Re: Nur-ellen in the world of Brithenig (was Re: Nur-ellenuniverses)

Me govanen!

andrew tetent:

> Am 08/29 01:33  J?rg Rhiemeier yscrifef:
> > Me govanen!
> >
> Benlligad!
>
> > Is the concept alive *there* at all (other than in the shape of the
> > Nur-ellen folk), or buried in old mythology?  I mean, there might not be
> > an equivalent to JRRT *there*.
> >
> The fact that the Nur-ellen folk are there suggests that the concept
> exists.  Even if there is no JRRT *there* the old mythology that he
> mined to revive elvishkind does!  Who knows?  Perhaps the age of
> nationalism of the 19th-20th C. lead to the rise of a Kemrese Sibelius
> or a Wagner - or possibly an Ossian.
Surely the mythology is there, and some scholar will have come to the
conclusion that those tall, slender compatriots speaking that peculiar,
obviously ancient language must be a remnant of the folk it all started
with.

Someone *will* have cobbled together a Kemrese national epic some time
around 1900
which no doubt will prominently feature Elves.

And certainly, the Gobineaus and Rosenbergs (i.e. the cranky race
theorists) of the Brithenig timeline will have freaked out on them.  The
timeline should also abound with crackpots claiming the Elves were
descendants of Atlantis, space aliens or whatever.  Just about anything
claimed *here* about the Basques or the Maya, but squared.  The amateur
linguists trying to link Nur-ellen with just about any other language
isolate in the world are surely among the most stomachable of all those
kooks.

After all, the point is this: unlike *here*, where the Tuatha de Danann,
Alfar, whatever they are called, are just a faint memory of a distant
past, they are very real people *there*, even if they aren't really
half-gods, but just a minority with a fascinating history.  Those people
who like to draw all sorts of conncetions between mythological lands and
beings on one hand and peculiar minority groups on the other have a
group at hand where it is *widely accepted* that they are "identical" to
a prominent class of mythological beings!

And what do the Cos Nustr think about them?  Do they hate them like
everything else non-Brithenig, or do they worship them as the "noble
elder race"?
Do they try to fell the trees and topple the stones of Mertlad
(Nur-ellen "festival site", the name of the open space in the centre of
Tavrob`l), or do they try to abuse it for their own foul rituals?

(Thinking of Mertlad: pagan sites often tend to be overbuilt with
churches when christianity moves into an area.  Why was the church of
Tavrob`l built off the site?)

There is another side effect of the presence of Elves and their
language.
The world of linguistics does not need to wait until the prejudices
against Native American languages are overcome and the languages become
eligible for linguistic research in order to discover active languages -
the linguists of Kemr have one to study in their own country.  This
could mean that concepts of semantic roles and "case grammar" surface
earlier *there* than *here*.  It might also help weed out the
"[insert-your-favourite-ergative-language-here] puts everything in
passive voice" nonsense (which *here* lingered in quite a number of
textbooks well into the 1950s) in time.

Hey!  This is FUN!

> > BTW: Does Kemr include what *here* is Warwickshire and Staffordshire?
> > (It seems so judging from the description of the boundary on your page.)
> > I ask this because this way, both Mindon Gwar (Nur-ellen Mind`n War,
> > English Warwick) and Tavrobel (Nur-ellen Tavrob`l, English Great
> > Haywood) would be in Kemr.  They could be decent-sized cities (perhaps
> > about 100,000-200,000 each)
> > with substantial Nur-ellen speaking minorities.  What would they be
> > named in Brithenig?  Are the Brithenig names translations of the
> > Nur-ellen names (Mind`n War means "watchtower", Tavrob`l means
> > "forest-town") or adaptations to Brithenig pronunciation of spelling
> > (which would give something like "Mindyn War" and "Tafrobyl")?
> >
> Wrestling with the maps has caused half an hour of anguish.  This would
> be my responsa - Tavrobel is definately within Kemr, probably in the
> province of lla Ferch (the March).
The exact position is, as you probably already found out, where the
River Trent crosses the 2-degree meridian.  The city (well, the old part
of it) lies on the north bank of the river, just as the village of Great
Haywood does *here*.
It also happens to sit exactly on the straight line running through
Stonehenge and the Avebury stone circle, i.e. on one of the country's
most prominent ley lines.  Coincidence?

>       Mindon Gwar is less happy.  It lies
> virtually on the border, probably on the English side.  In a more
> violent age it has changed hands several times.
So M.Gw. might be a rather small town just east or just west of Yll
Ffens
(if that is the Br. term for the border), possibly known by a name which
does not give away its Elvish origin, and no longer with a particularly
strong Elvish element.  Tavrob`l, however, might be the flourishing
centre of Nur-ellen culture, with a radio and a TV station broadcasting
in Nur-ellen, one or two Nur-ellen newspapers and a publishing house
dedicated to the language.

