Grammar

How Romániço Works

Romániço is a rigorously agglutinative language, which is to say that it is entirely made up of roots and regularized affixes. In this way the language is a lot like a set of Lego bricks, for one can combine most any root with any other root or affix to form words in any part of speech.

For example, from the root bel- (“beautiful”):

That all words in Romániço are built this way has the advantage of greatly reducing the number of words one needs to know in order to make oneself understood, for if one knows how to say to think in Romániço (penser), one automatically knows how to say a thought (penso), thinker (pensanto), thinking (pensanta), and so on — even if one has never encountered those words before.

Moreover, there are enough affixes in Romániço to let one coin words on the fly should the need arise; if one doesn’t know the word for ugly (feda), for example, one can always say desbela “the-opposite-of-beautiful”. Indeed, one could even get away with desjurno (“the-opposite-of-day”, i.e., “night”) if one had to.

It should be noted that Romániço is more exact than English in that a root can usually have only one part of speech. For example, “Google” is ordinarily a noun in English, but it can be used as a verb to mean “to search using Google”. In Romániço, the use of an instrument is indicated by -ij-, so “to google” is Google-ijer and “a Google search” is on Google-ijo. Similarly, “crown” can be both noun and verb in English; in Romániço, corono is the noun, coronizer the verb (-iz- meaning “to provide with”). A coronation is coronizo.

Speaking Romániço

Alphabet

The Romániço alphabet contains 25 letters — 5 vowels and 20 consonants — most of which sound very much like their English equivalents:


¹ In earlier days, c represented [ʦ] in all positions, k [k] in all positions, which made spelling easier but more artificial-looking: Grekos paraulan Grekenso instead of Grecos paraulan Grechenso.

Digraphs

Like English, Romániço uses the letter h in combination with certain other letters to produce “husher” sounds:

*Can also be transcribed cx.

Otherwise, each consonant should be pronounced separately, even when the same consonant is doubled:


Diphthongs

Ordinarily, when two vowels come together in a Romániço word, each is pronounced separately. (Eg., coercer is pronounced co-er-cer.) Some vowels, however, combine with other vowels to form sounds pronounced as a single (or close to single) syllable, as in English coin and couch. These combination vowel sounds are called diphthongs.

The letters i and u, when they are not the only vowel in a root and are immediately followed by a different vowel in the same word, produce a “rising” diphthong (ex. ia, ie, io, iu, ua, ue, ui, uo).


*Whichever is easier for the speaker

After the letters c or g, the letter u always produces a diphthong when followed by another vowel, even another u. (Otherwise, two of the same vowel are still pronounced separately.)

The letters i and u also form the “falling” diphthongs ai, ei, oi, au, and eu, but only when following vowels in the same root:


Tonic Stress

Generally speaking, words in Romániço are stressed on the next-to-the-last syllable, as in fortuno [for-'tu-no] and mentiono [men-'tjo-no]. The exceptions to this rule are:


All three cases go back to being stressed on the penultimate syllable, however, when suffixes that change the stressed vowels’ position in the words are added, reducing the original stress to secondary stress: herédito “inheritance”, but hereditanto [he-ˌre-di-'tan-to] “heir”.

These accent marks, while useful in print, need not be used in handwriting; one can write spectáculo or spectaculo, as long as one remembers to pronounce it [spek-'ta-ku-lo].

Articles

An article is a kind of adjective, such as the and a, that indicates whether the thing being discussed is something specific, nonspecific, or unique.

In Romániço, there are three kinds of article — zero, indefinite, and definite.


The Zero Article

The absence of an article is called the zero article. Before a singular noun, it indicates that the person or thing under discussion is unique or otherwise uncountable, typically abstractions (e.g., punditry, truthiness), institutions (e.g. church, and, in some countries, hospital), substances (e.g., water, wood), words or phrases functioning as adverbs (e.g. hand in hand), and proper nouns (e.g., Albert Einstein, Los Alamos).

