Re: CHAT: Punic sources

David Stokes, on Mon Dec 11, 2000, 2:43pm
wrote:

>Subject: Punic sources
>I've been thinking about a alt-history where Hannibal wins the wars
>against the Romans and Carthage, not Rome, becomes the dominant power of
>the Mediterranean. Lots of interesting con-lang possibilities here. For
>instance, what is the language of a conquered Rome ? After a little time
>perhaps something Punic, with Latin influences, like real-world French
>came from Latin with Gaulish influences.
Hello David,

Your idea is quite interesting. I don't know anything about Punic language,
except, of course, that it was a Semithic one. But perhaps it would be of
some help to point you that the latinization of Western Europe was certainly
not due to the Roman Empire in itself, but to the Church (as late as in
Charlemagne times, people in France were still divided between those who
spoke romance and Francic languages, an this is why modern French is much
more influenced by germanic than by Celtic languages). Political domination
as conceived in ancient times -and perhaps more so to Cartaghinians than
to Romans- certainly did not need linguistic change. If I would develop
a project like yours, I would think about some kind of strong ideology and/or
organization with a similar role to the Church, in order to explain the
Punification (argh...) of the Mediterraneum.

Hope this helps more than bothers,

Luís Henrique




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