Zompist Bboard Again

That's really cool, even if it gives me flashbacks to my own (failed) efforts at more or less the same thing. (I went with runes instead.)

I don't remember your Dekavurian alphabet well, but I wouldn't say it was a failure.

updates:
new sound change in early modern gothic: when i was deriving the word "mouse" from proto-germanic, the results were *mūs → mwás → mvós → mvós, with an initial cluster /mv-/ that i didn't like at all. since i already had a rule in early modern gothic affecting word-initial clusters ending in nasal consonants (it turns them into liquids: zm → zw, gn → gr, etc.), i expanded it to include word-initial clusters beginning with nasal consonants. so now in this environment the nasal turns into a voiced stop (m → b, n → d), which gives us *mūs → mwás → bvós → bvós. this also means words like "moon" become bjánɨs instead of *mjánɨs, which is more interesting to me anyway, as it makes it sound even more unusual compared to the other germanic languages (maan, Mond, måne, etc.)

delaying second palatalization: modern gothic has a rule in which velar consonants (plus /h/) palatalize following /i/ or /j/. this was intended to remain a surface change/allophone rather than creating new full-fledged phonemes, but for some reason i had made it one of the first changes in the development from early modern to modern, which essentially would have meant it had to stay a surface allophone for 600 years. not impossible, but i felt it would make more sense if it took place later; as such, i've moved it to much later in the sound changes, right before the vowels reduce or shift. i'm still not 100% satisfied, though, and i'm considering deleting it altogether

many new dictionary entries: i've been adding new dictionary entries to anthologi.ca, some that already existed in my dictionary spreadsheet but many new creations as well. i've been updating the dictionary index post in this thread if people are interested! and of course you can go directly to the dictionaries themselves (middle, early modern, modern)

in progress:
a more systematic review of changes between proto-germanic and gothic: due to the paucity of the existing gothic corpus, a great deal of words will need to be created by deriving the likely gothic forms from the existing proto-germanic reconstruction. right now i'm doing something i frankly should have done at the beginning: compiling a list of words that (according to wiktionary, which is the basis for these reconstructions due to ease of use) derive directly from proto-germanic terms, listing them next to their pg sources (with declension/conjugation classes where applicable), and then using them to suss out a definitive list of correspondences so i don't have to keep double-checking. like i said i should have done this a long time ago

possible future updates:
an idea i recently started toying with is adding some new cases to the nominal morphology. i came across a couple of gothic suffixes, -þrō and -drē, which respectively create adverbs indicating motion from or toward a place. in gothic they were only added to determiners, prepositions, and other adverbs (and -þrō seems to have been much more productive than -drē), but i could see them very easily being extended to nouns indicating places, and then from there to all nouns. the tricky part is justifying them becoming (or justifying referring to them as) case suffixes rather than adverbial suffixes. probably part of this will involve having different forms for/incorporating the endings of the non-singular numbers, but i need to think more about this. i have already started preliminary testing on what the forms might look like with different noun stems and shapes (so far the descendants of -þrō look like they'd be <-lur>, with or without a preceding thematic vowel) but the germanic descent review is a priority. adding lative and ablative cases suggests the possibility of adding a locative case as well, but it isn't strictly necessary and i don't know what i would derive it from

i've also been considering having modern gothic, under influence from russian, eliminate the present-tense copula and as a corollary replace the inherited preterite with the past participle. part of the original design goal was a heavy slavic influence, but in practice that's mostly been relegated to palatalization and some borrowed vocabulary. these changes would be very strong evidence of slavic influence, and would help make the language very different from other germanic languages. the only significant changes to the basic structure of gothic verbs that i've currently made are filling out dual forms (and corresponding changes to 3pl forms), jettisoning the morphological passive and the reduplicating class of verbs (both necessitated by sound changes and neither of which i'm happy with), and turning the present subjunctive into a future tense and the past subjunctive into just a general subjunctive. on the other hand, i do like the copula, especially the opportunity it gives me for interesting contractions (with pronouns and/or with negative participles). i also really like the inherited germanic preterites, especially in the strong verbs, and i've had a lot of fun with irregular forms (e.g. /ʒá-/ "show" vs. /téf-/ "showed"), and i don't know that i'm ready to give them up, especially in favor of the past participles which mostly tend to match the basic stems

Emily wrote: ↑Mon May 11, 2026 10:32 pm a more systematic review of changes between proto-germanic and gothic: due to the paucity of the existing gothic corpus, a great deal of words will need to be created by deriving the likely gothic forms from the existing proto-germanic reconstruction. right now i'm doing something i frankly should have done at the beginning: compiling a list of words that (according to wiktionary, which is the basis for these reconstructions due to ease of use) derive directly from proto-germanic terms, listing them next to their pg sources (with declension/conjugation classes where applicable), and then using them to suss out a definitive list of correspondences so i don't have to keep double-checking. like i said i should have done this a long time ago

I've been there too, and so has none other than JRRT, although he had to wait a bit before he could use Wiktionary¹. Welcome to Germanic conlanging!

