Grammar Crumbs: Articles and Body Parts

Grammar quirk: Valthungian has two definite articles – he and sa – which are inherited from the Germanic proximal and medial demonstratives, *hiz and *sa, respectively, and counterparts to the demonstratives his and sā. Sa is usually the default (as became the case in most Germanic languages), but you can use he if your “the” feels more “this-y” than “that-y.”

However, when referring to personal body parts, always use he for your own and sa for others’.

E.g. ‘my heart’ is always he hreta mīna – never þa hreta mīna; conversely, you would never say he hreta þīna – always þa.

Some other useful body parts:

	“mine”	“yours”
hair:	he hēr mīna	þa hēr þīna
head:	he hǭviþ mīna	þa hǭviþ þīna
brain:	he hrežne mīna	þa hrežne þīna
eyes:	hīž·ǭgana mīnan	þ·ōgana þīnan
nose:	he nasa mīna	þa nasa þīna
ears:	hi hǭsana mīnan	þo hǭsana þīnan
mouth:	he munþs mīna	sa munþs þīna
tongue:	hi tunga mīna	so tunga þīna
teeth:	his tynþis mīnans	þe tynþis þīnans
throat:	he haus mīna	sa haus þīna
neck:	he þnaka mīna	sa þnaka þīna
arm:	he rams mīna	sa rams þīna
hand:	hi handus mīna	so handus þīna
fingers:	his fingras mīnans	þe fingras þīnans
nail:	he naglas mīna	sa naglas þīna
chest:	he brust mīna	sa brust þīna
heart:	he hreta mīna	þa hreta þīna
lungs:	hi lungna mīnan	þo lungna þīnan
stomach:	he maga mīna	sa maga þīna
leg:	hīž·anke mīna	s·anke þīna
knee:	he knio mīna	þa knio þīna
shin:	hi skina mīna	so skina þīna
calf:	he waþua mīna	þa waþua þīna
ankle:	his anklas mīna	s·ānklas þīna
feet:	his fœučis mīnans	þe fœučis þīnans

The Old Valthungian Alphabet (ca. 950ᴀᴅ)

Most of my posts about Valthungian have something to do with the modern Valthungian language, but I wanted to share a little bit about a stepping-stone we cross on our way from Griutungi (a dialect or close relative of Gothic) to Valthungian.

Old Valthungian, the language spoken by Goth descendants living in parts of Northern Italy between 800 and 1200ad, had a unique writing system which seems to have been largely based on Gothic, but with a few innovations possibly inspired by some of the interesting things that were happening to “Latin” at the time (before it really consciously registered for anyone that they weren’t really speaking Latin anymore). There were very often Latin characters mixed into the Old Valthungian texts as well.

Of course, spelling was very inconsistent, and what I’ve attempted to regularise here is merely academic; a more thorough list of variations and exceptions can be found at the link below. The order of the alphabet as shown is also approximate, based on Gothic and modern Valthungian alphabetic orders; no extant documents or artifacts contain the Old Valthungian alphabet in full.

For more information on Old Valthungian, please visit:

https://linguifex.com/wiki/Old_Valthungian

Update: Yeah, so I’ve totally rearranged and reconstructed all of this. The link above is current. The table below is out of order and missing a couple of letters. Also, just kidding about the “exact order of the alphabet is unknown” thing. Now it’s mostly known.

O.V.	Rom.	Gothic	IPA	E.g.
	a	𐌰	ɑ	apls ‘apple’
	b	𐌱	b	bagyms ‘tree’
	g	𐌲	ɡ	gaets ‘goat’
	d	𐌳	d	dagyz ‘day’
	ð	(𐌳)	ð	aeðij ‘mother’
	e	𐌴	ɛ	erða ‘earth’
	qv	𐌵	kw	qvernu ‘mill’
	z	𐌶	ʐ	þizae ‘to that’
	h	𐌷	h~x	herjis ‘army’
	þ	𐌸	θ	þjuþ ‘people’
	i	𐌹	i~ɪ	igyil ‘hedgehog’
	j	𐌾	j	jeir ‘year’
	k	𐌺	k⁽ʰ⁾	korts ‘short’
	l	𐌻	l~ɫ	langz ‘long’
	m	𐌼	m	maeðms ‘gift’
	n	𐌽	n	naoþs ‘need’
	o	𐍉	ɔ	ortigardz ‘garden’
	p	𐍀	p⁽ʰ⁾	paeða ‘shirt’
	r	𐍂	r	riqvus ‘darkness’
	s	𐍃	s	sougila ‘sun’
	t	𐍄	t⁽ʰ⁾	tungl ‘star’
	u	𐌿	u~ʊ	ulbvandus ‘camel’
	f	𐍆	f~ɸ	fimf ‘five’
	v	𐍅	w	vilðijs ‘wild’
	y	(𐍅)	y~ʏ	hyhsopus ‘hyssop’
	k	𐍇	kʰ	korts ‘short’
	hv	𐍈	xw	hvilftri ‘curve’
	aa	𐌰	ɑː	haah  ‘curtain’
	ae	𐌰𐌹	ɛː	aens ‘one’
	ao	𐌰𐌿	ɔː	kaupoun ‘buy’
	bv	(𐌱)	β	gibvan ‘give’
	ea	𐌰	ɛ	eandjis ‘end’
	eao	𐌰𐌿	œː	leaosjan ‘liberate’
	ei	𐌴	eː	meina ‘moon’
	eo	(𐌰𐌿)	œ	andweordjan ‘answer’
	eou	(𐍉)	øː	afmeouðij ‘disagreement’
	eu	(𐌿)	y	feutlijns ‘fulfillment’
	euv	(𐌿)	yː	heuvhjan ‘hoard’
	gy	(𐌲)	ɣ	aogyou ‘eye’
	ij	𐌴𐌹	iː	ijs ‘ice’
	ju	𐌹𐌿	ju	jup ‘up’
	ng	𐌲𐌲	ŋɡ	singan ‘sing’
	nk	𐌲𐌺	ŋk	drinkan ‘drink’
	nqv	𐌲𐌵	ŋkw	inqvar ‘your’
	ou	𐍉	oː	ous ‘river-mouth’
	uv	𐌿	uː	uvhtvou ‘pre-dawn’

