Some Might Say

Flag of the Getae

Some might say that I have no idea what I want from a conlang. Although this one is in no way genetically related or even similar to previous samples, I still think of them as incarnations of my conlang. That said, I have figured what I want to try out with this one. Last year I said I was trying to out-weird Albanian, so I've gone ahead and made a sister language to Albanian - which, as far as I know, no-one has tried. Most likely because Albanian is poorly and lately attested compared to well documented languages like Latin which has spawned countless Romlangs as a result. On the basis that Albanian is a descendant of Dacian (and that Romanian has a Dacian substrate), I've scraped together what little (free*) information is out there and applied them to yield plausible cognates with Albanian.

*A Concise Historical Grammar of the Albanian Language is currently £154 on Amazon and only partially viewable for free on Google Books.

In order to accrue influences from neighbouring languages I had to put Getic into the mouths of hypothetical people. I took the Getae tribe's name as there was little to conflict with historically and I couldn't think of something original. I've sent the Getae to the upper ranges of the Carpathians to set the scene for some of those vaunted Slavic palatalisations (and depalatalisations). This and all the justifications and considerations of historical population movement have drawn me dangerously close to creating a proper con-country (see Novegrad for an exceptional example). For the time being it's easier to consider it a minority language in an existing Eastern European country. I have at least one trapping of statehood - the flag is essentially an abstraction of the Albanian double-headed eagle fused with a cross. In reality, it's highly derivative of the logo for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I'll argue fair use in court.

Rather than go through the hassle of re-translating Schleicher's Fable, which took forever last year and it still had mistakes in it, I've taken the low road and translated half of the Lord's Prayer, if only because John Foxx covered it. The below translation is essentially output from a sound change applier that takes no consideration of semantic drift, register, or analogical levelling. As with last year, I'm using my own split-ergative morphology rather than the traditional reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European.

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Levelled PIE
[1] *pH2tér *nsóm *ḱém-en-i
[2] *h₁nḗh₃mn̥ *téwe *ḱwen-tó
[3] *H₃rēǵ-nó *téwe *gʷi-gʷem-ór
[4] *wel-tó *téwe *dhi-dheH1-ór
[5] *ḱém-en-i *dʰéǵʰōm-kʷe

Gloss
[1] father.ABS 1pp.GEN heaven.LOC
[2] name.ABS 2ps.GEN holy(ADJ).ABS
[3] kingdom.ABS 2ps.GEN come(AOR).PRES-SUBJ.3ps
[4] wish.ABS 2ps.GEN make(AOR).PRES-SUBJ.3ps
[5] heaven.LOC earth.LOC AND

Latin Orthography (Revised Feb 2012)
[1] Hetrja neza ċjemienj
[2] nom tjew wata.
[3] Rana tjew gigjbra,
[4] wlieta tjew didra,
[5] ċjemienj djeżakie.

Cyrillic Orthography (Revised Feb 2012)
[1] Хэтръя нэза ћъемень
[2] ном тъев вата.
[3] Рана тъев ґіґьбра,
[4] влета тъев дідра,
[5] ћъемень дъеђаке.

IPA (Revised Feb 2012)
[1] /hˠətrjá nˠəzˠá θjémʲənʲ/
[2] /nˠómˠ tjéʋʲ ʋˠatˠá/
[3] /rˠanˠá tjéʋʲ gʲɨgʲbrˠá/
[4] /ʋlʲetˠá tjéʋʲ dʲɨdrˠá/
[5] /θjémʲənʲ djéðˠa kʲe/

Cognates
[1] Eng. 'father', Get. [xəˈtrja]: Arm 'hayr', Toc.B 'pâcer', OAlb 'bace', OIr 'athir'
[2] Eng. 'holy', Get, [waˈta]: Lit. 'šventas', OCS 'svętŭ'
[3] Eng. 'kingdom', Get. [raˈna]: Lat. 'rêgnum'
[4] Eng. 'wish', Get. [vʎeˈta]: OCS 'voliti', Lat. 'volo'
[5] Eng. 'earth', Get. [ˈdjeɣa]: Lit. 'žeme', Alb 'dhe', Skr. 'kša'

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As for the previous incarnations of my conlang, I've kept all the old files and I'd like to delve back into an old one that had a definite Finnic flavour to it. The problem, as ever, is that conlangs are rarely completed works. At least this one has a goal - something that could reasonably be a descendant of Proto-Albanian - that lets me walk away from it at an endpoint. Personal conlangs are dictated by whim, often wound up in euphonics and appearance.

Written September 2011
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