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| Venedic | |
|---|---|
| Wenedyk | |
| Created by | Jan van Steenbergen |
| Date | 2002 |
| Setting and usage | A thought experiment in thealternate history,Ill Bethisad, ifLatin had replacedPolish's ancestor. |
| Purpose | |
| Sources | constructed languages a posteriori languages (Romance language with aPolish substrate) |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | None |
| IETF | art-x-wenedyk |
| This article containsIPA phonetic symbols. Without properrendering support, you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbols instead ofUnicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. | |
Venedic (Wenedyk,lęgwa wenedka) is a naturalisticconstructed language, created by the Dutch translatorJan van Steenbergen (who also co-created the international auxiliary languageInterslavic). It is used in the fictionalRepublic of the Two Crowns, based on thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in thealternate timeline ofIll Bethisad. Officially, Venedic is a descendant ofVulgar Latin with a strongSlavic admixture, based on the premise that theRoman Empire incorporated the ancestors of thePoles in their territory. Less officially, it tries to show whatPolish would have looked like if it had been aRomance instead of aSlavic language. On the Internet, it is well-recognized as an example of thealtlang genre, much likeBrithenig and Breathanach.
The idea for the language was inspired by such languages as Brithenig and Breathanach, languages that bear a similar relationship to the Celtic languages as Venedic does to Polish. The language itself is based entirely on (Vulgar)Latin andPolish: all phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes that made Polish develop fromCommon Slavic are applied to Vulgar Latin. As a result, vocabulary and morphology are predominantly Romance in nature, whereas phonology, orthography and syntax are essentially the same as in Polish. Venedic uses the modern standardPolish orthography, including⟨w⟩ for/v/ and⟨ł⟩ for/w/.
Venedic plays a role in thealternate history of Ill Bethisad, where it is one of the official languages of theRepublic of the Two Crowns. In 2005 Venedic underwent a major revision due to a better understanding of Latin and Slavic sound and grammar changes. In the process, the author was assisted by the Polish linguist Grzegorz Jagodziński.
The dictionary on the WWW page linked below contains over 4000 entries.
The language has acquired some media attention in Poland, including several online news articles and an article in the monthlyKnowledge and Life [pl].
Venedic uses thePolish alphabet, which consists of the following 32 letters :
Also, there are seven digraphs, representing five phonemes (ch being identical with h, and rz with ż):
Pronunciation is exactly as in Polish. Stress almost always falls on the penultimatesyllable. Apreposition and apronoun are generally treated as one word, and therefore, when the pronoun has only one syllable, the preposition is stressed.
(In theory, the construction of Venedic enables relatively easy construction of other "Slavo-Romance" languages. The Romance "mirror" forCzech, for example, is called "Šležan";[1] another forSlovak, although somewhat looser than the other two as it uses a partiallyHungarian orthography, is called "Slevan".[2])
Venedic does not havearticles. This is a feature that distinguishes Venedic from all natural Romance languages. The reason for this is thatVulgar Latin showed only a rudimentary tendency toward the formation of articles, and they are absent in Polish and most other Slavic languages.
Nouns, pronouns and adjectives can have threegenders (masculine, feminine, neuter), twonumbers (singular, plural), and threecases:
Venedic also has avocative case. In most cases it has the same form as the direct case, but there are exceptions:O potrze! "Oh father!" In earlier version of Venedic, it used to have nominative and accusative cases, but later merged to form the direct case.
