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docs(eittlandic): phonology update 
Reintroduce contrasts between short and long vowels and bitonal
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Phonetic Inventory and Translitteration

Evolution from Early Old Norse to Eittlandic

Eittlandic evolved early on from Early Old Norse, and as such some vowels it evolved from are different from the Old Norse vowels and consonants some other Nordic languages evolved from. In this chapter, we will see the main list of attested phonetic evolution Eittlandic lived through.

The history of Eittlandic goes from the late 8th century until modern-day Eittlandic. Its history is divided as shown on table below. It is not an exact science though as changes happened progressively through the country. Changes were also progressive, meaning the dates chosen to go from one language to the other are relatively arbitrary. In evolution examples, it will be indicated whether the Eittlandic pronunciation is specific to a certain time area (with Early Middle Eittlandic, Late Old Eittlandic, etc…) but if it only specifies Eittlandic it means no significant changes in pronunciation occurred since the phonetic rule shown. Meaning is also shown between parenthesis. In case of semantic shift, its new meaning in Eittlandic is shown — the same goes for the word’s spelling.

Period Language
8th century - 12th century Old Eittlandic
13th century - 16th century Middle Eittlandic
17th century - today Modern Eittlandic
Linguistic eras of Eittland

It is generally considered the gj-shift of the 13th century is the evolution that marks the change from Old Eittlandic to Middle Eittlandic while the great vowel shift marks the change from Middle Eittlandic to Modern Eittlandic between the 16th and the 17th century.

hʷ > ʍ

One of the first evolution of the Eittlandic was the evolution of the (written «hv»). It differs from other nordic languages which evolved their , like in Icelandic or in Norwegian. However, this evolution is cause to debate, mainly due to the original phoneme which could be inherited from Proto-Norse instead.

Example
Early Old Norse or Late Proto-Norse hvat (what)

C / #h_ > C[-voice]

When preceded by a , word-initial consonants such as «l», «r», «n» would lose their voicing and become voiceless consonants. Note «hj» went to .

Example

 

  • Early Old Norse hlóð (hearth) > Old Eittlandic hlóð
  • Early Old-Norse hneisa (shame, disgrace) > Early Old Eittlandic
  • Early Old Norse hrifs (robbery)
  • Early Old Norse hjól (wheel)

g / {#,V}_⁣{V,#} > ɣ

In word-initial position and followed by a vowel or when between vowels, Early Old Norse .

Example
Early Old Norse gegn (against, right opposite) > Old Eittlandic

V / _⁣# > ∅ ! j _

When finishing a word, short unaccented vowels disappeared. Historically, they first went through a weakening transforming them into a , but they eventually disappeared before long vowels got affected by the first part of the rule. However, it did not apply to final vowels following a «j».

Example
Old Norse heilsa (health) > Late Old Eittlandic heils .

Reflecting this change, the last vowel got lost in the Eittlandic orthography. However, this rule did not get applied consistently with a good deal of people that kept them well until the Great Vowel Shift.

V / j_# > ə

While the final short vowel of words did not disappear when preceded by a «j», they still weakened to a schwa.

Example
Old Norse sitja (to sit) > Old Eittlandic

Vː / _# > ə

When at the end of a word, long unaccented vowels get weakened into a schwa.

Example
Old Norse erþó (as though) > Late Old Eittlandic .

Notice how in the modern orthography the «ó» didn’t get lost, unlike with the previous rule. Unlike the schwa from the previous rule, the current schwa still bears the long vowel feature, although it is not pronounced any more by that point, influencing the final schwa loss.

ɣ / {#,V}_ > j ! l,j

During the 13th century, continued palatalization of the letter «g» when beginning or preceding a vowel transformed it from in Proto-Norse to in Early Modern Eittlandic.

Example
Old Norse gauð (a barking) > Early Middle Eittlandic gauð (a barking, a quarrel) .

This is the first rule of the g/j-shift along with the three next rules, marking the passage from Old Eittlandic to Middle Eittlandic.

gl > gʲ

The exception to the above rule is the «g» remains a hard when followed by an «l» in which case .

Example
Old Norse óglaðr (sad, moody) > Early Middle Eittlandic óglaðr (very sad, miserable)

d g n s t / _j > C[+palat]

Another exception to the lenition of is it remained until the appearance of this change a hard . It however ended up getting assimilated by . Other phonemes also get palatalized, assimilated by the following . In the end, we have the conversion table given by the table below.

Early Old Norse Eittlandic
Consonants palatalization

Note this is also applicable to devoiced consonants described above.