So what is the name of Tavrob`l in Brithenig, "Tafrobl", "Tafrobyl",
or "Tref-di'll-busc" or something like that?  I think it depends on
whether the Kemrese populace was aware of the meaning of the name or
not.  If they were, they no doubt translated it; if not, the Brithenig
name might be an arbitrarily distorted form of the Elvish original.  You
are the expert here on how such a name would have evolved in Brithenig,
not me; your suggestion?  (The name Tavrob`l is pronounced [tavrob@l],
with stress on the _o_; the schwa /@/ is a very weak and short one (some
Nur-ellen dialects would drop it and pronounce the name with a syllabic
/l/); /r/ is an alveolar trill.)

> > How strong can the "Elvish" element be in Kemr?  How many people still
> > speak Nur-ellen, and how alive is their original culture?
> > I can imagine that there is some kind of "Elvish Heritage Revival
> > Movement" of young (and not-so-young) people seeking a better life who
> > study the ancient (pre-Celtic!) culture of the Elves (I imagine those
> > pre-Celtic Elves to have been culturally actually quite similar to
> > Tolkien's, even though they were not immortal or anything), worship Eru,
> > celebrate festivals at the old sites (such as the Stonehenge or the one
> > in the city centre of Tavrob`l - right in the heart of the city, there
> > is a circular open space surrounded by standing stones and tall trees) -
> > and learn the Nur-ellen language.
> >
> I would say that 10% of the population (400 000+) would claim to by of
> Nur-Ellen descent (maybe more because I don't know how widespread Beaker
> folk genetic material is).  Statistically a large number of that could
> claim to speak Kemrese Nur-ellen as a first or second language.
If I understand correctly, you mean there are 400,000 Elves (to use this
word as a term of convenience for this ethnic group) among 4 million
citizens of Kemr.
Assume that about half of them actually speak Nur-ellen either as L1 or
L2.
Giving the cultural importance of the minority to Kemr as a whole,
Nur-ellen should find quite favourable social conditions in Kemr, and
one can assume that the number of Nur-ellen speakers it at least stable,
if not increasing!
There might be quite a number of L2 or L3 Nur-ellen speakers *not* of
Elvish origin, especially among environmentalists and other
"counter-cultural" types.

I think the city of Tavrob`l (and its vicinity) has an above-average
Elvish population, such that of its 200,000 citizens (I'll take this
number as fixed unless there is a problem with having a city of this
size at that location - but I don't see why it should be a problem at
all, given that Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent might not be there at
all), some 50,000 are Elves, and given the strength of Nur-ellen
cultural life in the city, most of them actually speak Nur-ellen.

> Intellectually they would be very important to national cultural
> heritage.
Certainly!  As I already stated above, someone will have written a
Kemrese national epic based on the old mythology, equating the elves
with the Elves (sounds quite tautological in English - mind the spelling
of the E's!).  Many people might have started studying "the oldest and
noblest language of the country", i.e. Nur-ellen.

>       Older druidic orders which are meso-pagan or monotheistic
> would find worship of the One comparable to their own beliefs.  The
> relationship between the Cambriese Uniate Church and the Elves probably
> included unfriendly clashes.
I can easily imagine that.  And that's why I've said that Nur-ellen
might have borrowed from Hebrew and Romani: the Elves found themselves
in a situation similar to that of Jews and Gypsies, and thus came in
close contact with them.

>       Kemrese Environmentalists might see the
> Elvish renaisance as very appealling.
Absolutely!  I think the Green movement in Kemr embraced the Elves and
their traditions from the start, similar to the way many Greens
romanticized the traditions of North American indians *here*.  If you
seek a more "sound" way of life and live in a country where there are
still a few left of a people said to have possessed such a way of life
in the past, it is natural to take interest in those people.

> > According to Padraig's post, there was a German Empire which seems to me
> > to have caused trouble *there* as well even if they weren't Nazis.  So
> > perhaps the German borrowings exist in Nur-ellen *there* as well?
> >
> So it appears.  No one has wandered across the Channel that far to find
> out yet.
I once made my own thoughts about it.  My impression was that it would
seem fit if the nations on the Continent were smaller and more diverse
than they are *here*, just as they are in the Isles.  So, among others,
I had the idea that Bismarck's reunification of Germany never happened,
but the country splintered into about half a dozen separate nations in
the 17th century, each having promoted their dialect to the national
language.  So the official language of Lower Saxony (bigger than the
German state that goes by the name *here*) is indeed "Plattdüütsch"
(except that they call it "Neddersassens" there; this would make
"Saesonig" an ambiguous term), that of Bavaria is Bavarian, etc.
However, Padraig said that there was (and still *is*) a German Empire.

> On other issues the idea that Great Britain could move from union to
> federalism within its parts in a European Union led me to introduce the
> Federated Kingdom *there*, possibly accompanied by a pro-Europe
> sentiment.  (Although the idea that the Europeans there still work off
> stress by beating up their neighbours could be an interesting one :)
The fact that there is still a Kaiser in Germany does not necessary mean
that Germany is still an aggressive, militarist country.  The Kaiser
might by now be a mere figurehead, like the kings of Scandinavia, while
it is a smoothly functioning democravy entertaining friendly relations
with all its neighbours.

Syld,
Joerg.