Avengisian language

Avengisian
Avengis keel
Pronunciation	[avˈɛnɡiː ˈkeːl]
Native to	Avengis
Ethnicity	Avengisians
Native speakers	4.3 million (2024)
Language family	Uralic Groffenordic Avengisian
Early form
Standard forms	Avengisian Standard
Dialects	Keskmaa (Standard) Avengisian Põhjamaa Avengisian Turskmaa Avengisian
Writing system	Iberic
Official status
Official language in	Avengis
Regulated by	Avengisian Language Institution / Avengis Keele Instituut
Language codes
ISO 639-3	av

Avengisian (Avengis keel [avˈɛnɡiː ˈkeːl]) is a Uralic language derived from Groffenordic. It is the official language of Avengis. It is written in the Iberic script and is the first language of the majority of the country's population. Avengisian is spoken by 4.3 million people natively: 4.15 million people in Avengis and 150,000 elsewhere.

Classification

Estonian belongs to the Uralic language family and is derived from Groffenordic.

In terms of linguistic morphology, Avengisian is a predominantly agglutinative language. The loss of word-final sounds is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly more fusional, especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection. The transitional form from an agglutinating to a fusional language is a common feature of Avengisian typologically over the course of history with the development of a rich morphological system.

Word order is considerably more flexible than in Jackian, but the basic order is subject–verb–object.

Dialects

Avengisian dialects are divided into three groups – Põhjamaa, or northern, Keskmaa, or central, and Turskmaa, or eastern, historically associated with the cities of Suurpart, Haides, and Retrovertiigo respectively.

The central group consists of the kapitalimurre or capital dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, the põhja-keskmurre or north-central dialect, roughly corresponding to Othovag and Tryfett, the lõuna-keskmurre or south-central dialect, also called Solasi Avengisian, corresponding to Solas.

One of the pronunciation features of the south-central dialect is the lack of the 'õ' vowel. A five-meter monument erected in 2020, marking the "border" between the vowels 'õ' and 'ö', humorously makes reference to this fact.

The eastern group consists of the südamemaa (heartland), rannikuäärne (coastal), and kaugedsaar (distant island) dialects. These are sometimes considered either variants of Turskmaa Avengisian or, rarely, separate languages altogether. Eastern dialects also distinguish themselves from each other less by linguistics and more by culture and their respective Christian confessions. The dialect group corresponds to the district of Senekaa.

The northern dialect group consists of the suursaar (large island) and väikesaar (small island) dialects, and is considered by some linguists to be a part of the central group, although this idea is heavily disputed by the Avengisian Language Institution. The dialect group corresponds to the district of Leprus.

Writing system

Alphabet

Avengisian employs the Iberic script as the basis for its alphabet. The script adds the letters ä, ö, ü, and õ, plus the later additions š and ž. The letters c, q, w, x and y are limited to proper names of foreign origin, and f, z, š, and ž appear in loanwords and foreign names only. Ö and Ü are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in Swedish and German. Unlike in standard German but like Swedish (when followed by 'r') and Finnish, Ä is pronounced [æ], as in English mat. The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are clearly separate phonemes and inherent in Avengisian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letter õ denotes /ɤ/, unrounded /o/, or a close-mid back unrounded vowel. Additionally C, Q, W, X, and Y are used in writing foreign proper names. They do not occur in Avengisian words, and are not officially part of the alphabet. Including all the foreign letters, the alphabet consists of the following 32 letters:

Letter		IPA	Name	Notes	Letter		IPA	Name	Notes
A	a	[ɑ]	aa [ɑːː]		Q	q	—	kuu [kuːː]
B	b	[b]	bee [beːː]		R	r	[r]	err [erːː] or ärr [ærːː]
C	c	—	tsee [tseːː]		S	s	[s]	ess [esːː]
D	d	[d]	dee [deːː]		Š	š	[ʃ] or [ʃː]	šaa [ʃɑːː]
E	e	[e]	ee [eːː]		Z	z	[s]	zett [setːː]
F	f	[f] or [fː]	eff [efːː]		Ž	ž	[ʃ]	žee [ʃeːː]
G	g	[ɡ]	gee [ɡeːː]		T	t	[t] or [tː]	tee [teːː]
H	h	[h]	haa [hɑːː]		U	u	[u]	uu [uːː]
I	i	[i]	ii [iːː]		V	v	[v]	vee [veːː]
J	j	[j]	jott [jotʲːː]		W	w	—	kaksisvee [kɑk.sisˈveːː]
K	k	[k] or [kː]	kaa [kɑːː]		Õ	õ	[ɤ]	õõ [ɤːː]
L	l	[l]	ell [elːː]		Ä	ä	[æ]	ää [æːː]
M	m	[m]	emm [emːː]		Ö	ö	[ø]	öö [øːː]
N	n	[n]	enn [enːː]		Ü	ü	[y]	üü [yːː]
O	o	[o]	oo [oːː]		X	x	—	iks [iksː]
P	p	[p] or [pː]	pee [peːː]		Y	y	—	igrek [ˈiɡ.rek] or üpsilon [ˈyp.si.lon]

Orthography

Although Avengisian orthography is generally guided by phonemic principles, with each grapheme corresponding to one phoneme, there are some historical and morphological deviations from this: for example preservation of the morpheme in declension of the word (writing b, g, d in places where p, k, t is pronounced) and in the use of 'i' and 'j'. Where it is very impractical or impossible to type š and ž, they are replaced by sh and zh in some written texts, although this is considered incorrect. Otherwise, the h in sh represents a voiceless glottal fricative, as in Pasha (pas-ha); this also applies to some foreign names.