Using the zero article before a countable noun makes it uncountable:

The absence of an article before a plural (and therefore countable) noun in Romániço can either constitute a generic article, or simply be an elided indefinite article:


The Indefinite Articles

The indefinite article indicates that the person or thing being introduced is a nonspecific member of a class of similar people or things.

In most cases, English uses a(n) to introduce a single, countable noun, and some or nothing to introduce plural nouns. Romániço follows the same pattern, but uses on for both a(n) and some:

When followed by an adjective, on can be used alone as a stand-in for a person or thing:

The indefinite article in Romániço does not normally change according to number, but when indicating a plural noun that is either unspoken or has no plural form (e.g., letters, numbers, family names), one uses onas:

To underscore that the speaker is unfamiliar with the person or thing being introduced, Romániço uses álica (“some”):

Alternatively, one can use cuida (“a certain”) to indicate that the person or thing being introduced, while specific, is not explicitly named or stated, or that it is unknown to the listener or reader:


The Definite Articles

The definite article indicates that a person or thing has already been mentioned, is common knowledge, is about to be defined, or is otherwise a specific member of a class of similar people or things. In English, the definite article is the. In Romániço, it’s most often la:

As in English, the definite article can sometimes be used to indicate a single, countable noun in general, though this is properly and unambiguously done with le, Romániço’s other definite article:

When followed by an adjective, la can be used alone as a stand-in for a person or thing:

The definite article in Romániço does not normally change according to number, but when indicating a plural noun that is either unspoken or has no plural form (e.g., letters, numbers, family names), one uses las:

Note that other Romance languages use the definite article when the thing introduced denotes a kinship relation, body part, article of clothing, or other object intimately associated with the speaker, but Romániço does not:

Nouns

A noun is any sort of person, place, or thing, and comes in two varieties: common and proper.


Common Nouns

Common nouns are generic words that identify members of a class of people, places, or things. In Romániço, all common nouns end in -o:

The plural adds -s:

Words that are not already nouns can be made into one simply by adding -o to the root:

The -o of Romániço nouns should not be confused with the masculine -o of Spanish and Italian; every noun in Romániço, whether it’s male, female, or neuter, ends in -o. So to specify that a noun is male or female, one can add -as- or -is- to the root:

Note that -as- and -is- should only be used to avoid potential confusion. When speaking about Senioros Smith (“Mr. and Mrs. Smith”), for example, one might need to distinguish between Senioraso Smith (“Mr. Smith”) and Senioriso Smith (“Mrs. Smith”), but not when addressing either one of them directly (both are Senioro Smith).


Proper Nouns and Foreign Words

Proper nouns name a particular person, place, or thing, and as such have no generic ending; they are treated as immutable “foreign” loanwords, pronounced as closely as one can get to the original within the limits of the Romániço phonetic system. Those originally written in the Roman alphabet (including Latin renderings of Greek, Biblical, and other names) are transcribed as-is; those written in other alphabets are transcribed phonetically. Such words include names of individual people as well as words that are exclusively national or local:

One should use the foreign plural form, too, if such exists and is known: una fida'i, dua fida'iyin, una pound, dua pounds. If neither is the case, one can pluralize the word’s adjectives, if any and where necessary, or add -(o)s (including the hyphen): dua fida'i, dua pound, las fida'i, las pound, fida'i-s, pound-os.

When a personal name is known to be a national variation of an internationally common name (e.g., John, Jean, Giovanni, Juan, Hans, and the many other descendants of Biblical Yohanan), one can use the name as-is, or one can use its Latin or Latinized form along the following guidelines:


* Proper names transcribed Gu- in Romance should be transcribed V- [w] here.

The desinences of Latin or Latinized proper names are elidable in Romániço for purposes of adding suffixes: Iacobus “Jacob”, Iacobisto “Jacobite”, Iacobus Iacóbido “Jacob Jacobson”.


