Uínlītska

This majority language of Norse America is derived from Old Norse, with adstrates from Germanic, Celtic, Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Inuit, in particular Scots, Scots Gaelic, English, Nunatsiaviummiutut, Nunavimmiutitut, Míkmak, Ojibwe, Abenaki and Beothuk.

Phonology

Consonants

p b	t d			k ɡ	ʔ
f v	s z	ʃ ʒ	θ ð	x ɣ	h
		tʃ dʒ
	ɬ l
m̥ m	n̥ n			ŋ̥ ŋ
ʍ w	ɹ̥ ɹ	ç j

Voicing and Devoicing

In etymologically Old Norse roots, fricatives are voiced initially, finally, or between two voiced sounds (consonants or vowels). In etymologically non-Old Norse words, or in morphologically-created situations, voiceless fricatives may occur in those positions, which is handled differently by each orthography.

In etymologically Old Norse roots, liquids are devoiced immediately following a voiceless consonant. In etymologically non-Old Norse words, or in morphologically-created situations, voiced liquids may occur in these positions, which is handled differently by each orthography.

The phonemes /x/ and /ɣ/ have allophones [ç] and [ɟ] when immediately adjacent to an apical phoneme.

Vowels

i	y		u
e	ø	ə	o
ɛ	œ		ɔ
a		ɑ

Vowel Harmony

A simple harmony "guideline" tends to exist (but is not a hard rule), especially in natively Norse words:

• Vowels within one word each share the frontedness and/or the roundedness of the preceeding vowel.

• The vowels /a/ and /ɑ/ are considered to be neutral with respect to roundedness.

• The vowel /ə/ is neutral with respect to both properties.

This is not a productive rule in the modern stage of the language, and does not apply to new compunds or borrowings, though it applies sporadically to older borrowings, and was almost certainly fully productive at and earlier point.

Sound adaptation in borrowed words

Every foreign phoneme (if possible) maps to the identical phoneme in Fínlǣsk.

The following general rules tend to apply to phonemes from various languages without exact duplicates in Fínlǣsk:

Foreign	q	ɢ	ɴ	ɟ	ɰ	kʷ	ʌ
Fínlǣsk	k	ɡ	ŋ*	j	w	kw	ɑ

*Inuktitut /ɴ/ becomes /ɡ/ word-initially.

Sandhi / Liaison

Metaphonemic Symbols

Symbol

∅

◌← ◌↑ ◌→ ◌↓ ◌↖ ◌↗ ◌↘ ◌↙

η

υ

ω

τ

κ

γ

ρ

◌̽

◌̾

◌́

◌̆

Meaning

Nothing

Umlaut

Vowel

Unrounded

Rounded

Consonant

Voiceless

Voiced

Liquid

Broken

Merged

Long

Short

Vowels

Umlauting

←

↑

→

↓

↖

↗

↘

↙

η

ω

◌̽

◌̾

a

æ

ų

á

á

ę

ǫ

á

á

a

ǫ

aƿ

a

e

ej

i

o

ę

i

ᵫ

œ̨

ę

e

œ

ję

e

ę

ęj

e

ǫ

æ

e

œ

a

æ

ę

œ̨

jæ

ę

i

í

í

u

e

í

ᵫ

œ

e

i

ᵫ

je

i

Liaison

i

y

u

e

ø

ə

o

ɛ

œ

ɔ

a

ɑ

iː

yː

uː

eː

øː

əː

oː

ɛː

œː

ɔː

aː

ɑː

i

iː

yː

ju

y

u

e

ø

ə

o

ɛ

œ

ɔ

a

ɑ

iː

yː

uː

eː

øː

əː

oː

ɛː

œː

ɔː

aː

ɑː

Consonants

CCC sequences are phonotactically disallowed, though note that this means phonemic sequences (things like tj /tʃ/ are considered single consonants under these rules). The following is a simple summary of the rules, in the order they are applied, along with contrived examples.

• If an orthographic j occurs anywhere in the CCC sequence, it is moved to the end: mantj /mɑntʃ/ + kun /kun/ > mantkjun /mɑnttʃun/
• Phonemic "double" or "long" consonants lose their first orthographic component: mantkjun /mɑnttʃun/ > mankjun /mɑntʃun/.

