Historical sound changes from Old Saxon to Town Speech / Urban Basanawa: view article

Although Town Speech / Urban Basanawa has numerous borrowings, and most of them are from non-european languages, most common words and most words used in everyday speech are inherent from Old Saxon, which clearly shows that Town Speech / Urban Basanawa is a West-Germanic language, and as Town Speech / Urban Basanawa has evolved for a long time from Old Saxon, there are certainly some sound changes.

Rules listed below might not be correct, and may not be the complete list. Some of the sound changes are shared with those happened in other Low German dialects, others are peculiar to Town Speech / Urban Basanawa.

Most sound changes of Stage I occured when people who spoke the ancestor languages of Town Speech / Urban Basanawa(persumbly Old Saxon and Middle Low German dialects) were still live in our world, and most sound changes of Stage II occured after they arrived "De Niuland".

Stage I

- ei, o:i > ai / !_V
- e:V, i:V > e:
- V[-stressed](especially when V is a high vowel) > Ø / R_(R is an resonant /m n l r/)
- wu > wo
- a > o / _ld (before final consonant devoicing)
- euwV, iuwV > juwV / #_
- euwV, iuwV > u(:)wV / r_
- i:jV, u:wV > ijV, uwV
- eu > e:
- iu > i:

- Open syllable lengthening:
-- a > ɑ: / Old Saxon open stressed syllables
-- o,u,au > ɔ: / Old Saxon open stressed syllables
-- e,i > ɛ: / Old Saxon open stressed syllables
-- ø,y > œ: / Old Saxon open stressed syllables

- V[-stressed] > ə
- V:[-stressed] > V

- θ,(ð) > d (before final consonant devoicing)

- C > C[-voice] / _#(final consonant devoicing)

- Unronding of front rounded vowels(this sound change probably occured much later, but it certainly occurred before the earliest writing record):
-- y: > i:
-- ø: > e:
-- y > i
-- ø > e
-- œ: > ɛ:

- ɛ > a / h_rC(this sound change is highly restricted)

Stage II

a vowel change comparable to the trisyllabic laxing in English.(happened and ceased to be productive sometime before the diphthongization of vowels)

- ai > ɛ:
- au > ɔ:

- diphthongization of vowels:
-- i: > ai
-- u: > au

- raising of long vowels:
-- ɑ:,a: > a:
-- e: (>ei) > i:
-- o: (>ou) > u:
-- ɛ(:) > e(:)
-- ɔ(:) > o(:)

- z > s / #_

- h > Ø / V_V(this sound change probably occured much earlier)

- ə > Ø / _#
-- i:w > iu
-- a:w > au
-- a:j > ai
-- o:j > oi

there are some irregularities among words, the emergence of these irregularities were probably due to dialect mixing and dialect levelling at some earlier stages of Town Speech / Urban Basanawa:

* Old Saxon ''sumar'' > Town Speech / Urban Basanawa ''summer/夏'' /sumər/ "summer" (the expected form would be *''sommer'' /somər/, it is possible that it changed to summer by analogy of the semantically related word ''sun'' "sun", possibly an result of dialect leveling/dialect mixing)
* Old Saxon ''wika'' > Town Speech / Urban Basanawa ''week/週'' /wi:k/ "week" (the expected form would be *''weik'' /we:k/, possibly an result of dialect leveling/dialect mixing. or modelled after the Old Saxon word wēk "weak")

possible irregular words:

* Old Saxon ''frī'' > Town Speech / Urban Basanawa ''free/自由い'' /fri:/ "free" (the expected word would be *''frai'' */frai/ or *''frei'' */fre:/, but it is possible that it was actually a regular sound change modelled after certain forms of adjectives, or modelled after ''dree'', ''free''(the verb evolved regularly from Old Saxon ''frīohon'') or was an result of dialect leveling/dialect mixing)
* Old Saxon Class III weak verbs: The current forms are actually results of the remodelling of the verbs during Old Saxon era.

Out-of-fiction:

Being a Low German dialect, Town Speech / Urban Basanawa theoretically evolved from Middle Low German, as it is a Low German dialect(despite the Japanese influence and the writing system), however, in reality I don't have a middle low german dictionary, and I did from Old Saxon instead, and doing from Old Saxon actually gave me more freedom in deciding its phonological and grammatical system. ✎ Edit Article ✖ Delete Article

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