Re: OT: Ill Bethisad

 --- Mat McVeagh skrzypszy:

> LOL - thing is, Russia *did* lose that war anyway. I've just been reading
> about it in a book about the Japanese secret services. But it didn't become
> all Nipponified or Buddhist. There is no chance of that - most of Siberia
> and certainly all of European Russia was heavily under the influence of
> white, Christian and western or quasi-western tendencies.
Agreed. See my other post. BTW Sorry for the empty message; I accidentally
pushed the wrong button.

> If I ever get involved with Ill Bethisad (no promises) bagsy I do Siberia.
> It's one of my fave parts of the world; I guess I would do a Siberian
> language from yet another language family.
What family? Something related to Ket or Yukagir perhaps, but spoken by three
million people? Or would it be the same kind of ethnic mix the way it is now?
If I would have to fill up Siberia, I would probably do two things:
- shift the Hattic republic a bit to the right, behind the Ural;
- revive Tocharian (perhaps by inventing some form of "Modern Tocharian").

Explanation: the Hattic Republic is the fictional background of my conlangs
Hattic and Askaic, which belong to a family of kentum-type Indo-European
languages that fills the gap between Germanic and Tocharian. I like Tocharian a
lot, so any similarity is NOT coindicental :)
And the Tocharians: instead of being swallowed by the Uygurs, they just moved
north into Siberia, which allowed them to survive the Golden Horde).

> And I repeat what I put in another post - it would be even more interesting
> - for me at least - if Russia did not have such a huge advance into Siberia
> beginning in the 16th century. Maybe a little later, but with enough time
> for other things to develop there (Tatars, Mongols, Chinese, Manchus,
> Japanese). That territory was not Russia and had nothing to do with Russia
> until they conquered it then, much like Europe's conquest of the Americas.
> They hadn't even overcome the Tatar khanate of Kazan until shortly before
> the conquest of Siberia.
I would be a warm defendant of a less Russified Siberia. Which of course does
not mean, that Russia never conquered it. It's just that national consciousness
should have been preserved better *there* than it has *here*.

Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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