Day 29
Gán Vẽi (Entry 29):
Gán Vẽi /ɣan˩˧ vej˧˩/ (
animate)
Noun:
1. a name for the language, especially the standard variety
2. any standard or prestigious language
3. koine, lingua franca
4. folk music, folk song
5. oral literature, oral history
Etymology
From
gán "throat, front of the neck, voice" +
vẽi "common, general, public, communal".
gán is from Old TBD
t·kan "throat, voice", from Proto-TBD
*to "to take, to receive, to accept" +
*ka "all, full, complete" +
*ni "tube, pipe, column".
vẽi is from Old TBD
l·uêih "familial, shared, common", from Proto-TBD
*look "large, great" +
*wir "family, lineage, household" +
*xo "face, appearance".
Usage notes
Despite not being politically united under a single state, speakers of
Gán Vẽi see themselves as members of a single ethnic group, although that group is divided into seven distinct "lineages". These lineages roughly correspond to different geographic regions, but there are more independent states than lineages, and political boundaries rarely correspond very well to those of these ethnic subgroups. Each lineage has its own characteristic accent or dialect - the reality of the situation is, of course, more complicated, but this is the way speakers believe things to be. At this point in time, the degree of mutual intelligibility between any two varieties of the language is still likely to be greater than 50% - all dialects share more or less the same (initial) consonant inventory and are very similar in terms of word order as well, but vowels, tones, final consonants, and verbal enclitics tend to be somewhat more variable.
Nevertheless, as part of a collaborative effort between the governments of the various different states, a standardized "lingua franca" of sorts was codified and is now used for all official international communication. It has also become the language of education, government, and organized religion within individual states.
Gán Vẽi, originally a name for the spoken language in all of its regional forms, now refers first and foremost to this standardized, high-prestige variety - both spoken and written. It's not exactly anyone's native language, but as it was first codified relatively recently, is periodically "updated" over time, and isn't seen as perfect or divinely-inspired, the standard is not significantly "out of touch" with the spoken varieties. Despite the fact that representatives from all states and members of all lineages participated in its codification, however, standard
Gán Vẽi does generally favor the dialects of the centrally located and economically influential
Kéi,
Srǎi, and
Ngôi lineages.
Example sentence:
Srǒu cá gán lảng gản nha ma píu cá "Gán-Vẽi" mãu ná vǐ hō lou.
/ʂow˧˨˧ ca˩˧ ɣan˩˧ laŋ˨˩˨ ɣan˨˩˨ ɲa˧ ma˧ piw˩˧ ca˩˧ ɣan˩˧ vej˧˩ maw˧˩ na˩˧ vi˧˨˧ ho˥ low˧/
[ʂɔw˧˨˧ t͡ɕaː˩˧ ɣɑ̃n̪˩˧ ɫ̪ɑ̃ŋ˨˩˨ ɣɑ̃n̪˨˩˨ ɲaː˧ maː˧ pɪw˩˧ t͡ɕaː˩˧ ɣɑ̃n̪˩˧ ʋɛj˧˩ mɑw˧˩ n̪aː˩˧ ʋiː˧˨˧ ɦoː˥ ɫ̪ɔw˧]
srǒu cá gán lảng gản nha ma píu cá Gán Vẽi mãu ná vǐ=hō=lou
speak with throat house INDEF.POSS soft CMPR from with throat common at 1s seem=DIR=real
Speaking with your own accent is a lot better than speaking "properly", I feel.
Thedish (Entry 29):
Dudish /ˈdyːdɪʃ/ (
plural Dudishes /ˈdyːdɪʃəs/)
Noun:
1. the name of the language; Dudish, "Thedish", "Theodish", etc.
2. (archaic) any Germanic language
3. (archaic) any West Germanic language
4. (archaic) spoken language, vernacular language, native language
Dudish /ˈdyːdɪʃ/
Adjective:
1. of or pertaining to the Dudish/"Thedish" language
2. of or pertaining to speakers of the Dudish/"Thedish" language
3. (archaic) of or pertaining to Germanic languages or their speakers
4. (archaic) of or pertaining to West Germanic languages or their speakers
5. (archaic) spoken, vernacular, native (of a language)
6. (archaic) popular, common, public
7. (archaic) ethnic, tribal, national, native
8. (archaic) customary, traditional, cultural, ancestral
9. (archaic, religion) gentile
10. (archaic, religion) pagan, heathen
11. (rare) human; of or pertaining to human beings
Alternative forms
dudish,
Dydish,
dydish,
Duidish,
duidish,
Deutch,
deutch,
Ditch,
ditch,
Dutch,
dutch
Etymology
From Old Thedish
þīedisċ, from Proto-Germanic
*þiudiskaz. Compare Dutch
Diets, German
Deutsch, Icelandic
þýskur, Swedish
tysk.
