Re: Nur-ellen universes

Me govanen!

John Cowan wrote:
>
> On Sun, 27 Aug 2000, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>
> > Certainly!  In any scenario where Tolkien's fiction is fact, it seems
> > plausible that the Elves have declined during all that time, having
> > become almost indistinguishable from normal humans.
>
> Tolkien's own speculation is that (after cycles and cycles of reincarnation)
> the Elves had become almost completely etherealized, and invisible
> to mortal eyes most of the time.
In the fan fiction story which inspired me to design the language this
was definitely not the case: the Elves in that story still looked like
they look in LotR.  And they have DEFINITELY not become ethereal and
invisible in the "realistic" conhistory of the language, which is also
the one I suggested for the Brithenig universe.  Besides, I doubt that
ethereal elves would still have need for a language like that.  So, in
any world where (a) Tolkien's books are real history and (b) Elves have
become ethereal, Nur-ellen is either not spoken at all, or, if it is
spoken there, by someone else.

> > Nur-ellen *there* certainly has a different set of borrowings, including
> > many from Brithenig.  How parallel is the history of continental Europe
> > *there*?  Was there a Nazi Germany, for instance?
>
> We don't really know.  There were First and Second World Wars in Europe,
> but we don't know who fought in them.  There is also a European Union
> at the present time.  Feel free to speculate.
A European Union (or something similar) is likely to happen in just
about any timeline where the people in Europe eventually get tired of
having their subcontinent ransacked by a major war every few decades.

Syld,
Joerg.