Loanwords II. Waldaiic, Celtic and others

Nothing is ever simple.

Waldaiic

Waldaiic is a branch of Indo-European languages classified as satem, meaning that Proto-Indo-European velar and labiovelar plosives merged while palatals stayed distinct. It is divided into the West, North and East Waldaiic subbranches; the exact relationships between these are disputed.

Waldaiic languages are spoken in large parts of eastern and northeastern Europe. Notable members include, from northeast to southwest, the North Waldaiic languages Ethiynic (spoken roughly between the rivers Volga and Daugava) and Bhaltic (between Daugava and Vistula) and the West Waldaiic languages Cherric (between Vistula and Elbe), Undavan, and Elbic (south of Cherric). The first attempts to reconstruct the unattested Proto-Waldaiic language were undertaken in the late 19^th century.

A rare picture of Jack Nodwhich (left) and Egon Ekbert Schrejber (right) at a meeting of the Waldaiischer Conversations-Bund (Waldaiic Conversational Bunch). Click to enlarge and note the logo on the hatbands. The identity of the moustached man facing the camera remains a mystery.

All present-day Waldaiic languages, as well as Volgan, Suomish, Magyarian, Basque, and the Celtic languages except Danubian (and formerly Beskidic), are written in the Waldaiic alphabet, which is the third major European script besides Greek and Lemizh. To spare our readers learning another writing system, we will use the Roman transliteration devised by German linguist Egon Ekbert Schrejber. It is straightforward for vowels (except for Ethiynic which will be described further down); consonants are denoted as follows:

(Schrejber originally wanted to use ß for /s/ and s for /z/, and ß̌ and š for /ʃ, ɕ/ and /ʒ/, respectively; but this proposal was met with general disbelief.)

Glides are written with the vowel letters i and u.

Proto-Waldaiic x-wld

The protolanguage was probably spoken during the late third millennium BCE in the Middle East. Old Lemizh has loaned some scattered words from Proto-Waldaiic, such as warndzi‑ ‘rice’, shark‑ ‘gravel’, gword‑ ‘rose’, and gweshsh‑ ‘trick’ (from the PWald word for ‘birdlime’).

On the other hand, Proto-Waldaiic had plenty of loans from Old Lemizh, many of them related to seafaring and mathematics: PWald *sgvála < OLem sgwal‑ ‘boat’, *thuphḗskhas < tüpēsk‑ ‘dolphin’, *álgo < alg‑ ‘calculate’, etc.

Phonology

Proto-Waldaiic shortened PIE *a and *o and simplified diphthongs, resulting in a nearly regular vowel inventory *a *e *i *o *u, *ā *ē *ī *ō *ū, *ö, with the latter not only being the reflex of *eu̯ but also preserving a trace of the labiovelars – it is the outcome of *e after *kʷ *gʷ *gʷʰ. The two diphthongs, *au *ei, do not continue the PIE ones but are reflexes of earlier *ab(h)/aph *eg(h)/ekh, respectively.

The following consonants are reconstructed:

The recostruction of a consonant inventory with voiceless and voiced aspirates, and voiced, but not voiceless, plain plosives is a matter of ongoing dispute. A number of scholars argue that it is highly unlikely for a language to have only marked (voiced and aspirated) sounds but no corresponding plain ones, as such a system would quickly collapse into a simpler, less marked, one. Schrejber usually responded to such criticism with snide comments about German and English aspiration of voiceless plosives.

Proto-Waldaiic had mobile accent; whether stress or pitch is unclear.

The PIE palatals *k̑ *g̑ *g̑ʰ developed into *š(ž) *j *ǰ, respectively. The most famous diachronic development is the ruki-rule: after *r *r̥ *u *u̯ *k̑ *k *i *i̯, the sibilants *s *z became *š *ž.

Morphology

Proto-Waldaiic verbs had lost the imperfect tense, the subjunctive mood, as well as the mediopassive voice, and innovated a new passive, but otherwise continued the PIE forms including the dual. We cite verbs in the first person singular present indicative active, which had the ending *‑o in thematic and *‑mi in athematic verbs.