Example

 

  • Early Old Norse djúp (deep) > Middle Eittlandic djúp (deep, profound)
  • Early Old Norse gjøf (gift) > Early Middle Eittlandic
  • Early Old Norse snjór (snow) > Middle Eittlandic
  • Early Old Norse hnjósa (to sneeze)
  • Early Old Norse sjá (to see)
  • Early Old Norse skilja (to understand, to distinguish)
  • Old Eittlandic sitja (to sit)

j > jə / _#

With the appearance of word-final appeared due to the phonological rule forbidding word-final consonant clusters to end with a .

Example
Early Old Norse berg (rock, boulder) > Middle Eittlandic berg

u / V_ > ʊ

When following another vowel, .

Example
Old Norse kaup (bargain) > Early Middle Eittlandic

{s,z} / _C[+plos] > ʃ

If precede a plosive consonant, they become palatalized into a — the distinction between «s» and «z» is lost.

Example

 

  • Old Norse fiskr (fish)
  • Early Old Norse vizka (wisdom) > Middle Eittlandic viska

Note that in the Modern Eittlandic orthography, the «z» is replaced with an «s».

f / {V,C[+voice]}_ {V,C[+voice],#} > v

When a «f» is either surrounded by voice phonemes or is preceded by a voiced phoneme and ends a word, it gets voiced into a .

Example
Old Norse úlf (wolf) .

l / _j > ʎ

When followed by a «j», any «l» becomes a , merging with the following «j».

Example
Early Middle Eittlandic skilja (to understand, to distinguish)

ɑʊ > oː

Sometime in the 15th century, any occurence of «au», pronounced by then .

Example
Early Middle Eittlandic kaup (bargain) > Late Middle Eittlandic kaup (commerce)

C[+long +plos -voice] > C[+fric] ! / _C > C[+long +plos] > C[-long]

Unless followed by another consonant, any unvoiced long plosive consonant becomes a short affricate while other long plosives simply become shorter.

Example

 

  • Old Norse edda (great grandmother) > Late Middle Eittlandic edda (great grandmother, femalle ancestor)
  • Old Norse Eittland
  • Old Norse uppá (upon)

r > ʁ (Eastern Eittlandic)

From the beginning of the 16th century, the Eastern Eittlandic began morphing into an in all contexts except in word-final «-r», remanants of Old Norse’s nominative «-R». This is typical in the Eastern region of Eittland, and it can be even heard in some dialects of Southern Eittlandic.

Example

 

  • Old Norse dratta (to trail or walk like a cow) > Eastern Modern Eittlandic dratt (act mindlessly)
  • Early Old Norse fjárdráttr ((unfairly) making money) > Eastern Modern Eittlandic fjárdráttr (to scam)

Great Vowel Shift

The great vowel shift happened during the 16th and 17th century during which long vowels underwent a length loss, transforming them into different short vowels. Only three rules governed this shift:

  • V[+high +long] > V[-high -long +LT]
  • V[+tense +long] > V[-tense -long +LT]
  • V[-tense +long] > V[-long -low +LT]

This shift reintroduced a bitonal system in Eittlandic, contrasting former long vowels with short vowels. Hence, the vowels evolved as shown in the table below.

Orthography Old Eittlandic vowel Modern Eittlandic Vowel
á
é
í
ó
œ (ǿ)
ú
ý
Evolution of Old Norse long vowels to Eittlandic short vowels

As you can see, some overlap is possible from Old Norse vowels and Modern Eittlandic vowels. For instance, Eittlanders will read «é» and «á» both as an .

Examples

 

  • Middle Eittlandic sjá (to see)
  • Old Norse fé (cattle)
  • Late Proto-Norse hví (why)
  • Old Norse bók (beech, book) > Modern Eittlandic (book)
  • Early Old Norse œgir (frightener, terrifier) > Modern Eittlandic Œgir (a kind of mythical beast)
  • Middle Eittlandic úlv (wolf)

Diphthongs also evolved following these rules:

It is probably up to this time period when Eittlandic stopped nasalizing its vowels aside from Southern Eittland (see below), although the timeframe regarding this evolution is very much unclear and it might have happened as early as during the 13th century.

rɡ > ʁ (Southeastern Eittlandic)

In Southeastern Eittlandic, in the area around Hylfjaltr, the phonemes , affecting words such as myrgun pronounced then as .

ə[-long] / C_# > ∅

As described in the weakening of final long vowels, the schwa resulting from it kept its long vowel feature, although it wasn’t pronounced anymore. This resulted in the current rule making all schwas resulting from short vowels at the end of words to disappear when following a voiced consonant. However, this process lengthened any previous vowel, thus reintroducing a contrast between short vowels and long vowels in Eittlandic. This distinction is however unmarked when written in Standard Eittlandic due to the spelling dropping the final vowels affected here.