Grammar Crumbs: Genitive-Dative Alignment

While the Grey Tongue uses the standard plain-old, boring-old Germanic cases (Nominative, Genitive, Dative, and Accusative, yes in that order), I’ve been gradually giving a little more responsibility to the Genitive, such as taking over certain rôles like the standard Germanic “accusative of time.” (E.g. ‘today’ – in Gothic hina dag or himma daga – is hisdagis, or sometimes hindag in specific circumstances.)

I’ve recently noticed that this has created an interesting dichotomy between the Genitive and the Dative, where they’ve started to grow into rôles of opposites: Dative being generally analogous to “to/for/towards” and Genitive to “from/of/away from.” This is particularly notable among the pronouns, which occur frequently in the genitive as well (rather uncommon in Germanic languages except for Icelandic, but there it’s actually replacing or mirroring the dative rather than contrasting with it.)

E.g. His ist mīn skenča ‘This is a gift from me’, which contrasts with His ist skenča mīns ‘This is my gift’ or ‘This is a gift of mine.’

Shameless Pilfering of Morphology

Just a little grammar snippet for you.

Looking at the history of Valthungian, the period between Griutungi (the dialect of Gothic that was likely the main parent of Valthungian) and Middle Valthungian occurred mainly in northern Italy and some other areas of southern Europe, and borrowing from Vulgar Latin and its subsequent descendants was fairly rampant. One such borrowing that occurred around the time of Old Valthungian was the borrowing of the Latin genitive plural ending –ōrum to replace Valthungian’s earlier –ē and –ō, which had by that time were starting to undergo some final unstressed vowel degradation and were in danger of vanishing from the language completely, leaving a bare root.

Classical Latin –ōrum was borrowed from Vulgar Latin –ōrũ into Old Valthungian –ōru, which eventually became Middle Valthungian –oru and Modern Valthungian –aro.

Some examples:

Gothic NS: bagms ‘tree’, andeis ‘end’, handus ‘hand’, wata ‘water’ → GP: bagmē, andjē, handiwē, watanē
Griutungi: bagms, andīs, handus, watar → bagmē, andjē, handiwē, watanē
(early) Old Valthungian: bagms, eandijs, handus, vatar → bagmei, eandjei, heandjugei, vatanei
(later) Old Valthungian: bagms, eandijs, handus, vatar → bagmouruv, eandjouruv, heandjugouruv, watanouruv
Middle Valthungian: bagms, endîs, handus, watʀ → bagmoru, endzjoru, hendzjugoru, watɴoru
Modern Valthungian: bagmas, endis, handus, watra → bagmaro, enǧiro, henǧigaro, watanaro

Grammar sub-snippet: Why does watanaro still have so many vowels? Shouldn’t it be watnaro?

Yes and no. Watnaro is common enough in usage, but the retention of the unstressed /a/ here has to do with the development of Valthungian prosody, particularly throughout the Middle Valthungian period when a lot of vowels were jumping ship en masse, when the language came to have a much stricter iambic meter, so many unstressed vowels were retained and some were even added between two stressed syllables.

Grammar Crumbs: Suējuga X, īðanǭðan Y: The X-er the Y-er

In Valthungian there is a handy formula: Suējuga ___, īðanǭðan ___. 

This is roughly equivalent to the English formula “the ___-er the ___-er.”
Literally it translates to “So much ___, that then still then ___.” (Gothic gets weird with its conjunctions, and Valthungian just doubles down on them.) The comparative form of the adjective should be in its uninflected adverbial form (usually –is if its inflected form takes –iža).

E.g.
Suējuga mikilis, īðanǭðan batis. ‘The bigger the better.’
Suējuga langis lečiðit, īðanǭðan vresis gengiðit wisna. ‘The longer it takes, the worse it will be.’
You can also use the same construction with mǣs / mǣža or mitnis / mitniža and noun phrases, e.g.
Suējuga mat mǣžna ǣgums, īðanǭðan grēðo mitnižna (ǣgums). ‘The more food we have, the less hungry we’ll be.’
Suējuga birœ́uǧistu mǣs, īðanǭðan tīman langižna þik lētiþ þat guþ þīna ta livna. ‘The more you complain, the longer your God lets you live.’