Re: Languages in fiction: The Triune Monarchy

Thomas Leigh scripsit:

> Oh yeah... I think I vaguely remember you talking about Piat here a
> couple of years back. What kind of languages is it? Do you  have
> anything on line or anything you could post here? I'd be curious to see.
Right now it's just a phonology.

> What do you suppose it would be like? Do you think it would have changed
> a lot from "Wulfilan" Gothic, or do you think it would be pretty
> conservative? Would it have picked up a lot of Slavic and/or Romance
> loanwords, given where it's spoken?
Ya got me there.  It might be more like Crimean Gothic, which is not a
direct descendant of Wulfila's.

> Aha, so there would be another Turkic language spoken in Europe besides
> Turkish? Would you happen to know -- since you're the fount of all
> knowledge ;) -- is there any other name by which these Turkic-speaking
> Avars were known? Or would you have any idea which modern Turkic
> languages would be closest to Avar?
We don't even know for sure if the Avars spoke a Turkic or a Mongolian
language, it turns out.  Typically for horse-barbarian empires, we know
most about them when they were in decline.

http://www.fernweb.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/mf/avars.htm says Mongolian, but
is a handy summary of the Avars from their rise to their fall.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avars is part of Wikipedia, a highly
respected resource; it suggests tentatively that the two groups called
Avars were actually the same.

>  > Davidson borrowed Ruritania from Anthony Hope's famous romances
>  > _The Prisoner of Zenda_ and its lesser-known sequel _Rupert of
>  > Hentzau_. They speak German, though their onomastics show that they
>  > have not always done so.
>
> Which begs the questions of (a) how did they end up speaking German, (b)
>    how different would a variety of German spoken so far away from the
> other lands where German is spoken be from the rest of German?
I think it was Davidson who put them so far east.  In Hope's work,
Ruritania is no more than a day's train ride from Zenda in early-20th-century
conditions, and the implication is that it is a sort of Luxemburg, a
survivor of the HRE that has become fully independent for whatever reason.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_