Jameld (was: Re: Germanic YANC alert!)

Concerning Jameld, we wrote:

> > > What does "t~s" mean, and where do you derive it from?
> >
> > It's the highly unattractive ASCII version of the Jameld letter Aut~s,
8<
> Why ts? Where did you derive the sound and the ligature from?
It just seemed like a good idea at the time - and it's still one of my
favourite features of the orthography. I think I just wanted a different way
to write /S/, and I'd just started learning German at school, hence the
influence of its orthography on Jameld's.

Conhistorically, _t~s_ developed from OJ _ts'_ (that's s-acute), which in
some way represented a /S/-like sound, probably with a silent t. But I've
never really tried to invent a reason for it.

There's a rather useful temporal hole in the Jameld universe (and *here*),
in that OFris is attested from only about 1250, with a whole chunk of
centuries of previous development undocumented. I haven't worked out the
details of the Jameld timeline yet, but I think the Jameldic migration took
place from Frisia quite some centuries before that date (the scrap of paper
I have here says 'c.510', but that's probably wrong :). This gives plenty of
time for strange features to develop within a very small population* before
the first documented OJ at about 750 CE, the Ulvita Stone (a runic
inscription, pictured at
www.zolid.com/zm/archive/zm10.htm).

[* Not being a qualified linguist, I don't know if this would really work -
are very small populations more or less linguistically conservative?]

After that, the next point on the curve is the Saga of Jorthel (c.850-900 -
also online in English at www.zolid.com/zm/culture.htm) and that's about it.
A while after that, say 1250-1300, the Middle Jameld phase begins, during
which stabilisation occurred due to final settlement of the land around the
Sauer. This period came to an end in the 16th Century when the Blue Plague
all but wiped out the Jamelt~ses, causing a [so far undocumented]
restructuring of Jameldic society as the population recovered over the next
century or so. Then we're into early modern Jameld.

> Anything on Old Jameld?
[See comments and links above.] It's only sketchy at present.

> > > Do you have anything digital on Jameld grammar you would let us look
> at, please? [and pronunciation, etc]
OK, then:

--<Begin pasted old shabby text from the old dict, slightly edited>--

SOME NOTES ON GRAMMAR

Verbs

Verbs in Jameld are hardly conjugated at all; only four verbs have more than
one form in the present tense - more about them in a moment. As a general
rule, therefore, the following holds true:
The infinitive always ends -en, e.g. trinken, mesten, anvülen, vegnen.
The present tense is usually formed by removing the -en ending, e.g. trink,
mest, anvül, but some verbs retain the final -e for reasons of euphony, as
in vegne. Such verbs are termed 'soft-ending' verbs, and are marked in the
text with an asterisk.

The other main tense endings are employed in place of the infinitive -en,
and are as follows:
 Infinitive          -en    To sneeze: Nësen
 Present             -      I sneeze: Me nës
 Present participle  -in    Sneezing: Nësin
 Past (perfect)      -mä    I sneezed: Me nësmä
 Past (imperfect)    -ave   I have sneezed: Me nësave
 Past participle     -i     Sneezed: Nësi
 Future              -fäo   I will sneeze: Me nësfäo (ARCHAIC/FORMAL*)
                                 [* i.e. I don't like this feature!]
                                           Me t~sald nësen (MODERN)
 Conditional         -on    I would sneeze: Me nëson
Compound tenses are formed from these endings and auxiliary verbs.  The
imperative is formed by appending an amended form of the relevant pronoun to
the verb root; the pronoun's 'e' becomes 'ë', e.g. Mestvën (Let's eat),
Trinkës (Let her drink), Anvülyë! (Walk!), etc.

