>
>Quoting Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:
>
> > Thomas Wier wrote:
> > >
> > > > There seems to be some evidence that for speakers of a language,
>there
> > >is
> > > > some other specific language that all foreign words are assumed to
>be
> > >in.
> > > > For English, it's French.
> > > >
> > > > A lot more on this at
> > >
http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/issues/6/6-555.html#1
> > > >
> > > > ObConlang: how do people's conlangs handle foreign words?
> > >
> > >Overwhelmingly, most of the foreign loans into Phaleran are
> > >from the C'ali languages (especially Classical C'ali), which
> > >together comprise an impact on Phaleran's lexicon something
> > >analogous to the Latin and Romance languages on English.
> > >Although Classical C'ali provides the largest number of loans
> > >and constructions, the language that is actually referenced for
> > >[+foreign] pronunciations is Trans-Aliderian C'ali, one of its
> > >daughter languages.
> >
> > Slightly OT, but to my knowledge you've never elaborated anything the
> > sociopolitical interactions of Phaleran and C'ali speakers over time.
> > You you care to give some basic info? Why has C'ali have such extensive
> > influence on Phaleran, and why, if Classical C'ali carries such
>prestige,
> > is Phaleran now apparently the language of the powers that be rather
> > than some decentant of C'ali?
>
>When the planet was first settled by humans, most of the settlers
>spoke languages descended from present day Sino-Tibetan and Indo-
>Aryan languages. These first settlers were essentially independent
>of their homeworlds, and evolved socially, politically and economically
>independently of them (the First Wave). After some hundreds of
>years, interstellar trade increased greatly, and trading settlements
>grew explosively in foreign population in a short period of time (the
>Second Wave). These Second Wavers were typically poorer and came
>because Phalera was labor-poor and therefore wages were notably
>better than elsewhere. The second wavers were also set apart by being
>mostly speakers of Tlaspi, which had by this time become established
>as an interstellar trading language. The old established First Wave
>elite encouraged this in-migration, because although the Second Wavers
>got paid higher wages on Phalera than elsewhere, their rootlessness
>and poverty made them easily manipulable politically, and the old
>elites took advantage of this to impress them into a kind of
>permanent servant underclass. This underclass soon came to vastly
>outnumber the original elite classes, and increasingly more repressive
>measures were required to prevent wide-scale revolution.
>
>Now, approximately 1100 years after the first colonies were settled
>on Phalera, a series of economic crises created immense social
>disruption throughout most of settled space, and in the ensuing
>political chaos was born one of the first interstellar empires.
>Most planets were integrated into this empire by force, but the
>Phaleran old elite had a problem on their hands that could be
>easily solved by open invitation of the Empire. So, unlike most
>other planets, whose native elites were dismembered by warfare or
>internecine conflict surrounding the Empire's wars of conquest,
>the native elites, whom by this time we may assume were speakers
>of Proto-C'ali, remained largely intact, and used the proceeds of
>this relative wealth and power to enhance their political image
>by artistic and cultural patronage. Later ages of Phalerans
>consider this the first classical age of Phaleran culture, much
>in the way we look back on the raw despotism of New Kingdom Pharaohs,
>whose monuments inspire awe in us even if we deplore their social
>system. Now, this cozy system of mutual-backscratching lasted for
>about half a millennium: though dynasties rose and fell, it remained
>in the self-interest of the C'ali to repress the masses, and in
>the external powers to possess Phaleran mineral and trading wealth.
>The last and greatest of these stellar Empires, which pompously called
>itself the Empire of Man, collapsed spectacularly when an alliance
>of renegade worlds smashed a series of asteroids into Earth,
>Venus and Mars, rendering these worlds almost uninhabitable.
>Historians still debate the exact cause of this collapse; some
>attribute it to accumulated failures of inefficient government
>economic policies of centuries prior, while others claim that
>the Federal structure of the Empire was proven for the sham it
>had become, and that the large scale and recurrent civil wars
>were the result of widespread resentment of the concentration
>of political power, which was inevitably manipulated by the
>military. Whatever the case, conflict had so weakened the
>Empire by the time of its official demise in 6241 (in the
>C'ali reckoning) that on most worlds, human achievement was set
>back hundreds or thousands of years, in many cases to pre-space
>travel levels.
>
>The Collapse was every bit as meaningful for Phalera as it was for
>the Empire as a whole*. Taking advantage of the internal weakness
>of the central government, in the year 6234, revolution broke out
>in many of the major C'ali centers, including Q'alitë, the residence
>of the Governor, lead by Cuwannes Eiltai, a half-literate day-laborer
>of the Xosûni Clan which lived near present day Twolyeo. Though in
>later centuries he was elevated into a near God-like figure (and
>indeed was the first ruler in Phaleran history to whom a ruler-cult
>was instituted) by the new Phaleran elite, his successes are clearly
>the result of a combination of native military genius, a keen sense
>of public suasion, and a good dose of good luck. After sacking
>Q'alitë and other C'ali centers, enslaving their populations,
>imprisoning the Governor, and forcibly marrying two of his daughters,
>he returned to his center of operations in Twolyeo, about a thousand
>miles to the East, and proclaimed himself the legitimate representative
>of Imperial stewardship on Phalera by crowning himself the new Governor
>(or _Ahra_ in Phaleran). So, rather than fundamentally changing the way
>affairs were run on Phalera, he redefined the old power relationships
>in such a way that his ethnic class came out favorably rather
>than unfavorably. Among his innovations of governance is the dual
>Chancellery of C'ali and Twolyeo affairs, by which he sought to govern
>C'ali speaking regions and his own without his intendants becoming
>wholly assimilated to C'ali culture, and the establishment of the
>Gubernatorial Academy of Twolyeo, which began the process of
>standardization of the Xosûni tongue. (Due to a quirk in the
>administrative machinery of the new regime, the ministry of
>propaganda was situated in the same building, and as a result
>the Xosûni tongue, a Tlaspian language, came to be called Phaleran,
>and has with much argument remained so every since.) Although
>later generations failed to maintain his military conquests
>in full, his regime based in Twolyeo to this day is by far
>the most powerful Great Power on Phalera.
>
>*(The Tlaspian speakers use a separate calendar from the C'ali,
>based on the date of their claimed liberation.)
>
>==========================================================================
>Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
>Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right
>University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
>1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
>Chicago, IL 60637