Sironan (Language)

The Sironan language is a mixed language—largely of French and Breton, though also including a few influences from English—developed during the early years of the colony. While the majority of the original colonists partook the effort from a desire to have a new world to reestablish the Breton language, they found difficulty in doing so while also being able to converse with the mostly French-speaking crew of their colony ship. As a result, over the years, Sironan developed through efforts to cross-communicate, with the grammar (including some more grammatical vocabulary, such as pronouns and prepositions) largely deriving from Breton and the vocabulary, contrastingly, largely developing from French.
== Phonology ==
=== Consonants ===
*Voiced velar nasal (/ŋ/) becomes either voiced dental/alveolar nasal (/n/) or voiced palatal nasal (/ɲ/) with no regularity in which change occurred
*Labialized sounds (/ɡʷ/, /kʷ/) from Breton become unlabialized (/g/, /k/)
*Voiced palatal lateral approximate (/ʎ/) from Breton becomes non-lateral (/j/)
*Voiced dental fricative (/ð/) from Breton becomes voiced alveolar fricative (zh /z/)
*Velar fricatives (/ɣ/, /x/) from Breton become corresponding Post-alveolar fricatives (/ʒ/, /ʃ/)
*Glottal voiceless fricative (/h/) from Breton becomes post-alveolar voiceless fricative (/ʃ/)
*The rhotic allophones are in free variation
=== Initial Consonant Mutations ===
==== Soft ====
Effects –
*Voiceless plosives become voiced plosives (/p/ → /b/, /t/ → /d/, /k/ → /g/)
*Voiced plosives become fricatives (/b/ → /v/, /d/ → /z/, /g/ → /ʒ/)
*Nasal /m/ becomes fricative /f/
Situations –
*After any definite or indefinite article
*After prepositions
*After interrogative (“what”) pronouns
*After singular possessive pronouns
*After numerals
*After conjunctions “if,” “if, when,” “or,” and “while”
*After adverb “too”
*After pronouns/determiners “all,” “those, ones,” and “that, one”
*After verbal particles
*In adjectives after singular nouns
*Following adjectives
==== Hard ====
Effects –
*Voiced plosives become voiceless plosives (/b/ → /p/, /d/ → /t/, /g/ → /k/)
Situations –
*After plural possessive pronouns
*After infixed first or second person singular personal pronoun “me/you,” and “to my/your” and “in my/your”
=== Vowels ===
*Open central unrounded vowel (ä) from French becomes Open front unrounded vowel (a)
*Schwa (ə) from French becomes Open-mid front rounded vowel (œ)
*ɔ and ɛ can become nasalized, all other normally nasalized vowels lose nasalization (nasalization orthographically represented with an 'n' next to the vowel)
*Glide/vowel alternation from French is lost, only allowed diphthongs are /ai, ei, ou/
=== Phonotactics ===
*(C)V(C) syllable structure word-initially, CV(C) elsewhere
*Last consonant is unpronounced unless:
**It is the orthographic representation of /k/, /ʁ/, /f/, or /l/
**The following word begins with a vowel
== Grammar ==
=== Nouns ===
==== Gender ====
Sironan nouns no longer have gender. Words that change form depending on a noun’s gender are exclusively derived from the feminine form of the word. This is also the case for the third person singular pronoun.
==== Number ====
Nouns exist in two numbers: singular and plural. The standard plural form is through the addition of the “-ed” (/ɛd/) for animate nouns and “-(y)ou” (/(j)u/) for inanimate nouns. Occasionally, other suffixes occur, though this is unpredictable. Additionally, some nouns denote plural through vowel alteration (/a/ to /ɛ/ or /e, ɛ/ to /i/) but these are also unpredictable. Finally, some are irregular. These three later methods only occur on words of Breton origin. All words of French origin have regular plural forms.
Finally, body parts that come in pairs (eyes, ears, arms, legs, etc.) have a dual form created by the prefix “dou-“ (/du/). These words can also take a plural, all in the regular sense.
==== Singulative ====
Nouns that default to meaning a collective are marked as singular by the addition of the suffix “-en” (/en/). These words can further be marked as individual plurals by the addition of the regular plural suffix.
==== Diminutive ====
Diminutive forms of nouns are created by the addition of the “-ig” (/ig/) suffix, with plurals formed through appending the regular plural suffix following “-ig” in addition to the standard plurality change for the core word.