The four verbs that do conjugate slightly are as follows:

 Infinitive     Singular form                Plural form
 Isten (to be)  Jist (Me jist, Es jist, etc) Ist (Ven ist, Tem ist, etc)
 Aven (to have) Kave (Ye kave, etc)          Ave (Yen ave, etc)
 Alen (to go)   Gal (E gal, etc)             Al (Tem al, etc)
 Airen (to do)  Daire (Me daire, etc)        Aire (Yen aire, etc)

Other irregular verbs: these are mercifully few in number, and show a change
from the usual present tense form:
 Hüvren (to hope)    Huv (Me huv, Ye huv etc)
 Huen (to hold)      Hü (E hü, Ven hü etc)
 Ihuen (to gather)   Ihü (Y'ïhü, Tem ïhü etc)
 Oberhuen (to keep)  Oberhü (M'oberhü, E h'oberhü etc)


Accent

The stress is generally on the first syllable, except in some loanwords.
Word stress is marked in the dictionary where the stress is not on the first
syllable. The situation is more complicated with compound words such as
prefix-amended verbs (where the prefix is rarely stressed) and some numbers
(above ten, the last part of the number, the unit, is usually stressed
most), but the above is a good general guide.

Adjectives

Adjectives in Jameld, when used attributively, precede the noun, as in
English and German. Most adjectives take the ending -i when used like this
(e.g. te rafti fayel - the early bird), although the following exceptions
make no change:
 All adjectives ending -az, e.g. Britaz, Dänaz
 All adjectives formed with -lauk, e.g. toldlauk, frosklauk
 Possessive pronouns used attributively, e.g. meü, venü
 Comparatives and superlatives, ending -o and -üt
 Adjectives ending -(i)t~s, e.g. närvit~s, fëft~s
 Adjectives ending -i or -ï anyway, e.g. röti, minikï
 Past and present participles used attributively
 Impersonal adverbs/adjectives like ans, isem, most, necht & yüé
 The following special exceptions: able, delet, dreche, éan, gut, lavte &
nüaw

Also, some adjectives end with unstressed vowels; they usually change, like
ägno/ägni & ghéla/ghéli. Full details are given in the dictionary under each
entry. There may seem to be a lot of exceptions here (it's not as bad as it
looks, in fact), but at least they don't have to agree in number, case and
gender, like some languages I could mention.

Adjectives used predicatively (not attached directly to a noun) do not
change.


Nouns

The only thing to concern the learner here is the formation of plurals. In
Jameld, this is very simple: nouns ending with a consonant add -es, and
nouns ending with a vowel add -s, e.g. monn/monnes, herta/hertas.


Punctuation

As in English, except that a comma is placed before infinitives where the
meaning is 'in order to', e.g. Me gal, dëturnen (I go in order to return),
but Me wulne alen (I want to go).


Word Order

Mainly as in English. Special exceptions, e.g. pag^é are noted in the text.
Jameld adheres more strongly to the usual word order than English does.
Subject - Verb [- Adverb] [[- Preposition] - Object]

Further information is outside the scope of these brief notes.

JAMELD: PRONUNCIATION GUIDE & OTHER NOTES

Pronunciation refers to the standard Üstzur dialect.

Consonants and Digraphs

B  /b/
C  (not found on its own)
CH /x/
CK /k/
D  /d/, final /t/
DH /D/ (edh)
F  /f/
G  /g/
GH /C/
G^ /dZ/  G with caron
H  /h/
J /Cj/
K /k/
L /l/
M /m/
N /n/
NG /N/
NK /Nk/
P /p/
QU /kv/
R /r/ more like Scots than English
S /s/
T~S /S/
T /t/
TH /T/
TT~S /tS/
V /v/
W /W/ (script-v/lower-case upsilon: labiodental approximant, somewhere
between /w/ and /v/)
X /ks/
Y /j/
Z /z/ or /ts/, almost at random, although initial & final tends to be /z/
and median /ts/

Vowels and Diphthongs
(ASCII-IPA very very approximate)

A /&/, /a/
AA /a:/
Ä /e:/, /e/
AU /aU/
ÄU /C:/
E /e/, /3/, /@/
É /e:/
Ë /i:/
I /I/, /i/
Ï /aI/
O /o/, /o:/
Ö /ö/
U /U/, /u/, /u:/
Ü /u:/, /y/

... and so on.

--<end long boring document>--

Hope that's a satisfactory start.

James

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james@zolid.com  James Campbell  Zeugma--Our Life Is Design  www.zolid.com
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