Romanicized Proper Nouns

One could, if one were so inclined, go a step further and completely Romanicize Latinizable names (including the names of places) by doing the following:

However one renders names, they can all come in three forms: short, familiar diminutive, and affectionate diminutive. The first is produced by simple truncation, when possible; the second by adding -i to a short form or -et- to a long form; the third by adding -uci- to any form:

Finally, names that are in fact anglicizations of other names can be directly translated into Romániço:

See Names in Romániço for a list of Romanicized names.


Countries and Demonyms

The names of countries, oceans, and international rivers and mountain ranges preserve their Latin (or Latinized) form, but conform to Romániço’s orthography and have, where necessary, been altered for the sake of regularity:


* From a 19th-century acronym for “United States of North America”

In English, the name of a country’s inhabitants is sometimes the basis for the name of the country and language (e.g., “England” and “English” from the ancient Ængle), sometimes the other way around (e.g. “Congolese” from “Congo”). In the latter case, the language might instead be derived from the ethnic group whose language it is (“Spanish” in the case of Mexico), or have its own name (“Swahili” in the case of Kenya).

While this is true in Romániço as well (Anglia “England”, is named after the ancient Anglos, Conganos “Congolese” after Congo), modern peoples are named not after the ethnic tribe from which they descended, but the country of which they are citizens. A person legally living in England, then, is an Angliano, whether that person is ethnically Angla or not; any citizen of Great Britain is a Britaniano, even though the ancient Britanos that gave Britain its name are no more.

A shorthand for the names of languages can be formed by adding -enso to the name of a country, for example Ċinenso “Chinese”, which might more specifically be Mandarinenso, Cuantonghenso, or many others. Usonenso refers to American English. Gualienso, however, or “the language of Wales”, is not Welsh (Gualenso), but English; for that reason, it’s generally more accurate to name languages not after the country they’re spoken in, but the people who first spoke them (Anglenso “English”; Anglienso “English as spoken in England”).

Capitalization

Romániço capitalizes the first letter of a word when:

Pronouns

A pronoun is a word that refers either to the participants in the discourse at hand (eg. I, you) or to someone or something mentioned in that discourse (eg., he, they, those). In Romániço, there are six different types of pronoun: personal, reflexive, possessive, demonstrative, relative, and indefinite.


Personal Pronouns

Strictly speaking, there are only six personal pronouns in Romániço:

In English, one makes no distinction between the singular and plural forms of you, except in the somewhat dialectical expression you all (or y’all); in Romániço, one says vi only when addressing a single person, vos when addressing a group. Those wishing to express a higher degree of familiarity or antiquarian flavor when addressing a single person (eg., to family and very close friends) can use the secondary pronoun ti (“thou/thee”).

Note that li refers to any third person entity, regardless of gender or animation:

Other languages divide the third person according to gender, animation, etc. This division is not necessary in Romániço, but may be translated by the secondary pronouns il / ilos (he / they), el / elos (she / they), ol / olos (it* / they), ul / ulos (they):


* “It” in Romániço includes non-human entities only; humans of indeterminate sex are indicated by ul.

All these pronouns refer to specific entities, but there are also two pronouns in Romániço for referring to different types of non-specific entities. The first of these is homi, used to refer to an unspecified person or people in general:

The second is lo, used to refer to a situation or circumstance, like the weather, or to the contents of the previous sentence:


Reflexive Pronouns

A pronoun that refers back to the subject of a clause (eg., English myself, themselves) is called a reflexive pronoun. In Romániço, this is identical to the personal pronouns — except for those in the “third person” (he, she, they, etc.), all of which use si:

If one were to use a pronoun other than si in the last two examples, it would mean that the subjects hurt someone else, not themselves:

Bear in mind that si refers only to the subject of the clause that it’s in, which may or may not be the main clause of the sentence.


* An infinitive verb or a participle with a complement counts as a separate clause.