Orthography

Latin Script

p b		t d			k g	᛫
	f	s	sj / sk sg	ð	ȝ	h
			tj dj / kj gj
		l
m		n			n
ƿ (w)		r	j

i	ᵫ		u
e	œ	ų	o
ę	œ̨		ǫ
æ		a

The correct alphabetic order is:

a b d ð e ę f g h i j k l m n o ǫ p r s t u ų ƿ z ȝ æ œ œ̨ ᵫ ᛫

Diacritics are acute for long vowels, or macron (the linea nasalis) for nasalized vowels.

The orthography is uncial, that is there are no capital letters. The customary letter used for /w/ is ƿ, although the ƿᵫn romœ̨́fti (the Roman wyn, i.e. w) is also found. Some inhabitants consider it a shibboleth for "outsiders", though this is a pretty vague and nonspecific term most often (but not always) refering to members of Christian Churches other than the Northern Church.

Runes

ᛈ ᛒ	ᛏ ᛞ			ᚴ ᚷ
ᚠ	ᛋ	ᛊ	ᚦ	ᚻ
	ᛐ	ᛣ
	ᛚ
ᛗ	ᚾ
ᚹ	ᚱ	ᛃ

ᛁ	ᛨ			ᚢ
ᛖ	ᚯ			ᛟ
		ᛡ
ᚫ				ᛅ

Morphology

Both verbs and nouns distinguish between single, dual and plural number.

Nouns

Summary

A fully inflected noun consists of (in order) a stem, inflected for number and case, optional marking for definiteness, and an optional postposition. For instance: sōrᵫnmeð (with the son), hámsū (about a house).

Gender

Nouns are split into Masculine, Feminine and Neuter genders in the singular. In the dual and plural, Masculine and Feminine collapse into identically-formed paradigms, which is often called the Common plural.

Case

Nouns have six cases, and are classified into a number of conjugations, called stems. There are three main stems, a, i, and u (associated with most nouns with open, front, and back vowels respectively) and a number of other, less-frequent stems (off-glide variants of the main stems, ja, ji, ju, ƿa, ƿi, ƿu, behave just like the plain versions). They are shown in the tables below with a summary of their uses and inflections.

See the section on umlaut and sandhi for a description of the notation used below.

		a-stem			i-stem
		Sg	Du	Pl	Sg	Du	Pl
Nominative	Initiator	-a	-ja	-á	-∅	-υ←-ja	-υ←-∅
Accusative	Undergoer	-∅	-υj-∅	-∅	-υ↑-∅
Genitive	From	-s		-ų	-υ↓-ar
Dative	To	-i		-ω↗-ū	-u
Locative	At	-υ←	-jυ↖
Oblique	Everything else	-ar	-r

Article

Definiteness is marked as follows:

Definite To		Marking
Speaker	Listener	Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
No	No	Not marked
Yes	No	-er	-ér	-eðð
Yes	Yes	-in	-ín	-it

Attributive Article

The fully-definite articles above are used with an initial h (i.e. hin, hín, hit) to precede adjectives and adverbs used attributively as parts of names, as opposed to "ordinary" articles suffixed to adjectives and adverbs to nominalise that quality. For instance bænn hin ǫðiȝ is Bjarn The Weathly, and bænn ǫðiȝin is the weathly Bjarn (as opposed to the other one).

Postpositions

Many common postpositions have become enclitics, and a process of their becoming instead enlargements of the case system is imminent, and arguably already underway in various colloquial lects.

Postposition	Case	Meaning
á		on, upon; at, in; to, towards; by means of; during; in the manner of
af		out of, from; with; concerning; because of
at	Dative	to
	Locative	near
	Oblique	towards
í		in, within; among; during; into, onto
eftí		after, behind; for, to obtain; along; according to; in succession to
flá	Genitive	from
	Oblique	concerning
fᵫ́ri	Genitive	because of, for
	Dative	against
	Locative	before, in front of
með	Genitive	by means of
	Dative	as well as
	Locative	in combination with
of		over; across, through; around, about; concerning; because of; for
ǫ́	Genitive	of
	Dative	out of, from
	Oblique	with the material of, made from
sjá		beside, at the side of; compared with; close by
til		in; of, concerning; on; as, for, to obtain; until, to, up to the time
útā		outside (of); beyond; without
ū	Genitive	about, concerning
	Dative	across
	Locative	throughout, around, about
ᵫðð		reaching to, against, with; towards, at; in exchange for; by; (together) with, close to; because of
ᵫfí		above, over, at; across, upon

Postpositions show above with a leading hyphen have generally fused as enclitics.

