Design Principles
Regularity first
Rules should be consistent, explicit, and productive. Irregularity is not added merely to make the language appear natural.
Germanic raw material
Prefer historical Germanic roots when they fit. Sources may include Proto-Germanic, Old English, Old Norse, modern norsk, Swedish, German, Dutch, and related languages.
Borrowed roots become native immediately. Their original declension classes, irregular plurals, vowel mutations, grammatical gender, strong/weak verb classes, and other historical baggage are not inherited.
Historical roots may also be reshaped creatively when doing so produces a form that better fits Nordsippisk phonology or aesthetics.
Example:
njivv — new
This is inspired by Proto-Germanic material rather than mechanically copied from a particular descendant.
Roots remain visible
Roots are orthographically invariant under normal derivation and inflection.
timbtimb-ertimb-ingtimb-de
The root remains immediately recognizable.
Do not mark the same information repeatedly
Agreement and redundant marking are minimized.
Adjectives do not agree with nouns. Verbs do not agree with person or number. Subject/object roles are primarily identified by word order.
Context is allowed to work
Not every distinction needs a dedicated grammatical marker. If a construction is already clear from context, avoid adding machinery merely for formal completeness.
Formal grammar and vernacular speech are different things
The documented grammar should remain regular and conservative. Natural shorthand, contraction, omission, and reanalysis may occur in vernacular speech without being promoted into formal grammar.