Re: Brithenig

At 11:45 03.4.2000 -0400, John Cowan wrote:
>BP Jonsson wrote:
>
> > Jón Kávan hinn blóðugi skrifaði:
>
>"John Cowan has bloody-well written"?  "John Cowan, the bloody, has written"?
The latter, i.e. a translation of _Sanguinarius_ (how did you acquire that
_cognomen_, BTW?)  This _hinn_ is the preposed version of the definite
article _-inn_, which is mostly used in the construction Proper_noun +
article + adjective, but also differentiate e.g. _hið Hvíta Húsið_ from the
white house across the street.  In ON it often differed from the pronoun
(corresponding to German _jener_) by lacking the initial _h_.  In modern
Icelandic the only difference is that the Nom/Acc neuter Sg. is _hið_ in
the article and _hitt_ in the pronoun (_(h)it_ vs. _hitt_ in ON.)  It is
*not* used when the modifier isn't an adjective, so Philip the Goth is
_Fílipús Gauti_ -- Goths of Sweden being Gautar rather than Gotar.

> > Or perhaps Lyonesse is still above sea and Brythonic there!
>
>An interesting thought, but I think our maps make it impossible.
Must be something wrong with those maps, then! ;-)

> > Could the Isle of Man possibly be speaking a descendant of Old Norse in the
> > Brightenig universe?  As it happens I have a sketch of such a lang
> > (Q-Celtic-influenced!) lying around.  Of course I would be delighted if
> > Maneyx could win citizenship in the Brightenig universe.  I guess that is
> > up to Andrés Smiðr to decide...
>
>A fine idea IMHO.  Norse on Man, Irish in Ireland, Scots and Scots Gaelic in
>Scotland, English in England, Brithenig in Kemr proper, Kernu in Cornwall and
>Brittany, Arvorec in the Channel Islands.  Also English, Scots, Brithenig,
>Pennsylvaanisch, and Swedish (not much) in the North American League.
Heh!  In *my* conhistory the Norse settlement of Vínland was more
successful.  In fact _Tanasiq_ is the Lingua Franca through most of the
northern part of Vinlandia, although most people at home speak various
native languages.  The Iroquois were just as imperialist there as Here,
though, so neither the Norse, nor the English or French were quite as
successful There.  (There are other differences too: the main point of
divergence is the battle of  The point of divergence is the battle of
Niniveh in 627, which the Persians, rather than the Byzantines, win.  As a
consequence : the Arabs do *not* defeat Persia at Nehavend in 642.  The
Arab conquest is limited to North Africa, and the strong Persian influence
on Arabic and Islamic culture is replaced by a Egyptian-Coptic
one.  Eventually most of Africa outside Ethiopia is Islamized.  European
colonization of Africa becomes a much smaller affair than in our world, but
Arabs reach al-Maghreb al-Akbar shortly after the Norse reach the northern
New World.  The result is a Mayan-speaking Sunnite empire in Mesoamerica
(which of course not is so called There) and a Quechua-speaking Shi'ite
empire in the Andean are.  Constantinople does eventually fall to the
Turks, but instead of turning the Hagia Sophia into a Mosque they install a
sapling of the Adur Bursen-Mihr there!  OTOH all of Italy south of Rome
remains Greek until modern times, and there is a Basileus at Syracusa.  &c,
&c.)

>"Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr' over the short sea, had passencore
>rearrived
>from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to
>wielderfight his penisolate war [...]."
>         -- James Joyce, _Finnegans Wake_ 3:4-6

         :-)





/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson  <mailto:bpj@...>bpj@netg.se
<mailto:melroch@...>melroch@my-deja.com
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