=== Articles ===
Sironan has both definite and indefinite articles. The definite article is “an” (/an/) before vowel sounds, “al” (/al/) before /l/, and “ar” (/aʁ/) everywhere else. The indefinite article is “une” (/y.ne/) and follows the same pattern (une, ule, ure) as the definite article. The definite article can contract with preceding prepositions if the preposition ends in a vowel, with the vowel replacing the “a” in “an.”
In Sironan, if a noun preceded by a definite article and a noun preceded by an indefinite article both appear in the same sentence, the one preceded by the definite article must be the subject and the one preceded by the indefinite article must be the object. This is a holdover from Breton, despite the fact that word order in Sironan has become rigid enough to already strictly define subjects and objects of a sentence.
=== Adjectives/Adverbs ===
Adjectives can be inflected for comparison with the suffixes “-och” (/oʃ/) (comparative) and “-an” (/an/) (superlative). These suffixes devoice preceding consonants. Equative forms are created by a preceding “ken” (/ken/) and then the base form. Some adjectives are irregular to both these patterns, though these are exclusively from Breton origins. Adjectives usually follow the noun they modify. Noun adjuncts take the singular form as a base adjective, and nominalized adjectives take the base form as a collective noun.
Adverbs do not inflect, and typically begin a sentence before the normal word order rules apply.
=== Prepositions ===
Complex prepositions have fallen out of use in Sironan, though in general, prepositions are derived from Breton. As such, most prepositions inflect with the standard Breton simple form—taking on an ending derived from personal pronouns—and those that used to be non-inflecting simple or complex still do not (or no longer do) inflect. Formerly complex prepositions tend to maintain only one-half of their original form (the one that received the inflection).
For simple inflecting prepositions, there are two methods, “i” endings and “o” endings, as summarized in the chart below:
As these prepositions were originally derived from contracting with the personal pronouns, if the inflected preposition is used, no pronoun has to follow, though this does not bar other nouns from following if a pronoun is not the intended prepositional object.
=== Pronouns ===
==== Personal ====
Sironan has lost all personal pronouns except for six of the seven Breton “strong” personal pronouns and a corresponding six of the pre-clitic head pronouns, though only in their possessive meaning. These can be used in the same distribution as a full noun phrase and can be subjects, objects, or obliques. To form general possessive pronouns (i.e. not attached to a specific noun), the proclitic pronouns are placed before the determiners “aman” (/aman/) and “re” (/rɛ/) for singular and plural pronouns, respectively.
==== Demonstrative ====
Demonstrative prepositions in Sironan are post-head clitics and are used exclusively in conjunction with the definite article.
==== Interrogative ====
Interrogative pronouns can either be subject or object. The interrogative pronouns are “piv” (/piv/, who?), “petra” (/pɛt.ʁa/, what?), and “pechini” (/pɛ.ʃi.ni/, “which?), which also has plural form “pere” (/pɛ.ʁe/). The interrogative adverbs are “pelech” (/pɛ.leʃ/, “where?”), penais (/pɛn.ais/, “how?”), “perak” (/pɛ.ʁak/ “why?”), and “peur” (/poeʁ/, “when?”). Interrogative adverbs typically start the sentence.
==== Indefinite ====
Indefinite pronouns can be positive (e.g. “some, ones” and “all”) or negative (e.g. “nothing” and “nowhere”) and can be preceded by a determiner such as “the” or a possessive pronoun.
=== Verbs ===
Sironan verbs can be conjugated to show tense, aspect, mood, person, and number by the addition of suffixes to the verbal stem
==== Regular ====
The regular conjugation of verbs in such a manner as shown in the table below.
Additional suffixes can be added to indicate the verbal noun. These are, most commonly “-out” /ut/, “- an” /an/, or “-in” /in/. Some other verbs are a verbal noun in the stem form without any additional suffix.
Verbs also have a present participle formed by the particle “o” /ɔ/ (and causing soft mutation) and a past participle formed with a suffix, typically “-et” /ɛt/
Most verbs are regular.
==== Irregular ====
Irregular verbs can merely have differing conjugations from regular verbs, have additional tense/aspect distinctions, include person markers in the tensed form (in the form of pre-clitic head pronouns), or a combination of the three. Irregular verbs only appear among those derived from Breton, though not all Breton-derived verbs are irregular.
==== Composed Forms ====
Sironan no longer distinguishes between simple and progressive present. Occasional remnants of this distinction can be found in cases where the present tense is formed through the use of the verb “to do” marked with the appropriate present and combined with the verbal noun of the action in question.
