Wortsproke

Wortsproke Vårt språk
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Pronunciation	//
Region	Vittmark
Status	official
Speakers	28 million
Language family	Kachal-Anarian Anario-Adhenic Stoldish Northern Stoldish Vittmarker Wortsproke
Parent languages	Scarch, Imperial Stoldavic
Early forms	Odalish, Lidenite
Writing system	Anarian (adapted)
Official status
Official in	Vittmark
Regulated by	Styrelsen för vårt språk

Wortsproke (vårt språk in Wortsproke) is the official and national language of Vittmark. It is the native language of over 95% of the residents of Vittmark. The language was formalised in 7564 as a standard between interintelligible language variations in Ådalen, Liden and to a lesser extent Hagen, all predecessor states of Vittmark. At first, Wortsproke was used for communication between states and citizens of the different states and as such taught as official language on all schools. Today, the predecessor language variations Odalish, Lidenite and Hagenish are considered dialects of Wortsproke instead, since a (near) standard version of Wortsproke is in use in over 80% of the Vittmarker homes.

Due to the central role Vittmark plays within Mellanhand Orkanan, as well as the rise of the entertainment industry with movies and music, Wortsproke is widespread as a second language, with over 100 million people having some language skills in Wortsproke. Many loanwords on topics like religion, shipping, trade and business management are present in foreign languages.

History

The inhabitants of the region that currently is Vittmark started using a proto-Stoldish language around 4000RH. The Orkanan Realm (roughly 4700-5600RH) led to a wide distribution of the so-called Realm Stoldish language across Stoldavia and Thultannia, even parts of mainland Anaria. After the fall or the Orkanan Realm, the language development started to diverge in the different corners of the Realm Stoldish speaking area. Three main branches developed, a Thultannian one called Early Cheltic, a southern called Early Stoldish on southern Stoldavia, and a northern called (Northern) Stoldavic on northern Stoldavia.

Northern Stoldavic

Written sources from the Northern Stoldavic period are scarce. The FYRIHUGN rune alphabet was still used but the language used does not resemble present day Wortsproke much. Wortsproke ultimately developed from this northern branch.

Scarch

During the era of the Union of Skara (roughly 6500-6950) the Scarch language became the lingua franca in many coastal towns of Stoldavia and northern Thultannia. Scarch had a lot of characteristics of the southern, Stoldish branches as well, partially due to the influence of Mountain Stoldish from present day Sörmark and Mörenburg. Although very influential, Scarch can not be seen as a direct predecessor to Wortsproke. Scarch was mainly written in a rune-like writing systems which had adapted some characteristics of the Anarian alphabet. It established the use of the vowels "å", "ä", and "ö", which still are present today.

High Stoldavic

High Stoldavic originally was the local dialect spoken around Östvallen and Kletudde. The application of the printing press meant that this language variation became a standard in a much wider area. Where Scarch mainly was a traders language with a religious Sunnist Orkanan undertone, High Stoldavic began its expansion by the distribution of the Mellanhand Orkanan of the Exemplar Scriptures around 6900. The Mellanhand Translation is often considered to be a reasonable compromise between old and new and can be seen as a direct predecessor to Wortsproke.

Imperial Stoldavic

High Stoldavic evolved into Imperial Stoldavic, which was one of the main languages of the Greater Stoldavic Empire (the other being Imperial Stoldish as spoken in southern Stoldavia). The main difference with High Stoldavic was the transformation of the spoken language into the written language according to the standardisation of 7034RH. Imperial Stoldavic manifested itself in an early, middle and late version.

Diversification

After the fall of the Empire, many smaller nation states emerged in the area where Imperial Stoldavic was spoken. It led to a diversification into separate languages as Dunsvic, Storlidish, Odalic, Hagenish and Kobbish, which still were all mutually intelligible. The entire area currently covered by Vittmark became a dialectal continuum. The eastern languages Dunsvic and Hagenish developed more into the direction of Aedelish under the influence of a wave of traditionalism. This was partially in response to the expansion of Hagen in the area, where independent city states and principalities tried to emphasise the language differences with expansive Hagen. The Storlidish languages underwent a modernisation due to industrialisation and the accompanying urbanisation around 7500.

Wortsproke

After the formation of Vittmark as a nation state in 7564, King Karl av Kulla quickly appointed a committee to deal with the language issue of the highly diverse nation. After a year, it presented a report titled "Utredning av vårt språk, forskning för ett gemensamt språk i Vittmark" (Research of our language, for a common language in Vittmark). Linguists constructed vårt sproke (literally meaning "our language") based on the dialect of Östervallen, adapted to language characteristics from nearby Ådalen and Liden. The spelling proposals were met by negative responses all over the nation at first. While grammatical changes were very limited, in the long run it was the modernisation of the spelling that made Wortsproke the language innovation that could carry the young federal kingdom into the future.

