Brithenig, or also known as Comroig, is an invented language, or
constructed language
A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction ...
("conlang"). It was created as a hobby in 1996 by Andrew Smith from
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
, who also invented the
alternate history of
Ill Bethisad to "explain" it. Officially according to the Ill Bethisad Wiki, Brithenig is classified as a Britanno-Romance language, along with other Romance languages that displaced
Celtic.
Brithenig was not developed to be used in the real world, like
Esperanto or
Interlingua
Interlingua (; ISO 639 language codes ia, ina) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It ranks among the most widely used IALs and is t ...
, or to provide detail to a work of fiction, like
Klingon
The Klingons ( ; Klingon: ''tlhIngan'' ) are a fictional species in the science fiction franchise ''Star Trek''.
Developed by screenwriter Gene L. Coon in 1967 for the original ''Star Trek'' (''TOS'') series, Klingons were swarthy humanoids c ...
from the ''
Star Trek'' franchise. Rather, Brithenig started as a thought experiment to create a
Romance language
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...
that might have evolved if
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
had displaced the native
Celtic language as the spoken language of the people in
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It i ...
.
The result is an artificial sister language to
French,
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
,
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
,
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
,
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
,
Occitan Occitan may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain.
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France.
* Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...
and
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
which differs from them by having sound-changes similar to those that affected
Welsh, and words that are borrowed from the
Brittonic languages
The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; cy, ieithoedd Brythonaidd/Prydeinig; kw, yethow brythonek/predennek; br, yezhoù predenek) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic ...
and from
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
throughout its pseudo-history. One important distinction between Brithenig and Welsh is that Welsh is
P-Celtic
The Gallo-Brittonic languages, also known as the P-Celtic languages, are a subdivision of the Celtic languages of Ancient Gaul (both '' celtica'' and '' belgica'') and Celtic Britain, which share certain features. Besides common linguistic in ...
, but Latin was a
Q-Italic language (as opposed to
P-Italic, like
Oscan
Oscan is an extinct Indo-European language of southern Italy. The language is in the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic branch of the Italic languages. Oscan is therefore a close relative of Umbrian.
Oscan was spoken by a number of tribes, including ...
), and the trait was passed onto Brithenig.
Similar efforts to extrapolate Romance languages are (influenced by the other branch of Celtic), (influenced by Hebrew), (a non-Ill Bethisad language influenced by Icelandic), ''
Venedic'' (influenced by Polish), and ''Xliponian'' (which experienced a
Grimm's law
Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Gr ...
-like sound shift). It has also inspired ''Wessisc'', a hypothetical Germanic language influenced by contact with Old Celtic.
Brithenig was granted the code BZT as part of
ISO 639-3
ISO 639-3:2007, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3: Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of languages'', is an international standard for language codes in the ISO 639 series. It defines three-letter codes for ...
.
Andrew Smith was one of the conlangers featured in the exhibit "Esperanto, Elvish, and Beyond: The World of Constructed Languages" displayed at the
Cleveland Public Library from May through August 2008. Smith's creation of Brithenig was cited as the reason for his inclusion in the exhibit (which also included the Babel Text in Smith's language).
Orthography
Brithenig orthography are similar to that of
Welsh, except:
* Unlike Welsh, Brithenig has
soft C and
G, that is before vowels ''e'' and ''i'', the consonants ''c'' and ''g'' is pronounced , , similar to
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
.
** Brithenig also use such phonemes finally in letters ''c'' and ''g''.
** Hard G in Brithenig is indicated by ''gh'' as in Italian.
** Similarly, when preceding ''e'' and ''i'', ''sc'' is pronounced , otherwise .
* The letter ''k'' used for hard is much more alive in Brithenig than Welsh.
* While Welsh words are usually stressed in penultimate syllables, Brithenig words are stressed in the last syllable (Brithenig ''yscol'' vs. Welsh ''ysgol'', both mean "school").
* There are no complicated rules on predicting vowel length from orthography: stressed vowels are always pronounced long.
