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From: "Christian Thalmann" <cinga@hidden.email> Yeah, I've had such thoughts too... in my earliest versions, I had some elitist grouping of Romans (Something like a sect perhaps? The children of Jupiter? That would at least explain the name...) founding a colony somewhere off the wars and invasions in Europe. However, I'd have to drop the German substrate completely... or maybe adopt something else as a substrate, but I'm afraid I'm not familiar with any language that was spoken at that time. =( Of course, I could include the Germanic substrate in the form of a load of Germanic slaves carried along as workers... but surely the Germanic languages 2000 years ago were totally different from the German I know... =(
I wasn't going to mention this, because I thought it would complicate the picture, but during the barbarian invasions of the empire the Vandals went down thru Spain and into North Africa, setting up a kingdom on the western part of the Roman Mediterranean possessions there. They later moved on into Italy and sacked Rome, and I think their north African kingdom was eventually destroyed by some new invader, maybe the Muslims. The Vandals could be the source of your Germanic element. Vandalic was an East Germanic language like Gothic and Burgundian.
As for Northern Africa, well, it would be a possibility, I guess, but it would introduce yet another substratum of pre-existing culture with which I have even less experience...
You could always just ignore it like I am doing the realities of placing Ruman where it is :) There is always going to be something you can't explain away when doing this conculture, since history went a different way and you are trying to falsify it.
But, take the example of English in England. Britain was full of Britons, speaking Old Brittonic, but there is almost no influence from it on English. Some say the continuous tense is from a Celtic verb construction; but there is almost no vocab from Old Brittonic, and very little evidence of the phonological changes apparent from other languages adopted by or spoken near Celts.
Reason? Some say the Anglo-Saxons invaded England on a slash-and-burn basis, driving the Britons westwards rather than absorbing them and intermarrying, and this would mean there weren't any around to be having an influence on English. I don't know, I doubt it was entirely either, but at any rate you have a clear example of a language which took over another language's area without being too influenced by it, so I wouldn't worry re Jovian.
Back to N. Africa... I would love to do something with the Carthaginians as well :) They've always been a favourite of mine, especially Hannibal. i've never actually liked the Romans. :)
It doesn't need to get to Jupiter. My planned sci-fi universe that would contain Jovia has never been developed past the conceptual idea stage, so I could well transplant the language along with its culture into another universe.
Then yes, I suggest you keep it to Earth and have the culture named after the God rather than the planet. Maybe they name their capital city after Jupiter; after all he was the god of luck and providence.
-- Christian Thalmann
Mat _________________________________________________________________Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail