Re: A sketch of Old Albic

Hallo!

On Tue, 22 Jun 2004 11:53:32 +0100,
Barbara Barrett <barbarabarrett@...> wrote:

> >Jörg Jotted;
You seem to have an entire alphabet of synonyms for "say" or "write"
such that you can always alliterate with the name ;-)

> >This is my 400th post to CONLANG; and I think this jubilee ought to be
> >celebrated.  Thus, I present you a sketch of my current main conlang,
> >Old Albic. <snip>
> >Old Albic (OA) is the oldest Albic language attested in writing.
> >The language was spoken in southern Britain prior to the Celtic
> >invasions.  This sketch describes the classical language as
> >it was spoken and written in the heyday of the Albic civilization
> >in the 6th century BC.  The native term for the standard language
> >is _Tañ Tach (Is Elbis)_, "proper language (of the Elves)".
>
> Barbara Bubbles;
> Wonderful stuff Jörg! I really enjoy this type of post and the insight it
> gives.
Thank you!  I am delighted that you enjoy it.

> Your paragraph about the conculture has me wishing you'd provide more
> information about the Albic civilisation. How do the culture and language
> intermesh for example?
OK, here you are.

One way to put it is to say that the Albic people are humans who
behave quite much like Tolkien's Elves.  They are also the historical
grain of truth in the Germanic and Celtic tradition of elves,
which is why I call them "Elves".  The Albic civilisation is also what
the Greek tradition of Hyperborea is based on, and might even
have been Plato's Atlantis.

The Elves believe that humanity exists for a divine purpose, namely to
create novel things and thus enrich the world.  The most highly
esteemed individuals in Old Albic society thus were artists,
craftspeople, scholars and engineers rather than warriors.
Nevertheless, farmers and warriors were respected professions as well,
as they provided vital services to the society, namely, food and raw
materials in case of the former, and defense in case of the latter.

Old Albic society was egalitarian and democratic (and unlike Athens,
without the black spot of slavery), a loose-knit confederation of
autonomous small polities.  It was based on the belief that in order
to maximally deploy their creativity as it was their Purpose,
people had to be free.  There was no "Elvish empire" or anything
like that.  At least in classical times, they did not wage war among
themselves, though; the warriors' job was mainly to guard the
shores and the seas around Britain against pirates and barbarian
invasion attempts which occured from time to time.  Compared to the
people of mainland northwestern Europe, the Elves were quite
wealthy, which attracted attempts to share some of their wealth
by force.

I know little yet about their religion, but I think it was quite much
like the "Eru + Valar" model of the _Silmarillion_.  There was a supreme
God, and several ranks of spiritual beings, ranging from archangels
to the lowliest spirits of nature.  Elves live in deep respect for
Nature and seek to exist in harmony with it.  An important issue
is sustainability - never take more from Nature than what can grow
back.  Elves also are more or less vegetarians (though they drink
milk and eat eggs and cheese), and the word `meat-eater' (I haven't
yet found out what the actual Old Albic word for `meat' is) can be
roughly translated as `barbarian'.

Elvish astronomy was highly developed.  They used a lunisolar calendar
based on the Metonic cycle (19 years = 235 months), and they had found
out that Mercury and Venus orbit the Sun rather than the Earth.
Some of their scholars argued that *all* planets orbit the Sun,
and that the Earth is a planet - more than 200 years before
Aristarchos of Samos.  The Elves also were great navigators,
sailing virtually the entire northern Atlantic and establishing
tradeposts along the Atlantic shores from Norway to western Africa
and from Newfoundland to Brazil.

The Elvish philosophy of nature closely resembles what is now known
as "morphic field theory".  Each living being has a soul, and even
inanimate objects have some sort of form-giving entity, and all these
entities we would today call "fields" are in resonance with each other
- the more similar two objects are, the stronger is the resonance
between them.

The origin of the Elves: according to their mythology, they came to
Britain from the east and arrived in the year 1823 BCE.  This date is
of course entirely legendary, but it is very likely that the ancestors
of the Elves, or rather the group from which they inherited the
language, indeed came to Britain at the dawn of the Bronze Age.  No
doubt, these immigrants, who might have been the "Bell Beaker" people,
mingled with groups that were already there.  The Elvish mythology
speaks of a lush and fertile lost homeland in the east on the shore of
a great lake which was drowned beneath the sea in a great cataclysm,
sending the ancestors of the Elves (among other peoples) on their long
march westward.  This myth probably points at the Black Sea Flood
that occured around 5500 BCE, drowning large stretches of fertile land
along the northern shore of the Black Sea.  Such an eastern homeland
is also supported by linguistic evidence, as the Albic language family
appears to be distantly related to Indo-European.

This great civilization eventually declined and was shattered by
repeated violent incursions of Celtic tribes around 500 BC.
More and more Elvish communities were absorbed by the now-dominant
Celts, and the Albic dialect continuum was reduced to several
isolated pockets of dialects which developed into separate languages.
The trade colonies along the Atlantic shores were left to fend for
themselves, and most were either abandoned or absorbed by the local
populations.

What regards the intermesh of language and culture, first I must say
that I don't agree with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.  Nevertheless,
there will be of course various words and expressions (yet to be worked
out; the vocabulary is still severely lacking) that are conditioned
by the Albic cultural tradition.  I already have mentioned the usage
of `meat-eater' = `barbarian'.  And almost from the start of the
project, I found that a fluid-S argument marking pattern (see my
post in the "Lexicalising Ergativity" thread) just seems right
for them.

What ultimately drives the Albic project is an attempt to create
a language and culture that embodies my personal taste and ideals.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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