Re: is there a Latin-Chinese conlang?

On Wednesday, January 19, 2005, at 01:49 , Muke Tever wrote:

> Pascal A. Kramm <pkramm@...> wrote:
>> On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 23:01:14 +0200, Rodlox <Rodlox@...> wrote:
>>
>>> out of curiosity, has anyone ever created a Latin-Chinese conlang?
>>
>> No. Because of the large geographical distance it would be highly
>> improbable... but don't let that stop you.
Since when has that put off a conlanger?     :)

> Latin != Roman.
Quite right! It never was at any time just the language of the Romans. It
is called _Latin_ because originally it was the language of the Latins -
one of the several different peoples inhabiting the Italian peninsular in
the 1st millennium BCE. One of the Latin towns was a place called Rome.

It is true that it was through Roman conquest that the Latin language got
spread over a large area of Europe and north Africa; but after the
collapse of the western Empire, it was the western Church that caused
Latin not merely to continue but to spread even further in Europe (tho
north Africa was lost).

But as Muke said, Latin & Roman are not the same.

> Latin was still being used around the time contact with Japan became
> common--I know at least Ioannes Petrus Maffeius was writing about Japan
> (and inflecting Japanese words as Latin, albeit spelling them funny) in
> the sixteenth century[1]--
Yep.

And in the 17th century there was considerable interest in the Chinese
written system shown by people such as Leibniz and Descartes. Leibniz also
outlined a regularized and simplified form of Latin. It would not be a
great leap of the imagination for an alt-history in which a 17th century
philosopher/ polymath took things a stage further and came up with a
conlang which was a synthesis of Chinese and a regularized, simplified
Latin.

> Chinese, which was already known to the
> ancient Romans, wouldn't be too much of a stretch at all.
It certainly was - that's where the Romans got their silk from  :)

I do not think an alt-history in which a Latin-Chinese trade "pdigin"
developed along one of the the silk-routes is particularly improbable. Of
course the Latin concerned would be Vulgar latin, not the Classical of
Cicero & Caesar. It might even have given rise to a creole somewhere maybe
near the border with China (I have come across a theory that
proto-Germanic developed from a IE-creole developed on the amber trade
route to the south of Scandinavia IIRC).

> (And no, I havnt made a Latin-Chinese conlang.
Nor I - but I would not venture to say that no such conlang has been
created, but I do not now of one.

Umm - might be rather fun to "discover" the 'lost Latin Pidgin/ Creole' of
the ancient silk road    ;)

The snag is that to do this one really needs to know what Chinese was like
in the first few centuries CE and, indeed, to create the conlang of our
alt-history philosopher we would need to know what Chinese was like in the
17th century  - and alas I know neither {sigh}

Ray
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"If /ni/ can change into /A/, then practically anything
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