Re: Help! (Dragons)

* James Comer said on 2005-09-03 21:35:52 +0200
> The ancestors of the Urasti, a people dwelling in a wealthy mercantile
> city-state, and the Yorayash, human tribes living in symbiosis with giant
> carnivorous lizards, last spoke a common language between five hundred and
> a thousand years ago.  I want to use Urasti as the basis for conlanging a
> dialect for the Yorayash, but am not sure *how* different dialects should
> be after such a time.
500 to a 1000 years isn't really that much. A thousand years ago,
Norsemen could comfortably speak with their cousins in what is now known
as England. Now, using English vs. any of its nearest realtives as a
gauge is really not the smartest thing one can do since English is just
plain weird. Spanish versus Italian maybe, or French (langue d'oil) versus
Langue d'oc, or Dutch versus High German... you get the idea.

Potentially quite a bit of change in pronunciation, not so much in words
and (simple) grammar. If the Yorayash speakers have been isolated, you
might get the Icelandic phenomenon: sound-changed from the ancestor
tongue but not that much of a grammar-change. If not you end up with
"Scandinavian", mutually intelligible with a little effort from all
parties involved.


t.