Anglecymrāeg

This conlang was created for a school project, and while supposedly there is little to no record of the language, this article will go into (hopefully) great detail as to the many aspects that make up the language, more than could ever have been discerned by any manuscripts that would've survived the tests of time.

Introduction

Englecymrǣc was a naturalistic language spoken by a small group of Welsh Anglo-Saxons who spoke a language which stemmed from Old English and Old Welsh. This language arose when a faction of the Saxon settlers rebelled and eventually left their people to travel West across Britain to modern-day Wales. There they met a small group of Welsh-speaking people. The group of Saxons didn't try to conquer the Welsh since they were few in numbers and half-starved. Instead, they were welcomed and thus assimilated into the village. For a few hundred years they lived there, until with one thing and another the population dwindled and the village was abandoned, the remnants scattering in different directions. they were never heard from again, until the late 20th century, when a wooden chest with various documents were found in modern-day Wales, some in Old English or Anglocumeric. It contained several unknown literary works of fiction, and excerpts from Beowulf. While most were in Anglocumeric, the Beowulf excerpts were written in both, which helped to decipher the lost language.

Phonology

Much of the phonology of Englecymrǣc is speculative, but guesses can be made about how things sounded. It is assumed that many sounds merged to form a sort of compromise in order to "appease" both groups.

Vowels

As Old English and Old Welsh merged, the /y/ and /ø/ sounds changed to /ɨ/ and /ə/ respectively, thus losing the round front vowels. The /a/ sound became a merged form of the Old English /ɑ/ and the Welsh /a/, slightly more back than the Welsh, but still farther forward than the Old English. All vowels are written as their IPA symbols except for /ɨ/, which is represented by the letter y, and /ə/, which can be represented by e or y. All vowels had a short and long variants ― the short being one mora and the long being something approximating 1.67 morae, not quite two ― except for /ə/, which is only short.

	Front	Central	Back
High	i   iː	ɨ   ɨː	ʊ	u   uː
Mid	e   eː	ə		o   oː
Low	æ   æː	a   aː

Vowel changes

Many of the phonemic vowel changes in Englecymrǣc are directly from Welsh, but a few formed on their own. Like Welsh, many of the changes that occurred are a result of a vowel being displaced from being the nucleus of the final syllable when a suffix is attached. This type of mutation is sometimes called centring.

centring mutation

Final	Non-final	Example (in progress)

Consonants

In the merging of Old English and Old Welsh, a few changes occurred. Firstly, the Welsh /ɸ/ and /β/ were lost since the Germanic /f/ and /v/ proved easier phonetically to pronounce that thus favored over the former. Additionally, the Welsh /ŋ̊ʰ/ was lost altogether, while /m̥ʰ/ and /n̥ʰ/ changed in form to the affricates /ɧm/ and /ɧn/ respectively.

	Labial	Labio-Dental	Dental	Alveolar		Post-Alveolar	Palatal		Velar		Glottal
				plain	lateral		plain	velarized	plain	labial
Nasal	m			n					(ŋ)
Plosive	p   b			t   d					k   (g)	(kʷ)
Affricate						tʃ   (dʒ)
Fricative	(ɸʷ)   (βʷ)	f   (v)	θ   (ð)	s   (z)	(ɬ)	ʃ		(ɧ)	x   ɣ	(xʷ)	(h)
Approximant					l		(j)			(ʍ)   w
Trill/Flap				(r̥)   r

The sounds surrounded by parentheses are allophones of the non-parenthesized phonemes.

Consonant Changes

Most, if not all consonant sound changes were of the allophonic variety.

• [ŋ] is an allophone of /n/ when followed by a /g/ or /k/.
• [v], [ð], and [z] are allophones of /f/, /θ/, and /s/ when occurring post-vocalically or clustered with a sonorant. An exception is made if the grapheme is doubled, in which case no change occurs.
• [g] is an allophone of /ɣ/ when occurring word-initially or when preceded by /n/.
• [j] is also an allophone of /ɣ/ when occurring alone between to vowels or at the end of a syllable if the coda doesn't contain other phonemes. This is almost always marked as ġ.
• [ʍ] and [r̥] are allophones of /w/ and /r/ when preceded by h.
• [h] is an allophone of /x/ when preceded by a front or central vowel.
• [ɧ] is also an allophone of /x/ when occurring word-initially.
• [dʒ] is an allophone of /j/ when occurring after nasals or when word-initially.
• [ɬ] is an allophone of /l/ when preceded by a voiceless plosive /p/, /t/ or /k/.
• [ɸʷ] and [βʷ] are allophones of /w/ and /ʍ/ when occurring word initially.

Orthography

In all instances, the macron (ō) denotes both increased length on the vowel. Often this marking is also linked to stress, but since they are not one and the same in practical usage a longer vowel which is also stressed with a circumflex (ô).

