Re: yet another romance conlang

Am 01/04 18:41  Steg Belsky yscrifef:
> okay...
> now that i finally took out a book from my college library about romance
> languages, (_the romance languages_ by rebecca posner; the others were
> too technical for me), i started working a little bit on my Judean
Posner is ok, but I think Elcock's book by the same name, although
earlier, is better on grammar, especially verbs, and possibly more
reliable.  At one point Posner says there is a trend among romance
languages for VSO order, which made me go 'eh?'

> Ju:dajca is spoken in an alternate-history conearth where the Romans
> didn't succeed in wiping Judea off the map.  a bit nicer than the romans
> in RL, these con-romans' plan for stopping judean revolts was to attempt
> to swamp the country with imperial colonists.  contrary to their plans,
> instead of the jews assimilating into the colonists, the colonists
> assimilated into the judeans.  however, the romans won out linguistically
> as the acculturated colonists continued to speak their own dialect of
> Romance, which eventually displaced Aramaic as the vernacular of Judea.
> of course, many people resented this "linguistic imperialism" and refused
> to speak the developing language, which was still derogatorilly called
> something along the lines of "soldier-speak" until the standardizing
> developments (including orthography) and political changes somewhere
> around 1400-1700.
>
Boy, do I wanna wander over to Conculture and discuss this!  The
implications on Ju:dajca's alternative history are enormous:  the temple
cult, the effects on Judaism and Christianity, the Eastern Romans, the
Muslims and later invaders...

Brithenig exists in its own timeline.  This doesn't rule out
co-existence with Ju:dajca, but it doesn't guarentee it either.
Brithenig obeys its own historical trends and Ju:dajca will obey her
own.

If Ju:dajca wasn't standardised until rather late then I suspect there
was a heavy borrowing from native Semitic languages, possibly heavier
than what occured in Spanish, Ladino or Yiddish.


> there are two cases, oblique (derived from genitive) and construct
> (derived from nominative).  this is due to the hebrew/aramaic
> sub/ad/super-strate influence re-interpreting the construction
> (noun) (of noun)  ~  nominative genitive
> as
> (noun of) (noun)  ~  construct oblique
>
survival of the latin genitive is unusual but not unknown, it happens in
Romanian.  Old French had a nominative case from the nominative and an
oblique case from the accusative.


> "even (though)" = _fi:lu:_, from Hebrew _afilu_.
The survival of this word seems to be compulsary :)

- andrew.
--
Andrew Smith, Intheologus                       hobbit@earthlight.co.nz

                      "Piskie, Piskie, say Amen
                   Doon on your knees and up agen."

                    "Presbie, Presbie, dinna bend;
                   Sit ye doon on mon's chief end."
                               - Attributions unknown.