The Ruthenish Language: A Compiled Guide
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OOC: Hi there, I am making this post because I have determined by the time Ruthenish becomes a working language, it will have cluttered up so much of Ruthund's factbook, the thread will be less accesible to people looking for more general and non-linguistic information for Ruthund. I will keep my language posts in my factbook for the time being, but they will eventually migrate as I develop this thread. I also wanted to make a fresh thread, because I wanted to retrace my steps in making Ruthenish so I have a more methodical layout for the language thereby making it easier in its further development. Making a language to the point where it can actually be spoken is a lot of work, and its especially a lot of work since I'm basing it off an extinct language that we still don't have a complete understanding about. So a special workspace I feel is appropiate. Thank you ^ ^
Introduction to Ruthenish
Ruthenish is a language found in Europe. It is spoken by about 60 million speakers region-wide, primarily in Ruthund, where it is the national language. It is the liturgical language of the Zdardrin Grand Temple, alongside Classical Ruthenish. As a language from the East Germanic branch, Ruthenish considered quite different from the currently existing Germanic languages. It is generally accepted by scholars that Ruthenish is the sole surviving East Germanic language.
Evidence of the Ruthenish did not appear until the late 4th century CE, in modern-day north Czech-Slavia and south Strathae. The inscriptions found in the area show that Ruthenish was largely intelligible with Gothic. Proto-Ruthenic, emerging by the early 6th CE in modern-day Gallorum and later found in modern-day Ruthund, had a notable amount of Greek influence on some grammatical structures as well as vocabulary. However, limited writing in Proto-Ruthenic exists. Classical Ruthenish emerged by the 10th century CE and largely resembles the modern day language. Zdardrin scripture is primarily written in Classical Ruthenish, with the largest pieces of the religious texts being written circa 12th century CE. The religious texts of Ruthenish remained a literary standard as well as the language of the Ruthenish Court until the 18th century, when more vernacular version became more accepted. Modern Ruthenish emerged in the late 16th century, following the Great Ruthenish Vowel Shift. Following the end of the Old Regime in 1994, the amount of foreign loanwords have increased, most notably from English and German, though the language still remains largely conservative.
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1. Phonological (Sound) Inventory
In total, Ruthenish has 26 phonemes used in the language, 6 of which are vowel sounds and 20 of which are consonants. While the Ruthenish language consonant inventory is within an average range for most Germanic languages, its vowel inventory is unusually small for a Germanic language.
Ruthenish is a pitch-accent language, a language that has some tonal elements to distinguish certain syllables within a word from words that would otherwise sound identical. Examples of other languages that use pitch-accent is Japanese, Norwegian, and some Franconian dialects in central Germany. This is contrasted with stress-accent languages, such as English. Pitch is not often expressed in writing in Ruthenish and heavily relies on context when ambiguity does occur.
Default stress falls on the first syllable of the word.
Ex: wordjoz
high-pitch, second syllable: police, security
flat tone: district, wardVowel Inventory:
Front Back Close i (ɪ) u Close-Mid Open-Mid ɛ ɔ, o Open a Diphthongs:
ai (aɪ)
ɛi
oi
ui
au
ouConsonant Inventory:
Labial Dental Alveolar Postaveolar Palatal Velar Labiovelar Glottal Nasal m n ŋ Stop p b t d k g Fricative f θ (ð) ʃ ʒ x h Approximant l j ʍ w Flap ɾ -
2. Pronouns in Ruthenish
Though Ruthenish doesn't use pronouns as frequently as in other modern-day germanic languages, often omitting them when context allows, they do appear from time to time. All pronouns have a singular and plural form and in Classical Ruthenish, there is a dual form for 1st and 2nd person pronouns. In English, we also have singular and plural forms of pronouns, however we do not have plural forms in 3rd person pronouns, apart from the non-gendered "they"-- but Ruthenish retains gendered plural 3rd person plurals from Proto-Germanic. I put below the translations in both English and German, because between these two languages, you can see some patterns and similarities between all three of the languages.I should also note that I am use English pronouns in an archaic way, so they corrospond with their German counterpart more neatly. "Thou" should be familiar in the way its used here, however "you" is being used in its original sense in Early Modern English-- which corresponds with the German "ihr" or "y'all, or you guys". As stated before both German and English don't have 3rd person plurals (except for they/sie), so I didn't translate them.
Also note that there are 3 vestigial cases in English, Nominative, Oblique, and Genitive with Dative and Accusative merging into the Oblique. So there isn't a difference between Accusative and Dative grammatically in English, but there is in German and Ruthenish.
1st Person ("I" and "We")
Singular
Nominative: hei (I/ich)
Accusative: mei (me/mich)
Dative: mes (me/mir)
Genitive: mein (my/mein)Plural
Normative: weis (we/wir)
Accusative: ins (us/uns)
Dative: ins (us/uns)
Genitive: insor (our/unser)2nd person ("Thou" and "You")
Singular:
Nominative: thei (thou/du)
Accusative: thui (thee/dich)
Dative: this (thee/dir)
Genitive: thein (thy or thine/dein)Plural:
Nominative: his (you/ihr)
Accusative: ewes (you/euch)
Dative: ewes (you/euch)
Genitive: ezwor (your/euer)3rd person singular ("He", "She", and "It")
Feminine:
Nominative: ze (she/sie)
Accusative: ehou (her/sie)
Dative: ezoi (her/ihr)
Genitive: ezos (her/ihrer)Masculine:
Nominative: es (he/er)
Accusative: en (him/ihn)
Dative: em (him/ihm)
Genitive: es (his/sein)Neuter:
Nominative: et (it/es)
Accusative: et (it/es)
Dative: em (it/ihm)
Genitive: es (its/sein)3rd person plural ("They")
Feminine:
Nominative: ehos
Accusative: ehos
Dative: ezou
Genitive: emMasculine:
Nominative: eis
Accusative: ens
Dative: em
Genitive: ezeNeuter:
Nominative: ehos
Accusative: ehos
Dative: em
Genitive: eze -
Four Form System of Ruthenish
Ruthenish has what in linguistics is known as a four-form system. This means there isn't one word for “yes” or “no” (known as the two form system) but two words for yes or no depending on the context of the question asked. The four-form system is found in other languages such as Early Modern English (yes/yea and no/nay) as well as Romanian.
In Ruthenish, the 4 interjections to confirm or negate something are: ho/ei (yes), nu/tho (no). Which interjection to use heavily depends on how the question is being asked. When someone is asking a basic question for example “Would you like some ice cream?”, you would either answer “ho” or “nu”. However, if someone was asking a question in a way that was either asking for your opinion or whether they agree with something the correct way to respond would either be “ei” or “tho”. For example “Isn’t Elden Ring the best souls game to date?” or “You are coming to the party, aren’t you?” These questions are asking whether we agree with what that person said and the response ‘ei’ would mean “Yeah, I agree with what you said/exactly”. On the contrary, ‘tho’ would mean “Actually, the opposite is true/ I disagree with that statement”.
Ruthenish also makes use of echoing in some contexts. Echoing is when instead of saying yes or no to a question, the person instead uses the affirmative or negative of the verb within the question. For example: “Bohes n’Kazmurbirhai?” (“Do you live in Kazmurbirhaz?”) would prompt “Bohja” or “I live”. However, this way of answering questions is less common than using the four-form system and is mostly used in the Hukonian dialects of Ruthenish.
