Blylandic language

The Blylandic language (blyylęnsk tunge) is a language that is spoken in Blyland and surrounding regions. It is the official language of the Republic of Blyland, and is a recognised minority language in Likkra and Namari.

Consonants

 * [ŋ] is the general realisation of the nasals /m/ and /n/ before /k/ and /g/. Note that at the end of words, /g/ when following a nasal may disappear completely, resulting in /mg/ and /ng/ being pronounced [ŋ].
 * While /ɕ/ occurs as a phoneme in Blylandic, it is also an allophone of /s/ before /i/ and /y/.
 * [ʑ] is an allophone of /z/ before /i/ and /y/. However, it is extremely rare in native words.
 * [ç] is an allophone of /h/ before /i/ and /y/, and likewise [x] is an allophone of /h/ before /u/.
 * /kʷ/ cannot occur next to /u/ (it is delabialised to /k/ if /u/ is next to it).
 * While /t͡ɕ/ and /d͡ʑ/ are phonemes in Blylandic, historically they also occurred as allophones of /k/ and /g/ respectively before /i/ and /y/. In the modern language, however, the "soft k" and "soft g" have been phonemicised due to loanwords.

Vowels
Blylandic has ten short vowels, five long vowels and six diphthongs. The short vowels are listed below: /ə/ never occurs in stressed syllables. Note that while /e/ and /ə/ are both written &lt;e&gt;, they are separate phonemes and the phonetic value of &lt;e&gt; must be determined from context. In unstressed word-final position, /ə/ is &lt;e&gt; while /e/ is &lt;ei&gt;

The long vowels are listed below: Long /aː/ is rare in native words, but does exist (e.g. the indicative past tense singular of sein "to see" is saa "I/he/she/it saw", with /aː/).

The diphthongs are /ai̯/, /ei̯/, /au̯/, /eu̯/, /iu̯/ and /ou̯/. The diphthongs /ei̯/ and /ou̯/ never occur in word-final position when unstressed; the digraph &lt;ei&gt; represents /e/ instead, and &lt;ou&gt; is pronounced the same as &lt;o&gt; in the same position.

Umlaut
Umlaut is a significant part of Blylandic grammar. It involves the change of a particular vowel to another vowel depending on the grammatical category. There are two forms of umlaut in Blylandic: i-umlaut and u-i-umlaut.

i-umlaut
This form of umlaut is found in nouns and adjectives. Typically, for nouns, the singular is the non-umlauted form, and the plural is the umlauted form, while for adjectives, the umlauted form is used for the comparative and superlative. The following vowels and their umlauted forms are listed below: The /o/~/ø/ alternation is rare, as it only occurrs in words that had a specific Proto-Germanic form (if the Proto-Germanic form was *-unC-, where *C is not a stop, or *-uNN, where the nasal is geminated).

u-i-umlaut
This form of umlaut is found in the past tense of strong verbs and the present tense of preterite-present verbs, as well as in some strong nouns and adjectives. For strong verbs, the u-form is used for the indicative plural and the i-form is used for the subjunctive. For adjectives, the u-form is used for the positive, while the i-form is used for the comparative and superlative. For nouns, the singular uses the u-form, while the plural uses the i-form. The forms are listed below:

Nouns
Nouns in Blylandic can have one of three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. They decline for two numbers (singular and plural) and four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive and dative). In general, there are three declensional classes of nouns, of which two are still productive.

Nouns may or may not display i-umlaut in the plural.

Strong declension
The strong declension is one of the two productive declensional classes. Its declensional suffixes differ depending on the gender of the noun.

The following table demonstrates this declensional class:

Note that if the stem ends in a vowel, if the ending begins with -e-, then it is deleted, unless if it is the genitive plural form, in which case the ending -a is used instead of -e. The dative singular -i never directly follows a -i(i)-, -y(y)- or the diphthongs -ai- and -ei-; in those cases the ending -jei is used instead (-ijei, -yjei, -ajei, -ejei).