* Brithenig has numerous
silent letter
In an alphabetic writing system, a silent letter is a letter that, in a particular word, does not correspond to any sound in the word's pronunciation. In linguistics, a silent letter is often symbolised with a null sign . Null is an unprono ...
s.
** In words more than two syllables, word-final ''-t'' in the sequence ''-nt'', and ''-r'' or ''-l'' as the second members of consonant clusters become silent.
** Word-final ''-f'' generally silent, but not as an orthographically geminate ''-ff''.
** In the infinitive endings ''-ar'', ''-er'', ''-ir'', the ''-r'' is usually unpronounced.
* Some other speakers pronounce ''-ae'' and ''-oe'' as and , respectively. In the standard variant, both vowels are pronounced as and .
* Monosyllabic words ending in consonant clusters which ends in ''-r'' or ''-l'' are pronounced with an
epenthetic
In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable ('' prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word ''epent ...
vowel same as the last vowel (''llifr'' pronounced as ''llifir'' , see above). Such would account for unusual stress patterns.
Grammar
Mutation
Like Welsh and other Celtic languages, initial
consonant mutation
Consonant mutation is change in a consonant in a word according to its morphological or syntactic environment.
Mutation occurs in languages around the world. A prototypical example of consonant mutation is the initial consonant mutation of all ...
s (''cluinediwn'', lit. "declensions") in Brithenig is an important feature. There are three mutations: soft (''moillad''), spirant (''solwed''), and nasal (''naral'').
Soft mutation are used with feminine nouns, adjectives, verbs, change in word order, after an adverb, and prepositions ''di'' "of, from" and ''gwo'' "under". Spirant mutation are used for marking plurals on nouns, adjective, and verbs, but also after prepositions ''tra'' "through" and ''a'' "to, at", and the conjunction ''mai'' "but". Nasal mutation are used after the negative adverb used to negate verbs ''rhen'', and prepositions ''in'' "in" and ''cun'' "with".
Before a vowel, the prepositions ''a'' "to, at" and ''e'' "and" irregularly became ''a-dd'' and ''e-dd''.
Nouns and adjectives
Gender in Brithenig nouns is lexical and unpredictable, as it obscured by historic sound changes. The indefinite article in Brithenig is ''yn''
x "one".
Unlike Welsh with unpredictably-formed plurals, there is no dedicated separate plural suffix for Brithenig, thus, the singular and plural forms are almost always invariable (similar to
transnumeral
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
languages such as
Indonesian and
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
). Instead, the plural definite article is generally placed before the noun (''lla gas'', ''llo chas''), but yet there are some exceptions to this rule. Exceptions include the plural of ''(ill) of'' "man", ''(llo) h-on''; and some plurals that formed by placing feminine singular definite article before it with spirant lenition (''ill bordd'', ''lla fordd'').
Dual forms of natural pairs (e.g. arms, legs), however, have their own prefix and formed by prefixing ''dew-'' "two" to the nouns. The similar feature also occurs in
Breton. Diminutives and augmentatives are derived by suffixing ''-ith'' (usual)/''-in'' (affection/collective) and ''-un'', respectively.
Pronouns
There is no distinction of numbers in third person, but can be indicated by spirant lenition on succeeding nominals or verbs (before singulars the mutation is not used). Unlike nouns, pronouns are not just inflected for numbers, but also grammatical cases. Like many languages, there are
T–V distinction
The T–V distinction is the contextual use of different pronouns that exists in some languages and serves to convey formality or familiarity. Its name comes from the Latin pronouns '' tu'' and '' vos''. The distinction takes a number of forms ...