Possessive Pronouns

Possessive pronouns show what belongs to whom, and in Romániço are as follows:

The reflexive is sua, and one can use iluya, eluya, oluya and uluya for a more gender-specific “his” and “hers” and “its”. The indefinite is homuya. “Thy” is tua.


Demonstrative Pronouns and Adjectives

Romániço has three demonstrative adjectives — ecuista (“this”), ecuila (“that”), and tala (“such”) — which are used to indicate a person or thing being referred to in terms of their proximity:

All three words can be used without change as pronouns for the nouns they refer to:

When changed into actual nouns (by adding -o to their roots), they mean not only “this/that thing” but “this/that business or fact”.


Relative & Interrogative Pronouns

Relative pronouns refer to an expressed or implied person or thing in another clause; they correspond with English who, what, and which:

Note that cua is immutable, even when standing in for a plural noun:

Like in English, Romániço relative pronouns are also used as interrogative pronouns, that is, pronouns used in questions:

In this case, the plural of cua, where necessary, is cuos:

Interrogative pronouns generally come first in a sentence, but beyond this the word order of Romániço sentences does not alter when made into questions, as it often does in English sentences:


Indefinite Pronouns

Indefinite pronouns are those that do not refer to any definite entity in particular, corresponding to English someone, something, nobody, nothing, everyone, everything, each (álicu, álico, nulu, nulo, omnu, omno, cascunu):

Adjectives

Adjectives are words that attribute a quality to a person or thing. In Romániço, all adjectives end in -a:

Any word that isn’t already an adjective can be made into one simply by changing its ending to -a. One might also add -isc- (“concerning”), -os-(“abundantly having”), or other affix to the word’s root, depending on the meaning one wants to convey:

Conversely, any adjective can be turned into a noun simply by changing its ending to -o:

Not that this is always necessary, as adjectives can often do duty for nouns as-is:

In these cases, to indicate that an adjective is describing something in the plural, one can either make the adjectives into plural nouns or use las:

In other cases, when describing the plural of a noun that has no plural form in Romániço (family names, for example), one can add -s to the adjectives:


The Placement of Adjectives

In Latin and the Romance languages, adjectives and participles usually directly follow nouns, except for adjectives of beauty, size, quantity, goodness, or truth, which precede the noun being modified. Putting adjectives that normally follow a noun before it can change the meaning in ways that are not always immediately evident:

Because of this, all adjectives in Romániço generally come before the people or things they describe, except for emphasis or stylistic flourish:

While this differs from Romance practice, it’s typical of international technical compounds:

Non-adjectives, however, cannot be used as adjectives like they can in English, but must be modified or rearranged:

Adjectives and participles that have a complement must come after the person or thing being described in order to make sense:


Degrees of Comparison

“All animals are equal,” declares the ever-amended constitution in Animal Farm, “but some animals are more equal than others”. Such comparisons (equal and unequal) are expressed in Romániço in much the same way as they are in English:

As might be expected from a planned language, all comparatives are formed regularly:

Alternatively, for those so inclined, a few non-standard comparatives are available alongside the regular ones:

Adverbs

Adverbs are words that say something about the time, place, manner, or degree regarding a verb, adjective, or another adverb. Some words are adverbial by nature, like now, very, and too in English; some are created from other sorts of word by adding -e to the root, much like those created by adding -ly in English:

Questions

Oftentimes a yes-or-no question can be expressed in Romániço simply by raising the pitch of one’s voice at the end of a sentence:

Depending on the speech habits of the speakers involved, this might not be a reliable means of asking a yes-or-no question. A better way is to use chi (“whether”), which introduces direct and indirect questions:

For direct questions, one can also put the verb before the subject:

Other sorts of questions, those asking “who”, “what”, “where”, “when”, etc., are introduced by the appropriate question word. One should bear in mind that, in Romániço, the subject of the sentence (the person or thing performing the sentence’s action) is whatever person or thing that most closely precedes the verb:

Prepositions

A preposition is a word that expresses a relationship between one noun or noun phrase and another word or element in the same sentence:

