Re: Whatever happened to Cosseran?

On Thu, 9 Nov 2000, Dan Jones wrote:

>Padraic Brown wrote:
>
>> >In the recent spate of Romance-Conlanging, I decided to dust off
>> my own one,
>> >Cosseran. Originally based on Cossyra (tiny island in the
>> Mediterranean), it
>> >has now migrated to the Massif Central. Cosseran has always been quite
>> >Occitan, so I went the whole hog and now it has found a home in
>> Ill Bethisad
>> >(Brithenig Universe)- subject to ratification by the powers that be.
>> >
>> >*There* we've decided that the Occitan dialects are thriving in
>> the south of
>> >France, but have no concrete reason.
>>
>> Actually there is. French history isn't well known to me, but it's
>> my understanding that Standard French became the national language
>> of modern France only after the Revolution and whatever policies
>> were put in place thereafter. Something *there* happened differently
>> in France such that the Revolution was either postponed or mitigated.
>> These policies never came to anything and all those revolutionary
>> policies either never happened or died very quickly without anyone
>> ever noticing their existence.
>
>I can't see any way of avoiding the French Revolution at that time. I know
>quite a bit about French history and the Revolution was something of an
>inevitability. The easiest changes to make in history are those which hinge
>on one person, Napoleon for example. Since France *there* is ruled by a
Having seen a documentary on N last night, removing him might clear
up some of the problems that would otherwise preclude the France that
_does_ exist *there*. Or a Nlike charcter might fill the vacuum, only
not quite as expansively.

>first consul, I assume that Napoleon came to power, so the Revolution must
>have taken place otherwise he never would have come to power at that time,
>because he played on the nationalistic sentiments created after the
>Revolution, with all it's talk of "la république une et indivisible". If we
>want to have a republican France and more than that, a unified Italy, we
>must have the 1789 revolution. We can't just say "something different
>happened". Besides, an independent Provence is a really cool idea. I presume
>that much of this was contrived to avoid the invention of decimalisation?
What we _need_ is for someone who knows *here*'s French history to
look at what *there*'s France is like and figure out how it happened.
Until someone does, all we really _can_ say is "something different
happened"!

Agreed about the independant Provence idea.

Nondecimalisation? In part, yes. The US was already on it's way
to decimalisation (of the money only) by 1789; and definitely
had it in 1792 while the French still had sous and the rest. It
may not have swayed France into rampant decimal reform; but I'd
like to think we had a little influence there. Though in the end,
it's just going to be a matter of *there*'s postrevolutionary
France _not_ adopting measures reform, linguistic hegemony, and
the rest.

>Yes they do:
>onic, dòic, treic, quatoric, quenic, seishic (or seic), dieic-sett,
>dieic-óic, dieic-nou, vint
>/onS/, /dOiS/, /trejS/, /'kwatorS/, /kwenS/, /sejSiS/ (/sejS/),  /djeS'set/,
>/djeS'OjS/, /djeS'n@u/, /vInt/
>
How do they say merci? :)

>
>> >-----------------------------------------------------------
>> >cuebra um deroát a zi sem,
>> >Break a piece of wood and I am there,
>> >                                            cuoca um perro tu me meitera
>> >  Dan Jones                         Lift a rock and you will find me
>>
>> My goodness but you do get around, Dan!
>
>Student rail cards, Padraic.
Ah. That would explain rather a lot. So, British Rail leave no
stone unturned, eh?

Padraic.