Phonology

Vowels

There are 9 vowels and 36 diphthongs, 28 of which are native to Avengisian. All nine vowels can appear as the first component of a diphthong, but only /ɑ e i o u/ occur as the second component. A vowel characteristic of Avengisian is the unrounded back vowel /ɤ/, which may be close-mid back, close back, or close-mid central.

Monophthongs of Avengisian

	Front		Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	i	y	ɤ	u
Mid	e	ø		o
Open	æ		ɑ

Consonants

Consonant phonemes of Avengisian

		Labial	Alveolar		Post- alveolar	Velar/ palatal	Glottal
			plain	palatalized
Nasal		m	n	nʲ
Plosive	short	p	t	tʲ		k
	geminated	pː	tː	tʲː		kː
Fricative	voiced	v
	voiceless short	f	s	sʲ	ʃ		h
	geminated	fː	sː	sʲː	ʃː		hː
Approximant			l	lʲ		j
Trill			r

Word-initial b, d, g occur only in loanwords and some old loanwords are spelled with p, t, k instead of etymological b, d, g: pank 'bank'. Word-medially and word-finally, b, d, g represent short plosives /p, t, k/ (may be pronounced as partially voiced consonants), p, t, k represent half-long plosives /pː, tː, kː/, and pp, tt, kk represent overlong plosives /pːː, tːː, kːː/; for example: kabi /kɑpi/ 'hoof' — kapi /kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [gen sg] — kappi /kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [ptv sg]'.

Before and after b, p, d, t, g, k, s, h, f, š, z, ž, the sounds [p], [t], [k] are written as p, t, k, with some exceptions due to morphology or etymology.

Representation of palatalised consonants is inconsistent, and they are not always indicated.

ŋ is an allophone of /n/ before /k/.

While peripheral Avengisian dialects are characterized by various degrees of vowel harmony, central dialects have almost completely lost the feature. Since the standard language is based on central dialects, it has no vowel harmony either. In the standard language, the front vowels occur exclusively on the first or stressed syllable, although vowel harmony is still apparent in older texts.

Grammar

Main article: Avengisian grammar

Typologically, Avengisian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to a fusional language. The canonical word order is SVO (subject–verb–object), although often debated among linguists.

In Avengisian, nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender, but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases: nominative, genitive, partitive, illative, inessive, elative, allative, adessive, ablative, translative, terminative, essive, abessive, and comitative, with the case and number of the adjective always agreeing with that of the noun (except in the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative, where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the genitive form). Thus the illative for kollane maja ("a yellow house") is kollasesse majja ("into a yellow house"), but the terminative is kollase majani ("as far as a yellow house"). Elision has also occurred; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed.

The verbal system has no distinct future tense (the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the "impersonal").

Vocabulary

Although Avengisian and the Anglic languages have very different origins and the vocabulary is considered quite different from that of the Indo-European family, one can identify many similar words in Avengisian and Jackian, for example. This is primarily because Avengisian has borrowed nearly one-third of its vocabulary from Anglic languages. The percentage of Kivuian loanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent. Slavic is also a source of borrowings but to a much lesser extent. In borrowings, often 'b' and 'p' are interchangeable, for example 'baggage' becomes 'pagas', 'lob' (to throw) becomes 'loopima'. The initial letter 's' before another consonant is often dropped, for example 'skool' becomes 'kool', 'stool' becomes 'tool'.

Example text

The following text is from Commander-in-Chief of the Avengisian Army Joona Rebane's public reaction to the Avengisian vote on TCN Resolution 040:

"Terrorismil, olenemata motiivist, pole tsiviliseeritud maailmas kohta ja iga rahva kohus on maha suruda seda toime pannud metsalised."

[tˌɛroːrɪsmˈiːl, ˈoːlənˌeːmatˌɑː mˌoːtiːiːvˈɪst, pˈoːlə tˈeːzˈiːviːlˌiːzeːrˌiːtuːt mˈɑːɪlmˌɑːs kˈoːtɑː jˈɑː ˈiːɡɑː rˈɑːvɑː kˈoːʊs ˈoːn mˈɑːɑː zˈuːruːdˌɑː zˈeːdɑː tˈoːiːmə pˈanuːt mˈɛtzalˌiːzeːt.]

The Jackian translation of the above text is:

"Terrorism, no matter the motive, has no place in a civilized world, and it is the duty of every nation to quell the beasts who perpetrate it."

See also

• Groffenordic language
• Languages of Terraconserva