Some strong declension nouns end in a schwa. If that is the case, then the dative singular and genitive plural endings replace the schwa (note that the genitive plural is -a in this case). An example is given below:

Weak declension
The weak declension is the other productive declensional class. Unlike the strong declension, it has fewer distinct endings.

r-stem declension
The r-stem declension is a relic class, and is no longer productive. All nouns in this class display i-umlaut, if applicable.

Irregular nouns
Some nouns form their plurals irregularly, whether it be from an irregular umlaut or an irregular Old Blylandic plural form.

List of nouns with irregular plurals: Historically, glas ("glass", n) had the plural form glare. However, in the modern language, glar is now a separate lexeme meaning "amber".

The noun dor ("door", n) has a regular plural dore, but it also has a special dual form dyr (genitive dyre, dative dyrem). This dual form is only used to refer to double doors.

A few nouns have unique nominative singular forms: For all neuter nouns listed above, the nominative singular form is also used for the accusative singular.

The noun kaur ("cow", f) is highly irregular:

Adjectives
Most adjectives have separate strong and weak declensional forms. The more distinct strong forms are used in the absence of a demonstrative, while the less distinct weak forms are used in conjunction with a demonstrative.

The strong declension is as follows:

The weak declension is as follows:

Some adjectives only have strong forms, while comparatives and ordinals (other than fyrst and anner) only have weak forms.

With the exception of comparatives, superlatives and a couple of irregular adjectives, adverbs are formed with the strong (if applicable) neuter genitive singular, while all adjectives use the strong (if applicable) neuter genitive singular when they are used as a predicate. Comparative adverbs remove the -e ending from the original adjective, while superlative adverbs have no ending.

Comparatives are formed by suffixing -ere to the adjective, while superlatives use -est. However, there are some exceptions, which are listed below:

Numerals
The following lists the cardinal numerals:

The numeral iin (1) declines as a strong adjective, albeit with an irregular neuter nominative/accusative singular iit. The numeral twii (2) declines as follows:

The cardinal numeral þrair (3) declines as follows:

The cardinal number föder (4) declines as follows:

The cardinal numbers from 5 to 19, with the exception of 8, decline identically. They form their genitives with -e and their datives with -em, and for the masculine and feminine gender, their accusatives with -en. The numeral atte (8) has an irregular declension:

The cardinal numerals from 20 onwards are syntactically nouns, not determiners, and thus require the noun to be quantified to be declined in the genitive plural. The decades behave as plural strong declension masculine nouns, hunderd and miklund as strong declension neuter nouns, and þausend as a strong declension feminine noun. Numerals that modify these nouns must agree in gender, and hunderd, þausend or miklund by itself (or with iin) is grammatically singular, meaning that adjectives and verbs that agree with it must use singular forms.

The numerals twiiger (20), þrairtiger (30) and födertiger (40) decline irregularly:

Additive numerals are formed in two different ways, depending on the magnitude of the numerals in question. For the decades, the lower value addend is placed before the higher value addend, as if the smaller addend modifies the larger addend as an adjective. The powers of 10 instead use the conjunction ǫk ("and") and place the smaller addend after the larger addend (only the last conjunction is mandatory, when combining multiple numerals).
 * As an example, 54,321 is rendered as fef miklunde föder þausender þrai hunderde ǫk iini twiiger.

Even larger numbers can be represented, with tund (hundred million), þrijund (trillion), and even higher powers of 10,000 (föderund, fefund) made by suffixing -und (which declines as a strong neuter noun) to a numeral. However, in practice, one typically does not see values requiring numerals larger than þrijund (just as "quadrillion" and larger numerals are uncommon in English).

The ordinal numerals are listed below: Additive and multiplicative compounds are formed identically to the cardinal numerals, except that ordinals are used instead. All ordinal numerals in compounds must agree with each other.

Blylandic also possesses special numeral prefixes for half (sam-), one (ęn- or in-, depending on dialect; ęn- is standard), two (twi-), three (þri-) and four (feder- or föder-, depending on dialect; feder- is standard), while other numbers use the bare cardinal numeral as its prefix. These prefixes can be used to form various compounds, such as twifald ("twofold, double", twi- + -fald).

Personal pronouns
Blylandic has personal pronouns in the first and second person.

