| Modern Trainish | |
| Spoken in: | Train Village |
|---|---|
| Total speakers: | 11 (revival) |
| Origin: | American English |
| Language family: | Indo-European :Germanic ::West Germanic :::Anglo–Frisian ::::Anglic :::::Lovian English |
| Writing system: | Latin script |
| Official language in: | nowhere |
| Regulated by: | no official regulation |
| ISO 639-1: | en |
| ISO 639-2: | eng |
| ISO 639-3: | eng |
Modern Trainish is an extinct dialect of Lovian English, spoken by a small group of usually older people in and around the Lovian town of Train Village, Sylvania. It shared some characteristics with the present-day Beaver River dialects.
Phonology[]
Consonants[]
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | ||||||
| Plosive | p b¹ | t d¹ | k ɡ¹ | ʔ | |||||
| Affricate | ts dz¹ | tʃ dʒ¹ | |||||||
| Fricative | ʋ¹ | f v¹ | θ ð¹ | s z¹ | ʃ ʒ¹ | χ² ʁ² | h¹² ɦ¹² | ||
| Approximant | j¹ | w¹³ | |||||||
| Lateral | l² ɫ² |
- Does not occur in coda position.
- The pairs /χ/ and /ʁ/, /h/ and /ɦ/, and /l/ and /ɫ/ are freely interchangeable.
- /w/ only occurs as an offglide in centralizing triphthongs.
Vowels[]
Modern Trainish vowels have clearly been influenced by Train Village Dutch. The following table list words with vowels, followed by their Modern Trainish and General American pronunciation.
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Monophtongs[]
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | iː · yː | · uː | |
| Near-close | ɪ · ʏ | ||
| Close-mid | eː · øː | · oː | |
| Mid | ə | ||
| Open-mid | ɛ(ː) · | ||
| Open | æ · | ɑː · ɒː |
Characteristics[]
Modern Trainish had some very typical phonological and grammatical characteristics:
- The [r] is pronounced as /ʁ/.
- The [ʊ] is pronounced as /uː/.
- The /ɑːr/ sound as in car is now pronounced /ɑʊ̯wəʁ/, resulting in the unique car-cower merger.
- There is s-deletion for some words like pass, due to this pass is pronounced as pa'.
- Dutch and German loanwords like skeapen ("alderman", from Dutch schepen) and manshaft (from German Mannschaft).
- The ending sound /aɪt/ in words like bright and write is pronounced like the Dutch ei/ij sound: /ɛɪ̯/.
- The sound /ɪdʒ/, which constitutes the -idge word ending, is pronounced /ɪts/.
- Differences between male and female words in the case of possessive pronouns like me ("my"), your, and their, which become men, youn, and theirne when preceding a female noun or pronoun.
- Neologisms such as hornick (meaning "strong person", derived from horn, as horns are associated with strength).
- Some plurals forms, especially words derived from Latin, are different: the plural of center is centra in Modern Trainish, not centers as in Standard English.
- College and senate are pronounced /kəˈliːtʃ/ and /səˈneːt/ and exhibit a shifting stress to the last syllable, which is taken from Dutch. Business is pronounced /ˈbɪzinɪs/.
Origin of the name[]
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This section is under construction. |  |