Írsc

[Travis B.]

One old project of mine that I had abandoned due to lack of information and probably having taken the wrong approach to work on it was Írsc, i.e. what one would get had Old Norse survived in the British Isles, particularly parts of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. Previously I had tried to derive it directly from Old Norse, but gave up due to lack of adequate information on Old Norse. This time I will take the opposite approach, and work from modern North Germanic languages for source material but give them local color by having them be influenced by Goidelic.

Phonologically, Írsc will be pretty predictably what one would get if Old Norse had developed a greater system of palatalization than developed in the real-world offshoots of Old Norse (which, yes, do have palatalization themselves), along with velarization. Additional features will be preaspiration, as found in Icelandic and Scottish Gaelic, and, just because, preservation of Old Norse vowel nasalization under the influence of Goidelic varieties which have/had it. The Great Back Vowel Shift of Swedish and Norwegian will have not taken place, and cluster retroflexion will not have taken place. Also, rounded front vowels will unround under Goidelic influence (also paralleling the unrounding of high front vowels in Icelandic, albeit without the fronting of /ʊ/). One significant note is that Old Norse /w/ will be preserved when not palatalized. Also, Old Norse /hw/ will become /k/ while /hr hl hn/ will merge with /r l n/.

Morphologically, Írsc will have shifted significantly towards analysis relative to Old Norse, under the influence of Goidelic. It will have three cases, nominative/accusative, dative, and genitive, but in the vast majority of words the nominative/accusative and dative will have merged. Postposed definite articles will be lost under the influence of Goidelic, being replaced by preposed definite articles; similarly there will be no indefinite article. The continental North Germanic -s middle voice marker will not be developed, with reflexive meanings being expressed with mij, dij, and sij. In formal registers there are synthetic person/number markers, but in everyday speech these have largely been lost outside of a small set of verbs. The subjunctive mood is preserved unlike in much of continental North Germanic. One key development under the influence of Goidelic is the development of conjugated prepositions, but unlike Goidelic with multiple forms for prepositions descended from originally dual-purpose (i.e. dative versus accusative) prepositions in Old Norse.

I will probably think of more later, but this is probably a start.

[Moose-tache]

Haha, I also have a long-term project like this. "Yorwicks" is a descendant of Old East Norse spoken in the North York Moors, the Vale of Pickering, and the Scarborough coast. It's a lot of fun mixing (Yorkshire) English and Danish sound changes. Never stop glottal stopping.

Lack of information is real, though, if you're going for an east Scandinavian language especially.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

One old project of mine that I had abandoned due to lack of information and probably having taken the wrong approach to work on it was Írsc, i.e. what one would get had Old Norse survived in the British Isles, particularly parts of Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man...

This is an interesting idea. I look forward to seeing more.

[Ares Land]

Same here!

[Man in Space]

Fourthed!

[WeepingElf]

Surely a rocking cool project!

[Travis B.]

Okay, first things first: the phoneme inventory!

The consonant inventory has been significantly remodeled under the influence of Goidelic, resulting in the following:

	Labial (vel.)	Labial (pal.)	Coronal (vel.)	Coronal (pal.)	Dorsal (non-pal.)	Dorsal (pal.)
Nasal	mˠ <m>	mʲ <m>	n̪ˠ <n>	nʲ <n>	ŋ <n(g)>	ɲ <n(g)>
Plain plosive	pˠ <b>	pʲ <b>	t̪ˠ <d>	tʲ <d>	k <g>	c <g>
Aspirated plosive	pˠʰ <p>	pʲʰ <p>	t̪ˠʰ <t>	tʲʰ <t>	kʰ <c>	cʰ <c>
Voiceless fricative	fˠ <f>	fʲ <f>	sˠ <s>	ʃ <s>	h <h>	ç <h>
Voiced fricative/approximant	w <v>	vʲ <v>			ɣ <g>	j <j>
Tap			ɾˠ <r>	ɾʲ <r>
Lateral			l̪ˠ <l>	lʲ <l>

Orthographically, velarization/non-palatalization will be distinguished from palatalization much the same way as it is Irish or Scottish Gaelic.