, with ''ty'' is used for addressing people that the speaker is familiar with or gods, while ''Gw'' is used when speaking to a stranger or a less familiar or more formal acquaintance (with capitals). Before feminine nouns, the succeeding noun(s) exhibit soft mutation, while before plural the noun(s) exhibit spirant mutation. When mutated, ''ty'' and ''ti'' irregularly becomes ''dy''
x to avoid confusion with ''di'' "of". Unlike Welsh, Brithenig make fewer use of
inflected preposition
In linguistics, an inflected preposition is a type of word that occurs in some languages, that corresponds to the combination of a preposition and a personal pronoun. For instance, the Welsh word ' () is an inflected form of the preposition ''i'' m ...
s, and such prepositions only found in the word ''cun'' "with":
Verbs
Similar to
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
and
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
, Brithenig verbs are divided into 3 conjugations according to their infinitive endings: ''-ar'' (''canhar'' "to sing"), ''-er'' (''perdder'' "to lose"), and ''-ir'' (''dorfir'' "to sleep") (note that the final ''-r'' are usually
silent). Brithenig is a non-
null-subject language, that is, it requires pronouns before the verb forms (''ys cant'' "he sings"). Note that the stem's final consonants also undergo lenition, but also unvoiced final stop consonants become voiced in the imperfect, past definite, and subjunctive past plurals; future, and conditional forms (that in verbs like ''canhar'' those also undergo mutation as well).
Subjunctive forms nowadays only survive in fixed phrases, like ''can in Rhufein, ffâ si llo Rhufan ffeigant'' "when in Rome, do as the Romans do". Also in subjunctive present forms, final vowels are affected by i-affection (except in ''-ar'' verbs where it only happen in plural forms):
Regular verbs
Irregular verbs
While the Brithenig conjugation is mostly regular, there are some irregular verbs. In past definite tense, some verbs have s-stem preterite originating from Latin perfect tenses in ''-x-'' or ''-s-'' (''eo ddis'' from ''diger'' "to say" for example):
In past participles, instead of regular forms, some verbs have irregular participles inherited from Latin
supine
In grammar, a supine is a form of verbal noun used in some languages. The term is most often used for Latin, where it is one of the four principal parts of a verb. The word refers to a position of lying on one's back (as opposed to ' prone', l ...
s in ''-tum'' (''facere, factum'' → ''fager, faeth'' "to do"), ''-sum'' (''claudere, clausum'' → ''clodder, clos'' "to close"), or even combinations of them (''vidēre, *vistum'' → ''gwidder, gwist'' "to see"). Some verbs also have irregular imperative forms, either by lengthening the last vowel and deleting last consonant (only in the case of familiar imperatives, ''diger'', ''dî'', ''digeth''), or taking forms from subjunctive (''saber'', ''seib'', ''seibeth''). The verb ''gweddir'' "to go", where it comes from
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
''vadō'' but it is not suppleted with other verbs, has irregularities in the present tense: ''eo wa'', ''tu wa'', ''ys wa'', ''sa wa'', ''nu wan'', ''gw wath'', ''ys/sa want''.
= Most irregular verbs
=
''Irregular forms are
underlined.''
Syntax
The default word order in Brithenig is
subject–verb–object (SVO), overall syntax is similar to
French but unlike Welsh. However, when the verb coexists with an object pronoun the word order changes to
subject–object–verb. The word order for yes-no questions is
verb–subject–object (''gw pharolath Brithenig'' "you speak Brithenig" vs. ''parola'gw Frithenig?'' "are you speaking Brithenig?").
[Note that the second-person plural ending ''-th'' was elided before the pronoun ''gw''.]
Vocabulary
Most of Brithenig's vocabulary is distinctively Romance even though it is disguised as Welsh. This list of 30 words gives an impression of what Brithenig looks like in comparison to nine other Romance languages, including Wenedyk, and to Welsh. The similarity of about one quarter of the Welsh words to Brithenig words (indicated by not being bracketed) is because of their common
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
background, but a few others, such as ''ysgol'', were borrowings from Latin into Welsh.
Example
The Lord's Prayer
The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...
:
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
External links
*
*
*
The corresponding page in Ill Bethisad Wiki
{{conlang
Artistic languages
Ill Bethisad
Constructed languages introduced in the 1990s
1996 introductions
Thought experiments
Constructed languages
Romance languages