Wenedyk

Spelling and pronunciation

Wenedyk uses the Polish alphabet, which consists of the following 32 letters :

A Ą B C Ć D E Ę F G H I J K L Ł M N Ń O Ó P R S Ś T U W Y Z Ź Ż

Also, there are seven digraphs, representing five phonemes (ch being identical with h, and rz with ż):

Ch Cz Dz Dź Dż Rz Sz

Pronunciation is exactly as in Polish. Stress almost always falls on the penultimate syllable. A preposition and a pronoun are generally treated as one word, and therefore, when the pronoun has only one syllable, the preposition is stressed.

(In theory, the construction of Wenedyk enables relatively easy construction of other "Slavo-Romance" languages. The Romance "mirror" for Czech, for example, is called "Šležan"; [1] another for Slovak, although somewhat looser than the other two as it uses a partially Hungarian orthography, is called "Slevan". [2])

Nouns and adjectives

Wenedyk does not have articles. This is a feature that distinguishes Wenedyk from all natural Romance languages and also from other Romance-based constructed languages like Esperanto and Ido. The reason for this is that Vulgar Latin showed only a rudimentary tendency toward the formation of articles, whereas they are absent in Polish and most other Slavic languages.

Nouns, pronouns and adjectives can have three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), two numbers (singular, plural), and three cases:

the direct case: used for both the subject and the direct object of a sentence. In the sentence: Miej poterz leże libier "My father reads a book", Miej poterz "my father" and libier "a book" are both in the direct case.

the genitive case: used to indicate possession, for example: siedź potrze "my father's chair", rzejna Anglie "the queen of England".

the dative case: used to indicate the indirect object of a sentence, for example: Da mi ił libier "Give me that book", Da mi łu "Give it to me".

Wenedyk also has a vocative case. In most cases it has the same form as the direct case, but there are exceptions: O potrze! "Oh father!"

Noun can be subdivided into four declensions. They are similar to the declension system in Latin:

the first declension are all words on -a, the vast majority of which are feminine;

the second declension are mostly masculine and neuter words ending with a consonant. It is a mixture of the second and fourth declension in Latin;

the third declension are mostly feminine words ending with a soft consonant;

the fourth declension are words on -ej, it matches the Latin fifth declension.

Adjectives always agree in gender, number and case with the noun they modify. They can be placed both before and after it.

Pronouns

Unlike nouns, adjectives and other pronouns, personal pronouns do not use the direct case, but preserve the distinction between the nominative and accusative instead. They are displayed in the following chart:

Verbs

Verbs are inflected for person, number, mood and tense. The forms in the present tense are:

1 sg. – jemu "I love" 2 sg. – jemasz "you love" 3 sg. – jema "he/she loves" 1 pl. – jemamy "we love" 2 pl. – jemacie "you love" 3 pl. – jemą "they love"

Interestingly, because Latin and Proto-Slavonic had virtually identical person/number inflections, Wenedyk and Polish do also.

Wenedyk verbs have the following moods and tenses:

infinitive – jemar "to love" present tense – jemu "I love, I am loving" imperfect – jemawa "I loved" perfect – jemie " I have loved" future tense (imperfective) – joru jemar "I will love, I will be loving" future tense (perfective) – jemaru "I will have loved" conditional mood – jemarsi "I would love, I would have loved" imperative mood – jem "love!" present active participle – jemęć "loving" perfect passive participle – jematy "beloved"

Word list

Wenedyk vocabulary as published on the internet consists of over 4000 words. Because of how it was developed from Vulgar Latin, Wenedyk words are closest to Italian, but with phonologic differences from Italian which may be compared to those distinguishing Portuguese from Spanish. The following charts of 30 shows what Wenedyk looks like in comparison to a number of other Romance languages; note that unlike Brithenig, where one-quarter of the words resembled Welsh words, only four Wenedyk words (not counting szkoła, borrowed into Polish from Latin) resemble Polish words, due to the Slavic languages' greater distance from the Romance languages compared to the Celtic languages:

Example

The Lord's Prayer:

Potrze nostry, kwały jesz en czałór, sąciewkaty si twej numię.
Owień twej rzeń.
Foca si twa włątać, komód en czału szyk i sur cierze.
Da nów odzej nostry pań kocidzany.
I dziemieć nów nostrze dziewta, komód i nu dziemiećmy świew dziewtorzew.
I nie endycz nosz en ciętaceń, uta liwra nosz dzie mału.
Nąk twie są rzeń i pociestać i głurza, o siąprz. Amen.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article I

Tuci ludzie noską sie liwrzy i jekwali z rześpiece świej dzińtacie i swór drzecór. Li są dotaci ku rocenie i koszczęce i dziewię ocar piara wyniałtru en jenie frotrzeńtacie.

Similar languages

In the Ill Bethisad universe, there are two other languages which are related to Wenedyk: Slevan, which is spoken in that universe's counterpart of Slovakia; and Šležan, or Silesian, spoken in Silesia. Šležan mirrors Czech [3] [4] in much the same way Wenedyk does Polish, whereas Slevan, despite being located in Slovakia, is more similar to Hungarian and Croatian in its orthography. (The Romance "mirror" of Slovak is a dialect of Slevan spoken in Moravia called Moravľaňec.) (As if in compensation, Croatian in Ill Bethisad is forced to be noticeably different from Serbian by being made to resemble the now-virtually-missing Czech and Slovak. [5] )

Additionally, in the famous The Adventures of Tintin series, the fictional language Syldavian may be thought of as the Germanic counterpart of Wenedyk, showing what Polish might have looked like if it were a Germanic and not a Slavic language. Interestingly, the nearly extinct Wymysorys language provides another real-life example of this. Ill Bethisad also has such a "Slavo-Germanic" language: Bohemian, spoken in that universe's Czech Republic, developed by amateur Czech linguist Jan Havliš.