1.0 Introduction

The Velmarin Popular Latin Standard is a Para-Romance language spoken by approximately four million people in the Velmarin archipelago and among the Velmarin diaspora worldwide.

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2.0 Phonology

The Popular Latin Standard is phonologically conservative, retaining velars before front vowels and /w/ and /j/ as approximants (often [β˕] and [ʝ˕]) in all positions except around sonorants. Geminate consonants and long vowels are also retained, though there is debate surrounding the precise nature of their production.

2.1 Consonants

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Voiceless stops are lightly aspirated.

/tj dj sj/ palatalise to [tɕ dʑ ɕ]. Younger speakers are in the process of depalatalising these to [ts dz s].

Geminated /ɾ/ is produced as a trill [rː].

Some speakers have difficulty differentiating /ɾ/ and /l/; others can differentiate them, but do so by producing /l/ as [n] and /ɾ/ as [ɾ ~ ɺ ~ ɭ ~ l]. This latter group of speakers generally produce stop-rhotic clusters (/tɾ/, /br/, etc.) as voiceless aspirated stops (/tʰ/, /pʰ/, etc) and stop-lateral clusers (/pl/, /gl/, etc.) as stop-rhotic clusters or retroflex stops (/pɾ/, /gɾ ~ ɖ/, etc.).

2.2 Vowels

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2.3 Phonotactics and Syllabification

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2.4 Pitch Accent and Tonogenesis

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2.5 Registers and Isolects

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2.6 Orthography

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Spelling is not strictly standardised, and thus can be quite varied from writer to writer. Nevertheless, spelling is largely phonetic and follows Latin conventions; e.g., ⟨c⟩ for /k/ and ⟨qu⟩ for /kw/. Unreleased final stops are often written with their voiced equivalents for etymological or stylistic purposes; e.g., ⟨ad⟩ for /at/ "towards" and ⟨digna⟩ for /dikŋa/ "rank, status", though ⟨dicna⟩ also appears. Personal names are especially prone to being personalised, as it were, especially if the modern spelling differs significantly from the Classical one, as ⟨Smaragda⟩ instead of ⟨Simaracta⟩ for /simaɾakta/ "emerald, jade", from Latin sᴍᴀʀᴀɢᴅᴠs.

Long vowels are marked using apices, as ⟨á é í ó ú⟩ for /aː eː iː oː uː/, but are rarely written, except in learning aids and where necessary to differentiate homographs.

Falling diphthongs /aj/ and /aw/ are distinguished from vowels in hiatus /a.e/ and /a.u/; the former are written ⟨ai⟩ and ⟨ao⟩, the latter ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨au⟩. All other falling diphthongs use ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩.

In contemporary spelling, ⟨i⟩ and ⟨y⟩ are interchangeable for /i/, but ⟨i⟩ is generally preferred, except in personal names, which vary depending on personal preference, and for Sinoxenic /tɕ dʑ ɕ/, where ⟨ty dy sy⟩ are preferred; e.g., Latinate ⟨nátióne⟩ /naːtɕoːne/ "nation, coordinate term to patria", but Sinitic ⟨sentyuna⟩ /sentɕuna/ "prim and proper" (from Middle Chinese 正中 tɕiᴇŋ^H ʈɨuŋ).

Before the late-eighteenth century, ⟨y⟩ in an initial position represented /v/ (derived from ᴠ with a dot or vertical stroke below), but this convention has since been entirely replaced by ⟨v⟩, except in archaising texts.

There are several methods for writing the Popular Latin Standard in hanzi, akin to the Korean idu script or the Classical Japanese man'yōgana writing system, but these systems have largely fallen out of use outside of historical literature studies. There likewise exist a handful of methods to render Classical Chinese texts into both Latin and the Popular Latin Standard, akin to the Korean gugyeol system and the Japanese kanbun system. Two characters commonly seen today, often as a form of sensational spelling, are the adjectival suffix 如, after Latin -ɴᴀ, and the perfective suffix 矣, after Latin -ᴠɪ-.

3.0 Morphology

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4.0 Syntax

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5.0 Sample

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6.0 Notes

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7.0 Commentary

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