Note that the expected reflex of OTh.
þīedisċ would be
Dydish /ˈdʌɪ̯dɪʃ/, rather than
Dudish /ˈdyːdɪʃ/ - seemingly from
*þēodisċ instead. It has been suggested that the unexpected vowel may be a result of interdialectal borrowing or analogy with
Dude /ˈdyːd/ "person, Thedish-speaker". Whatever the case may be, the result is the same, although forms like
Dydish or
Duidish - from a hypothetical OTh.
*þīodisċ - can be found in other varieties of the language, albeit sometimes with different meanings.
Usage notes
Senses 1-3 of the noun are typically uncountable, but the plural
Dudishes may occasionally be encountered in reference to multiple language varieties, especially in older texts which lump all (West) Germanic languages together, most often in contrast with Latin or the Romance languages in general - called
Leadish /ˈlɛːdɪʃ/,
Leadenish /ˈlɛːdənɪʃ/, or
Romance /rɔˈmans/ - and the Celtic languages -
Wealish /ˈwɛːlɪʃ/. The coordinate term for Old Norse and its descendants, if treated separately from West Germanic, was typically
Deanish /ˈdɛːnɪʃ/.
Deanish,
Wealish (or
Welsh), and
Romance survive in the modern language as the words for "Danish", "Welsh", and "Romance", but
Leadenish has mostly been displaced by
Latyn /laˈtʌɪ̯n/ as the word for "Latin".
The fact that
Leadenish,
Wealish, and
Deanish all contain /ɛː/ is a coincidence. Nevertheless, at one point in history, speakers seem to have come to associate /ɛː/ with the names of foreign peoples and their languages. For example, in some of the earliest Dudish/Thedish texts mentioning Slavic-speaking groups, the expected
Winedish /ˈwiːnədɪʃ/ can occasionally be found "misspelled" as
Weanedish /ˈwɛːnədɪʃ/. Modern speakers, however, are almost guaranteed to use something along the lines of
Slavonish /slaˈvoːnɪʃ/ or
Slavic /ˈslaːvɪk/ instead.
Monosyllabic variants of
Dudish - namely
Deutch /ˈdœt͡ʃ/,
Ditch /ˈdɪt͡ʃ/, and
Dutch /ˈdʊt͡ʃ/ - may occasionally be used as the names of specific West Germanic languages other than Dudish/Thedish - usually "(High) German", "Low German", and "Dutch", respectively. However, this has declined in recent decades.
Sense 4 of the noun and Senses 5-11 of the adjective are typically not capitalized in writing. In contrast to Senses 1-3 of the noun and Senses 1-4 of the adjective, Sense 4 of the noun and Senses 5-8 of the adjective are - or at least were, when they were still common - frequently used in reference to both Germanic and non-Germanic groups. Senses 9-10 of the adjective are most often associated with early translations of the Bible. As Christianization progressed,
dudish as a religious descriptor switched from being something speakers called themselves to something they called others before eventually falling out of use in favor of later loanwords.
prat /ˈprat/ (
plural prats /ˈprats/)
Noun:
1. (informal) Dudish, "Thedish", "Theodish", etc.
2. dialect, regiolect; the language variety characteristic of a particular region, area, place, etc.
3. any language variety
4. (derogatory, dated) patois
5. (rare) cant, jargon, vernacular, code
6. (archaic) joke, riddle, trick, lie
Alternative forms
pret,
prattes (pl.),
plat,
pat
Etymology
From Old Thedish
pratt, from Proto-Germanic
*prattuz. Compare English
prat, Dutch
prat, Icelandic
prettur. Also related to English
prate and
prattle. The variants
plat and
pat are thought to have been influenced by German
Platt or Low German
Plattdütsch and French
patois, respectively.