Nouns and adjectives had singular, dual and plural forms and inflected for seven cases. The citation form for nouns is the nominative singular, which typically ended in *‑as for thematic masculine and *‑a for thematic feminine and neuter words. Athematic words continued the PIE *‑s either as *‑s or as *‑š, unless they were endingless due to Szemerényi’s law. Adjectives, again, are cited in their masculine forms.

Further reading

• Mr Jay Poll and Emir Cornbread (1997, 2002). The Waldaiic Languages. Dearborn & Routledge.

Old Elbic is still under construction.
Please have patience!

Old Elbic x-plo

Elbic (x-pl) is a Waldaiic language spoken in a small area of the Krkonoše or Giant Mountains, near the source of the river Elbe. For our purposes, we are however interested in Old Elbic, which spanned a considerably larger area – from the Baltic region to the Rhine – for a short time around 200 BCE during the height of the Elbic Empire.

Phonology

The Old Elbic vowels were a e i o u, with no contrast between short and long ones. The consonants were:

Morphology

Verbs inflected for person, number, tense and voice like Proto-Waldaiic; only the dual and the mediopassive were lost. One conspicuous innovation was the inclusive first person plural (‘I and you’ as opposed to ‘I and they’). Mood was mostly expressed with auxiliary verbs. The citation form, as so often, is the first person singular present indicative active.

Nouns and adjectives retained the seven Proto-Waldaiic cases, but nominative and accusative had mostly become identical in form and were distinguished by word order. The language added a partitive plural to the three Proto-Waldaiic numbers (but not for verbs, as just mentioned – they took the plural when their subject was in the dual or one of the two plurals). Nominals largely lost gender distinctions. The citation form is the nominative singular.

Further reading

• Simon Clewzeezenkin (1985). History of the Elbic Language. National Scientific Publishers PWN.

Ethiynic x-et

Ethiynic (also ‘Ethijnic’ following the German spelling), endonym Eþījnu, is spoken in northeastern Europe, roughly between Lemaria and Suomi. Modern Lemizh loans include financial and trading terms.

Phonology and orthography

Ethiynic has a complex vowel inventory based on the five standard vowels, which are pronounced differently when unstressed, stressed, stressed and long, or stressed, long and nasalised. Each vowel has a corresponding diphthong; these only occur in stressed positions, and are never nasalised. The following table shows Schrejber’s (German-based) orthography and the pronunciations.

* Long (un-nasalised) vowels and diphthongs rarely occur in citation forms but are common in the passive as well as in substantivisations of adjectives: Eþijnu is ‘Ethiynic’ as an adjective, while Eþījnu is the noun referring to the language as well as the people.

† Schrejber’s self-flattering attitude is well known.

Here is the consonant inventory.

* The plain plosives, written b d g, are voiced in most positions but have voiceless variants in word-initial position and before other voiceless consonants.

The most iconic feature of Ethiynic is a group of sound shifts known as Boil’s Dozen, after Marvin V. Boil (who, as we know, also published a series of lectures on the Tlöngö̀l):

1. *sph > f (e.g. *sphérdho ‘run away, flee’ > férdho ‘flighty, elusive’)
2. *f > p (written b) word-initially and before unvoiced consonants (*frī́no ‘churn’ [of the sea] > brĩne ‘go down in turmoil’)
3. *f > l elsewhere (*iuphī́fa > iufĩla ‘female foreigner’)
4. *sī > su > þu (*sī́ > þú ‘she’)
5. *ðe > a before ph and r (*ðéro ‘balk [of sails]’ > áre also ‘act/sing in an overly dramatic fashion’)
6. *ðe > aw elsewhere (*ðeskhmö́ > awþkhmej ‘butterfly’)
7. *khl, *kh > l after vowels (*gúkhlu ‘antimony’ > gúlu ‘poison’ [also metaphorically])
8. *kh > p (written b) word-initially (*khúždha ‘[hidden] treasure’ > búšdha ‘alcohol, “booze”’)
9. *ða > a (i.e. *ð disappears before *a, as in *milíða ‘sweet’ > milīa ‘honeymoon’)
10. *th > b word-internally and word-finally (*nifthónas > nibbóna ‘tide’)
11. *sl > mm (*themslás ‘twin’ > thẽmma ‘evil twin, freak’)
12. *ma > õ (*mai ‘my, me’ > õi ‘my’)
13. *l > ∅ before *a (*sgvála > þgfáa ‘boat, ship’)

Morphology

Verbs distinguish tense, aspect, mood, and voice, partly by inflection and partly using constructions with auxiliary verbs. Person and number are expressed with pronouns and have no impact on verb forms. They are traditionally cited in the imperative, which consistently ends in ‑e.