Nouns can be subdivided into fourdeclensions. They are similar to the declension system in Latin:
| Declension class | I | II | III | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| f | m | m | n | f | n | ||||||||
| hard | soft | hard | soft | hard | soft | hard | soft | hard | soft | hard | soft | ||
| Singular | Direct | -a | -∅ | ||||||||||
| Genitive | -ie | -u | -ie | -u | -ie | ||||||||
| Dative | -ia | ||||||||||||
| Plural | Direct | -ie | -i,-ie1 | -ia | -ie | -ia | |||||||
| Genitive | -ar | -ór | -i2 | ||||||||||
| Dative | -iew | ||||||||||||
Hard andsoft in this context are suffixes that are decided by final consonants, either hard (remaining consonants, like-n,-c, or-d) or soft (postalveolars or palatal-like sounds, like-l,-ń, or-rz). Endings in-ia-,-ie-, and-i- are always affected by regular changes below:
| Final consonant | Result | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| +-ia- | +-ie- | +-i- | |
| c | ca | ce | cy |
| ch | sza | sze | szy |
| cz | cza | cze | czy |
| ć | cia | cie | ci |
| d | dzia | dzie | dzi |
| dz | dza | dze | dzy |
| g | ża | że | ży |
| k | cza | cze | czy |
| j | ja | je | i |
| ł | la | le | li |
| ń | nia | nie | ni |
| r | rza | rze | rzy |
| sk | szcza | szcze | szczy |
| sz | sza | sze | szy |
| t | cia | cie | ci |
| ż | ża | że | ży |
| ź | zia | zie | zi |
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| Direct | moszkieł /ˈmɔʂkʲɛw/ | moszkli /ˈmɔʂklʲi/ |
| Genitive | moszkłu /ˈmɔʂkwu/ | moszkłór /ˈmɔʂkwur/ |
| Dative | moszkli /ˈmɔʂklʲi/ | moszklew /ˈmɔʂklɛf/ |
There are a number of irregular nouns. Not just completely irregular nouns on the table below, some nouns have less predictable oblique stems (the rest stem other than nominative singular), as in abovemoszkieł, gen.moszklu. However, nouns with the last voweló regularly shorten too (sórz,sorze).
| numię "name"1 | ciępu "time"1 | fołgr "lightning"1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| Direct | numię | numna | ciępu | cięprze | fołgr | fołgra |
| Genitive | numien | numnie | cięprze | ciępr | fołgrze | fołgr |
| Dative | numni | numniew | cięprzy | cięprzew | fołgrzy | fołgrzew |
| dziew "god" | womień "person"2 | kap "head" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| Direct | dziew | dziei | womień | ludzie | kap | kapta |
| Genitive | dzieju | dziejór | womnie | ludzi | kapcie | kaptór |
| Dative | dziei | dziejew | womni | ludziew | kapci | kapciew |
| rzej "head" | dzej "day" | Jezus "Jesus" | ||||
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | Singular | ||
| Direct | rzej | rzeje | dzej | dzeje | Jezus | |
| Genitive | rzei | rzejar | dzei | dzejór | Jezu | |
| Dative | rzei | rzejew | dzei | dzejew | Jezui | |
Adjectives always agree in gender, number and case with the noun they modify. They can be placed both before and after it. Unlike nouns, the adjective declension are always consistent and there is no distinctions in declension classes.
| Singular | Plural | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | Masculine | Neuter | Feminine | ||
| Hard | |||||||
| Direct | Non-personal | -y | -a | -ie | |||
| Personal | -i | -ie | |||||
| Genitive | -u | -iej | -ór | -ar | |||
| Dative | -i | -iew | |||||
| Soft | |||||||
| Direct | Non-personal | -i | -ia | -ie | |||
| Personal | -i | -ie | |||||
| Genitive | -iu | -iej | -iór | -iar | |||
| Dative | -i | -iew | |||||
The comparatives and superlatives are formed by the suffixes-ierzy and-ieśmy, respectively, to the adjective's stem. However, the adjectives below have irregular comparative (second row) and superlative (third row) forms:
Adverbial forms are either done by removing the-y/-i from the root or adding the suffix-mięć into the root (kłary,kłar/kłaramięć "warmly"). There are no rules which forms are preferred, but the latter usually expresses how something is done.
For the longer form,-amięć is used after hard consonants while-iemięć used after soft consonants. Adjectives in-ły use the suffix-lemięć (i.e.-ł- +-iemięć), except for the adjectivesbiały,mały,miły,siegły which are always suffixed with the former (biały →białamieć). The adjectivebony "good" has an irregular adverbial derivation:bień. The comparatives and superlatives can also have adverbial forms, by substituting-ierzy and-ieśmy with-iu and-ieśmie. Verbal participles always remove their last vowels.
The predicative forms are the same as masculine and neuter direct singular forms, except that sometimes the suffix-y/-i is removed, but this predicative forming is somewhat archaic and the resulting forms should not be confused with adverbs.
