History

Romans reached Norway in the first century CE, latinizing parts of the country and by this brought a Romance language to Þrjótur.^[1] Þrjótrunn is an extremely conservative Romance language, which, although it underwent substantial sound changes, retains many features of the Vulgar Latin that reached Norway. These circumstances have made the grammar quite irregular.

Read what historian Bjarne Mørk reconstructed about the events that led to Romans reaching Norway.

The name of the new Roman province in Southern Norway was colloquially called 'Frigoriterra' in Rome. This name was more and more used in Norway itself, too, by the speakers of the local Latin dialect, but they used it more for the Northern areas and, more generally, for Northern, Non-Roman territories, i.e. for Þrjótur and also Greenland and parts of Finland (also the plural was used when referring to these territories collectively). While on the mainland, the term was lost in the following centuries, it was in continuous use in Þrjótur, but only referring to Þrjótur itself. 'Frigoriterra' became 'Þrjótur' in the modern language.

The name of the language derives from the country name by adding an -(a)n ending to get an adjective. 'Þrjótrunn' is the neuter singular nominative form, which is used when using the name alone. In a phrase together with 'language', it becomes 'Þrjótran Lyng' which literally means 'Þrjóturian Language'.

When Latin reached Norway, the inhabitants, speaking a Germanic tongue, were exposed to a sound system not exactly like the one they were used to, but still quite similar. Latin words were probably pronounced with a heavy local accent, at least reconstructions show that the first sound changes of Vulgar Latin must have happened just at the time of the split of this North Romance language.

Þrjótrunn has several Germanic loans, some of which it shares with other Romance languages, like the points of the compass: norður, austur, suður, vestur. But there are also many Germanic loans unique to the Romance language of Þrjótrunn. Typical words include plants that are only found in the north (björkur 'birch'), and geographic phenomena found in Scandinavia, e.g. coastal shapes (fjörður 'fjord', vík 'bay').

The number of Celtic loans, on the other hand, is relatively small. Some words that were in Latin already when Romans reached Scandinavia naturally made it into Þrjótrunn (e.g. körr < carrvs < from Gaulish), but newer ones usually did not, e.g. the widespread *camisia 'chemise', 'shirt'.

Apart from phonology and lexicon, Germanic influenced the morphology and syntax of Þrjótrunn.

One prominent difference between Proto North Romance and other Romance is the final -r were Latin had -s. This is certainly due to Germanic -az, -iz, -uz nouns, which made the Latin -vs, -es, -is became pronounced as -uz, -ez, -iz. By analogy, most other final -s in Latin was also shifted to -z. The further development then changed this -z into -ʀ and ultimately into -r.

It is also noteworthy how Germanic loans appear in Þrjótrunn, which declension and gender they became. Loans of masculine Germanic -az, -iz, -uz nouns usually were rendered as Latin masculine -vs nouns of the second declension, e.g. fjörður < *ferþuz (also note how this loaned f did not shift to þ). Further, Germanic feminine -ō nouns became 1st declension, feminine -a nouns in Proto North Romance.

There are examples where this typical correspondence had some influence back on Latin words with unusual forms. E.g. the Greek loan into Latin boreas is börr in Þrjótrunn, which requires a reconstructed form of *borivs. This is probably due to an imagined Germanic **borjaz.

Other developments are probably independent from Germanic influence.

The Latin ablative had already gone when the Romans reached Scandinavia. Þrjótrunn retains a few irregular vocative forms and even locatives, but these are rare and will not be listed in the normal tables, but handled as separate lexicon entries. Otherwise, the Latin case system is retained, i.e., the language has four cases: the nominative, the accusative, the dative, and the genitive, both in pronouns and in nouns.^[8]

All three genders of Latin are retained: the feminine, the masculine, and the neuter (to show similarities more clearly, we will use this order of the genders throughout the document).

Further, the Latin fourth declension class ('u' declension) is retained. Mostly feminine plants in -vs, even originally 2nd declension ones, and some frequent words use the fourth declension. The declension contains almost only feminine nouns.