Nouns and adjectives do not inflect for case and only distinguish singular and plural. They continue the PWald nominatives and are cited in the singular. There is no general way to form the plural, but the common ending ‑a (< PWald *‑as, *‑a, *‑a < PIE *‑os, *‑eh₂, *‑om) typically turns into ‑o.

Further reading

• Ms Rapturous* (2005). The Ethiynic Language. Ethiynic Institute.

* also a pseudonym

Uyquaritan x-uqb

Uyquaritan is an undeciphered and most likely non-Indo-European language that flourished around the 4^th/5^th centuries BCE in northeastern Asia Minor, and for some reason was written in an early form of the Waldaiic script, with an abundance of diacritics and an additional letter transcribed as ʜ. In Roman transliteration, some letters are written differently from Schrejber to avoid stacking of diacritics (č → ʧ, ǰ → ʤ, ň → ɲ, š → ʃ, ž → ʒ), although this convention makes Uyquaritan texts hardly easier to read. To prove the point, here is the penultimate line from the so-called Ode to ‘Ŋā (although scholars disagree whether this poem is actually addressed at somebody called ‘Ŋā):

 õtaim̃ yo pǐr̯amiȷ̈̃ ǟz xõrẍe łvis v̟ǒr̀xes̊ eɣrāps’

Almost needless to say, many linguists have attempted to decipher this language, variously claiming genetic relationships to Boolean, Babylonian, Persian, and even Chinese. Jack Nodwhich has the honour of being the only linguist to actually admit his failure.

This language does not seem to have had any influence on Lemizh whatsoever, unless of course Uyquaritan was the source of the Late Middle Lemizh principle of relativity, which is however mere speculation, if not a hoax.

Further reading (selection)

• Bertha R. Quine (2004). Linear Logic in Language Decipherment: The Proof that Uyquaritan is an East Semitic Language. Cambridge University Press.
• Ariadne Menard (1972). Uyquaritan Seals Deciphered: A Mandarin Deer. Kessinger.
• Jack Nodwhich (1958). I couldn’t decipher this language. Cambridge University Press.

Celtic

The Celtic branch of the Indo-European family is centum like Hellenic, but otherwise not particularly closely related to Greek.

All living Celtic languages are descentants of the Insular Celtic subbranch (consisting of Brittonic, Gödelic, and Aballoic) which is, among other features, distinguished by word-initial consonant mutations; the other (‘Continental’) Celtic languages died out in antiquity. The domain of the Brittonic languages is southern Britain (British and Welsh), Scandinavia (Scadian), Jutland (Danish) and Iceland (Eylandic), while Gödelic is spoken in northern Britain (Scottish) and Ireland (Irish), and the only extant Aballoic language is Danubian in central Europe.

Proto-Celtic x-cel

The common ancestor of the Celtic languages was spoken around 1000 BCE in central Europe, most likely by the people of the Urnfield culture (c. 1300–750). Middle Lemizh has a few Proto-Celtic loanwords, such as bodaragnyr ‘drum’ (whence ModLem wdràg. ‘fight’), karwyr ‘carnyx > trombone’, trigjyr ‘music’, fraatja ‘perceive’, and danoujyr ‘Danube’.

Phonology

The vowels *a *e *i *o *u occurred short and long, with the exception of *o, which was always short because PIE *ō turned into *ā or *ū. The diphthong system was reduced to *ai *au *oi *ou. And these were the consonants:

Proto-Celtic had mobile accent, which is not always indicated in the dictionary for lack of data. The inherited Proto-Indo-European pitch accent likely transitioned into stress accent during Proto-Celtic times.

Apart from the centum merger, diachronic developments included de-aspiration of breathy voiced plosives (*dʰ > *d etc.) and weakening of *p to the labial fricative *φ, which subsequently disappeared altogether. Laryngeal consonants vanished while their vocalic allophones turned into *a.

