Linguistic minorities in Uriania

Urianian, English and Azurian are the major school languages in Uriania and part of the curriculum in every state school, but there are others spoken by minorities. Of these, instruction is available locally in Muna, Romani, Scollerinian, Irish, Spanish, Turkish, Tamil, Urdu, and Punjabi. There are other, smaller immigrant populations who don't yet have public instruction in their native language. Of these the most notable is the Polish immigrant community of the late 18th century, but from the most recent census there are native speakers of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, German, Finnish, Italian, Russian, and Hungarian in sizeable numbers and smaller groups of scores of others.

Nearly all of these languages are taught in accordance with standards from their countries of origin, and so there is no point in describing them here. The only exceptions are the three first mentioned, Muna, Romani, and Scollerinian.

Muna

Muna is spoken in the inner reaches of the wide and inhospitable Muna valley in the east, which were thought uninhabited until the first contact with the inhabitants in 1857, a major discovery in those days. No affiliation to any other Urianian language has been established for Muna, and indeed, there is no proven affinity to any other language in the world. Thus Muna can be classified as an isolate.

However, links have been established to names of places and persons mentioned in early literature, and it is thought that Muna is related to the language spoken in the country before the arrival of the Urianians from about 3000 years ago. The Muna may even be related to the Nanki, famous enemies of Uttrediay known from the old songs about him. Furthermore, attempts have been made to relate Muna to Basque and further to the Northeast Caucasian language group, and for completion, this will also be presented here.

Urianian Romani

The Rom have a long history in Uriania and their speech has evolved in relative isolation on this island, forming several variations and taking up words and morphology from their surroundings, setting them apart from their brethren in other countries. Unfortunately, linguistic interest in their language is relatively recent, and we can only say that we have any knowledge of its development from the last couple of centuries.

Scollerinian

Scollerinian is a dialect of Urianian that has its own orthography, taken up as the official language of the Republic of Scollerin when it was founded in 1949. Its orthography was established first through the work of the Berg committe of 1950-51, largely based upon ideas presented by the pioneering Scollerinian linguist Hans Syvert Gulbrandsen in 1909, with some significant adjustments in the reform of 1958. Only the orthography will be treated here. For the Scollerinian language, see its entry under dialects of Urianian.

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