Re: imagining language(s)

In a message dated 2000/05/07 05:51:47 AM, Ray Brown continues with my idea
of an alternative militantly democratic Greco-Hellenic world:

>Would the Federation have left it at that or gone on into Persia to smash
>the Empire at its heart?
>
    _Anabasis_ on a large scale, eh? Harbinging shades of the Gulf War, hehe?

>>>Now if the Carthaginians had won the 'Punic Wars', things would have _very_
>>>different.  Latin would have developed no literary form and fallen into
>>>oblivion together with the Roman alphabet.  <SNIP> Would the Phoenicians/
>>>Carthaginians have had the same high regard for the Greeks as the Romans
>>did?  >I think it less likely.
>>
>>    And what if the hearts, minds & military might of Rome had backed Greece
>>(in another words, after Greece took over Rome, the Romans became "equal
>>partners" in spreading a Greco-Roman democracy)?
>
>I can't see any way this would happen.  When the Romans began their
>life-and-death struggles with the Carthaginians, they were merely the
>masters of Italy & still had a Republican government.  It was not till they
>started defeating the Carthaginians that they became an imperial power, by
>which time they'd probably see the Hellenic Federation as a threat also.
>
>But if, as I imagined above, the Hellenic Federation included the Greeks of
>southern Italy, then Rome would not have become masters of Italy.  The
>small, fledging republic of Rome would've been brought into the Federation
>& become hellenized; maybe, as a republic, it would join willingly as
>protection against the Etruscans to the north, whom the Federation would
>defeat & also hellenize. Thus, Latin never be developed as literary
>language.   The struggle for supremacy in the Med would then be between the
>Hellenic Federation and the Carthaginians.
>
>If the Federation defeated the Carthaginians, then we'd get the Greek
>language & alphabet spread around the Mediterranean & the Levant.  We'd
>have no Romance languages - but we might have separate languages >descended
from ancient (Athenian) Greek.
>
>Whether the Federation could maintain its democratic polity after becoming
>the imperial power in the Med, is IMO questionable.  Certainly the Roman
>republic constitution proved woefully inadequate and degenerated into civil
>war before the system of Emperors with powerful centralized government
>emerged.   But that's another matter.
>
>Such a Hellenic Federation, it would seem to me, would be less likely to be
>interested in northern Gaul or Britain than the Romans were, so Gallic
>could've survived in northern Gaul (tho I think the English model would
>suggest that it eventually the Frankish German dialect would've established
>itself there).
>
    WoWzA... kinda what I was thinking but didn't articulate.

><ok, I am making this as
>>though Greece was like some weird proto-USA>  ;)
>
>Maybe.
>
>>    Just imagining...
>
>Why not?  That's exactly what Andrew did as he created Brithenig - and many
>others have done & do the same.  It's one way of creating a scenario for a
>conlang.  What language(s), e.g., would be spoken in modern Spain if it had
>once been part of the Hellenic Democratic Federation?
    A Greco-Celtiberian language?  "glossa Greco-Celtiberi"? That would be
interesting to see if someone(s) can come up with conlang based on this
intriguing premise!!!

    zHANg