And here is the monophthong vowel inventory (I have decided against including vowel nasalization, for practical reasons):

	Front	Central	Back
Close	iː <í>		uː <ú>
Near-close	ɪ <i>		ʊ <u>
Close-mid	eː <é>		oː <ó>
Mid		ə <e/o>
Open-mid	ɛ <e>		ɔ <o>
Open		a aː <a á>

Again, the strong Goidelic influence should be apparent. Note that ON /ɔ/ merged with ON /ø/ prior to front vowel unrounding, and close-mid short vowels became open-mid, and open-mid long vowels because close-mid after that.

As for the diphthong inventory, I have decided to be somewhat more conservative than many North Germanic languages and have preserved some ON diphthongs, specifically /ɛi/ and /ɔu/ will remain diphthongs, specifically /əi əu/ (written <ei> and <ou>); the former will trigger palatalization while the latter will not. However /øy ~ ɛy/ , as one may guess, will merge with /ɛi/ as /əi/ (written <ei>). (One important note is that cases of /əi/ that do not trigger palatalization of preceding consonants are written <ai>.)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Does the language also have mutations?

[WeepingElf]

Does the language also have mutations?

I sincerely hope it won't! Because the initial mutations of Goidelic (and those of Brythonic) are the result of post-vocalic and post-nasal lenitions that operated across word boundaries within phrases, and these changes had already taken their course when the Norse came to Ireland and Scotland, and probably did not happen in Írsc. So Írsc should not have Goidelic-like initial mutations. After all, English never developed initial mutations, either, for the same reasons.

[Travis B.]

Does the language also have mutations?

Nope! As WeepingElf states, mutations long predate Norse settlement of the British Isles. Conversely, though, palatalization is much more in line with a Goidelic-influenced North Germanic language, particularly as all modern North Germanic languages have at least some degree of palatalization, which implies that Old Norse had it too, if subphonemically perhaps.

[Travis B.]

Okay, now some pronouns:

Personal pronouns consistently preserve the dative case. Also, there is a distinct accusative in the 1st and 2nd persons (but in the plural the 1st and 2nd accusative and dative are merged). It should be noted that while Írsc has only two numbers, singular and plural, the 1st and 2nd person plural continue the ON dual rather than the ON singular, like Icelandic and Faroese. Unlike both modern Goidelic and continental North Germanic and like Icelandic and Faroese, Írsc preserves three genders, masculine, feminine, and neuter, due to the dual influence from Goidelic towards preserving a distinction between masculine and feminine, which is lost in continental North Germanic outside of natural gender, but also the stability of the neuter in North Germanic due to having very distinct marking syntactically.

Singular	1st	2nd	3rd m.	3rd f.	3rd n.
Nominative	ej	dú	han	hon	da
Accusative	mij	dij	han	hon	da
Dative	mér	dér	hom	hen	dví
Genitive	mín	dín	hansar	hennar	des

Plural	1st	2nd	3rd m.	3rd f.	3rd n.
Nominative	vit	dit	dei	de	dei
Accusative	occom	diccom	dei	de	dei
Dative	occom	diccom	deim	deim	deim
Genitive	occar	diccar	deir	deir	deir

As you can see, the above was strongly inspired by Faroese's personal pronoun inventory.

Additionally, there is an invariant 3rd person reflexive pronoun sij. There are no relative pronouns, but rather a relativizing marker som.

[Travis B.]

Now the articles:

There are only definite articles, and they go at the start of an NP. They have the following forms:

Singular	m.	f.	n.
Nominative/Accusative	dan	dan	da
Dative	dví	dví	dví
Genitive	des	deir	des

Plural	m.	f.	n.
Nominative/Accusative	dei	de	dei
Dative	deim	deim	deim
Genitive	deir	deir	deir

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Can we have some phonetic details?

[Travis B.]

Now adjective declension:

All adjectives may be declined as "strong" or as "weak"; "strong" declension is used if no article or determiner starts an NP and the noun in question is not a name, and otherwise "weak" declension is used.

Here is the strong declension:

Singular	m.	f.	n.
Nominative/Accusative/Genitive	-	-	-t
Dative	-om	-are	-om

Plural	m.	f.	n.
Nominative/Accusative/Genitive	-er	-ar	-
Dative	-om	-om	-om

Here is the weak declension:

Singular	m.	f.	n.
Nominative/Accusative/Genitive	-e	-a	-a
Dative	-a	-o	-a

Plural	m.	f.	n.
Nominative/Accusative/Genitive	-o	-o	-o
Dative	-o	-o	-o

[Travis B.]

Can we have some phonetic details?

