Wenedyk

Wenedyk (in English: Venedic) is a naturalistic constructed language, created by the Dutch translator Jan van Steenbergen (who also co-created the international auxiliary language Slovianski). It is used in the fictional Republic of the Two Crowns (based on the Republic of Two Nations), in the alternate timeline of Ill Bethisad. Officially, Wenedyk is a descendant of Vulgar Latin with a strong Slavic admixture, based on the premise that the Roman Empire incorporated the ancestors of the Poles in their territory. Less officially, it tries to show what Polish would have looked like if it had been a Romance instead of a Slavic language. An alternative Polish term for the language could thus be either polskowłoski, incorporating the term włoski, originally meaning Vlach but now applied in Polish to Italian, or polskoromański, literally "Polish-Romance". On the Internet, it is well-recognized as an example of the altlang genre, much like Brithenig and Breathanach.

The idea for the language was inspired by such languages as Brithenig, Breathanach and Kerno, languages that bear a similar relationship to the Celtic languages as Wenedyk does to Polish. The language itself is based entirely on (Vulgar) Latin and Polish: all phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes that made Polish develop from Common Slavic are applied to Vulgar Latin. As a result, vocabulary and morphology are predominantly Romance in nature, while phonology, orthography and syntax are essentially the same as in Polish. Wenedyk uses the modern standard Polish orthography, including (for instance) ⟨w⟩ for /v/ and ⟨ł⟩ for /w/.

Wenedyk plays a role in the alternate history of Ill Bethisad, where it is one of the official languages of the Republic of the Two Crowns. In 2005 Wenedyk underwent a major revision due to a better understanding of Latin and Slavic sound and grammar changes. In the process, the author was assisted by the Polish linguist Grzegorz Jagodziński.

The dictionary on the WWW page linked below contains over 4000 entries.

The language has acquired some attention in Poland, including a few online news articles and an article in the monthly Wiedza i Życie ("Knowledge and Life").

Read more about Wenedyk:  Spelling and Pronunciation, Word List, Example, Similar Languages