Unlike nouns, adjectives and other pronouns,personal pronouns do not use the direct case, but preserve the distinction between thenominative andaccusative instead. They are displayed in the following chart:
| singular | plural | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| first person | second person | third person | first person | second person | third person | |||||
| masculine | feminine | neuter | masculine | feminine | neuter | |||||
| Nom. Acc. Gen. Dat. | jo mie miej mi | ty cie ciej ci | ił łu łu li | ła łą lej lej | łu łu łu li | nu nosz nosz nów | wu wosz wosz wów | li łosz łór lew | le łasz łar lew | le le łór lew |
| English | I me mine to me | thou, you thee, you thine, yours to thee, to you | he him his to him | she her hers to her | it it its to it | we us ours to us | you you yours to you | they them theirs to them | ||
Verbs are inflected for person, number, mood and tense. Because Latin andProto-Slavonic had virtually identical person/number inflections, Venedic and Polish do also.
Venedic verbs have the followingmoods andtenses:
| Person ↓ | Classes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | II—VI | VII | VIII | ||
| Singular | 1st | -u | -je | -u | -sku |
| 2nd | -asz | -esz | -szczesz | ||
| 2nd | -a | -e | -szcze | ||
| Plural | 1st | -amy | -iemy | -my | -szczemy |
| 2nd | -acie | -ecie | -cie | -szczecie | |
| 3rd | -ą | -ję | -ę | -ską | |
Venedic vocabulary as published on the internet consists of over 4000 words. Because of how it was developed from Vulgar Latin, Venedic words are closest toItalian, but with phonologic differences from Italian which may be compared to those distinguishingPortuguese fromSpanish. The following charts of 30 shows what Venedic looks like in comparison to a number of other Romance languages; note that unlikeBrithenig, where one-quarter of the words resembled Welsh words, only four Venedic words (not countingszkoła, borrowed into Polish from Latin) resemble Polish words, due to the Slavic languages' greater distance from the Romance languages compared to the Celtic languages:
| Term | Latin | Italian | Wenedyk | Romanian | Polish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| arm | brachium | braccio | brocz | braţ | ramię |
| black | nĭger, nĭgrum | nero | niegry | negru | czarny |
| city, town | cīvĭtās, cīvĭtātem | città | czytać | oraş, [cetate] | miasto |
| death | mŏrs, mŏrtem | morte | mroć | moarte | śmierć |
| dog | canis | cane | kań | câine | pies |
| ear | auris, aurĭcŭla | orecchio | urzykła | ureche | ucho |
| egg | ovum | uovo | ów | ou | jajko |
| eye | ŏcŭlus | occhio | okieł | ochi | oko |
| father | pater, patrem | padre | poterz | tată | ojciec |
| fire | ignis, fŏcus | fuoco | fok | foc | ogień |
| fish | pĭscis | pesce | pieszcz | peşte | ryba |
| foot | pĕs, pĕdem | piede | piedź | picior, [piez] | stopa |
| friend | amīcus | amico | omik | prieten, amic | przyjaciel |
| green | vĭrĭdis | verde | wierdzi | verde | zielony |
| horse | ĕquus, cabăllus | cavallo | kawał | cal | koń |
| I | ĕgo | io | jo | eu | ja |
| island | īnsŭla | isola | izła | insulă | wyspa |
| language, tongue | lĭngua | lingua | lęgwa | limbă | język |
| life | vīta | vita | wita | viaţă, [vită] | życie |
| milk | lac, lactis | latte | łoc | lapte | mleko |
| name | nōmen | nome | numię | nume | imię |
| night | nŏx, nŏctis | notte | noc | noapte | noc |
| old | vĕtus, vetulus | vecchio | wiekły | vechi | stary |
| school | schŏla | scuola | szkoła | şcoală | szkoła |
| sky | caelum | cielo | czał | cer | niebo |
| star | stēlla | stella | ścioła | stea | gwiazda |
| tooth | dĕns, dĕntem | dente | dzięć | dinte | ząb |
| voice | vōx, vōcem | voce | wucz | voce, [boace],glas | głos |
| water | aqua | acqua | jekwa | apă | woda |
| wind | vĕntus | vento | więt | vânt | wiatr |