Basically pronunciation is marked orthographically via the basical mappings listed above. About palatalization, both individual consonants and consonant clusters are palatalized if they are followed or preceded by a front vowel or <ei> or unstressed <e>, unless they are followed in turn by a vowel other than than a front vowel or <ei>. or unstressed <e>. Unstressed <e> is not a front vowel but derives historically from one, being synchronically /ə/ (and realized as [ə]), but serves to also mark palatalization (which distinguishes from unstressed <o>, which is also synchronically /ə/ (and realized as [ə]), but serves to mark a lack of palatalization (being typically derived historically from a non-front vowel).

(Oh, and yes, stress always falls on the first syllable of a word.)

[Travis B.]

And here is some content on verb conjugation:

There are two types of verb conjugation - synthetic and analytic - on top of the typical Germanic strong/weak dichotomy. The primary difference between them is that in synthetic conjugation verbs agree with their subjects in person and number, while in analytic conjugation they do not.

There are five classes of synthetic conjugation in the indicative, weak classes 1-4 and strong. The present tense has the following forms of synthetic conjugation:

Present	1st sg.	2nd sg.	3rd sg.	1st pl.	2nd pl.	3rd pl.
Weak 1	-	-ar	-ar	-om	-i	-a
Weak 2	-	-or	-or	-om	-i	-a
Weak 3	-	-er	-er	-om	-i	-a
Weak 4	-	-t	-	-om	-i	-a
Strong	-	-or	-or	-om	-i	-a

The preterite in the indicative has the following forms of synthetic conjugation:

Preterite	1st sg.	2nd sg.	3rd sg.	1st pl.	2nd pl.	3rd pl.
Weak 1	-ai	-ai	-ai	-úm	-ú	-u
Weak 2/3	-de/-te	-de/-te	-de/-te	-dúm/-túm	-dú/-tú	-du/-tu
Weak 4	-e	-e	-e	-om	-u	-o
Strong	-	-(st)	-	-om	-u	-o

Analytic conjugation levels out the different person/number markings, and is the norm for the actual spoken language at the present:

Present	all
Weak 1	-ar
Weak 2	-or
Weak 3	-er
Weak 4	-
Strong	-or

Preterite	all
Weak 1	-ai
Weak 2/3	-de/-te
Weak 4	-e
Strong	-

As for the preceding, but in the subjunctive, here are the synthetic forms for the subjunctive:

Present	1st sg.	2nd sg.	3rd sg.	1st pl.	2nd pl.	3rd pl.
Weak 1/2/3	-e	-er	-e	-om	-i	-e
Weak 4	-e	-et	-e	-om	-i	-e
Strong	-e	-er	-e	-om	-i	-e

Preterite	1st sg.	2nd sg.	3rd sg.	1st pl.	2nd pl.	3rd pl.
Weak 1	-ai	-ai	-ai	-úm	-ú	-u
Weak 2/3	-de/-te	-de/-te	-de/-te	-dúm/-túm	-dú/-tú	-du/-tu
Weak 4	-e	-e	-e	-om	-u	-o
Strong	-e	-er	-e	-jom	-ju	-jo

And here are the analytic forms for the subjunctive:

Present	all
Weak 1/2/3/4	-e
Strong	-e

Preterite	all
Weak 1	-ai
Weak 2/3	-de/-te
Weak 4	-e
Strong	-e

Notice that there is no difference between the indicative and the subjunctive for weak verbs in the preterite.

[Travis B.]

And now, conjugated prepositions:

This is an area in which Írsc differs considerably from the rest of North Germanic. In this case, a personal pronoun is joined to a personal pronoun in a fashion that can only be fully understood diachronically. Take me "with" - it can be conjugated in the following fashions, which are both dative (as in using an instrument) and accusative (as in bringing with) historically:

Dative	1st	2nd	3rd m.	3rd f.	3rd n.
sg.	memer	medder	meoum /mʲəum/	mén	meddve
pl.	meoc /ˈmʲɛkʰ/	meddeoc /ˈmʲɛtʲːəkʰ/	meddeim	meddeim	meddeim

Accusative	1st	2nd	3rd m.	3rd f.	3rd n.
sg.	memi	meddi	mean /ˈmʲan/	meon /ˈmʲɔn/	medda
pl.	meoc /ˈmʲɛkʰ/	meddeoc /ˈmʲɛtʲːəkʰ/	meddei	meddei	meddei