The genitive forms, if used attributively, behave as determiners that inflect as strong adjectives. The use of the dual first person and second person pronouns are rare in colloquial language, having largely been replaced by their plural counterparts, but they are still used in formal language.

There are multiple ways a Blylandic speaker may refer to a third person. Typically, this is done using the proximal or medial demonstratives, with the latter typically used for emphasis. There is an additional set of dedicated third person pronouns (which bear similarity to the proximal demonstratives), but they are rarely used:

The third person dual pronoun bears no resemblance to any other pronoun. It is declined as follows: This can also be used as a determiner, meaning "both".

Interrogatives
Blylandic possesses three different interrogative pronouns. The general interrogative is declined as follows: This pronoun retains an instrumental form, wai (meaning "how"). This pronoun has no plural forms.

The other interrogatives are węr (which of many) and waþer (which of two), both of which decline as strong adjectives.

Demonstratives
Blylandic has three levels of demonstratives. The distal jein declines as a strong adjective, while the proximal hir and medial sa decline irregularly.

The medial demonstrative can also be used as a definite article.

The dative plural forms of the proximal and medial demonstratives may or may not end in -er. This -er is typically omitted if the demonstrative is used as a determiner, while it is retained if it is used as a pronoun.

Other correlatives
The following is a general table of correlatives in Blylandic:

Verbs
Verbs in Blylandic show considerable inflection. These inflections are split into "basic" inflections and "composed" inflections, which reflect the earlier state of the verbal system in Old Blylandic.

The basic inflection system conjugates verbs in the following:
 * Two tenses (present/future and past)
 * Three moods (indicative, subjunctive/optative and imperative)
 * Person (first, second, third)
 * Three numbers (singular, dual and plural; apart from the copula, which very rarely shows a dedicated second person dual, the dual is only distinguished in the first person)

The use of the dual is rare in the colloquial language, and is tied in with the use of its corresponding dual pronouns. The use of nominative pronouns for the dual is mandatory; the plural forms are to be used instead if the pronouns are to be omitted.

The endings vary depending on the conjugational class of the verb and the tense and mood, and the endings beginning with -e- drop the -e- if it directly follows a vowel. The subjunctive, in particular, is marked with an infixed -i- (which disappears if it is preceded directly by a -yy-, -öö- or -ii-; short -i- becomes -ei-, while short -y- is lengthened), while the present indicative third person forms are unique (singular -s and plural -(e)nt, as opposed to null and -(e)n respectively). The distinction between the first and third person singular is only made in the indicative (other than in the copula, whose present subjunctive forms are irregular).

Strong verbs
The following is an example of a strong verb, beren ("to bear"): A strong verb has five principal parts: the infinitive, the third person singular past indicative, the third person plural past indicative, the third person singular past subjunctive and the past participle. They form their past tenses by ablaut (what were once reduplicating subclasses in Old Blylandic have since been converted into ablauting classes, with only two exceptions). All forms of a strong verb can be derived from one of these five principal parts.

The second person singular past indicative form is normally marked with the suffix -t attached to the second principal part. However, if the second principal part ends in a -k, -p or -t, then the form of the verb changes:
 * For -k + -t, the vowel directly preceding the -k (if it exists and is a short monophthong) is lengthened (note that ę and e become ei and o and ǫ become ou) and the -k is replaced with the -t suffix (e.g. souk → sout, lak → laat, wesk → west).
 * For -p + -t, the resulting form replaces the -p with -ft (e.g. gap → gaft).
 * For -sp + -t, the resulting form replaces the -p with -t (e.g. resp → rest).
 * For -t + -t, the resulting form replaces the -t with -st (e.g. wart → warst).
 * For -st + -t, the second person singular past indicative is unmarked (e.g. brast → brast).

Some verbs display grammatischer Wechsel, in which the final consonant of the stem changes depending on the tense. The following alternations are observed (note that final consonant of the second principal part arose from an Old Blylandic sound change): In Blylandic, only one verb, sein ("to see"), also displays an alternation between the past indicative and past subjunctive/participle (3p past indicative sougen, 3s past subjunctive söö, past participle söön). This verb, while classified as a strong verb, is considered not to fall into any subclass due to its anomalous conjugation.

