Sino-Romance language (was Re: yet another romance conlang)

Padraic Brown wrote:

> Ah, but they weren't lost, and they weren't soldiers. The "Book of a
> Myriad Things" of the Sian Empire records for the second century of
> this age: "Antun wang Marsch-tac tuule Ackasch Taischanno-tac
> (Ambassador of Marcus Antonius, king of the Great Western Country)
> came from the Land of the Sunset Plains, offering ivory, rhinoceros
> horns, and tortoise shell, and many strange and cunningly wrought
> goods. In return were given silks, gold, spices and many precious
> gifts." According to Publius Heros Odiosus the eastern Roman
> historiographer, anyway.
Looking in _A History of Rome_ (by Cary and Scullard), I found a couple
references of import:

(1) "A Chinese Historian of the first century A.D. makes reference
to a picture illustrating the siege of a town in Turkestan, in which were
shown a palisade (as of the Roman type) and a scaling party with
interlocked shields over their heads (a Roman 'testudo').  The attackers
may have been old soldiers of Crassus who broke loose from their
captivity in Parthia and took service under the Chinese Emperor."
(p. 620)

This closely parallels my earlier comments on the issue.

(N.B. the Tarim Basin, more or less modern Xinjiang, was a tributary
state of the Han Empire during that time)

(2) "Direct commercial relations between the Roman Empire and China
were hampered by the kings of Parthia, who succeeded for a time in
preventing official contacts between the emperors of the East and of the
West. But in 97 [A.D] a Chinese envoy named Kan-Ying collected information
(though perhaps not at first hand) concerning a country Ta-tsin, in which
we may probably recognize Syria.   This or subsequent reports about this
area especially noted the multitude of its cities, the milestones on its roads,
the low price of gold, the honesty of its merchants, and the high profits with
which their probity was rewarded." (p. 457)

(3) Speaking of the development of transcontinental trade routes
during the reign of the Antonine Emperors:

"Finally, in 166 [A.D.], a deputation of Greek merchants who styled themselves
'ambassadors' from the emperor 'An-Tun' (M. Aurelius Antoninus) but
were probably private merchants, visited the courtof the emperor Huan-ti
at Loyang (on the Hwang-ho, Yellow River) and opened up negotiations
for a regular overseas trade between the Mediterranean lands and China."
(p. 457)

So the answer appears to be: yes, there very well could have developed
some Sino-Romance language, almost certainly through the settlement of the
Roman soldiers in China and not through trade, since the traders were mostly
Greeks anyways. Although it seems to me that this community would also have
been of limited scope, and more likely than not would have been assimilated
back into mainstream Han culture before long.  If it survived, I surmise it would
have undergone heavy borrowing of Han cultural and governmental terms, and
the original Latin element might be as small as the original Albanian element in
modern Albanian (~8%).  Adstrate influence of Han Chinese could also contribute
to atrophying of the inflectional system that was probably occurring, and maybe
the addition of tones (an interesting idea to think about!) and fricative phonemes
that did not exist in 1st century BC Latin (the time of Crassus).


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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
AIM: Deuterotom ICQ: 4315704
<http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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