Regnate Latin

Not to be confused with Regnate Latium

Regnate Latin is the local Latin dialect spoken in and around the region of Regnate Latium, written using its own variant of the Latin alphabet. It appears to have begun to split from Classical Latin by around 400BC, although many later changes also affected it.

Orthography

Regnate Latin uses a variant of the Latin script with only capital letters, without the letters J, K, U and W (V takes the place of U), and with the following additional letters, mostly placed at the end of the alphabet:

Letter	Name	Romanisation	Sound
ꓤ	eře	ř	/ɣ/
3	jōga	j	/j/
Ⅎ	vē	v	/w/
Ɔ	eps	ps	/ps/
Ⱶ	sonùmus	ù	/ʊ̈/

The apex diacritic (identical to acute) is used to mark all long vowels; I longa is not used.

Orthography is otherwise mostly the same as that of Classical Latin with a few minor differences:

• Consonants pronounced geminated intervocalically are written doubled, so for instance CV33VS for cujus, AZZALEA for azalea. This does not apply to GN as it is a digraph.
• The letters B and G are always replaced with P and C before S or T, matching their pronunciation. CS and PS are further replaced with X and Ɔ.
• Note that the sequence GN is often written with the gnē ligature, which looks like merged C and N and is often placed at the end of the alphabet but is not a letter. It has an initial capital form resembling N with left hook (Ɲ) but with the hook touching the base line without going below it.

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Central	Dorsal
Nasal	m	n	ŋ
Stop	pʰ b	t̪ʰ d̪	kʰ g kʷʰ gʷ
Fricative	f	s z	x ɣ
Approximant	w	l r̥ r	j

• Unlike in Classical Latin, /ŋ/ is phonemic, as it appears both from /n/ before velar consonants and from /gn/ > /ŋn/ > /ŋ/ (written GN, geminated intervocalically) in all cases.
• The product of rhotacism in Regnate Latin was not /r/ but a new phoneme /ɣ/; note that /h/ alone became (or perhaps stayed as) /x/.
• The tenuis stops became aspirated and merged with the Greek-loaned aspirated stops, except after /s/ where they merged with the voiced stops which had become voiceless in that position. The <h> for old aspirated stops is still retained and in some cases misapplied.

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	ɪ iː ʏ yː	ʊ̈	ʊ uː
Mid	ɛ e̞ː		ɔ o̞ː
Open		ɐ äː
Diphthongs		äe̯ äo̯ o̞e̯ e̞o̯

• The sonus medius sound was preserved as /ʊ̈~ɪ̈/; it has no long version.
• The diphthongs <au> and <eu> are instead written <ao> and <eo> to match their pronunciation in Regnate Latin.
• /ui̯/ such as in cui, huic is not considered a diphthong and is written as <uj> instead.

Morphology

Nouns

Regnate Latin has 7 cases, formed the same as Classical Latin but with some difference in usage:

• Nominative: the subject.
• Vocative: the addressee.
• Accusative: the direct object or the subject of indirect statements or reported speech, also used with prepositions or alone with a place name to indicate direction.
• Genitive: the object of a few verbs, mainly used for possession, but less common and partially supplanted by dative.
• Dative: the indirect object or the object of some verbs, may be used for possession especially with forms of sum.
• Ablative: the instrument, used for context especially in a participle phrase (the ablative absolute) and with prepositions or alone with a place name to indicate motion away.
• Locative: used with prepositions or alone with a place name to indicate position.

Verbs

There are a number of tense-aspect combinations and other verb forms:

• Present: simple present or present continuous or habitual.
• Future: simple future or future continuous. In the 1st and 2nd conjugations plus some irregular verbs, this uses sigmatic future endings instead of the Classical Latin ones. There is also a future subjunctive which often expresses possible desires, coming from the sigmatic aorist.
• Future Perfect: future perfect (past in the future). Used often where English would use future (or perfect or even present in conditional clauses). No future perfect subjunctive is attested.
• Near Future: present prospective. Formed periphrastically with present of sum plus the future participle.
• Imperfect: past progressive or habitual.
• Perfect: present perfect or simple past. Note that perfect stems are syncopated in most circumstances.
• Prospective: past prospective (future in the past). Formed periphrastically with imperfect of sum plus the future participle.
• Pluperfect: past perfect.
• Ultraperfect: past double perfect. Formed periphrastically with pluperfect of sum plus the perfect participle.

There are more possible periphrastic forms with participles, such as "plufuture" for future prospective, but these are so rare they are not officially considered tenses.