Tauro-Piscean language
| Spreec täropisceesum | |
|---|---|
| Pronounced: | [spɹek tɛəɹopiskesum] |
| Timeline and Universe: | Present, this universe |
| Species: | Human |
| Spoken: | People's Democratic Republic of New Pisces and Taurus |
| Total speakers: | 2 |
| Writing system: | Partridgo-Andersonic alphabet |
| Genealogy: | Indo-European Multi-Western |
| Typology | |
| Morphological type: | Inflecting |
| Morphosyntactic alignment: | Nominative-accusative |
| Basic word order: | V2 |
| Credits | |
| Creator: | S.C. Anderson, L.J. Partridge |
| Created: | 27 November 2007 |
The Tauro-Piscean language belongs to S.C. Anderson and L.J. Partridge, residents of the territories claimed by the New Pisces and Taurus micronation. Throughout its history, Piscean has belonged to several branches of the Indo-European language family, including Italic and West Germanic. Due to the awkward classification, a new pseudo-branch of Indo-European languages has been created by Anderson: 'Multi-Western', after the languages spoken in western Europe that have inspired Piscean. Tauro-Piscean is essentially the modern Piscean dialect, reformed and with some revived features from its history, and the newly developing - now ingested - language Taurusian. Since an agreement on 27 November 2007, Anderson (Piscean) and Partridge (Taurusian) have agreed to work on a joint language and now both moderate the Piscean Lexicon.
Models
Tauro-Piscean is an a posteriori constructed language, whose vocabulary is adapted primarily from Old English and German. There is also a growing influx of words from French and Old Taurusian where adapted words are not felt to be appropriate: for example, Avion (‘aeroplane’, from French avion) is used in place of German Flugzeug. Coinages, which often translate entire English phrases, are formed from various Romance languages. Because Old Taurusian orthography was based on phonetic English and, to a lesser extent, French spelling, it was changed to Taurusian before being consumed into Piscean, which uses a Piscean orthography, e.g. Old Taurusian Rougeonstul > Taurusian (Tauro-Piscean) Ruǧonstull.
Due to Piscean's history of borrowing from different Germanic and Romance languages, modern Piscean has 'recessive' vocabulary, i.e. it has words that mean the same as one another in their source languages, but now have different meanings in Tauro-Piscean. For example, there are four words that originally translated as 'day':
- Dominant: 'Deej' (Germanic) - 'day'
- Recessive 1: 'Tag' (Germanic) - 'typical day'
- Recessive 2: 'Scharne (Romance) - 'personal holiday'
- Recessive 3: 'Pee' (Germanic) - 'bank holiday'
The last form was imported into early Old Piscean from modern English ('pé', a corruption of 'day'); the third, into middle Old Piscean from French/Italian ('jarna', compare 'jour' and 'giorno'); the second, into late Old Piscean from German ('Tag'); the first, into modern Piscean from Old English (reformed spelling: 'daeg'). Therefore, Tauro-Piscean could now be compared to English, albeit the language of Anderson and Partridge arguably has a much more consistent method of assigning vocabulary. See also: Piscean language
Reform 07/12/07
The Reform of December has meant that in Tauro-Piscean, the letter G in words of Old English origin will be replaced by the letter J. Previously, in Piscean, some were replaced, but the substitution is now made complete. Observe:
- Godendeej (modern Piscean) > Jodendeej (Tauro-Piscean)
- frignan (modern Piscean) > frijnan (Tauro-Piscean)
- geond (modern Piscean) > jeond (Tauro-Piscean)
Also in words of Old English origin, the letters HW are replaced by W in Tauro Piscean and the letters WR are replaced by R.
- hwit (modern Piscean) > wit (Tauro-Piscean)
- hweet (modern Piscean) > weet (Tauro-Piscean)
- writan (modern Piscean) > ritan (Tauro-Piscean)
Furthermore, as of late December, the multigraphs SCH, TSCH, SCG (in Romanisation, to represent changes to the Partridgo-Andersonic alphabet) are replaced by and Š, TŠ and Ǧ respectively:
- Geschäft (modern Piscean) > Ješäft
- Schablone (modern Piscean) > Šablone
C is replaced by K:
- icc (modern Piscean) > ikk (Tauro-Piscean)
Ç is replaced by C:
- essenças (modern Piscean) > essencas (Tauro-Piscean)
Words from Taurusian
Tauro-Piscean, in addition to Romance and Germanic influences, is influced by Taurusian. Taurusian vocabulary is invented spontaneously by Partridge and, as a result of which, can cater for unique words among the Piscean language that often help to make communication quicker and less ambiguous. Observe (Piscean elements of infinitives are enclosed in square brackets):
- pars [bean] - to have mixed emotions
- Hijfíĵs - someone that opposes one's ideas or mannerisms
- Dijnumm - AstroTurf, flat 'artificial turf' used for sports
- Ruǧonstull - registration at regular intervals to affirm attendance
- Handjular - personal computer (PC)
- Cornipáznaj - compact disc (CD)
- Bude - box set
- lijtáccan - to be taken lightly
- Waterdogg - subwoofer
- fuzdulaársan - to rub it in someone's face
Sounds
Tauro-Piscean sounds are based mainly on those in the modern standard dialects of German and English.
For non-linguists or for casual browsing: Tauro-Piscean letters can be compared to English phonetically:
Types of consonants
Linguistically, Tauro-Piscean consonants can be arranged in a grid like this:
Nouns
Genders
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.
Articles
Definite articles
The word ‘the’ is known as the 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 articles
The word ‘a’ is known as the indefinite article.
The indefinite article 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'.