Pronouns

Pronouns are marked for person, number and case. Additionally, pronouns carry inclusivity/exclusivity information for the first person not encoded elsewhere. See the respective sections above and below for more details on the individual systems.

Placeholder mostly-pure-ON pronouns

1st

2nd

3rd

Incl

Excl

Subject

Object

Sg

Du

Pl

Du

Pl

Sg

Du

Pl

Sg

Du

Pl

Sg

Du

Pl

Nominative

eg

fitt

fé

hðu

hðitt

hðér

an

ant

hðéj

hðatt

hðætt

ðǫ

Accusative

mik

okke

oss

hðikk

ᵫkke

ᵫððe

hánn

hánnt

ðá

ðat

ðet

ðǫ

Genitive

mín

okká

fǫ́

hðín

ᵫkkar

ᵫðar

æns

æntts

hðéjæ

hðess

hðentts

hðéjæ

Dative

Locative

Oblique

The 3rd Person Subject/Object forms are used to distinguish between an 3rd Person who is the subject of the current sentence/clause (using the Proximal) and a 3rd person who is not the subject (using the Distal).

Verbs

The verb is similar in structure to the ON verb. The 4th conjugation of weak verbs has disappeared entirely, merging with the 2nd.

Conjugation Table

Pure ON table. No sound-changes or other changes.

Weak

Strong

1st

2nd

3rd

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

To be

INDIC.

Pres.

Sing.

1.

-a

-i

-∅

-∅

-∅

-η̾-∅

-η↖-∅

-∅

-η←-∅

em

2.

-ar

-ir

-r

-r

-s

-η̾-r

-r

-r

-η←-r

ert

3.

er

Plur.

1.

-um

-um

-jum

-um

-um

-um

-ω↖-um

-um

-ή-um

erum

2.

-ið

-ið

-ið

-ið

-ið

-ið

-ið

-ið

-ið

-ið

3.

-a

-a

-ja

-a

-a

-a

-a

-a

-a

-a

Pret.

Sing.

1.

-aða

-da

-að

2.

-aðir

-dir

-ðir

3.

-aði

-di

-ði

Plur.

1.

-uðum

-dum

-ðum

2.

-uðuð

-duð

-ðuð

3.

-uðu

-du

-ðu

IMPERAT.

-a

-∅

-∅

Person

1st, 2nd, 3rd Common, 3rd Neuter

Voice

Active Voice

Simple bare verb.

Passive Voice

The use of the Passive is virtually obligatory when the agent of the verb is of lower percieved animacy than the undergoer.

Nonpast Tense

Aorist/Present Construction

Simple bare verb.

Future Construction

Auxilliary verbs or adverbs of intention or likelyhood are used.

Past Tense

Ablaut.

Moods

Indicative, Interrogative (for yes/no questions on the truth value of the predicate), Subjunctive (includes Conditional and Irrealis), Imperative (includes Hortative and Jussive).

Aspects

Imperfect, Perfect.

Attitudinal and Evidential modifiers

Equiv. doch, schon, mal, eben, ja, etc.

Other Languages

Other languages in this AU presume the gradual creation and growth of European colonies in North & Central America starting around 1000CE instead of the rapid colonization of Central America starting around 1500CE and of North America starting around 1600CE.

Finla was the first major consolidation of power, followed by "Nova Scotia" (provisional name), consisting mostly of Christian Celtic and Anglo-Saxon missionaries from England and France who established their major centers on the southwest coast of Greenland and to the south of Finla between 1100CE and 1250CE. Their Hibernic language is a Celtic koine of Old Gaelic, Old Welsh, Old Breton and Old Cornish with adstrates from Old English and Old French and a significant superstrate from Church Latin.