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LotM - May 15: Gutiskar
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Ashucky's bagged another LotM win with Gutiskar, which also happens to be our very first winner that is fully derived from a natural language family.
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 24 Jun 2015, 01:09.

[comments] Menu 1. Gutiskar 2. Phonology and Orthography 3. Morphology 4. History 5. More on Gutiskar 6. A Note on LotM
[top]Gutiskar

May is here! Hooray! I guess. Gutiskar is our tenth language of the month, and as mentioned in the little quip above, our first LotM winner that is entirely a member of a natural language family - Germanic.

[top]Phonology and Orthography

Gutiskar writhes of Germanic-ism. The inventory includes the usual collection of stops, /p t k b d g/, but also some labialized velars /kʷ gʷ xʷ/. Also worthy of mention is /θ ð/ (English and Icelandic, anyone?). Vowels are nicely symmetric in long-short pairs (except for that pesky, always short /ə/), including the front rounded /ø(:) y(:)/ and near-open /æ(:)/. Long vowels are phonetically realized as diphthongs, much like Icelandic and English (well, what English calls long vowels, anyway).

The orthography is also nicely Germanicky, with <Ƕƕ> and <Ææ>, as well as the staples <Øø>, <Ðð>, and <Þþ>. Orthographic vowels carrying acute accents represent diphthongs (phonemically, the long vowels), but their actual pronunciation varies on the position of the vowel in the word, in terms of stress - there's handy table for that here.

You can find more orthography and phonology information [here]

[top]Morphology

Like any well-behaving Germanic language, Gutiskar is a fan of inflecting its words. Adjectives come in at least 3 classes, and nouns are split into 5 main classes that comprise at least 20 different variants.

Verbs, in true Germanic style, come in strong and weak varieties (corresponding to more or less, irregular and regular conjugations), and of course, these fall into further subclasses. Verbs come in 3 voices (active, passive, and middle), 3 persons, 2 numbers (and a fun, mixed 2nd and 3rd person dual), a whole slew of tenses and aspects (I stopped counting) including indicative, subjunctive, and conditional forms. Just read read this, it'll do a much better explaining what I am failing to do right now.

Nouns are declined in 5 cases and two numbers, singular and plural. Because I happen to find the declension of these two nouns entertaining, let's look at á (river) and ó (island):

Caseó “island”á “river”
Nominative ó [ɔw]á [aw]
Accusative á [aw]ó [ɔw]
Genitive agosos
Dative agøø
Instrumental agóó

Ashucky was kind enough to write up some gorgeous articles regarding all of this information; links to these are [verbs] [nouns]

[top]History

A quick little note on Gutiskar that makes it rather fun, in light of living and natural Germanic languages: Gutiskar is East Germanic, akin to the long-dead Gothic language. Gutiskar can be likened to the eastern Icelandic analogue; highly conservative and really inflected. Speaking of history, there is a word that popped up in the language that Ashucky attributes to Slavic influence perhaps: móje. Just click it for the meaning.

[top]More on Gutiskar

Craving more Germanic insanity? Look no further than all articles tagged for the language. If you're feeling tables, check out all of its beautiful classes and subclasses in table form here.

[top]A Note on LotM

Got suggestions for how the next LotM should be written? See something in Gutiskar that wasn't covered and you wish it had been? Hate my guts and want to tell me? Feel free to shoot me (argyle) a PM with your thoughts, suggestions, and hate mail. Also feel free to drop by the LotM clan if you have other feedback, want to join in the voting process, or nominate a language!
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