same noun, we can derive action nouns defenzetto ("defender") and defenzesso ("defendant"; or the thing being defended).

Derivation usually involves a string of words. From defenze we can get the verb defenzece ("defend"), and the adjective defenza ("defensive"), from which the adverb defenzal ("defensively") is derived. Likewise, from defenza we can derive another noun, defenzallíe ("defensiveness"). Alternative terms can be derived in the same vein. From defenzenissa ("defenseless") and defenzettía ("defendable"), we can get the verbs (without one-word equivalents in English) defenzenissece ("to make defenseless") and defenzettíece ("to make defendable"). From the same adjectives, the nouns defenzenisse ("defenselessness") and defenzettíe ("defendability") can be derived, as are adverbs defenzenissal ("defenselessly") and defenzettíal ("defendably").

All of them are semantically acceptable in Nord-Brutlandese.

Dialects

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Dialects are hard to describe in Nord-Brutlandese due to the homogeneity of the country. However, there is what the linguist-geographers call the 'gradients' that exist in the country. For example, as one moves from the northwest to southeast, gemination of many doubled letters decrease and instead the letters are just prolonged. For example, gemination of DD can be heard clearly in the Carocchi Valley of Norden (in the north), weakens in the grant of Borcenna in Dennland, occurs only sometimes in the capital (in the center of the country), and disappears around San Sbaccio in Brutland (in the south).

All dialects are mutually intelligible.

Sample Texts

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Lord's Prayer (1985 CVNb Version)

Noi Padre in Cello,
santeco nostra Nome,
nostra Rinnosso craiteco,
nostra fatte doco on tero as in cello.

Breco noi odde nòi pano díerría,
e rimotteco nòi pecadi,
as noi rimotteco passu chi pecadeco rescal noi,
e ledareco líonníal noi che tettazione,
non savoleco noi che mal.
Amen.

First Article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

"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."

Dei umanu ticóa barneteci friedal e stesal in digne e riggii. Mai dotareci son renze e coscienze, e oéacteco tunníal unse in a spirite di sfetellerríe.

Regulator

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The Royal Institute for the Advancement of the Nord-Brutlandese Language (Stiutte Reala per l'Avanze di la Lingùe Nordèbrutelliense, SRALN) monitors the language and publishes a dictionary every decade. It also has the task of maintaining, preserving, and enriching the language and at the same time adapting it to the changing times.