The following is a list of subclasses of strong verbs (with examples): Not all strong verbs neatly fit into one of the above subclasses. In particular, verbs derived from Old Blylandic verbs with word-medial -h- typically have lengthened vowels (such as the class 6 j-present lein "to laugh").

The "j-present" verbs form a sub-subclass within classes 5, 6 and 7, with anomalous present tense forms (shown in the above table). There are only three class 7 j-present strong verbs, and two of them (ęren "to plow" and dein "to die") are irregular (ęren, jar, ören, iri, aren; dein, dedu, döden, dödi, daun), being the last Blylandic strong verbs to show reduplication.

While standen ("to stand") is nominally a class 6 strong verb, it has irregular past forms (3s past indicative stuut, 3p past indicative stuuden, 3s past subjunctive steudi, past participle staden).

Weak verbs
The following is an example of a weak verb, warnen ("to warn"): Weak verbs only have two principal parts: the infinitive and the past participle.

Preterite-present verbs
A small, closed class of verbs show an unusual conjugational pattern. These verbs, the preterite-present verbs, have present tense forms that behave as if they were the past tense forms of strong verbs, and have weak past tense forms.

The following is an example of a preterite-present verb, skolen (future tense auxillary): Preterite-present verbs have five principal parts, like strong verbs; however, their set of principal parts is different.

List of preterite-present verbs:

Irregular verbs
The copula wesen is the most irregular verb in Blylandic: Very rarely, one can find sumer for the first person plural present indicative, and ste for the second person plural present indicative. Even rarer are swar for the first person dual, and stir for the second person dual (this form is the only dedicated second person dual form in Blylandic).

The third person singular present indicative form is not used in conjunction with a predicate adjective. Instead, the adjective is used alone, with a null copula. With other present forms, it fuses with the predicate adjective. Optionally, if the predicate adjective only has weak forms, -'s may be used as the copula (for the third person singular present indicative).
 * An example is Suu wereld mikls þai... ("Because the world is large...")
 * Þii męnner aldsint. ("Those people are old.")
 * Sa fogl minneren's. ("That bird is smaller.")

Related is the negative form of the copula, mesen: Very rarely, one can find nissum for the first person plural present indicative, and nist for the second person plural present indicative. Even rarer is nisser for the first person dual.

This verb has two present participles. The first participle, mesende, is only used in conjunction with an auxillary verb.

The other two irregular verbs are duun ("to do") and gein ("to go").

The weak verbs hęben ("to have") and wilen ("to want") are regular in Blylandic (past participles: hadd and weld, respectively), despite them being irregular in Old Blylandic.

Additional forms
Blylandic verbs also possess additional forms to denote additional tenses, aspects and moods. Unlike in most Germanic languages, where participle/infinitive and verb are separate, these forms are fused together.

Mediopassive
The Blylandic mediopassive is marked with the suffix -sk, attached to the end of a fully conjugated verb. The full conjugation is as follows, using beren as an example: The participles and the gerund add the -sk after the inflectional ending.

Negative
The negative simply concatenates the infinitive with the negative form of the copula.

An example is berennis ("[he/she/it] does not bear")

Perfect tense
The perfect tense is formed using the past participle in combination with wesen or hęben. There are eight different paradigms, depending on the form of the past participle and whether the verb is negated.

Note that historically, more verbs used wesen as its auxillary. However, due to confusion between forms, as well as a drive towards more regular inflection, most verbs that used wesen ended up using hęben instead. In the modern day, only gein, qemen and wesen itself use wesen as an auxillary. And with gein, the difference between the negative and the perfect is a matter of consonant length (the negative uses geminated consonants), because it has an identical infinitive and past participle.

Strong past participle, positive, wesen:

Strong past participle, negative, wesen:

Weak past participle, positive, wesen (obsolete in most dialects):

Weak past participle, negative, wesen (obsolete in most dialects): Note that the -d- in the forms listed above may differ depending on the actual form of the past participle.

The forms using hęben simply remove the h- from the auxillary then concatenate the participle and verb. Examples include borenadde ("I had borne") and borenębennim ("I have not borne").