Morphology

Large portions of Proto-Indo-European morphology remained unchanged. The optative mood, though, was lost, as was the dual in verbs. The imperfect forms are unrelated to those in PIE. Verbs are cited in the first person singular present indicative active, which ended in *‑ū when thematic and in *‑mi when athematic; nouns and adjectives in the nominative singular (masculine), often ending in *‑os for masculine and *‑ā for feminine forms.

Further reading

• Holger Pedersen (1913). Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen [Comparative Grammar of the Celtic Languages]. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
• Ranko Matasović (2008). Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic. Brill.

Beskidic x-sk

Beskidic (endonym Skid; the prefix Be- is probably from the Magyarian locative adverb) was an Aballoic language from the Beskid Mountains that became extinct in the late 15^th or early 16^th century. The closest living relative is Danubian (endonym Θανυ̨χ), spoken in the Alps and surrounding lowlands.

The main source of Celtic loans in Early New Lemizh is the Tlöngö̀l, which Ramo littered with Beskidic musical terms and words relating to other arts, tree names, and some others such as proxekxa < pråxäkx ‘badger’. Linguist and professional dancer Ida Yana Nash elucidated the intricate but ultimately pointless concepts behind the Beskidic words in the Tlöngö̀l.

Phonology

Beskidic had seven vowels, a ä å e i o u, and five diphthongs, ai äu åu ei oi, all of which occurred in short and long versions.

The language had a rather disconcerting kind of vowel harmony between the penultimate and ultimate vowels of a word, which changed the quality of the former before the latter was lost due to apocope. Celticist Gaspar Hoyt claims in regular intervals to have solved this riddle with his ‘11-limit theory’.

Lenition is the change of a consonant after a vowel. Epenthetic ä (as in the word for ‘badger’ above) did not give rise to lenition. The pattern of changes was as follows:

* ń was pronounced the same as n but written with a different letter; the difference is purely etymological.
† lengthening of the preceding vowel or diphthong

Beskidic had no words beginning with a vowel. If the first letter of a word was a vowel letter, it actually began with an [h]: mai ubn [ma͜iˈhubn̩] ‘my lamb’. The un-lenited form of ‘lamb’ began with a glottal stop: ʼubn [ˈʔubn̩]. An initial vowel sound caused a word to merge with the preceding one: māiåux [ˈma͜iːɔ͜ʊx] ‘my liver’ (un-lenited form: yåux [jɔ͜ʊx] ‘liver’).

Here is the complete consonant inventory:

The accent was fixed on the penultimate syllable.

The most apparent diachronic development of consonants in Aballoic was devoicing of plosives except in lenited positions; unvoiced plosives, meanwhile, turned into affricates when unlenited and into fricatives when lenited.

Morphology

Verbs were inflected for person and number (singular and plural) in the present and past indicative; most other verb forms were constructed with auxilliary verbs. The citation form is the first person singular present indicative active, which ended in -m for verbs of athematic origin but was endingless for verbs of thematic origin.

Nouns and adjectives did not inflect for case. The plural ended in -aib, a generalisation of the Proto-Celtic ablative plural of o- and ā-stem nouns. Many adjectives and some nouns had different masculine and feminine forms due to vowel harmony with the old endings (e.g. poduŕ/podaŕ ‘deaf’, yåŕkx/yåuŕkx ‘roe buck/doe’), in which case the masculine is cited.

Further reading

• Viola von Storch-Wams (1862). Grammatik der beſkidischen Sprache [Grammar of the Beskidic Language]. Lauffer & Stolp.

Other languages

Many other languages have contributed words to the Lemizh lexicon at all times: for example, bRÌj. ‘iron’ and bilà. ‘approve’ are ultimately from Akkadian, kÌt. ‘cat’ and RenÌj. ‘monkey’ from Ancient Egyptian, and tamgà. ‘tango’ from Ibibio, a Nigerian language.

In modern times, contacts with other parts of the world have widened the spectrum of loanword sources: labÌt. ‘car’ is from Magyarian, bunÌ. ‘coffee’ from an Afro-Asiatic language (probably Amharic), txÌ. ‘tea’ from Mandarin Chinese, kolÌb. ‘hummingbird’ from a Caribbean language, oranutnÌ. ‘orangutan’ from Malay, and markÌw. ‘kangaroo’ from an Australian language in which the word actually refers to a type of alcoholic sweet.

Appendix