MARKLENDSK

INTRODUCTION

You might have read my Artificial Languages page. It sets the context for this little linguistic study: and why I need not be embarrassed to have spent so much time on it!

Why "Marklendsk"?

Marklendsk would be called "Marklandish" in English. It is being created to explore the literary qualities of Icelandic, inherited from Old Norse. One of the beauties of Icelandic ("ISLENSKA") is the way it can be turned into wonderfully expressive writing. Many Icelanders write books. Icelandic is not far of course from the Old Norse of the great sagas. I decided that I would like to use its qualities in an artificial language. Icelandic's inflexions permit a flexible word order, which allows great subtlety of expression. It is the irregularity which gets most people, and of course the three-gender system whose variants have to be learnt before the irregular nouns (& verbs) come into play.

The descendents of Old Norse dialects in mainland Scandinavia (Norwegian, Danish and Swedish) have lost their inflexions. They are relatively regular and simple languages now. However without their inflexions the only way to show a word's meaning is its position in the sentence. Thus fexibility of expression is lost. The same is seem in English, Dutch and even in inflected German. (It is unfortunte that the German language has, perhaps artificially, been regimented into rigid, largely inflexible word orders.)

I made a suggestion to the alt.lang.artificial newsgroup to create a new variant on Old Norse, provisionally called "Marklendska" or "Marklendsk". It was for a more regular development of Old Norse. I called it "Marklendska" after Markland; the Land of Forests which Leifr Ericsson discovered on the way to Vinland. It is thought to have been Labrador. The Vinland colony was soon abandoned, but into the early Middle Ages there are references to Icelanders sailing to Markland for timber.

Imagine a colony of Norse loggers settled in Markland. Imagine the Marklanders, cut off from Europe, with their Old Norse language intact but adapting to their own position. This fictional idea is the schme for composing Marklendsk. Marklendsk is being based on Old Norse, but a Norse in which over time the genders have collapsed; all nouns have conformed to what was the Masculine inflexion. (Perhaps some trace of gender remains in the tree names and landscape names, for choosing their definitive suffix. We shall see.) Verbs likewise have become largely regular. Many strong verbs remain, forming their past tense with vowel changes, as one finds throughout the Germanic tongues.

If a colony of Marklanders had existed it would have been discovered long before now in the Canadian forests. That does not stop us from speculating on what their language might have been like.

More importantly though Marklendsk will give us a way of looking at the beautify flexibility of the Old Norse tongue, and modern Icelandic, without having to struggle through the huge multitude of declensions and idiosyncratic forms.

Marklendsk is a heavily inflected language, like Old Norse. It is more inflected than German, for those more familiar with that language. This allows for great flexibility in word order. This means that on can use the word order to place subtle emphases in statements in a way that is barred in, for example, English because of its more rigid form. English is capable of breathtaking beauty, but Icelandic beats it into a cocked hat. It is just that too few people understand Icelandic to appreciate it!

The project is at a very early stage and is likely to stay there for a while. To be frank, I have bitten off more than I can chew: I do not know Old Norse myself and my Icelandic is appalling. Still, it seemed a good idea. If anyone wants to help the project, feel free!

The Nature of the Language

Marklendsk is Germanic. It is inflected. Its grammar is fairly regular. Its vocabulary begins from a limited set of words. To refer to modern concepts I am trying to build up from older roots, as Icelandic does. As with the natural Germanic languages Marklendsk is basically an isolating language but with a range of common prefixes and suffixes, which can be combined.

I would welcome any constructive suggestions anyone has on my humble efforts. This is not an autocratic project like Baanzish.

So far however I can only give the outline, while I strengthen my grip on the vocabulary, and find the best ways to exemplify the Norse grammar.

GRAMMAR: Themes

NOUNS

The following is an example from the Icelandic masculine gender, a pattern which will apply throughout for Marklendsk, with the equivalent in marklendsk (as devised at present).

"Heimr" (nom. sing.) has a terminal "-r", typical of Old Norse masculines. Not all nouns will of course, in which case the nominative and accusative singulars are identical. Compare the following, again between Icelandic and Marklendsk, this time a Norse / Icelandic feminine noun:

The Genitive

The genitive should be used where in modern English one might use "of" to show relation.

The Definite Article
("The")

In Marklendsk, as in other Scandinavian tongues, the definite article ("the") is indicated with a suffix added to the root of the word. The definite article is not a word itself.

Since the article suffix contains the inflexions indicating case and number the suffix just attaches to the root of the noun, not the inflected form. The suffixes are as follows:

PERSONAL PRONOUNS

In addition to simple Singular and Plural the Dual form exists in Marklendsk in the first and second persons, as was found in Old Norse and Old English. A remnant exists in Icelandic. (The table below is empty but will be completed shortly, I hope.)

The genitive forms also form the possessive pronouns. For those, see below.

VERBS

Not all verbs in Marklendsk are regular. Other than að vera ("to be") they are regular in the present tense. In the past tense (perfect and imperfect) the weak verbs are regular, but there is a large class of strong verbs forming their past tense forms with a vowel change, or umlaut.

There are also the two moods: Indicative and Subjunctive. The latter is very important: more so than in many languages. The use of the Subjunctive is set out separately. Its forms should be learnt together with the indicative.

VERA ("to be")

HAFA ("to have")

Regular Weak Verbs
Example: (to be completed)

(Samples to be completed)

Use of the Subjunctive

Use the same tense as the contingency.

1. If / indic. present + indic. future

2. If / subj p. imperfect + subj p. imperfect

3. If / subj p. perfect + subj p. perfect

The Imperative

This is formed from the subunctive. Examples and explanations to be developed.

The Interrogative

Examples and explanations to be developed.

Auxiliary Verbs

Examples and explanations to be developed.

Reflexive and Co-ordinate Verbs

Co-ordinates work similarly to English. reflexives has a number of available forms, for flexibility of use. Examples and explanations to be developed.

ADJECTIVES

Adjectives are declined, as nouns are. In all Scandinavian tongues, and in German and Old English, there are two forms of inlexion:"Strong" and "Weak". Marklendsk need not have both. The question for developing Marklendsk then is which form to pick as the standard, or whether to go another way, such as using the same inflexions as the nouns have, or something like the German "-e" or "-n" only. I am veering towards copying the noun inflexions.

POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS

It is only slightly different in the possessives ending with an "-r":

- and this pattern is the same for:

hennar (her)
okkar (our: dual), ykkar (your: dual)
vár (our)
yðar (your)
þeira (their) (which drops the final "-a" in all the above inflexions).

WORD ORDER

"Subject - verb - indirect object - object." basically, but very flexible. Examples and explanations to be developed.

A Table of Interrogatives, Demonstratives & Concepts

NUMBERS

PREPOSITIONS

COMPARATIVE & SUPERLATIVE

TIME

The divisions of time:

The Days:

The Months:

VOCABULARY

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