Progressive aspect
The progressive aspect is formed by combining the present participle with werþen. However, the initial w- is removed from the auxillary:

Vocabulary
Family members: Note that the suffix form of dotter is -dutter (e.g. barnsdutter "granddaughter").
 * fader (m, plural fęder) – father
 * muuder (f, plural meuder) – mother
 * bruuþer (m, plural breuþer) – brother
 * swester (f, plural swister) – sister
 * sun (m, plural syner) – son
 * dotter (f, plural dytter) – daughter
 * nefe (m) – nephew
 * nift (f) – niece
 * atte (m) – grandfather
 * amme (f) – grandmother

Colours:
 * roud – red
 * göl – yellow
 * greun – green
 * blöö – blue
 * braun – brown
 * wait – white
 * swart – black
 * gröö – grey
 * oranj – orange (borrowing from Dutch oranje)
 * roz – pink (borrowing from Latin rosa)
 * jol – purple (borrowing from Latin viola)

Compass points: The above are adverbial forms. The nominal forms (all strong neuter nouns) attach -r to the end (oustr, norþr, sonr, westr), while the adjectival forms attach -ren (oustren, norþren, sonren, westren).
 * oust – east
 * norþ – north
 * sonn – south
 * west – west

Time:
 * taime (m) – time
 * sekond (n) – second (borrowing from Latin secundum)
 * minut (f) – minute (borrowing from Latin minūta)
 * stunde (f) – hour
 * dag (m) – day
 * wike (f) – week
 * meineþ (m) – month
 * jeir (n) – year
 * natt (f, plural nętter) – night
 * morgen (m) – morning
 * middag (m) – noon
 * aftermiddag (m) – afternoon
 * eibenn (m) – evening

Relative time: Note that gister- is a prefix, and thus applies to any measure of time (e.g. gisterjeir "last year"); however, this is uncommon outside of gisterdag. The adjectives frumere ("previous") and niist ("next") are used instead.
 * forgisterdag – day before yesterday
 * gisterdag – yesterday
 * þedag – today
 * þemorgen – tomorrow
 * ubermorgen – day after tomorrow

Days of the week:
 * sondag – Sunday
 * meindag – Monday
 * tyysdag – Tuesday (Blyland)
 * uudensdag – Wednesday (Blyland)
 * þorsdag – Thursday (Blyland)
 * friirdag – Friday (Blyland)
 * lougerdag – Saturday (Blyland)
 * fyndag – Tuesday (Namari)
 * wętendag – Wednesday (Namari)
 * boumsdag – Thursday (Namari)
 * golsdag – Friday (Namari)
 * erþerdag – Saturday (Namari)

Seasons:
 * warr (n) – spring
 * sumer (m) – summer
 * hęrfst (m) – autumn/fall
 * wyntr (m, plural wintrer) – winter

Rune names: These represent the 24 runes of the Elder Futhark. They are no longer used in Blylandic because they have long been unable to represent all sounds in the language.
 * föö (n, plural fii) – /ɸ/
 * aur (m) – /u/
 * þyrs (m) – /θ/
 * ǫss (m, plural ęsser) – /a/
 * riid (f) – /r/
 * koun (n) – /k/
 * geb (f) – /g/
 * ynj (f) – /w/
 * hagl (m) – /h/
 * neud (f) – /n/
 * ais (n) – /i/
 * jeir (n) – /j/
 * yy (m) – /e/
 * perþ (f) – /p/
 * ęlg (m) – /z/
 * suul (f) – /s/
 * tyy (m) – /t/
 * berken (n) – /b/
 * ei (m) – /ɛ/
 * manne (m, plural męnner) – /m/
 * lǫg (m, plural lęger) – /l/
 * ing (m) – /ŋ/
 * uuþel (n) – /ɔ/
 * dag (m) – /d/

Lists split off into their own articles:
 * Blylandic Swadesh list
 * Metalanguage
 * Religion
 * Science

Notable texts in Blylandic
The following is a list of notable texts in Blylandic in Innocence Seekers:
 * Saga of Gakran (Gakrans Sage), a retelling of the quest to defeat Gakran, by Emme Willemsdutter