In Romániço, prepositions never end a sentence, as they often do in English:

Because many compound words begin with a preposition, it is often a good idea to insert a definite or indefinite article after or before prepositions to avoid confusion:

There are two “back-up” prepositions in Romániço. The first, je, indicates the recipient of an action (the “direct object”) in ambiguous sentences, as when the usual subject-verb-object word order is inverted:

Je is also useful with verbs made into nouns:

The other back-up preposition is ye, which has no definite meaning of its own but is used when no other preposition seems appropriate:

When describing a change in location, if the preposition used doesn’t by itself indicate it — and nothing else in the sentence does, either — one can prefix the preposition with ad, somewhat like to in English into, onto:

Prepositions can be changed into other parts of speech by the addition of suffixes if the meaning allows. Note that the original stress remains the same unless the suffix is polysyllabic:

The prepositions en, ec, and per, however, do not take suffixes directly, but use separate roots: intern-, extern-, and mediation-.

One can freely use prepositions before infinitive verbs, but because prepositions are also used as prefixes to verbs, it’s often a good idea to separate them with another word or rephrase the sentence to avoid ambiguity.

Verbs

Words that express any sort of action, state, or occurrence are called “verbs”, and there’s usually at least one in any complete sentence:


Past, Present, and Future Action

There are three basic “tenses” available to Romániço verbs — past, present, and future — each expressing action happening at different times relative to the speaker:


The Present Tense

Verbs that express action that one has begun but not yet completed (those in the present tense) are marked by the suffix -an:

Note that the form of the verb does not change depending on who is performing it, as it does in English:

Esan “is/am/are” can be contracted to es: Mi bothechejan, dunche mi es.


The Past Tense

Verbs that express something that happened prior to the moment one is speaking (those in the past tense) are marked by the suffix -in:


The Future Tense

Verbs that express something that will happen after the moment one is speaking (those in the future tense) are marked by the suffix -un:


Hypothetical Action

The past, present, and future tenses all express actions that actually did, do, or will take place, and collectively make up what grammarians call the “indicative mood”. But there’s also a way to express hypothetical action that probably won’t take place, called the “conditional mood”, which in Romániço is expressed by -eb-:


Desired Action

Verbs expressing something requested are marked by the suffix -es:


Tenseless Action

Some people prefer to indicate tense through context rather than inflection. In Romániço, this can be rendered by the suffix -en (which simply indicates verbalness) and, if necessary, an adverb of time:


Reported Action: The Sequence of Tenses

In English, when one reports what someone else says or feels, the tense of the quoted action changes depending on the tense of the main verb:

In Romániço, the tense of the quoted material stays the same as if it were quoted directly:


Infinitives

When expressing the basic idea of an action without binding it to any particular tense or subject, English either uses the word to followed by the simple form of the verb or attaches -ing to it, as in “I like to dance” or “I like dancing”. In Romániço, the same idea is expressed by adding -er to the root of the verb:

While there’s nothing technically wrong with using infinitives after prepositions, it may be less jarring for some to express the same idea as an adverb instead:


Impersonal Action

English often uses the pronoun it when there’s no obvious subject for a sentence, as in “It is freezing in here” and “It would be great if you could come in on Saturday”. If there is no infinitive verb to take the place of “it”, Romániço expresses the same idea with the pronoun lo.

English “there is”, “there are”, “here is”, etc., is rendered by ci followed by eser or exister in Romániço:

except when one wants to call attention to the subject, in which case Romániço uses ecce:


Participles

Adjectives created from verbs are called “participles”. Most modern European languages, including English, recognize two kinds of participle — those expressing action currently being performed by the nouns they modify, and those expressing completed action, whether being performed by or on the nouns they modify:

In Progress

Completed

In Romániço, too, there are two basic types of participle: “active” (those being performed by the nouns they modify) and “passive” (those being performed on the nouns they modify by someone or something else). However, both types come in four distinct forms — one to express completed action, one for action in progress, one for action yet to come, and one for action regardless of time:

Active

Passive


Participles as Adverbs

A participle can also be used as an adverb by changing the final -a to -e. In this form it tells when or why something happens:

When adverbial participles have their own subjects, they form a “nominative absolute”, that is, an independent part of a sentence that describes the main subject and verb:


Participles as Nouns

By changing the final -a to -o, a participle can be used as a noun. In this form it expresses a person or thing that performs an action, or on whom it is performed:


Compound Verbs

Simple verbs in English and Romániço show not only when the action took place (tense), but the degree of the action’s completion (aspect). For example, the simple past tense generally shows completed action (mi scribin on létero), the present tense action in progress (mi scriban on létero), and the future tense action that will be completed later on (mi scribun on létero). With compound verbs, one can express any degree of completion in any tense:

Note that eser followed by a participle expresses a pre-existing state in Romániço, just as it would if followed by any other adjective. To say, for example, la Congreso esin impedichinta ye 3:00 means that Congress had finished impeaching at or before 3:00. To indicate that Congress finished at 3:00 and not before, use esecer (“to become”) instead of eser:

Compound tenses are much more common in English than in Romániço, which generally uses them only to underscore the time and completeness of one action in relation to another (impedicher and envader in the previous example) or to emphasize the agent of a passive action (Congreso in impedicata da la Congreso). Otherwise, where English uses a compound verb, Romániço uses a simple one.

Note that when action in the past continues into the present, the simple present can be used if a start time is given. If it isn’t, use fue to indicate continuous action.


Transitive and Intransitive Action

When a person or thing directs action toward another person or thing, the action is said to be “transitive” (i.e., it transits its action onto something else). For example, pay (a fee), watch (a movie), say (the truth). The person or thing being acted on (in the previous examples, fee, movie, and truth) is called the “direct object”.

When the action is not directed toward something else, like be, sit, and recline, it is said to be “intransitive”.

In English, many verbs are both transitive and intransitive, depending on the context:

Intransitive

Transitive

In Romániço, a verb is either transitive or intransitive, never both. To make an intransitive verb transitive, one can add -if- to the root; to make a transitive verb intransitive, one can add -ez- to the root:

Intransitive

Transitive

However, some intransitive verbs can have an object if that object is a noun version of the verb:

or a specific example of the same:

Note, too, that one can use a transitive verb without an object, so as to emphasize only the idea of the action itself:

Numbers

The basic, “cardinal” numbers of Romániço are:

These words are all adjectives, and work like any other adjective in Romániço:

Used as nouns, they serve as the names of the numerals themselves:

One can combine the roots by dropping their endings and inserting -i- (where necessary) to produce numbers greater than ten:

As in English, one need not pronounce larger numbers in all their awkward fullness, but can break them down into smaller, more manageable chunks:

For numbers greater than a billion, one can add -(i)lion (a million to the power of x) or -(i)liard (a thousand times a million to the power of x) to the numbers one through ten:

Numbers can be made into nouns or adverbs by adding -o or -e, respectively:


Ordinal Numbers

Ordinal numbers are those that express a thing’s position in a series, such as first, second, third. In Romániço, ordinals are formed by adding -ésim- to the equivalent cardinal number:

The suffix -ésim- is written -m- when the ordinal is transcribed by a number, and not at all when transcribed by Roman regnal numbers, though it is still pronounced -ésim-:

When asking for something requiring an ordinal number, one uses cuantésima, which means “which one of the series?”:


Fractional Numbers

Fractional numbers are those that express a value that is not a whole number, eg. half, a fourth, etc. In English, as in many European languages, these are mostly indistinguishable from ordinal numbers (eg., the fifth Beatle vs. a fifth of the Beatles), but in Romániço are marked by the suffix ´-im-:


Multiplicative Numbers

Multiplicative numbers are those like English double, triple, and quadruple. In Romániço, they are formed from the cardinal numbers by adding -(u)pl-:


