Luziycan

For the people from Luziyca, see Luziycans

Luziyican (historically known as Lusatian) is the one of the official languages in the Christian Republic of Luziyca, and is one of the most widely spoken Slavic languages in Esquarium.

History

The Luziycan language was first recorded around 570 BCE of a "group of people, the Serbs who speak the Serbian language." This "Serbian" language is seen as the start of Old Luziycan, which was written in an old Latin alphabet and had no Germanic influences at all, with an entirely Slavic grammar. The name, Luziycan first appears in 215 BCE, but it does not refer to the language, but a tribe that settled along the Sprska River. The term, "Luziycan language" first appears around 74 BCE, and by AD 300, Late Old Luziycan began to flourish, with this period having the most detailed records of any period of the Old Luziycan language. It adopted the modern Latin alphabet as we know it today.

However, after the raid at Smeerp Priory and the Viking invasion of Jerusalem in present-day Mirak, Middle Luziycan took hold as Germanic grammar spread, in addition to Germanic loan words. By that point however, Latin took over as the lingua franca for writing, despite it being a dead language. Gradually, as Germanic grammar was adopted, a language shift began to be noticed as more loan words from both Latin, Lombardian, and Germanic languages came into use within Luziycan, resulting in a reformulation of the Luziycan language. Around the 1300s, Luziycan works began to be more common, and as the knowledge of Latin decreased, especially with the printing press, and more towards Luziycan, people began to write more in Middle Luziycan. Around the 1500s, it transitioned to Early Modern Luziycan.

Early Modern Luziycan saw a transformation: due to significant influence from other languages, there was a shift in pronunciation and grammar as many elements of Slavic grammar began to be displaced by Germanic and Romance influence, notably the usage of "i" for of and "y" for and, as well as a general adoption of grammar similar to English.

By the 1700s, Modern Luziycan began to take shape, as colonization started to result in the borrowing of words from other languages, combined with simplification of the language to remove phrases that were deprecated. Since the 20th century, English, as well as languages such as Arabic have heavily influenced Luziycan grammar and vocabulary.

General information

The Luziycan language is today one of the most spoken languages in Esquarium, with an estimated 1-2 billion speakers of Luziycan. As such, it has one of the highest level of speakers among any Slavic languages within Esquarium and has a wide geographical distribution. Ergo, it has a plethora of dialects and accents, meaning that there is no consistent standard.

Dialects of Luziycan

These are the major dialects spoken in various regions. They do not include dialects only spoken within Luziyca, or subdialects.

Standard Luziycan

While Luziycan is spoken across Luziyca and is divided into various dialects, since unification in 1863, dialects have decreased in influence and for the most part, it is now pretty easy to understand one another's speech, even if they are from a few towns over, unlike prior to unification, although local slang terms persist. Standard Luziyca is generally accepted as the variety spoken within Bethlehem and is taught worldwide in Luziycan classes with the exception of a few countries.

Katranjian dialect

Due to the similarities with Katranjian, it has had significant influences from Katranjian. As a result, both Katranjian and this dialect are mutually intelligible and form a dialect chain, which is common among many dialects of Luziycan within the mainland. They use kralsto for Kingdom, republika for Republic, and zalot for gold. Thus, it is believed that many Katranjians and Luziycans living near the border, could understand this dialect, but not the standardized varieties.

Otekian dialect

See also: Otekian Luziycan
As a result of its geographic location, over the centuries, it has had significant influences from both Geadland and Namor, resulting a large number of words entering the vocabulary, with Namorese loanwords more prevalent since the 1970s after the fall of the Second Otekian Republic. A significant difference is that it uses "Oteki" for home compared to domoy, though domoy is used for house in both Otekian and Standard.

Kraqi dialect

See also: Kraqi Luziycan

The Kraqi dialect of Luziycan, dubbed Kraqi Luziycan, is the most commonly spoken dialect in Kraq. After over 250 years of cohabitation with the Arabic speaking Kraqi Arab population, Kraqi Luziycan has been heavily diluted by Arabic to the point that Kraqi Luziycan speaking populations living in Kraq use Eastern Arabic numerals and many Arabic loanwords.

Pronunciation

Pronunciation of the Luziycan language varies by dialect. The official standard dialect is based on the dialect spoken in Bethlehem.

Consonants

In the table of consonants below, consonant sounds which exist only in specific dialects of Luziycan are in brackets.

• The "r" sound is pronounced a [ɹ] in the standard dialect, but in other dialects can be [r], [ɾ] or more rarely a [ʁ].
• The "y" sound ([j]) often merges with consonants that come before it. Some examples of this are found in English, such as [sj] merging to [ʃ] and [dj] becoming [ʒ]. In other dialects, there are mergers which do not happen in English, such as [nj] becoming [ɲ] and [lj] becoming [ʎ].
• Dialects close to or within the Swedish-speaking regions in the north are influenced by Swedish. For example, [ʃ] is prounced as [ɕ], [ɹ] is pronounced as as [r] and alveolar consonants like [t] and [d] are pronounced from closer to the teeth. Likewise, dialects close to or within the Lombardian speaking regions in the south are influenced by Lombardian.

Rhotic and non-rhotic accents

Standard Luziycan, which is the variety spoken in Bethlehem is a rhotic accent, and many living in urban areas use the rhotic accent, both in English (saying cellar and beater instead of cell-ah and beat-ah). In the Bible Belt, however, and many areas outside Luziyca, like Kofeiya, they use a non-rhotic accent.

Orthography

The Luziycan language uses the standard 26-letter Latin alphabet, with no diacritics, similar to English. The pronunciations of these letters are like that of the English language, though some are difficult to pronounce for the native English speaker.

Grammar

Luziycan grammar has had significant influences from Germanic languages and Romance languages. The word, "y" when used on its own indicates "and," while "i" by itself generally means of. The Luziycan language, as a result uses "subject-verb-object," so in this example sentence, it goes: "Ona lyubit yego." It translates into "she loves him," so it goes in "subject-verb-object." However, much like English, it has developed from a reordering language and still bears traces of the "subject-object-verb" word order, for example in phrases like "Vo dvore sidel kat" (In the yard set a cat), and some clauses beginning with negative expressions: "tolko da" ("only then..."), and "ne tolko" ("not only..."), to name a few.

In general, Luziycan grammar is closely related to that of the English language.

Examples of Luziycan

For more, see Luziycan phrasebook

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