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--- In romconlang@yahoogroups.com, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote: > > > The modern name of the language as a whole should be > something like Borgonzay < *Burgundiense (i.e. the Romance > language of Burgundia, parallel to Français for the Romance > language of Francia) with two main dialect groups Rhodray > along the Rhodre (Rhône) and Saugonay along the Saugone > (Saône). The problem is that in the ATL there was also a > Germanic language Borgonzc < *burgundiska which survived > long enough to become a written language in books with Latin > letters. In contradistinction to this language the Romance > language of Borgonze was of course called Romanz or some > variation thereof and any derivative of *Burgund would be > inappropriate, but Romanz would be equally inappropriate in > contradistinction to Français/Frantxay (or perhaps > Francien/Frantxiá), not to speak of the Rumantsch and > Romand[^1] of Switzerland. > I don't think that the clash between Borgonzay and Borgonzc would have troubled anyone an the ground, as the words existed in different languages. In Graubunden, the various dialects are Romontsch or Ladin, but in Medieval German they were all just Wälsch. The speakers of Borgonzay would call Borgonzc by their word for German, and the speakers of Borgonzc would call Borgonzay by their equivalent of Wälsch. If there were two distinct dialects, Rhodray and Saugonay, is it likely that they would have developed a hyponym any more than the speakers of Ladin and Romontsch did? In the south of France, Occitan is a modern term; the speakers in the Middle Ages would have defined their speech as their dialect, while the literary form was Provençal. It's more than likely that there would be only one literary form of Borgonzay, unless there was a major city in each area. In the Middle Ages, the Franco-Provençal speakers of Geneva used the written language of Lyons. David