Re: intrinsically dead character of Livagian

BP:
> > > What lingo do kids on the Lífeyjar learn from their Moms?
> >
> >Nibboan, a kind of demotic, koine, vulgar prakrit that differs from Livagian
> >but is always constrained to remain fairly close to Livagian because of
> >Livagian's complete cultural hegemony.
>
> So the relation is somewhat like between Latin and the Medieval Romance
> languages, or Classical/Vernacular Arabic in our time.
Similar except that there's probably less diversity within Nibboan than
in Medieval Romance and Vernacular Arabic.

> Is Nibboan a lineal descendant of Livagian?
That's a matter of debate. My own view is that Livagian is a sanskrit to
Nibboan's prakrit, so they both descend from an ancestral 'Vedic'. But
Livagian has repeatedly had a massive superstrate influence on Nibboan,
to the extent that Nibboan could be seen as having repeatedly been
reborn as a Livagian-based creole.

> Hope you think my Icelandicization of the toponym is in order,
> BTW.  _Eyjar_ (ON ['øyjar] ModIc ['Eijar]) is "islands"; cf. _Orkneyjar_
> (_orkn_ = "killer whale", no less!)
Neat. So it's a kind of folk-etymological blend? I presume Norwegians sailed
on to Livagia on their voyages past Ireland and Biscay, and that that is the
source of the Norse name. Iceland is further from Scandinavia than Livagia
is from Ireland. (Liv is S of Iceland, W of Brittany.) The question then is
whether ['lyhaag] ~ ['lyxaag] would naturally yield Norse _Lífeyjar .

English _Lifay_ looks to me more as though it's come from _Livagia_ than
from _Luekhaag_, which is not so surprising, since Livagian contacts with
Anglosaxon England were not extensive. (Livagians tended to see the
Anglosaxons as barbarian wreckers of Romanian civilization.)
_Livag-_ ought to yield _Lifay_ fairly regularly, I think, though Dan and
Basileus may correct.
OTOH, a direct borrowing from _Luekhaag_ would have yielded _L{y|i}hay_
initially, and the h > f has to be explained, either as early assimilation of
the labiality of the /y/, or as a late cough/rough type change in the period
when non-foot-initial /h/ was being lost. It's rather annoying that the OED
doesn't include toponyms, else this etymological issue would be easy to check.

And does anyone know what the Irish name for Livagia is?

--And.