| Term | Portuguese | Spanish | Catalan | Occitan | French | Romansh | Wenedyk | Brithenig |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| arm | braço | brazo | braç | braç | bras | bratsch | brocz | breich |
| black | negro | negro | negre | negre | noir | nair | niegry | nîr |
| city, town | cidade | ciudad | ciutat | ciutat | cité | citad | czytać | ciwdad |
| death | morte | muerte | mort | mòrt | mort | mort | mroć | morth |
| dog | cão | perro | gos | gos, can | chien | chaun | kań | can |
| ear | orelha | oreja | orella | aurelha | oreille | ureglia | urzykła | origl |
| egg | ovo | huevo | ou | uòu | œuf | ov | ów | ew |
| eye | olho | ojo | ull | uèlh | œil | egl | okieł | ogl |
| father | pai | padre | pare | paire | père | bab | poterz | padr |
| fire | fogo | fuego | foc | fuòc | feu | fieu | fok | ffog |
| fish | peixe | pez | peix | peis | poisson | pesch | pieszcz | pisc |
| foot | pé | pie | peu | pè | pied | pe | piedź | pedd |
| friend | amigo | amigo | amic | amic | ami | ami | omik | efig |
| green | verde | verde | verd | verd | vert | verd | wierdzi | gwirdd |
| horse | cavalo | caballo | cavall | caval | cheval | chaval | kawał | cafall |
| I | eu | yo | jo | ieu | je | jau | jo | eo |
| island | ilha | isla | illa | illa | île | insla | izła | ysl |
| language, tongue | língua | lengua | llengua | lenga | langue | linguatg, lieunga | lęgwa | llinghedig, llingw |
| life | vida | vida | vida | vida | vie | vita | wita | gwid |
| milk | leite | leche | llet | lach | lait | latg | łoc | llaeth |
| name | nome | nombre | nom | nom | nom | num | numię | nôn |
| night | noite | noche | nit | nuèch | nuit | notg | noc | noeth |
| old | velho | viejo | vell | vièlh | vieux | vegl | wiekły | gwegl |
| school | escola | escuela | escola | escòla | école | scola | szkoła | yscol |
| sky | céu | cielo | cel | cèl | ciel | tschiel | czał | cel |
| star | estrela | estrella | estrella | estela | étoile | staila | ścioła | ystuil |
| tooth | dente | diente | dent | dent | dent | dent | dzięć | dent |
| voice | voz | voz | veu | votz | voix | vusch | wucz | gwg |
| water | água | agua | aigua | aiga | eau | aua | jekwa | ag |
| wind | vento | viento | vent | vent | vent | vent | więt | gwent |
TheLord's Prayer in Venedic:
Potrze nostry, kwały jesz en czałór, sąciewkaty si twej numię.Owień twej rzeń.Foca si twa włątać, komód en czału szyk i sur cierze.Da nów odzej nostry pań kocidzany.I dziemieć nów nostrze dziewta, komód i nu dziemiećmy swór dziewtorzór.I nie endycz nosz en ciętaceń, uta liwra nosz dzie mału.Nąk twie są rzeń i pociestać i głurza, o siąprz. Amen.
Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights in Venedic:
Article 1 of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights in English:
In the Ill Bethisad universe, there are two other languages which are related to Venedic: Slevan, which is spoken in that universe's counterpart ofSlovakia; and Šležan, or Silesian, spoken inSilesia. Šležan mirrorsCzech[3][4] in much the same way Venedic does Polish, whereas Slevan, despite being located in Slovakia, is more similar toHungarian andCroatian in its orthography. (The Romance "mirror" of Slovak is a dialect of Slevan spoken inMoravia called Moravľaňec.) (As if in compensation,Croatian in Ill Bethisad is forced to be noticeably different fromSerbian by being made to resemble the now-virtually-missing Czech and Slovak.[5] )
Additionally, in the famousThe Adventures of Tintin series, the pseudo-Slavic fictional languageSyldavian may be thought of as aGermanic counterpart of Venedic. The nearly extinctWymysorys language provides another real-life example of this. Ill Bethisad also has such a "Slavo-Germanic" language: Bohemian, spoken in that universe'sCzech Republic, developed by amateurCzech linguist Jan Havliš.
| Classification | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Specific languages by group |
| ||||||||||
| Neography | |||||||||||
| Study | |||||||||||
| Comparisons | |||||||||||
