Re: Fakelangs

On Thu, 2004-06-24 at 23:02, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
> Poster:       =?iso-8859-1?Q?J=F6rg?= Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
> Subject:      Re: Fakelangs
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Hallo!
>
> On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 15:57:41 +0200,
> Christian Thalmann <cinga@...> wrote:
>
> > Feel free to coin a better word for "fakelangs"...)
> >
> > Reading about conlangs that pretend to be part of Earth's history
> > rather than a con-Earth's, like Dirk's Tepa/Miapimoquitch or Joerg's
> > Albic, has always intrigued me.  I'm tempted to make one of those
> > langs myself, maybe even complete with a web page from an imaginary
> > language institute presenting some gathered data "reconstructed"
> > from old engravings and written accounts dating back a few centuries
> > when actual speakers of the language were still known to exist.
> >
> > The culture has its own religion, and survived past the middle
> > ages as a local minority.  Often pursued as heathens, they
> > sometimes had to keep their identity or at least their beliefs
> > secret.  For that reason, it is not clear when exactly the
> > language and culture died out.  Some fringe scientists even
> > conjecture that a secret society of them might still be around.
> > ;o)
>
> As for Albic, it survives in a few small pockets (amomg others,
> in the western Midlands) until today.  The modern Albic languages
> are of course very different from Old Albic, having had about
> 2500 years to evolve since then.
>
> > For the flavor of the language, I'd like something rough and
> > ancient-looking like what is left of PIE (which strikes me as
> > having lots of guttural sounds and labiovelars).  On the other
> > hand, it should be very non-PIE, predating all other languages in
> > the region (Germany or Switzerland? ;-).  I could find a few
> > German or Swiss-German proper names with uncertain etymologies,
> > and claim that they actually descended from my lang.  =D
>
> That's a good idea.
>
> > I haven't decided much yet, except that I'd like to have a
> > labiovelar consonant series, aspirated /hr hl/, and initial
> > clusters like /xt ft st/.  I've decided that /gwi:n/ should mean
> > "cattle", and that /'hajro/ is either the name of a Goddess or
> > the language itself.
> >
> > Any comments or advice on the premise so far?  What features
> > should I avoid/add to make the language decidedly un-Germanic
> > and un-Celtic, yet realistic?  No trigger stuff please...
> > though ergativity and maybe even vowel harmonies wouldn't be a
> > bad idea.
>
> The conhistory of Albic is based on the assumption that the neolithic
> farmers of central Europe spoke languages related to
> Proto-Indo-European, one of them being the ancestor of Proto-Albic.
> The protolanguage of this family, which is also the common ancestor
> of Albic and Indo-European, was spoken in the area that is now
> the Bay of Odessa (the northwestern part of the Black Sea, to the west
> of Crimea) before the Black Sea Flood (geologists have found out
> that the Black Sea basin was flooded in a large cataclysm some time
> around 5500 BC, when the sea level rose above the Bosporus).
> But there must have been a bewildering variety of languages spoken in
> central Europe before the Neolithic, and some of them may have
> survived in the Alps.  You may want to have a look at Caucasian
> languages for phonological (lots of harsh-sounding consonants,
> including labiovelars, uvulars and ejectives) and grammatical
> (ergativity!!!) inspirations.  The Caucasus is a linguistic
> wonderland, with three apparently unrelated indigenous language
> families in addition to several Indo-European and Turkic languages.
>
> This is great fun, and we could collect these "fakelangs" in a sort
> of net.project.  Kind of like Ill Bethisad, but without the
> alternative history, just linguistic minorities that could have been.
> (Any suggestion for a name?  Perhaps "League of Lost Languages",
> which would abbreviate to a juicy "LLL"?)
>
> Greetings,
>
> Jrg.
>
>
How's that pronounced?
/Kl/?
:-P

Reply