Para-Germanic: the positions it takes
Para-Germanic is a para-language: a speakable variety designed to sit inside the dialect continuum that Proto-Germanic reconstructions describe, close enough that it would plausibly have been understood, with every question the scholarship leaves open answered once and written down here. It is not a claim about what was actually spoken. Each position names its main alternative.
The reconstruction
- Sources. Ringe, From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic (2006, 2nd ed. 2017) for phonology and morphology; Kroonen, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic (2013) for the lexicon. Orel (2003) only where Kroonen is silent and the daughters agree. Alternative: Orel as a primary source (rejected: too many single-branch entries).
- Stage. Late Proto-Germanic, before the split: no Northwest Germanic changes (a-umlaut u > o, ē₁ > ā), no West Germanic gemination, no Gothic spellings (iu for eu, ai for e), no rhotacism of z. A form showing any of these is a daughter's and is replaced. Alternative: an early Northwest Germanic stage, closer to the oldest runes (rejected: it would cut East Germanic out of the evidence).
- Raising. e is i before i or j in the next syllable and before a nasal plus consonant (biriþi "bears", bindaną "bind"); eu is iu before i/j. The engine applies it. Alternative: write the unraised forms (rejected: Ringe dates the raising to Proto-Germanic).
Orthography and pronunciation
The engine and lexicon keep Ringe/Kroonen notation so every entry can be checked against the handbooks; learners read Para-Germanic spelling, so nothing on screen can be mistaken for a starred reconstruction. Every letter is on a normal phone keyboard: no þ, macrons or ogoneks. And the spelling is phonemic: every phoneme has its own spelling and every spelling one reading, checked over all 61,089 word forms the engine makes.
| sound | handbook | Para-Germanic |
|---|---|---|
| long vowels | ā ē ī ō ū | aa ee ii oo uu (as in Para-Indo-European) |
| overlong vowels | ô ê | ou ei |
| nasal vowels | ą į ų ǭ ǫ̂ | ahn ihn uhn oohn ouhn |
| palatal glide | j | y |
| labiovelar | kw | q (as Gothic writes it) |
| θ | þ | th |
| z, hʷ | z hw | z hw |
- Nasal vowels are written with a final -hn and said nasal. They only ever end a word, and no word ends in an oral vowel + hn, so the rule is local: a final -hn nasalises the vowel before it (bookuhn "book", acc., against bookun); an initial hn- is h + n (hnutuz "nut"). Alternatives: write them oral, as the earliest runic inscriptions do (rejected: it merged 45 pairs of real forms in the course, mostly case endings, and the language must be phonemic); a plain final -n or -m (rejected: -un -um -in -im -an -am are ordinary endings, bērun "they bore", hwan "when", so the reader could not tell); ogoneks (not on a phone keyboard). The voice has no nasal vowels, so it says the vowel + a light [ŋ], an approximation of [ɑ̃ ũ õː].
- Overlong vowels are written ou, ei and said [ɔː ɛː] against long [oː eː]. Merging them with the long vowels made 1,182 pairs of forms identical across the lexicon (the ō-stem genitive plural -ou against the nominative -oo, hwiilouz against hwiilooz). Neither sequence occurs otherwise except as oo + u (memooun): read oo first. Alternative: tripled vowels (rejected: unreadable).
- th is always the single sound þ; a t + h meeting across a compound boundary does not occur in the lexicon.
- b d g are fricatives between vowels and stops initially, after nasals and when doubled; final b d g z are devoiced. Stress is always on the first syllable of the root, so no accent is written.
- Latin letters only. The private working course also showed an Old Italic line (the Negau helmet's alphabet), an acknowledged anachronism; the public course and the translator do not.
Grammar
- SOV. Verb-second is later. Alternative: V2 (rejected as an anachronism).
- No articles. sa / sō / þat is a demonstrative, used only where English points.
- No future, perfect or progressive. Present covers the future; skulaną obligation; the preterite covers "has done" and "was doing".
- **The impersonal is man** ("one"), the source of German man. Alternative: a mediopassive (rejected: only Gothic keeps a few forms, Proto-Germanic had lost it as a productive passive).
- Yes/no questions put the verb first; content questions put the question word first.
- Double adjective declension: strong alone, weak after a demonstrative.
- Negation: ne before the verb.
- Possession: habjaną "have" (Gothic haban, ON hafa), unlike Para-Indo-European's dative + be.
- Numerals by rule (lexicon.numeral): 1-3 decline, decades are N tigiwiz, 70-90 the -tēhund type (Gothic sibuntēhund), hundą 100, þūsundī 1000.
Vocabulary
Order of authority: an attested Proto-Germanic word, a regular derivation, a deeper (PIE) root, a coinage on the family recipe. Every word is marked.
- Real loans are words of the language. Proto-Germanic did borrow, from Latin along the frontier and from Celtic: a loan reconstructable from two or more branches (wīną, strātō, kattuz, īsarną) is attested and stays, marked as a loan.
- Invented loans are not. A Latin or Greek word no early daughter shows (skōlō, urīsō "rice") is replaced by a native coinage. Alternative: borrow "along a plausible route" (the course's earlier rule, rejected: it fabricates history).
- Coinages are calques of the real etymology where possible (ferrastebnō far-voice, selbawagnaz self-wagon), built on Proto-Germanic words, never on a daughter's form.