Ferritumulic

Ferritumulic
Language family	Pisco-Imerchali
Early form(s)	Latin
Era	today
Writing system	Classical Latin
Official status
Spoken in	Vallis Draconum
Speaker
Demonym	Ferritumulic
Endonym	Hiperborian
Number of speakers	idk
Technical information
Usage	Vallis Draconum
Language code	SRN

Ferritumulic, also known as Hyperborian, is a language of the Pisco-Imerchali family, derived from Latin, spoken in Vallis Draconum.

History

Ferritumulic somewhat resembles languages like Italian. However, owing to not being in Italy, but instead in a simulated world derived from, but meaningfully distinct from, it, Ferritumulic does have several unique changes. Geminated stops are banned, and have turned into affricates; geminated continuants are still allowed though.

It took heavy influence from the Programming-Katho-Atlantic language Amphorean.

Phonology

Consonants

Consonant phonemes

	Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	m	n	ɲ
Stop	p	t d		k g
Affricate	pɸ bβ	ts dz	cɕ ɟʝ
Fricative	ɸ β	s~z	ɕ	x
Liquid		r	ʎ	ʟ

Notes

• Approximants are considered to be nonsyllabic vowels.
• /β/ is devoiced by some speakers.
• Medially, all affricates lose their stop component, but geminate.
• /x/ exists solely as a loaned phoneme.
• In unstressed syllables or in the coda, /r/ is a tap [ɾ] or a stop [d].

Vowels

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
Close-mid	e		o
Open-mid	ɛ		ɔ
Open		a

Orthography

Much like Regnate Latin, Ferritumulic still primarily writes using the Classical Latin script. However, it can be "modernized" fairly easily into the modern Latin script. There are some changes from Classical to Ferritumulic, mainly to accomodate phonological changes:

• Since /ks/ merged with /ts/, /ts/ always is written with <x>, even when it comes from /tj tl/.
• Latinate /h/ and Amphorean and Greek /y/ are only consistently written in proper nouns, such as the placename Hyperborea (Ferritumulic writes this as ⟨Hʏᴘᴇʀʙᴏ̀ʀɪ̈ᴀ⟩), though some other words do use these letters sometimes, as some proscribe the replacement.
• Amphorean gamma and eta were loaned for /x j/, partially since the last one is a mostly-loaned phoneme (old coda /s/ sometimes sounds like /x/, and so was rewritten at the same time). These are modernized into lowercase, fully-Latin script as ⟨k h⟩. Kappa is also used for /k/ from Amphorean loans, but these are modernized as ⟨c⟩ still. In alphabetical ordering, eta and kappa take the place of h and k.

Consonants

The cluster /βr/ is variably written as either of ⟨ʙʀ ᴠʀ⟩, though the former is more common.

Consonant phonemes

	Labial	Dental	Palatal	Velar
Nasal	ᴍ	ɴ	ɴʜ
Stop	ᴘ	ᴛ ᴅ		ᴄ ɢ
Affricate	ᴘʜ ʙ	x ᴢ	ᴄʜ ᴊ
Fricative	ꜰ ᴠ	ꜱ	ꜱʜ	ᴦ
Lateral		ʀ	ʟʜ	ʟ

Vowels

Some words maintain the use of ⟨ʏ⟩, but most are intended to be respelled.

When used as an approximant, /i u/ use the second item in their cells; if intervocalic, /u̯/ is doubled. Additionally, if the stressed vowel is not the antepenultimate vowel, it is given the grave accent mark. Marking a vowel with acute and grave at the same time uses the circumflex.

Even though they now have semivowel letters, standard text is expected to write the sequences /i.V/ and /u.V/ with a diaresis over the vowel anyway.

Vowel phonemes

	Front	Central	Back
Close	ɪ ʜ		ᴜ ᴠ
Close-mid	ᴇ́		ᴏ́
Open-mid	ᴇ		ᴏ
Open		ᴀ

Grammar

Word order

Despite its marking systems sometimes allowing for relatively free word order, Ferritumulic is a generally head-initial SVO language, the norm for indicative sentences in Pisco-Imerchali.

Articles

The definite articles of Ferritumulic are very similar to Italian, with the series being il, la, lhó, le for the masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural, and feminine plural, and with il becoming lu when the word it applies to starts with either two consonants or a palatal consonant. Since the sequence /ll/ is already normally allowed, this does not trigger il to become lu.

Verbs

Ferritumulic verbal paradigms are similar to those of Italian. However, notably, Ferritumulic actually has four standard verb declensions: -ari, -eri, -iri, and the newly developed -éri, sometimes also called -héri due to its restrictions.

