CHAT: Phaleran society [was Re: The [+foreign] attribute]

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