Grapheme	Phoneme	Notes
a	/a/	Slightly farther back than a typical /a/, very occasionally pronounced as full /ɑ/.
ā	/aː/
æ	/æ/	When in an unstressed position.
	/eː/	When in a stressed position. The Germanic /æ/ was sometimes as misinterpreted as /eː/ by the Welsh, who disliked the sound, resulting in /æ/ > /eː/ when stressed. Stress and length were almost always related, denoted by a macron (¯).
ǣ	/æː/
ae	/aɨ/	Not to be confused with /æ/, which comes from Old English. The ae marking was borrowed from Old Welsh.
āe	/aːɨ/
æg	/æj/   /æʲ/	Differentiation between soft and hard palatalization is extremely inconsistent. Usually, however, the soft palatalization was used only word-finally, and the hard palatalization was used everywhere else.
aġ		This grapheme was the most commonly used, favored because of its marginal simplicity, but other graphemes are used occasionally.
æġ		Very rarely used, mainly in older texts.
b	/b/
c	/k/
cj	/tʃ/	The exact morphophonological history of /tʃ/ is unknown, but it is guessed that it is related to the palatalization tat resulted in /ʃ/.
cw	/kʷ/
d	/d/
ð	/ð/	Replaces /θ/ when post-vocalically.
ðð	/θ/	The doubled /ð/ changes back to /θ/. This was a common feature in both Old Germanic and Brittonic languages.
e	/e/
	/ə/	Only when appearing directly before a stressed syllable. This came directly from Welsh, since the Old English didn't have this feature.
ē	/eː/	Note that /eː/ doesn't change to /ə/ when before stress,
	/e/	Only when appearing before a stressed syllable. This comes from the attempt to avoid a long /əː/ so it is articulated as /e/ but not long.
ea	/eɨ/
ēa	/eːɨ/
f	/v/	When post-vocalically.
	/f/	When word-initially.
ff		Replace f when unvoiced and post-vocalically.
g	/ɣ/	When medially or word-finally.
	/g/	When word-initially.
ġ	/j/
h	/x/	Medially and finally except if preceded by front or central vowel (cf. /h/).
	/ɧ/	Only used when occurring initially.
	/h/	Used specifically when preceded by a front or central vowel. Never used word-finally.
hl	/ɬ/
hm	/ɧm/	The sound /ɧ/ was opted for over /x/ or /h/ when appearing before nasals due to the tendency for a word-initial h changing to /ɧ/, carrying over to the consonant cluster rule. Originally, the sounds which were replaced by the affricates beginning with /ɧ/ were unvoiced nasals or liquids, but surprisingly, these changes still occurred, even though both groups had had unvoiced liquids and nasals as a phonological feature. Subsequently, voiced sonorants were phased out of the language completely.
hn	/ɧn/
hr	/ɧr/
hw	/ʍ/	Medially and finally.
	/ɸʷ/	It is thought that hw was only articulated this way when appearing word-initially, a remnant of the Welsh phonology.
i	/i/
ī	/iː/
ie	/jə/	Interestingly, diphthongs beginning with i when short would change to a palatalization. When the ī is long it changes to a fully annunciated /i/, but still monomoraic.
īe	/iə/
io	/ju/
īo	/iu/
l	/l/
ll	/ɬ/	Later texts preferred to write /ɬ/ as ll, although they are pronounced identically.
m	/m/
n	/n/
ng	/ŋg/	the plain /n/ would always change to /ŋ/ before velars, and similarly to Old English the velar consonant would be maintained.
nk	/ŋk/
o	/o/
ō	/oː/   /u/	Very occasionally pronounced as /u/, but only when word-finally and stressed.
oe	/oɨ/	The oe > /oɨ/ was a documentation used in Welsh which the Anglo-Saxons seemingly happily adopted.
ōe	/oːɨ/
p	/p/
r	/r/	For ease of speaking, it is guessed that this was pronounced as a tap/flap in all places except word-initially, in which case it would be a trill.
s	/s/
sj	/ʃ/	A feature present in Old English, palatalization of /s/ led to the /ʃ/ sound. It is thought that at one point it was closer to /ç/ which changed to /ʃ/ over time.
t	/t/
þ	/θ/	When word-initially, finally, and medially unless surrounded by vowels.
	/ð/	When surrounded by a vowels or when directly following another voiced consonant or sonorant.
u	/u/
ū	/uː/
w	/ʊ/	It is unclear why this vowel sound came into use, being favored over the Welsh /ʉ/, but it is possible that the influx of the Anglo-Saxons brought about this change. This would figure into the phonological history, with the only hypothesis being that the /ʊ/ was somewhat similar to /ø/ and found a sort of compromise.
	/w/	Medially and finally. The w only takes on a consonant value when occurring before another vowel.
	/βʷ/	Word-initially. The /β/ sound came from the Old Welsh.
	/ʊw/	Only when occurring word-finally.
y	/ɨ/
	/ə/	This sound change came directly from Welsh when y occurred medially, unless clustered with another vowel in which case no change occurred.

Phonotactics

Syllable-initial consonant clusters

First consonant	Middle consonant	Last consonant
		―	-m	-n	-r	-l	-w
―	―		m	n	r	l	βʷ
	-p-	p	―		pr	pɬ	―
	-b-	b			br	bl
	-t-	t			tr	tɬ	tw
	-d-	d			dr	dl	dw
	-k-	k	―	―	kr	kɬ	kw
	-ɣ-	ɡ		ɡn	ɡr	ɡl	—
	ʃ-	ʃ	―		ʃr	―
	f-	f	―	fn	fr	fl	―
	θ-	θ	―		θr	―	θw
	x-	ɧ	ɧm	ɧn	r̥	ɬ	ɸʷ
s-	―	s	sm	sn	―	sl	sw
	-p-	sp	―		spr	spɬ	―
	-t-	st			str	―
	-k-	sk			skr

Syllable-final consonant clusters

First consonant	Middle consonant	Last consonant
		―	-p	-b	-t	-d	-k	-ɣ	-f	-θ	-s	-ʃ	-x
―	―		p	b	t	d	k	ɣ	v	ð	z	ʃ	x
	m-	m	mp	mb	―				mf	mθ	ms	mʃ	―
	n-	n	―		nt	nd	ŋk	ŋg	nf	nθ	ns	nʃ
	l-	l	lp	lb	lt	ld	lk	lɣ	lf	lθ	ls	lʃ	lx
	r-	r	rp	rb	rt	rd	rk	―	rf	rθ	rs	rʃ	rx
	s-	s	sp	―	st	―	sk	―					sx
	f-