Verbs in -éri have a stem that ends in a palatal consonant or an affricate, such as ᴄᴀᴘʜᴇ́ʀɪ, meaning "to take", whose stem ends in /pɸ/. In the indicative, they conjugate similarly to -iri verbs, but in the subjunctive, they conjugate like -eri verbs. The imperfect of -éri verbs is also identical to what it would be as an -eri verb.

Being a Pisco-Imerchali language, irregularity is fairly common, particularly when weighted by the frequency of the word. For example, stari "to be" and aberi "to have", two of the most common verbs in the language, are highly irregular, and even more regular verbs like tenhéri "to hold" and moriri "to die" have notable exceptions (the preterite forms for tenhéri and both verbs' past participles).

Nouns

Nouns have grammatical gender in Ferritumulic. Generally, this can be deduced from the ending of the word. For example, words ending in -u are likely to be masculine, and words ending in -a are likley to be feminine. Words ending in -i are variable, where some words, like ᴠᴏʟᴘɪ "fox", can be either masculine or feminine, while others, like ᴄᴀɴɪ "dog" are always masculine, with a unique feminine form like ᴄᴀɴʜᴀ.

Nouns also decline for number and, notably for a modern Pisco-Imerchali language, case. There are three cases, nominative, accusative, and genitive. However, for nouns ending in -u or -a, the first two of these cases end up being identical in the singular. The accusative is also used for lative, ablative, and instrumental meanings using ste, per, and cóm respectively, and the genitive is also used for the dative using a. Note though, that if the noun begins with a lateral consonant, per becomes pel, and when adjacent to a non-labial nasal, stop, affricate or fricative, cóm becomes cón.

For nouns with the same form in multiple cases, di and a can still be used to clarify genitive and accusative meanings respectively.

Some nouns, like ꜱᴀʙᴇ, are always plural, while others, like ᴀᴄᴠᴀ, are always singular. Generally, nouns of either type are mass nouns like these two, but this is not necessarily always the case. These nouns can have forms of the other type, in these cases ꜱᴀʙᴀ ᴀᴄᴠᴇ́, but these are not used in normal speech, and are largely relegated to poetry or other artistic uses of language.

Pronouns

Owing to their erosion, autri (from "other") was stuck to the plural pronouns nu, vu, in line with many other Pisco-Imerchali languages, becoming nautri, vautri. The three forms of each pronoun can be used in the same way as with ordinary nouns.

Number	Person	Nominative	Accusative	Genitive
Singular	1st	hó	me	mi
	2nd	tu	te	ti
	3rd animate masculine	élli	lhe	lhu
	3rd animate feminine	élla	la	lha
	3rd inanimate	éxe	éxu	échu
Plural	1st	nautri	nautre	denautre
	2nd	vautri	vautre	devautre
	3rd animate masculine	élli	élló	éllóru
	3rd animate feminine	illé	éllau	éllaru
	3rd inanimate	éxi	éxi	éxóru

Adjectives

Adjectives' dictionary form, the masculine singular, often ends in -u, and this -u changes to -a in the feminine singular, -i in the masculine plural, and -e in the feminine plural. However, not all adjectives have unique declinations for all forms, and this is usually dependent on the masculine singular ending. Some adjectives end in -e or -é by default, and these change in the plural to -o and -ó respectively, and others end in -i by default, which generally means they don't decline.

Most of the time, adjectives go after the noun they apply to. However, if the adjective is considered an intrinsic property of the noun, either in general or for the specific object being referred to, it is often moved to before the noun. For example, a lengthy book would likely be il libru longu since not all books are long, but if it's called an epic instead, it would be la longa abenturóna, since epics are necessarily long. Some sets can go in either location, such as levi "clever" on volpi "fox". Foxes are generally considered clever, so il levi volpi is often preferred, but for a particularly clever fox, il volpi levi might still be used instead.

Generally, only one adjective will be placed before the noun, and all but the last of adjectives in sequence will have -é or -i (depending on if the adjective already ends in -é or e) appended to the end. This affix does not affect stress, but instead of writing the old stress location with a grave, the interpunct, also used for other contractions, is used. A particularly clever brown fox will likely be referred to as il volpi levi·é cautanhi.

Demonstratives

Ferritumulic has a three-level demonstrative system, albeit mutated from the Latin original, with cwestu (from eccum iste) being used for items close to the speaker, cwixu (from eccum ipse) being used for items close to the addressee, and cwellu (from eccum ille) being used for items far from both the speaker and the addressee. All three decline as expected for an adjective whose dictionary form ends in -u.