Old High Jermench (MGR)

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Old High Jermench Iermânêh
Spoken in:	northwestern Europe
Conworld:	Mundus Germaniae Romanae
Total speakers:	unknown
Genealogical classification:	Indo-European Romance Northern-Romance Old High Jermench
Basic word order:	SVO
Morphological type:	inflecting
Morphosyntactic alignment:	nominative-accusative
Writing system:
Created by:
P Collier, BP Jonsson	2006+

Introduction

The term Old High Jermench (OHJ) refers to the earliest stage of the Jermench language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050 CE. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of Old High Jermench proper to 750 for this reason.

The main difference between Old High Jermench and the Northern-Romance dialects from which it developed is that it underwent the High Jermench Consonant Shift. This is generally dated very approximately to the late 5th and early 6th centuries - hence dating its start to around 500. The result of this sound change is that the consonant system of Jermench remains different from all other Northern Romance languages, including {Rom-English} and Low Jermench. Grammatically, however, OHJ remained very similar to Old {Rom-English}, Old {Rom-Dutch} and Old {Rom-Low Saxon}.

By the mid 11th century the many different vowels found in unstressed syllables had all been reduced to 'e'. Since these vowels were part of the grammatical endings in the nouns and verbs, their loss led to radical simplification of the inflectional grammar of Jermench. For that reasons, 1050 is seen as the start of the Middle High Jermench period.

Modern Descendants

• (Modern High) Jermench
• {Rom-Luxembourgish}
• {Rom-Yiddish}

Phonology

Consonants

Consonants
		Bilabial		Labiodental		Dental		Alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal		m						n				ŋ
Plosive		p   b ¹				t   d ¹						k   g ¹
Fricative		β ¹		f		θ   ð ¹		s				x   ɣ ¹		h
Approximant		w								j
Trill								r
Lateral								l

¹The stop allophones occured in initial position or when geminated. In other positions b d and g are realised as fricatives.

Vowels

Vowels
				Front		Near-front		Central		Near-back		Back
High				iː								uː
Near-high						ɪ				ʊ
High-mid				e								oː
Low-mid						ɛ   ɛː						ɔ   ɔː
Low								a   aː

Phonological History

Morphology

Nouns

1st Declension

2nd Declension

3rd Declension

Pronouns

Verbs

Indicative Mood

1st Conjugation

2nd Conjugation

3rd Conjugation

4th Conjugation

Subjunctive Mood

1st Conjugation

2nd Conjugation

3rd Conjugation

4th Conjugation

Imperative Mood

Infinitive and Past Participles

Auxilliary Verbs

*Esttar (to be)

*Hābeir (to have)

*Weanīr (to come)