Example
Middle Eittlandic (to understand, to distinguish)

VN / _ > Ṽ[-tense] ! V[+high] (Southern Eittlandic)

When preceding a nasal, any vowel that is not high as determined by the vowel tree in Vowel Inventory gets nasalized when preceding a nasal consonant and loses its tenseness if it has any. Hence, the pronunciation of the «a» in Eittland is . However, Old Norse runa (rune) without any nasalization.

Note this evolution is mostly proeminent in the southern regions of Eittland and the city of Hundraðskip. It is less often documented in Eastern Eittland and almost undocumented in Western Eittland. It is more often documented in casual conversation buch rarer in formal conversation, especially when the majority of the speakers in a group are not southerners.

t / _C > ʔ ! _ʃ

When a precedes another consonant, it becomes a glottal stop.

Example
Early Modern Eittlandic Eittland > Modern Eittlandic

VU > ə ! diphthongs (Western Eittlandic)

A recent evolution in Western Eittland is weakening any unstressed vowel that is not a diphthong to a schwa. It is only documented in casual speech but almost never in formal speech.

Example

 

  • Standard Eittlandic ádreif (spray) > Western Casual Eittlandic
  • Standard Eittlandic einlægr (sincere) > Western Casual Eittlandic

ɣ > h (Urban Eittlandic)

Since around the middle of the 20th century, urban Eittlandic started leniting any .

Example
Standard Eittlandic djúplig > urban Eittlandic

In urban areas North of Ðeberget, word-final resulting from this evolution tends to get completely dropped since around the 90s.

Example
Standard Eittlandic djúplig > urban Eittlandic > Northwestern Urban Eittlandic

Vowel Inventory

Modern Eittlandic has a total of ten simple vowels and three diphthongs, regardless of the dialect. It does not directly inherit the vowel length contrast Old Norse bore anymore since the great vowel shift (see the Great Vowel Shift), though most of it shifted to a bitonal contrast instead. The original bitonal contrast believed to have existed in Old Norse has been most likely lost early on during Eittlandic’s evolution, leaving room for the current one. The first table below lists the Eittlandic simple vowels while the second table lists the Eittlandic diphthongs. Note that the contrast by length or tone is not listed in the table,

front back
close i y u
close-mid e ø o
open-mid ɛ œ ɔ
open ɑ
Vowel inventory of Modern Eittlandic
diphthong phonetics
ei
au
ey
Diphthongs of Modern Eittlandic 
(conlanging-graphviz-feature-tree vowels :label "vowels")
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Eittlandic Vowels Featural Tree
a
á
æ
e
é
i
í
o
ó
u
ú
y
ý

Consonant Inventory

Under construction

Pitch and Stress

The original bitonal pitch accent of Eittlandic is thought to have been lost around the 10th or 11th century, though it is no certain this dating is accurate due to next to no documentation contemporary documentation existing regarding this evolution. It has been, however, replaced by a newer bitonal system during the Great Vowel Shift as a replacement for the loss of the contrast between short and long vowels. The low pitch is marked, while the high pitch is unmarked.

The distinction between low and high pitch is only done on stressed vowels, whether they are the bearer of the primary stress or a secondary stress. The primary stress always falls on the first syllable of a word, while the secondary stress falls where the primary stress would fall in compound words, such as noregsúlv . In this instance, no distinction is made regarding whether is a high pitch or low pitch vowel as it bears no stress. On the other hand, the initial bears a high pitch, while the second bears a low pitch. Note that there is no correlation between which stress carries which pitch.

Regional accents

Eittlandic is a language in which three distinct main dialects exist with their own accent. These three main dialects are Eastern Eittlandic spoken in the majority Kingdom of Hylfjaltr, Western Eittlandic spoken in the majority of the Kingdom of Ðeberget, and Southern Eittlandic spoken on the southern parts of the island, regardess of the legal kingdom (see the map shown in Culture). Three main elements of their respective accent were presented above in the Eastern uvularization of «r», the Southern nasalization of vowels and the Western weakening of unstressed vowels.

Some regional variation can be also found in these dialects, although less significant and less consistantly than the changes mentioned above. As such, we can find in some rural parts of the Eastern Eittlandic dialect area high vowels slightly more open than their equivalent in Standard Eittlandic, as shown in table below.

Rural Eastern Eittlandic Standard Eittlandic
Equivalence Between Eastern Eittlandic and Standard Eittlandic

On the other hand, Southern Eittlandic tends to front its into otherwise.