Table of Contents
My opinionated version of Folksprak.
This version of Folkspraak tries to weigh intelligibility by number of speakers, by some metric. It also tries to limit foreign influence to the extent that foreign words are used only if that is the default word used in all modern languages. These constraints pull on each other quite noticeably: English by far the most spoken language, and this variant of Folksprak tries to keep it intelligible to the most amount of people, but at the same time it is also the language with the most foreign words.
Another constraint is the following: The language aims to be conservative, since the conservative option tends to win out. Certainly, any conservative features of English are weighed very highly. This is why we propose to keep dental fricatives, as they are preserved in some North Germanic languages, and crucially, English, the most widely spoken Germanic language. Innovations that are shared among all daughter languages and happened the same way will of course win out.
The * symbol marks Proto-Germanic.
1. Phonology
1.1. Consonant phonemes
In addition to usual allophonic constrasts, some consonant phonemes have a range of acceptable pronunciations to keep the language "zonal". However, care is taken so that this range is narrow enough where it is within the realm of normal dialectal variation and speakers can re-interpet these alternative pronunciations with little to no effort. These are explained in the notes below.
[ The phonology is more Anglo-centric than one would like, however, only in conservativisms. Especially because English loses out a lot on vocabulary, it seems fair to compensate in phonology. ]
The consonant phonemes are as follows:
labial | labiodental | dental | alveolar | postalveolar | palatal | velar | |
stops | p b | t d | k g | ||||
fricatives | f v | th dh | s z | sch | ch (gh?) | ||
affricates | tch dch | ||||||
nasals | m | n | ng | ||||
lateral | l | ||||||
approximant | w wh | r | j |
1.1.1. Notes
- <gh/ch> has the usual ach-Laut/ich-Laut allophonic contrast present in German and Middle English.
- <w> can be pronounced as [v] , since a majority of Germanic languages besides English pronounces the outcome of *w that way.
- <wh> can be pronounced as either [w] or [v], though technically speaking it should contrast with <w>, typically with the pronunication [hw] or [upside-down w]
- <th> and <dh> can be pronounced [t] and [d] in addition to [theta] and [eth]. This is the case for many L2 English speakers already.
1.1.2. Rationale
All phonemes/graphemes not listed below are uncontroversial (e.g) every Germanic language has that kind of phoneme and writes them the same way. This includes the nasals and stops for example.
Controversial in some way:
- <w>: This is not quite as Anglo-centric as it seems, at least not for <w>. Not only is this conservative outcome in the most spoken language, but <w> is also the grapheme for [v] in German and Dutch, making it even more recognizable. The acceptable range of pronunciations should smooth over pronunciation difficulties. It is already the case that many L2 English speakers pronounce <w> as [v] anyway.
- <wh>: This is definitely somewhat Anglo-centric. It is a conservative feature that is present only in English, but *hw developed differently in different languages. It is nice that <wh> is confined to a small set of words and only as an initial sound, so it shouldn't be too impactful. The main thing is that writing the wh- words with <wh> makes reading intelligibility far greater for English speakers.
- <th> and <dh>: Perhaps overly Anglo-centric, but Icelandic has these and they are from Proto-Germanic.
- <sch>: Most Germanic languages have this sound. <sch> seems to be an unambiguous way of writing this sound, and English writes it this way sometimes from German loanwords.
- <ch>/<gh>: I can't decide between this. On the one hand, English uses <gh>. On the other hand, it uses <ch> in the word <loch> and <bach>, and German and Dutch use this sound as well.
- <j>: English loses, partly because every Germanic language except English uses it, and not only that, a most non-Germanic languages reserve <j> for [j]. Arguably more importantly is the fact that there is a correspondence between non-English [j] and English [dʒ] in many cases, such as between German "Jan" and English "John".
1.2. Vowel phonemes
The Great Vowel shift in English is ignored. We have
i ü | u | |
e ö | o | |
ä | a |
Umlauts are used, because the way to write these on an ASCII only keyboard is well defined in German as <oe> and <ue>, <ae>. [ Actually, we could probably get away with no umlauts at all and just use <oe> and <ue> <ae> ]
[ Rational: Pretty much need oe and ue for certain words like to hear <hoeren>, <hoeren>, south <sued> ]
Vowel length is a meaningful distinction, since its present in pretty much every language. [ Marking vowel length orthographically is much harder to do in a language agnostic way, however ].
[ What to do here? English and German are inconsistent. Doubling might make sense. Probably some consistent combination of vowel doubling and consonant doubling is needed. ]
Closed syllable long vowels need double vowel somehow, perhaps by doubling. Maybe to make it look less alien we don't double but define some conventions.
[ Like what Scandinavians do ]
Open syllable short vowels double the consonant.
So we get slap for sleep.
### Every dag slap ick at 9:30.
2. Declension
UNCONTROVERSIAL:
Singular + Plural.
How to form it?
s/-en/-er/e?
2.1. Case
common and genitive seems natural for nouns. Sorry German! [ But this doesn't follow the principle of conservatism … ]
Genitive adds s.
pronouns are different though. We probably want the full kaboodle.
2.2. Gender
No gender…
3. Verb forms
3.1. Infinitive
-en
[ Picked simply because its the most conservative form among the various infinitive forms. And German and Dutch are widely spoken. ]
No extra "to" marker. No one else besides English does that I think.
3.2. Active present participle.
-ende/end. Which one?
3.3. Past participle
Use d or ed.
3.4. Present indicative
Only stem? No conjugation, not very naturalistic.
What about just having
sg | pl | |
1 | -e | -en |
2 | -st | -en |
3 | -th | -en |
3.4.1. been (irregular)
sg | pl | |
1 | Ick am (bim) | We sind |
2 | Thu art (bist) | Je sind |
3 | He/Se/It is(t) | Se sind |
3.4.2. haven
sg | pl | |
1 | Ick have | We haven |
2 | Thu hast | Je haven |
3 | He/Se/It hath | Se haven |