To form the past tense, the past participle of a verb is combined with “to have” conjugated exclusively for person and number.
==== Negation ====
Verbs are negated with “ne… ket” (/nɛ/… /kɛt/) on either side of the verb stem before conjugation.
==== Particles ====
Verbs cannot stand alone. When not marked by the negation particle, they are instead marked with the verbal particle “e” (/e/).
Word order rules for negation and standard verbal particles are described in the word order section.
=== Conjunctions ===
==== Coordinating ====
The coordinating conjunctions in Sironan are derived from those in French, modified for the new phonology and phonotactics.
==== Subordinating ====
The subordinating conjunctions in Sironan are also derived from those in French, modified for the new phonology and phonotactics. The French conjunction “lorsque” has dropped out of use in Sironan.
=== Numbers ===
==== Cardinal ====
Sironan has an underlying vigesimal counting system, though is otherwise base 10. “One” is the same as the indefinite article before a noun, but as listed otherwise.
A few interesting irregularities are “teur-zich” for “eighteen” (literally three-sixes) and “chanter-zen” for “fifty” (literally half a hundred).
Numbers above 100 are said in the same way as they are in English. For example:
*536 is “Sin-zen sich war-tegte”
*3536 is “Teur-kil sin-zen sich war-tegte”
*10,000 is “Dik-kil”
*100,000 is “Zen-kil”
The pattern for 100’s is just multiplicative using the eight remaining digits as prefixes. Following this, modified SI prefixes are used for each additional 3 powers of ten as per the following chart:
==== Ordinal ====
Most Sironan ordinal numbers are formed by appending the suffix “-eme” (/emɛ/) to the end of the respective cardinal number. However, the Sironan word for “the first” breaks this trend, instead being “ar bemye” (/aʁ bɛmje/).
=== Word Order ===
The standard, basic word order for Sironan is SVO, a hold-over from French and the form of Breton used for Sironan’s development. In this form, the subject of the sentence comes first, succeeded by the verbal particle “e” and then the verb itself, with the object of the verb coming last. However, there are a few irregularities to this word order.
First, if there is an indirect object/oblique (not distinguished in Sironan), these can either come last (after the object) or first (before the subject). (Example: “I gave the man the hat” would be “I gave the hat to the man” or “to the man I gave the hat”)
This word order holds for interrogative sentences, with any interrogative pronoun immediately preceding the verb required to be the subject and any interrogative pronoun immediately succeeding the verb required to be the object. However, in interrogative sentences formed with an interrogative adverb, the adverb typically begins the sentence, with the word order rules applying afterward. (“When did he eat the cat?” becomes “When he did eat the cat?”)
Additionally, the word order changes for negation. There are two forms that a sentence containing a negated verb can take. The most basic of these is a simple VSO word order. A sentence in this form begins with the negation particle surrounding the verb, then moves to the subject, then the object, and then finally the indirect object/oblique. Additionally, a sentence in this form could have the indirect object/oblique before the verb/negation particle instead of at the end of the sentence. In the second form, there is a simple OVS word order, also having two sub-forms. In the first, you have the object preceding the verb/negation particle cluster, followed by the subject and then the indirect object/oblique. However, this form can also occur with the indirect object/oblique first, with the same order applying otherwise.
In Sironan, the head noun precedes all noun complements. Additionally, the proper possessive, pre-clitic pronoun or the definite article can further indicate noun complements. When the possessive, pre-clitic pronoun is used, the complement occurs first, followed by the pronoun, and then finally the head noun. When the definite article appears, the head noun occurs first, then the article, and then the complement. Finally, the prepositions “to” or “of, from” can be used. Both of these follow the pattern “article, head noun, preposition, complement” with “to” being used for indefinite head nouns while “of, from” can be used for any head nouns to emphasize a source or origin.
Subordinate clauses in Sironan must follow the main clause, linked with one of the subordinating conjunctions. (derived from French) In all cases, subordinate clauses follow a strict VSO word order, following the first form of the negation sentence word order. (Derived from Breton) On the contrary, coordinate clauses, beyond being preceded by a coordinating conjunction, are constructed in the same manner as if they were an independent sentence.
== Vocabulary ==
(*General Rule: Convert French words into new orthography and phonotactics. Do same to Breton words for a more “high class” version in certain contexts. Always use feminine form of words that have optional forms. Words that are taken from Breton and are irregular maintain irregularity with specific conjugations converted into new phonetic/phonotactical rules.*)
== List of Appearances ==
* An Ankou