Re: eskribiw

Roger Mills wrote:

> Isaac Penzev wrote:
>
> > This is a heavily Arabicized Ibero-Romance lang from an alternative
> > timelin
> >  - a kind of attempt to imagine how Spanish (together with Portuguese,
> > Galic
> > ian etc.) could look if there were no Reconquista, and the Iberian
> > Peninsula
> > were still in the Islamic cultural space.
>
> The entire peninsula?? That _would be_ a change!
Yes, this is surely a totally different world ;) I have not yet thought
about much details, but the general early conhistory goes like that:

The point of divergence (is it a coorect term?) is the Battle of Poitiers.
The Franks won *here*, but *lost* there. Loire and Rhone rivers became a
kind of demarkation line. So, not only the Iberian Peninsula, but Aquitaine
and Provence were under Muslims for a while. A kind of Reconquista happened
in 9-12th cc. CE on *those* lands. Also Basques were able to gain back some
territories. Catholic rulers had no enough strength to gain back the whole
Iberian P., since there were no Charlemagne's Empire. Rome (and Pope)
remained under Byzantine control, England probably remained faithful to the
Celtic rite etc. OTOH, Arabs/Moors at first had no strength, and later no
desire to go further. A kind of equilibrium was reached in 12th c. CE

> Hmm, if no
> Reconquista/Reyes Cat?licos, maybe no Columbus!? Or did he sail under the
> auspices of the Moorish rulers, or perhaps of Genoa after all?
There was an figure equivalent to Columbus (I need to figure his name), and
he sailed as an Andaluzian merchant. For brevity sake, the Ajami timeline
world is predominantly Islamic, except of most Europe, and a few colonies or
ex-colonies in here's Canada, some parts of Africa etc.

> More details, please-- when you can.  What's the origin of "Ajami(ya)"?
I supposed that a kind of inertia in development would produce changes
similar to early stages of Ibero-Romance. I'm not a big specialist in
Romlangs history, so I take Modern Spanish grammar, Middle Spanish
pronunciation, dilute it with some Portuguese, replace Latinisms with
Arabisms when I found them borrowed in Farsi, Turkic, Malay, Swahili, and
enjoy the meal.

As for the name: In English I would spell it |Ajami| for short. The original
name is:
- in Arabic script: العجميه
- in Latin practical transcription I'm going to use here to be be e-mail
friendly: el-³Ajamiya
- in CXS: [el6Z6"mij6], or, in lofty style [?el?\6Z6"mijj6] (el is the
definite article, -iya is a nisba adjective suffix in feminine).
It comes from Arabic word |³ajam| 'non-Arab'.

> > The word _eskribiw_ is written in Ajami this way (vowel signs omitted):
> > اسكريبيو
>
> How's it pronounced? like modern "escribi?", or [eskri'bju]??
[eskri"Biw]


====================
Chris Bates wrote:

> The arabs never did controls the whole peninsular did they? I'm pretty
> sure parts of northern Spain escaped unscathed...
You are right, but Ajami is spoken in a totally different world.


=====================
Rodlox wrote:


> >and given that Islamic
> >Spain was more tolerant of free-thinkers and plurality of religions
I agree. Indeed, that was one of the reasons to invent this alternative
timeline.

-- Yitzik