Piscean language

Language tree showing the partially naturalistic, partially synthetic, evolution of Piscean from Indo-European

Piscean (Piscean: pisceesum) is the official language of the New Piscean Workers' Nation, founded on the manmade island New Pisces - off the coast of western France - that was created in 2028. Despite being the constructed language of Representative S.C. Anderson, Piscean is linguistically derived from Old English and Modern German; however, it is written not with the Latin or runic alphabets, but with the 'pro-Phoenician' Andersonic writing system devised in 2007. (For the purpose of this article, examples of Piscean will be transliterated into the Latin alphabet.)

Articles

The Piscean language includes three 'logical' grammatical genders. While in many languages, the genders do not often relate to physical properties of nouns, they do in Piscean; therefore, most nouns are neuter, while creatures of the male sex are masculine and creatures of female sex are feminine. If one refers to a creature, but does not wish to distinguish sex, the neuter gender can be used as a substitute. Observe the following examples:

• teet Sunne - the sun (no sex, so neuter)

• teet Mann - the person (no sex specified, so neuter)
• se Mann - the man (male, so masculine)
• seo Mann - the woman (female, so feminine)

The above example shows the importance the article plays in Piscean of distinguishing between sexes in a language where one noun fits all.

Definite article

The definite article is inflected in various ways, firstly split into three depending on grammatical gender, then into six depending also on quantity - whether singular or plural - and finally into a further thirty depending on grammatical case - whether nominative, accusative, dative, genitive or instrumental.

Those words highlighted with an asterisk follow irregular patterns. 'Enum' is a contraction arising from a rather complex - and now incorrect - 'teemenum'. 'Seäm' is a result of 'seoum', which is difficult for a Piscean speaker to pronounce. The O and U thus collapse into Ä. Similarly, 'som' is contrived, as 'säum' is awkward in speech, giving way instead to a collapse of Ä and U into O.

Indefinite article

The indefinite article (in English, 'a/an') is inflected in much the same way as the definite article, but lacking plural forms (which are shown not with an article, merely by inflecting the noun itself).

Those words highlighted with an asterisk follow irregular patterns. 'Een', 'eem', 'ees' and 'eum' are contracted forms of 'aneen', 'aneem', 'anees' and 'aneum', respectively. Regarding the feminine irregularities, 'änoen', 'änoem', 'änoes' and 'änoum' first contracted to 'oen', 'oem', 'oes' and 'oum', but - for even easier pronunciation - the O (and E, where applicable) finally collapsed into the dipthong IJ, which sounds like the English word 'eye'.

Cases and prepositions

Piscean implements five cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive and instrumental. Anderson affirms that these have greatly important and stylistic purposes.

Nominative

This case is used for the subject of the sentence (i.e. the noun doing the verb) and as a complement after: 'bean' ('to be'), 'weortan' ('to become') and 'hatan' ('to be called').

Accusative

This case is used for the direct object (i.e. the noun having the verb done to it/them) and after certain prepositions:

• to (for)
• ijmbe (around)
• geond (through)
• ot (until)
• butan (without)
• vider (contrary to)
• on (against)

The accusative case allows for flexible sentence structure that can place emphasis on a certain word by changing its location, yet retaining original meaning. For example:

• Se Hund bit sen Mann - The dog bites the man
• Sen Mann bit se Hund - The dog bites the man

Both of the above Piscean sentences have the same translation into English. On first glance, an English speaker might confuse the second example as 'the man bites the dog', although this is because the object comes before the subject. Because the word 'Mann' is preceded by the accusative article and 'Hund', by the nominative, those skilled in Piscean can easily deduce the sentence's meaning. Meanwhile, the first example places emphasis on the subject, while the second places greater emphasis on the object.

Dative

This case is used for the indirect object (i.e. the noun receiving or being given/sent/lent something); note that in this usage, there is no required to translate the word 'to' from English to Piscean:

• Icc geef hit sem Leerere - I give it (to) the teacher

The 'to' is not translated because it is suggested by the dative case ('sem').

It is also used after certain prepositions:

• eet (at)
• ut (outside)
• fram (from)
• ofer (about)
• eefter (after/according to)
• ongean (opposite)
• sittan (since)
• butan (except)
• mid (with)