Usage notes
For much of its history, native speakers and outsiders alike have often attempted to characterize Dudish/Thedish as
bloot ne prat "just a dialect" of one of its more prestigious relatives - typically English, but occasionally Dutch - due to its perennial lack of the proverbial "army and navy" required to insist otherwise. Even as recently as the mid-1900s,
prat was used almost exclusively as a derogatory term. However, as speakers' attitudes towards the language have greatly improved over the past 50-70 years,
prat has become more of a neutral word for "language (variety)", used without shame or contempt. However, it is still primarily used in reference to non-standard and low-prestige varieties, although a language like English, for example, might be called a
prat sarcastically or as a joke. The term is now also used as a colloquial name for Dudish/Thedish itself, typically as
de prat "the dialect" or
uir prat "our dialect".
Example sentence:
De Allwyd Retching ef Dudish Ryts, swea in de prat dyded, forcloars det…
/də ˈalˌwʌɪ̯d ˈrɛt͡ʃɪŋ ɛf ˈdyːdɪʃ ˈrʌɪ̯ts | swɛː ɪn də ˈprat ˈdʌɪ̯dəd | fɔrˈklɔːrs dɛt/
[d‿ˈɑɫwed ˈɾɛt͡ʃɨ̃ŋ‿əv ˈdyːdɨʃ ˈɾʌɪ̯t̚s | swɛ̃‿n‿nə ˈpɾat̚ ˈdʌɪ̯dəd̥ | fəɾˈklɔːɾz dət̚]
de Allwyd Retch-ing ef Dudish Ryt-s, swea in de prat dyd-ed, forcloar-s det
DEF universal explain-GER of popular right-PL, so in DEF dialect translate-PST.PTCP, state-PRES that
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as translated into Dudish/Thedish, states that…
Back in 2017, I think, I mentioned this sort of joke-idea I'd had for an a posteriori Germanic language where the reflex of Proto-Germanic
*þeudō, which would be the speakers' name for themselves and/or just the word for "person", was
dude [ˈdyːd~ˈdʉːd]. I've tried looking for the original post using the board's search function, but nothing's turned up, so I figure it must have been part of a thread that got deleted to help free up space. Anyway "Thedish", which I started working on for Lexember 2019, is what's come of that idea being taken at least 50~75% seriously. I think of it as "Dudish" in my head, and that's what it's called in all my notes, but for whatever reason, I guess I wasn't in the mood to potentially have to explain the name back at the start of the month. Anyway, as a result of the sound changes I wanted to have happen to get
dude from
*þeudō, I ended up deciding to make it a pretty normal/average/boring West Germanic language. I don't want/need/expect it to be interesting to anyone other than myself, but I enjoy working with it because I, for whatever reason, find small deviations from "the familiar" (in my case, English) fun, and because it lets me play around with things like the lexicon, for instance, without having to create all the roots from scratch or having to worry about whether or not I'm fundamentally misunderstanding any of the morphosyntactic features I want to implement. That's why I like using it for Lexember. It's also been a fun excuse to learn a lot about the history of my own native language and its closest relatives. Dudish/Thedish/Theodish/whatever has changed a lot in the past year, and it's definitely still a constant work-in-progress - I've made changes to the vowels at least three times this month - but thankfully I'm still enjoying working with it.
The a priori language I used for Lexember the past two years, called Y²KS for lack of a better name, has by no means been abandoned. However, I just haven't been happy with it for a while, and felt the need to start from scratch and rethink my approach, so to speak. I hadn't made much progress by the end of November, so I decided to take a break from that project and use a different a priori idea for this year's Lexember instead. Gán Vẽi is the result of an idea I had back in September, I believe. I originally called it
Yòu Kéi /jow˥˧ kej˩˧/ after the first two meaningless words I came up with to exemplify the aesthetic I was going for. However, based on the English word "you", it occurred to me that the name might be read as sounding like "UK", and again, as silly as this sounds, I guess I wasn't in the mood on December 1st to potentially have to explain myself, so I came up with "Gán Vẽi" as a substitute, decided it meant something like "Common Language", and ended up waiting until now to actually decide on the etymologies of the two components. I originally had the idea to make the word for "language" in some conlang related to "throat" instead of "tongue" after reading about
this. I've probably done it elsewhere before, but that concept's shown up again here.
Yòu Kéi has ended up as the name of one of the "lineages" mentioned above, although I haven't really worked out what exactly the first word means yet. As I believe I may have mentioned briefly earlier in the month, I'm not happy with how the language has turned out aesthetically, but I'm glad I've gotten to work with it like this to get a better idea of what I do and don't like about the current version.
The user formerly known as "shimobaatar".
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