Re: Alternative histories and paralele universes

On Sun, 3 Jan 1999, Hawksinger wrote:

> Carlos Thompson wrote:
> >=20
> > For my project Hangkerim I was thinking in an alternative history but t=
hen I
> > wonder at what extend it would be compatible with other alternative his=
tories
> > like those of the Chomros and the Tokana.
[snip]

> Sounds like an interesting project!  But I must admit to wondering
> how well it would work.  Even with the best of intentions, I suspect
> most of us are rather jealous of our creations.  There are a few
> concultures both my Nowans and T=F4lte could work with but probably
> not most.
I've been thinking/hoping to co-locate my Tungusic conlang (Sayat *) with
others. In a sense, I guess, it's partially due to an urge to combat the
fragmentation and isolation of the whole conlang scene, which I think has
been discussed a bit here before -- the way that everyone works on
developing their own languages & cultures, which aren't ever really
grappled with by anyone else.  I'm not sure that saying speakers of
conlang X live in the same imaginary universe as those of conlang Y is
much of a contribution to dialogue, but it seems to offer some weird
emotional satisfaction to me.

Although I've borrowed one word already from Tokana to Sayat ("kemet"), I
don't think it would make any sense to say the two con-cultures exist in
the same "universe" -- Sayat is definitely based (materially, I mean) on
"real-world" languages and situated in our own historical timeline, while
Tokana isn't.  I'm still torn between dumping the Sayat on Sakhalin or on
Kamchatka (one of the larger Kuriles has been tempting, but ultimately is
too small and barren), but in either case it joins the ranks of North
Pacific conlangs (Nowan and Boreanesian off the top of my head, and there
are others, too, aren't there?). =20

In any case, I'd be very glad to share an alternate "Earth, 1999" that has
the same laws of physics and only (relatively) locally divergent history.
Just give me a good-sized chunk of land where the reindeer can roam.

* Previous and alternate drafts of Sayat often had the language as a
mishmash of Evenki and Chukchi, spoken by the mutant parthenogenetic
descendants of UFO-abducted Valley girls on a distant planet, with a Texan
accent.  I now realize that's just silly, and _real_ Sayat is just a plain
old North Tungusic language, with good chunks of vocabulary borrowed from
its 'Hyperborean' neighbors... oh, and a few morphological thingamajigs...
the syntax has diverged a bit too... well, whatever...

Kenji Schwarz