There's always room for more (was Re: Ebb and flow (was Re: Naisek Pages Updated))

Hallo!

On Mon, 4 Aug 2008 12:07:21 +0100, R A Brown wrote:

> andrew wrote:
> > On Thu, 31 Jul 2008, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> [snip]
> >> Sure.  Making a romlang now is not the same as making a
> >> romlang in '96 (or whenever Andrew came up with Brithenig).
> >> Yet, the possibilities are not entirely exhausted, even if
> >> many of the more plausible scenarii such as Britanno-Romance
> >> or Germano-Romance have been taken.
> >>
>
> But just because a scenario has been 'taken' it does not mean, surely,
> that no one else can use the same scenario. Andrew has, more than once,
> asked me to show what I would do with Britanno-Romance. Maybe one day I
> will do this - *not* as a rival to Brithenig, which is firmly embedded
> now into the Bethisad shared-world project - but as an alternative
> possible development (obviously in an alternative universe both to
> *here* and to Bethisad).
Sure.  We are not in auxland :)  There is always room for more,
including things that have already been done - you can always
find another, equally legitimate, way of doing it differently.

For instance, I have found that Germanech was neither the only
nor even the first Germano-Romance conlang, but does that lessen
its artistic value?  Probably not.

What regards Ill Bethisad, I did indeed consider contributing
Germanech to it, but I later felt otherwise, and I decided to
integrate it into the framework of the League of Lost Languages,
as a tiny minority in a once-Roman part of Germany, either west
of the Rhine (as the FrathWiki page currently says) or south of
the Danube (which I now consider more likely, considering the
sound changes the language has undergone).  The LLL world could
as well have a Britanno-Romance language, which would not be
the same as Brithenig (though it would probably be similar to
it in several points).

I also have a modern Continental Celtic language on the back
burner, which will be very, very different from Daniel Jones'
Arvorec (and is also spoken in a different location as well
as in a different world - namely the LLL world again).  While
I think that Arvorec is a good conlang, I ask myself about it,
"Why should a modern Continental Celtic language look like an
Insular Celtic one?"  My Continental Celtic language, as for
now named "Camonic", will be not particularly similar to
Insular Celtic.

> [snip]
>
> > My reluctance to making changes to Brithenig is that it is embedded into
> > the Bethisad shared-world project.  That's a lot of work, and a big
> > surprise to foist on anyone!
>
> It is indeed, and would probably lead a 'Bethisad' schism. My own view
> is that Brithenig is now truly embedded into the Bethisad project it is
> better to leave it as it is. If you really want to make significant
> changes to Brithenig it would, in my opinion, be better to produce a
> different conlang as an _alternative_ to Brithenig - as mine would be if
> I ever get around to working on it - in a different conculture to
> Bethisad (for alternative histories of western Europe since the Roman
> period must be truly legion!    :)
Yes.  It is always difficult to make major changes to the
foundations of a conworld, and if it is a shared conworld, the
problems are magnified because the changes affect the contributions
of other people.

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