Re: Nur-ellen in the world of Brithenig

Me govanen!

Padraic Brown tetent:
>
> On Fri, 8 Sep 2000, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>
> Yscreus il Ioergs Rhimer:
> /i'skrews i:'jo(W)Erg hri'mer/
>
> >What language is it labelled in?  The names are often quite different
> >from those found on Andrew's pages.
>
> Ah. You've discovered the fundamental difference in modern Kemr;
> i.e., the language divide. It's labelled in Kerno, spoken in the
> southern Province of Dunein / Y Rheion Padguar lor Dunor (for the
> Nationalists).
I guessed that.  I am well informed about the matter.

> >Another question: what sizes are the cities of Kemr?  I guess that
> >Castreleon is around 500,000 or 600,000, which seems right to me for the
> >capital of a country numbering 4 million.  Aberddui would then count
> >some 300,000, with Esca and Tafrobl being around 200,000.
>
> Sounds about right to me.
John apparenly says that Castreleon is bigger (about 900,000), so
Aberddui and Esca may be slightly bigger (400,000 and 300,000,
respectively) as well.  But keep Tafrobl at 200,000 or only slightly
more, it seems just right to me.  My idea is that Tafrobl is the fourth
largest city of Kemr.

> >> It will need updating, as there are now llo Ylyl to deal with. Let me
> >> know where they are with respect to *here* and *there*'s geography!
> >
> >The city of Tafrobl is in northern Illemarcca (to use the form on your
> >map) on the river Trent, just northeast of the second "l" of
> >"Illemarcca" on your map.
>
> That's Bilemarcca (the "B" didn't come out too well apparently), or
> Border March.
What is the meaning of the dashed line running across the middle of
Bilemarcca?
It seems to represent some kind of political subdivision of the
province, but there are no labels on the map.  The northern part could
indeed be "Pays d'Ylyl" or something like that, though in that case the
line should rather slope towards the south-east.

> Which bank is Tafrobl on, and is that the oldest form of the town's
> name?
It is on the eastern bank of the river, I think, where Great Haywood is
*here*.  Of course, the modern city extends to the west bank as well, as
modern cities usually do unless there is a political boundary in the
middle of the river preventing it from sprawling to the other side.

The oldest form of the name is indeed what it is called today:
[tavrob@l].
The name has not changed much during the last 2000 years at least.
Note that Tolkien gives the Sindarin form (which is basically the form
used just prior to the Celtic invasion) as _Tavrobel_.  I'd say the
Kerno name is just the same as the name used in Nur-ellen and Brithenig,
adapted to the Kerno orthography.  (Unless the Kernow are so smug to
translate it - it means "forest town" - just to show that they have a
better understanding of Nur-ellen than the Brithenig-speakers ;-))

> >This is where the river intersects the 2-degree meridian.  Of the
> >200,000 citizens of Tafrobl, almost one half are Ylyl.
>
> I think I should be able to find that.
>
> > [distribution of Elves in Kemr; Picts]
>
> Then queue up!
I doubt that the proposal has a good chance to get very far with only
about 1000 speakers, most of them not really native.  The situation of
Pictish in Kemr is more like that of Cornish *here* - it is a
practically dead language, as good as abandoned for practical purposes,
but maintained for tradition, and so much of the language is lost that
modern Pictish poets (and poetry is indeed the chief usage of the
language) constantly have to make up words - which is much harder than
with Cornish, where you can always reconstruct from the Welsh and Breton
cognates, while Pictish is an isolate.  Some linguists claim that it is
related to Basque, but if it is, it is too remote to establish sound
laws.  (Other linguists are busy trying linking it to Afro-Asiaic, and
some claim that it is a mixed language composed of Afro-Asiatic, Iberian
and other ingredients, with a heavy Quendian superstratum influence.)

I have not yet a good idea what Pictish looks like, but I think it ought
to have initial consonant mutations, VSO word order, largely
agglutinative morphology with ergative case marking, and triconsonantal
roots.  (Hey, that's likely to become great fun!)  It is *not* related
to Nur-ellen though it has borrowed cultural terms (such as names of
metals) from earlier Quendian languages.  And yes, some Pictish words
could be recognizably similar to their counterparts in - guess what? -
Khuzdul.

> Any other town names and locations?
There are certainly several smaller towns and villages which have
Nur-ellen names, but I haven't come up with any yet.  I'll have to
invest some work in Tafrobl and its surroundings.

Syld,
Jörg.