Gehtic - Germanic lang in France

[Omzinesý]

Gehtic [ʒɛɦt̪ik] is "West-Germanic" lang that has eneded up to Western France.
Its grammar will (maybe) be quite similar to that of my project where I tried to generate a very Germanic language from Uralic.

Phoneme inventory

p t k
b d g
f s ʃ h
v z ʒ ʁ
m n (ɲ) ŋ
(w?) l (ʎ) j

y i u
(œ) ɛ ɔ
a ɒ

ei
ai, ay, ɒu


Features
Nouns
4 cases: Nominative, Accusative, Instrumental, Genitive
2 numbers
2 Genders

Verbs
4 tense-aspects: present, imperfect, perfect, future
3+3 persons
Some indefinite forms

[Omzinesý]

Development of consonants:

Plosives mostly remain as they are in PG.
p t k
b d g

*g => ʒ / before front vowels
*θ => s
*s => h / before consonants
*s => z
*sj => ʃ
*sw => ʃ
*rs => ʃ

*f remains
*w => v
*r => ʁ

*x => h / word-initially
something happens to *x elsewhere



Orthography of consonants:
p <p>
t <t>
b <b>
d <d>

k <c>
g <g>
<e> and <i> do however get two dots above them when followed by /k/ or /g/, <ë> and <ï>.

/s/
<c> before /i/ or /e/
<ç> before other vowels
<s> word-finally

/ʃ/ <ch>
/z/ <s>

/ʒ/
<g> before /e/ or /i/
<gi> elsewhere

/f/ <f>
/v/ <v>
/j/ <y>
/l/ <l>
(/ʎ/ <gl>)
/ʁ/ <r>
/h/ <h>

/m/ <m>
/n/ <n>
/ɲ/ <gn>
/ŋ/ <ng>

[Jackk]

Looks v cool!
Does s > h before consonants even word-initially?

[Omzinesý]

Looks v cool!
Does s > h before consonants even word-initially?

I'm still considering that.

'school' is either scole or ehcole. I'm not sure.

[Ælfwine]

no nasal vowels? Strange, as those German dialects on the French border do have them at least.

[Omzinesý]

no nasal vowels? Strange, as those German dialects on the French border do have them at least.

You are right, on the phonemic level, no nasal vowels. That is there is no distinction between [ɛ̃] and [ɛ̃n]. Vowels preceding nasal consonants are very nasalized though.
Borrowing some features from French doesn't mean it Gehtic should borrow all of them.

[Omzinesý]

y i u <u i ou>
(œ) ɛ ɔ <(eu) e o>
a ɒ <a ao>

ei <ei>
ai, ay, ɒu <ai, au, aou>

[Omzinesý]

Definite Articles

Proto-Germanic had demonstrative *sa, which the articles of all the modern Germanic languages derive from. Wikipedia has this reconstruction: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstr ... ermanic/sa

Gehtic also derives its articles from it.
I like to make Gehtic have some hue of Celtic, and I'm also in love with prestopping of resonants, so there is some processes operating between the article and the word following it (an adjective or a head noun).

*Masculine and *Neuter merge in Gehtic, like they do in Romance, creating two genders Masculine and Feminine. Masculine form derives from the *Neuter form *þat. Last consonant t realizes as prestopping of a following resonant. A plosive it geminates.

NOM çabman 'the man'
ACC çabmanne
GEN ças man
INSTR çane man

Feminines do not have the prestopping effect.

MON safru 'to woman'
ACC safrue
GEN sere fru
INSTR sere fru

I'm still considering Plural forms.

Before consonants Feminine article is usually just s-.

NOM skatta 'the cat'
ACC skatta
GEN sere katta
INSTR sere kattou

[Omzinesý]

Declension [to be edited later]

Gehtic, like most IE languages, has two productive declensions. They derive from IE -o and -ā declensions, that is Proto-Germanic -az and -ō declensions. After Gehtic forms, they are however called -e and - a declensions respectively, here.


E-declension

Singular
NOM -∅/-e*
ACC -e
GEN -es
INSTR -u [y]

* -e appears in Nominative after a stem ending in an open syllable.

Nominative is based on PG -az. /a/ is lost after closed syllables, and later /z/ lost in all nouns.
Accusative always preserves the last vowel because losing /a/ didn't happen in word ends.
Genitive derives from PG genitive -as.
Instrumental derives from PG instrumental -ō. It is interesting why it behaves differently from Nominative in a-declension.
PG dative merges with accusative earlier.


A-declension

NOM -a
ACC -a
GEN -a
INSTR -ou [u

Instrumental is apparently analogical to that in e-declension