¹ I've even downloaded the entire database and extracted the Germanic content for precisely the same purpose.

dictionary index post got too big. splitting it and putting it here

dictionary index part one:

dictionary index part two:

anyway! although i don't have it in a ready enough state for the relay game, i have made progress and updates:

• i got rid of the second palatalization. i was never really satisfied with it and i finally decided to just axe it. in its place i put an inconsistent sound change dropping /r/ in unstressed syllables before another consonant; it doesn't happen all the time (so it's not in my sca rules), but i've already done it with a lot of words anyway, and i figured i might as well put it in the list to keep the rule numbering the same lol
• i've been putting in a lot of work on the verbs. currently i have new tenses (in the looser sense of the word) developing from the participle paired with the copula or other auxiliaries, which are getting worn down into genuine verb endings. i don't have the details on my work computer but i can update this when i get home
• i've been fixing up the write-ups i have, though they're mostly not publicly visible yet
• i've been working on a lot of new vocabulary (see the dictionary posts). i've been having a fun time developing different ethnonyms, as well as terms for musical instruments (which in itself led to me working on the ethnonyms so i could create phrases like "Italian guitar" for "mandolin"), and words relating to chess
• i haven't worked out dialects in any great detail, but i do have a couple of things worked out: 1) in the middle gothic period, dialects in proximity to the byzantine empire tend to retain the original stress pattern of borrowed words, while dialects farther away tend to move the stress to the initial syllable, leading to sometimes very different descendants; 2) in the present day, the major dialect distinction is essentially countries that used to be in the ussr vs countries west of that. possible future dialect differences to consider include a dialect that does not undergo the modern gothic vowel shift, and probably some 2nd-person pronoun changes between different dialects as well
• (i also put html comments in my sca cheat sheet on anthologi.ca so i can find the specific rules i'm looking for when i need to make changes)

Emily wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2026 2:04 pm it doesn't happen all the time (so it's not in my sca rules)

I can’t resist noting that Brassica supports sporadic sound changes…

Emily wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2026 2:04 pm anyway! although i don't have it in a ready enough state for the relay game, i have made progress and updates:

I don't have anything specific to say but, ‘wow!’; count yourself as having gained another Modern Gothic admirer.

as promised, verb updates:

middle gothic ("phase 1", noted below as "MG") verbs are described in an earlier post. that writeup is mostly correct, save a couple of updates and corrections (the 3pl past tense forms should end in /n/, not /m/; i keep going back and forth on whether the strong 2sg and 3sg endings should cause palatalization), as well as a renumbering of the conjugations.

early modern gothic verbs (phase 2)
i've been reworking the verbs for early modern gothic ("EMG"), but mostly focused on the endings; i may go back and take another pass at the strong verb vowels. but in the meantime: drastic changes have taken place since middle gothic!

• the subjunctive present has shifted meaning to become a future tense. the former subjunctive past is now a tenseless subjunctive. a few endings in the future tense have regularized, and the subjunctive forms are altered to more cleanly parallel the past tense forms
• the inherited morphological passive forms were lost due to sound changes. even in the times of old gothic periphrastic passives were common, and they grew more so during the middle gothic period. but at the same time the inherited forms were waning away, the periphrastic expressions began to wear down into verb endings
• third-person imperatives are lost
• the gap for third-person dual endings is filled: the EMG 3du forms descend from MG 3pl followed by /bɛ/ "both", and the EMG 3pl forms descend from MG 3pl followed by /al/ "all". (the /bɛ/ form is extended to the imperative 1du, though not the /al/ form)
• as mentioned, the verbs have developed new conjugational forms based on the erosion of participle + copula/auxiliary verb:
  • a habitual/stative has formed from the present participle followed by "to be". (this is almost the complete opposite meaning from the parallel construction in english, which of course forms the progressive; the idea in gothic is that e.g. "she is running" doesn't mean "she is currently running" but "she is always running"). unique among the verb forms in EMG, these have separate forms for masculine and feminine in all three persons, and separate 3rd person neuter forms as well
  • the perfect (or perfective? i can never remember the difference—whichever one "he has died" is in) forms descend from, predictably, the past participle followed by "to be". since the past participle ending is different for strong and weak verbs, these endings differ between those two classes as well
  • new passive forms have developed from the past participle followed by the EMG reflex of waírþan "to become". these have different forms for past, present, future, and subjunctive; the singular endings differ between strong and weak verbs, though the dual and plural are the same

these changes, along with some other tweaks, leads to the following situation for verb endings in early modern gothic (habitual forms are listed in order masc / fem / neut; passive singular forms are listed in order strong / weak, as are imperative forms when they differ):

modern gothic verbs (phase 3)
the changes to verbs between EMG and MG are not nearly as drastic as those above. the most significant changes are:

• the feminine and neuter habitual endings are lost, though the feminine is remembered as an "old-fashioned" ending that is sometimes used as a joke (usually incorrectly), similar to english -eth
• the strong and weak perfect endings merge in the dual and plural, though they remain distinct in the singular
• the weak endings for future tense are lost; all future tense forms now use the reflex of the strong verb endings
• the same happens for the imperative forms, except for 2sg; the formal rule taught in schools is to use the null ending with strong verbs and the /-ɛ/ ending with weak verbs, but in actual use the /e/ ending is seen as polite or deferential, and the null ending is either familiar or rude, depending on the context
• the subjunctive forms extend the /J/ rather than /ʲ/ palatalization throughout (that is, non-palatalizable consonants such as /b/ and /m/ are followed by /j/)

but the overall structure remains the same. the resulting endings are shown in the table below; since MG spelling is not nearly as phonemic as EMG spelling, i am including the spelling in mulberry. when a cell has two entries separated by a slash, the first is found in strong verbs and the second in weak verbs
so that's where the verbs are at! i still need to do another pass at the strong verb vowels in EMG, and develop them for MG, and i might go back and refigure some of these endings—i feel like there might be some almost patterns that could turn into actual patterns pretty easily, and frankly i don't like having three-syllable endings. but that's where we're at for now

Just a minor comment -- you should refer to Early Modern Gothic and Modern Gothic as "EModG" and "ModG" or as "ENG" and "NG" (think like "ENHG" and "NHG" for Early New High German and New High German) to avoid confusion with "MG" for Middle Gothic and a potential "EMG" for a possible Early Middle Gothic.