Distributive Numbers

Distributive numbers are formed from cardinal numbers by adding -en-, which means “x at a time”:


Arithmetic

Some common operations in arithmetic:


Time

There are two words for hour in Romániço: horo, which indicates duration, and cloco, which indicates the hour of the day. Unlike in other languages, time in Romániço is expressed only in terms of the current hour, never the coming hour, as in a quarter to three:

Affixes

In order to reduce the number of words one would have to learn in order to speak the language, much of Romániço’s vocabulary is composed of a comparatively small stock of root words that can be combined with an even smaller group of familiar affixes to create new words as needed:


Prefixes


NOTE: In the role of “opposed to” and “against”, anti- is often replaced by the preposition contre.












NOTE: The prefix ne implies only negation, not opposite quality:









Suffixes




































































Desinences











Compound Words

Sometimes it’s convenient to render a phrase like saber of light or barroom sport of tossing dwarves as a single word like lightsaber or dwarf-tossing. Such words are called compound words.

Despite alleged monstrosities like Finnish lento­kone­suih­kutur­biini­moot­toria­pume­kaanik­koa­liup­see­riop­pilas and German Schützen­graben­vernich­tungs­auto­mobil, compounds are often shorthand renderings of even longer constructions in Romániço, like capil-brucio (“hairbrush”) from capilisca brucio or brucio por capilos.

Compound words generally consist of a head (a word that expresses the basic meaning of the whole compound) and one or more modifiers. (E.g., handbrake consists of the head brake, the basic meaning of the compound, and hand, describing the sort of brake it is.) The head and modifiers can be separated with a hyphen for the sake of clarity, according to preference.

In English, the head usually comes last in a compound, but this varies from language to language — and often within the same language (e.g., English lockpick and pickpocket, Spanish chupacabra and fazferir). Romániço uses the model of Greek and Latin derived international compounds, where the main element, if any, comes last (e.g., astronaut “star-sailor”, anthropophage “man-eater”).

There are some compounds that denote something other than a form of the head. For example, silverback denotes not a type of back, but a male ape characterized by a silver back, and before-tax denotes not a type of tax, but profits reckoned before taxes. Here, too, Romániço follows the model of Greek and Latin international compounds (e.g., apathy “without-feeling”).


* When the synecdochic use of words like grey-hair to refer to a person and not a kind of hair isn’t clear enough, a clarifying suffix should be added, e.g., gris-capiloso, gris-capilosa. This is most often the case when the first element of the compound is a descriptive adjective (i.e., one that answers “what kind?”).

Note that Romániço uses -i- as a connecting vowel between the elements of a compound word. The connecting vowel can be elided, euphony permitting, except when the preceding element ends in unstressed -i-:

When a preposition is combined with a verb that can take an object, the preposition is treated as an adverb with an elided -e and the object of the compound is the object of the original verb:

When a preposition is combined with a verb of motion that does not take an object, the object of the preposition can be used as the object of the compound to signify motion toward that object:

Word Order

In Romániço, the way one determines who does what to whom in a sentence is by the order in which the words appear. In general, the person or thing appearing most immediately before the verb performs the action; the person or thing appearing after the verb is the object or complement.

One can also use je to mark the object of a sentence, in which case the object can appear before the verb as well as after:

Adopting New Words

As important as any other aspect of a planned language is its ability to adopt new words as time goes on.

The method Romániço uses for this is etymological consensus. The order of preference for new words is:

For example, consider the word sidewalk. The Romance languages each have their own word for it, but most of the Germanic languages (and Russian) borrow their word from the French, which makes trottoir the most widely recognizable choice.

Once a candidate is arrived at, the immediate Latin source — or whatever phonetically spelled form of the word is available, in the case of non-Latinate words — is determined. In the case of Latin sources, recast nouns in the genitive* stem and add -o (or -uo to those with a genitive ending in -us, where necessary to prevent homynms); recast simple verbs in the present tense stem, affixed verbs in past participial stem, and add -er; indicate irregular stress, if any, with acute accents. In the case of trottoir, which is part Frankish and part Latin, it may be broken down to medieval Latin trottare (“to go”, from Frankish *trotton “to run”) + -oir, which comes from classical Latin -orium, yielding trottorio.


