Re: Slovanik, Enamyn, and Slavic slaves

 --- Peter Clark wrote:

> Well, I misunderstood Tom Wier as vaguely hinting that you might want to
> consider the Crimea. So I jumped in to point out that if you were considering
> the Crimea, you would be in for some major tinkering with history. Not that
> there's anything wrong with that; see Brithenig.
>         In fact, I really can't think of any time or place *here* in which a
> population of Slavs could have ever come under Roman domination. While, as
> you later pointed out, the Slavs were not unknown to the Imperials, they
> never came under Roman cultural influence to any significant degree.
That is my impression, too. So history much be altered somehow (but wouldn't it
be anyway, even by the very existence of a new language?). Now, our task is to
keep the changes as minimal as possible (see Brithenig).

> So, in my mind, you have two choices; either make a *there* in which Rome
> managed to extend Dacia north and east up around the Black Sea, or (this
> would be the way I would do it) have your Slovaniks migrate west and south
> into Dacia (modern-day Romania). Maybe they were fleeing the Huns or
> something.
Exactly! Either Moses must come to the mountain, or the mountain must come to
Moses. Or both: some Slavic tribes migrated west (which they actually did,
causing centuries of war with Germanic tribes, who tried to move east with the
same speed), ánd the Empire was a bit stronger and a bit bigger than it
actually was.
Which reminds me, that I must absolutely spice Slovanik with some Germanic
influence, too.
I agree that Dacia seems the most obvious place to use, but I'm still
considering the possibility of "using" Pannonia instead, or some place North or
East from it; this would allow me to make Slovanik Polish-based in the same way
as Brithenig is Welsh-based.
Besides, if I would choose for the region North and/or East of Dacia, this
would also require solutions for other problems: what to do with the Mongols,
the Magyars, the Avars, etc.?

Theoretically, there is a third possibility: the story of some lost Roman
legion, that settled down somewhere on Slavic territory and assimilated part of
the local population. I'm not sure if I like that, though; it comes a bit too
close to stories about alien abduction.

> Anyways, there's a map of the Roman Empire at its peak in 120 AD
> at http://www.dalton.org/groups/rome/RMap.html that can get you started.
Thank you! That was exactly what I needed; I took the liberty to add to it my
favourites.

> Just out of curiousity, does anyone know much about the substratum of
> Romanian? IIRC, Spanish, French, and their ilk have a substratum of Gaulic
> and Iberian Celtic; what about Romanian?
Dacian, I would guess. The Dacian language belongs to those ancient
Indo-European languages that we know only from a few fragments. My book about
the Indo-European languages qualifies it - along with Illyrian, Thracian,
Phrygian, Messapic, and Venetian - as one of the Paleo-Balkan languages, a
group of possibly related languages that cannot be homed elsewhere. Albanian
could be the last surviving member of this group.
Dacian, if I remember correctly, is closest to Thracian.

> > Your Enamyn BTW seems to fit in perfectly. I would be interested to learn
> > more about the language and its conhistory.
> Part of the fun of Enamyn has been integrating it into *here*. My only
> problem so far has been that since I have never visited the Crimea,
Unfortunately, I cannot help you here. I was in Ukraine three times, but never
on the Crimea. My girlfriend spent there a few vacations, though, and she says
it's very beautiful. All I know about it is, that the Crimea is something
completely different from Ukraine.

[snip Ressovsky/Atkins story]

Beautiful, really beautiful! Even knowing that the whole story is just the
product of someone's imagination, it's still difficult not te believe it. I'm
still eager to learn more.
This made me also curious about the language itself. Is it related to any other
language in the region?

> > >         Incidentally, our word "slave" comes from medieval Latin for
> > > "slavic," "sclavus," (which, alas, does not prove an Imperial
> > > connection). It comes from the fact that there was a booming slave trade
> > > that passed through Crimea from the 11th century until the Mongol
> > > invasion in the 13th.
> >
> > That is not entirely true.
>         <snip interesting discussion of Slavic history>
> What part isn't true? Merriam-Webster gave the etymology of "slave" and for
> two centuries the Crimea had the busiest slave ports in all of the Western
> world. (Can't speak for other parts at the time.) I am not saying that the
> Slavs were unknown prior to that time, but rather, the word "slave" is
> directly related to the word "Slav."
Then Mrs. Webster is at least partly wrong, because the truth is that we don't
know anything for certain. Numerious theories exist about the origin of the
name "Slavs"; the most popular and sensible theory supposes a connection with
the word /slovo/ "word". Hence, the Slavs called themselves "those with words",
"those who can speak words", their Germanic neighbours being /Nemci/ "those who
cannot speak". This may sound strange, but if you consider the fact that there
was a huge overlap between Germanic and Slavic territories, it become more
understandable.
The Latin name "Sclaveni" (that has an ancient Greek counterpart too:
"Sthlabenoi") is most probably based on the name the Slavs used for themselves,
appearantly "Slovene" (Polish: "Sl/owianie").
All this not withstanding the fact, that the Slavs indeed had a reputation in
the field of slave trade, by capturing and exporting their own countrymen as
slaves.

Regards,
Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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