Novoslovnica. Guide for a Slavic constructed language. George Carpow

[`vrɛmjɛ̃] – vremenï [`vrɛmɛɲi]

      Plemę (tribe) [`plEmjɛ̃] – plemenï [`plɛmɛɲi]

      In the conclusion of this paragraph it should be mentioned that alterations are very important in Slavic languages and Novoslovnica as well. You can use reproduction in your speech as a recommended feature, while alterations are complimentary in this language. As it was noted before, we cannot ignore anything that can bring a misunderstanding in our speech.

      Runaway vowels

      Looking back in the Slavic language history we can find out that there were roots with two strange for an ordinary person vowels – «Ò» and «J». First one was named «Yer» and denotes a hard mid central vowel (Shwa). The second one was named «Yerj» (with soft R) and denotes a soft mid central vowel. Now the second one is lost and we use only shwa sound in the letter «Yer». However, the words are still and we need to pronounce them in some way. Novoslovnica uses the soft «E» sound to represent roots with old soft shwa sound.

      Main feature of these sounds was to fall out from the root, when a vowel appears afterwards. That’s why there are many words with two consonants consecutively – there is an imaginary shwa sound between them that has been fallen out from the root.

      Nevertheless, despite falling out of «Yer», soft «E» in this places does not fall out. So, in the previous paragraph you could see that there are two alternations O//– and O//Ë, that are handled in the similar positions. So the answer on the question, why in the first case there is no sound and in the second there is a soft E is the fact, that words satisfying the first case comprise old hard shwa sound and remain comprise old soft shwa sound, that has transformed into soft E.

      The fact should be mentioned that nowadays the letter Ò exists only in roots of the words. In suffixes the letter E is used for this sound and in the prefixes the letter O is used.

      Look at the examples:

      – pod

      – ek

      – pòk

      However, you should remember that speaking the words with these letters we should pronounce them just as they are written – Ò as shwa, E as E, O as O. You should not reduce all the sounds to shwa.

      Accent

      Accent is a very difficult topic in most languages, because it is not permanent. There are some exceptions i.e. Czech and French, but in most cases we cannot say where accent will be put in the word without studying definite language. This causes problems for beginners.

      Novoslovnica has a dynamic accent, but it has been formalized. There is a rule, that determines the place you should put the accent.

      Rule n. 2: The accent should be put on the first syllable of the word root.

      This rule covers about 80% of the words in the lexicon. You know the well-known 80/20 rule, or Pareto principle. It is something alike with the accent. Remained 20 per cent of the words we should cover by introducing extra-rule cases. Accepting these cases, you will be able to cover more than 99 per cent of Novoslovnica word amount.

      These cases were created in attempt to unify the accents in different Slavic languages. Surely the Slavic languages have greatly changed since then, as they were one language. Therefore, accents in different Slavic languages often differ. Nevertheless, Novoslovnica tries to obliterate differences between them, producing accent patterns that could be comfortable to pronounce and to hear for all Slavs.

      Below you can see the list of all these cases, that you should remember while speaking Novoslovnica.

      Accent shifting cases:

      – Accented endings (Nouns)

      • -a (Dual, Nominative)

      • -y (Singular, Genitive/Partitive)

      • -ami (Plural, Instrumentative)

      • -ama (Dual, Dative)

      • -am (Plural, Dative)

      – Accented endings (Verbs)

      • -i Imperative (see paragraph about verb moods)

      – Accented suffixes

      • -ova- (Verb)

      • -ôva- (Verb)

      • -ava- (Verb)

      • -óv- (Adjective)

      • -ak- (Noun)

      • -ok- (Noun)

      – verb suffixes in Present Concrete Tense (see paragraph about verb tenses)

      – Accent shift in the root

      • If the word is a borrowed one, then the accent is put on the place it is in the original word.

      • If the root loses its vowel, the accents moves one vowel to the left (if it is possible)

      • Words that have more than one root (complex words) have their accent on the first syllable of the main word’s root. (see paragraph about complex words for what root is main)

      • Adverbs or other parts of speech, formed with the prepositional construction, have their accents on the first syllable of the main word (see paragraph about collocations)

      These rules are enough for you to speak Novoslovnica properly with a few efforts for it.

      Accent integrity

      There is also one term, that you should to know when you use Novoslovnica or any other Slavic language in your speech. This term is called accent integrity. Firstly I will introduce a term of a dependency structure:

      Dependency structure is a prepositional construction or a collocation.

      That means, that this abstract term expands the term of collocation by involving prepositional into itself.

      Accent integrity is a property of a dependency structure to unify elements of this structure with only one accent on the main word.

      What does this definition say? If we have a collocation\index {collocation} or a prepositional construction and we want to pronounce it, we should pronounce dependent words without any accent and put an accent on the first word of the structure. Look at the examples.

      Examples:

      Pod něbom [`pod nebom] – Under the sky

      Surely, you should remember that this might be applied only for brief structures, most often with one dependent word (or a preposition) of one or two syllables. If we have a long dependent word or there are too many dependent words in the construction, we pronounce them with a proper accent on each of the structure elements.

      Examples:

      Pod sïnïm něbom [pəd `sinim `nebom] – Under the blue sky

      Orthography

      Alphabet of Novoslovnica

      Alphabet

      Let’s summarize what we have known about Novoslovnica phonology. Afterwards we will get the list of phonemes and allophones and their connections with Novoslovnica letters in the alphabet.

      We have learned that Novoslovnica has 51 consonant sounds and 22 vowels. 13 consonants and 4 vowels are allophones among them. Hence, the amount of phonemes is (51—13) + (22 – 4) = 56 phonemes.

      You should know that in Novoslovnica, soft and hard consonants do not differ in writing. That is because of the fact that by the combination of «consonant + vowel» we can always determinedly get what the consonant is like – hard or