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Language of Norscand | ||||||||
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Norscand Language (by George). Introduction. The inhabitants of Norscand speak Norscandian (Iom Norscande), a relatively easy and widespread language. This language has multiple varieties, which differ at such a scale that people from the southern districts of Garand wouldn't immediately understand someone from Lostrand. However, the base form, Standard Norscandian (Iomsand Norscande), is understood by the majority of the Norscandians and is used for television and radio broadcasts, documents, signs and school. This Standard Norscandian is more or less native to the Scansey region, which makes sense because the capital is located in that area. Schools are obliged by law to teach using Standard Norscandian. Overview of the language itself. Norscandian is, like English and most contemporary Indo-European languages an lightly fusional to analytic language (that is, with little or no inflections of nouns and verbs) and a syllable pattern similar to English. Norscandian differs from English in the aspect of sentence order. A normal English sentence abides the order Subject-Verb-Object, whereas Norscandian makes use of the so-called SOV-order, that is, Subject-Object-Verb. Compare:
Norscandian has no inflection of verbs by person or number: verbs stay the same, even when in English suffixes are added: He walks has no Norscandian equivalent. Norscandian doesn't have articles either, but a Norscandian can indicate whether or not the noun in his sentence is definite or not by means of a sound change: The first vowel in the word changes, an aspect which some west-African languages have too. Verbs. Norscandian has a tense inventory that is really different from English, containing five verb tenses: a present, a near-present, a past, a future and a habitual. The present is used when indicating something that's happening now or going to happen very soon (say 5 minutes at max). It is constructed using the base form of the verb. The near-present is used when indicating something that's either happened not that long ago, or something which has consequences for the present. It is constructed by adding de- before the verb. The past is used for events that happened longer ago than the near-present, and that don't have (deep) consequences for the present. It's constructed by adding a- before the verb. The future is constructed by adding -sait after the verb. The habitual is used for repeated actions, behavior or reoccurring patterns. It's only used in written documents, as it's considered archaic and redundant. It can be constructed by either adding -en or -on behind the verb. Small dictionary. This dictionary gives a small list of frequently used Norscandian words on the maps.
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