* Historically, Western Romance nouns evolved from the accusative case, but the genitive case is more useful for word-building.

Be mindful of homonyms — both at the root level and with affixes — and be prepared to find or fudge alternate forms of a word to avoid conflict with other words. For example, Latin portare (“to carry”) became Romániço porter, so portus (“port”, genitive portūs) became portuo and porta (“door”) became portelo.

Then apply Romániço’s orthography: Change q to c, hard c to ch before e and i, soft c to ç at the end of a noun or adjective root; keep final -que as -che (not -cue); hard g to gh before e and i, soft g to ġ at the end of a root; sce-, sci- to ce-, ci-; -nct- to -nt-; ph to f; vocalic y to i; double letters to single. Reduce agentive -arius to -aro. Trottorio thus becomes trotorio, and Romániço at last gets its word for sidewalk.

Archaic Speech

Even for a language invented within living memory, it can sometimes be useful to simulate archaic speech, as when quoting Bible verses or Latin maxims, or writing historical fiction. For this, Romániço offers two levels of old-fashionedness: “Early Modern Romániço” and “Old Romániço”.


“Early Modern Romániço”

Were Romániço a natural language that had evolved alongside the Romance languages on which its lexicon is based, Early Modern Romániço would be the form of the language spoken from the 14th to 17th centuries, extending from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. It is more or less analogous to the English of Shakespeare or Spanish of Cervantes, as well as the traditional language of long-established religions.


Orthography

The Graeco-Latin digraphs ch, ph, and rh are retained, as are double consonants and vocalic y. The digraph qu is retained where it still has the sound [kw] in modern Romániço: Chriſtiano, phantáſmato, rhetórico, cyſto, equilla.


Typography

Lowercase s is printed as ſ at the beginning and middle of a word. Double s is printed ſs or ß: ſectionos, apóſtolos, abyſso (or abyßo).

The letter pairs i and j and u and v are not distinguished. The letter v is used at the beginning of a word and as a capital, the letter u is used everywhere else, regardless of sound: iúuena, maiora, Vrano, conuulſer.

Generally, modern printings of archaic texts should normalize these typographical conventions to avoid confusion.


Verb forms

The verb endings -an, -in, and -un of Romániço derive from Latin -ant, -ent, and -unt. In the Early Modern period, the final -t is retained in -ant, -int, and -unt, corresponding to English -eth and -est:


Pronouns

The words ti and tua, like English thou and thy, are regularly used during this period to address family members, close friends, subordinates, God, and, if one is a longtime, faithful servant, one’s master; everyone else is addressed with vi, invented during this time to eliminate the ambiguity of vos in “Old Romániço”.


“Old Romániço”

Most archaic speech should be rendered along the Early Modern model, as it is in English, but when something more remote and alien is needed, there is Old Romániço. This would be the form of the language spoken from the 8th to 14th centuries, roughly the end of the Early Middle Ages through the beginning of the Late Middle Ages. It is more or less analogous to the English of Tales of Caunterbury, the French of La Chanson de Roland, and the Spanish of El cantar de myo Çid.


Typography

In addition to the typological conventions outlined above, Old Romániço uses an e caudata where Classical Latin ae and oe have been reduced to e: cęlo, pręparer, obęder. Also, ç is regarded as its own letter, and keeps its cedilla even before e and i.


Adjectival agreement

Adjectives agree in number with the nouns they modify:


The oblique case

In this period, one distinguishes between nominative and oblique singular pronouns, as English still does with most of its own pronouns:

Note that there is no vi at this time; vos does duty for both the plural and the singular when not addressing, in this period, subordinates, children, or younger siblings.