Over the last century, the language has not changed much, apart from some peculiarities from the spoken language making it into the official grammar. The third person plural pronomen "de" (subject), "dem" (object) and "dom" (dative) all got replaced by the word "dom", a change that even transferred to the plural definite adjective "de" which is also "dom" these days. The auxiliary verb "ha" in present perfect tense can be left out, just as the word "att" functioning as preposition can often be omitted. Dialect and sociolect from the capital has made it into common grammar as well, like the standing expression "hanba" and "honba" as an abbreviation of "han/hon bara sa" (he/she said). The biggest change however was the inclusion of the letter ⟨j⟩ in the Wortsproke alphabet in 7584. Until then it was considered similar to the ⟨i⟩ functioning both as vowel and consonant, despite the ⟨j⟩ being present in Hagenite and southern dialects.

Distribution

Wortsproke is the official language in Vittmark. Even in regions with recognised language minorities like Aedelish, Jennem and Härska, everybody speaks Wortspoke at least at an L2 level.

Outside Vittmark, the language is used scarcely in every day life. The only exception are the settlers from the Fisks Islands, currently a part of the Nubugaru community in Sokoku. Of the 136,000 members, about 100,000 use some form of Wortsproke as their native language. In Sokoku there are about 90,000 people speaking it between a basic level and L2.

Due to the distribution of Vittmarker cinema and music, the cultural effect of Wortsproke has become quite large during the last decades. Wortsproke is among the more popular foreign languages in high school education in neighbouring nations like Aedeland, Mörenburg, Helreich and Halland. Especially in popular culture Wortsproke has become some sort of preferred language for songwriting, which adds to the popularity of the language. It is estimated that 200-250 million people have some basic knowledge about the language.

Classification

Wortsproke is one of the extant northern Stoldavic languages, beside Aldsay being spoken in Aedeland and West Hagen, as well as XX in XX. By many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the northern Stoldavic languages could very well be considered dialects of a common northern Stoldavic language. In that case there would be a language continuum with intermediate dialects and language variations like Härska and Jennem as intermediate versions.

It is a matter of debate if the language variations Lidenish, Odalish and Hagenite should be seen as dialects, language variations or separate languages as well. Today, all these languages are put in the newly constructed Vittmarker language family, a more recent construct in linguistics. Without a status as national language and lacking a regulatory body, they are no longer separate languages de jure and should be considered dialects.

Phonology

The language has 17 or 18 vowel phonemes (depending on the dialect) and 18 consonant phonemes, two of which, /ɧ/ and /r/, vary considerably in pronunciation depending on the dialect. For example, /r/ is both present in a guttural and dental variation. It is a stress-timed language, where the time intervals between stressed syllables are equal.

Writing system

Wortsproke uses and adapted version of the standard Anarian alphabet with 26 letters as its standard version. The ⟨q⟩, ⟨w⟩ and ⟨z⟩ are not present in Wortsproke, they can be used in foreign names, but never in loanwords. The letters ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨å⟩ have been added at the end, the three characters are not considered to be diacritics, but rather separate letters, and are independent following ⟨y⟩. Officially, the lowercase version can only be written as the double-storey ⟨a⟩ and not the single-storey ⟨ɑ⟩. The same goes for the double-storey (sometimes "looptail") ⟨g⟩, with the upper case ⟨G⟩ represented by a double case ⟨8⟩. As such, the Wortsproke writing system is a mix of older rune signs (that also made it into standard Anarian like ⟨B⟩, ⟨I⟩ and ⟨R⟩), mainland Anarian writing systems and 4-5 letters unique to the language.

The word "restaurant" in both Wortsproke writing systems, standard obove, with the stacked a and g, joined cursive below with a different form for a and r.

Beside the standard writing system, simply called standarden, Wortsproke also uses a joined-up writing system ligature for writing words from foreign languages that don't follow the Wortsproke phonology. This writing system is called stilen. In many cases, these are loanwords in the original spelling, but could include people's names and toponyms from foreign languages. As an example, compare the writing system for the adapted loanword restårang and its original, unadapted spelling restaurant in the image to the left. Twelve characters have a different form, while four have slightly different forms than in the standard writing system, all of them slightly italic. In printed text, an italic or cursive script is used for this, but always with the different forms.

A less official addition is the use of ⟨@⟩ instead of the proposition att. It is not sanctioned by the governing language body, but it is commonly used in written language anyway. In many cases, the word att isn't used anymore in spoken language and most probably the use of ⟨@⟩ reflects this in the written language: it's there but it isn't in use anymore.

In orthography, the colon is also used for some abbreviations, such as 3:e for tredje ("third") and N:a for norra ("north"), and for all types of endings that can be added to numbers, letters and abbreviations, such as a:et ("the a") and CD:n ("the CD"), or the genitive form OSSO:s ("OSSO's").

Grammar

TBA

Vocabulary

The vocabulary of Wortsproke is mainly Stoldish, most often through common Stoldish heritage. As with many Stoldish languages, new words can be formed by compounding, e. g. nouns like nagellackborttagningsmedel ("nail polish remover") or verbs like smyglyssna ("to eavesdrop").