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So, here is some background on my Aqilonian/Aqileian family ....This Italic-Romance-inspired language family is one of a number of Indo-European-style language families designed for use in a fiction project of mine. The fiction project is set in an alternate world -- not a "our world in the distant and fantastic past", like Howard or even Tolkien, but really just a "similar but different" world, perhaps somewhat like Harry Turtledove's Videssos. My background is in language and culture is largely Indo-European in orientation, so it is convenient for me to use those languages -- or alternate versions of those languages -- in my fictional context.
The geographical setting for my fiction project -- and thus my languages -- is a blend of the New and Old Worlds. My "pseudo-Indo- European" languages are envisaged as evolving in a low-land basin modeled on a dry Mediterranean/Caribbean+Gulf-of-Mexico which then floods and disperses the languages (a concept taken from Ryan & Pitman's Black Sea deluge theory, the likelihood of which I doubt, though I think it makes a fine story). I call my "pseudo-IE" family Eneân, after the use of the term Eneá for Europe in Snorri Sturluson's _Heimskringla_; historically, this name probably derives from the name of Aeneas.
Aqilonian/Aqileian (I vacillate between names) is intended as the "Italic/Romance" style branch of Eneân. There is no pseudo-Greek family in Eneân, but there are two main branches of Aqilonian/ Aqileian: Kûriac, which is more Latino-Faliscan, and Ausonic which takes inspiration from both Oscan and some aspects of Greek. There being no pseudo-Greek, I have to eliminate Greek loan-words from the vocabulary of Aqilonian/Aqileian (likewise, things like Etruscan loans), but I sometimes coin new Italic-style words from PIE roots that provided historical Greek words loaned into historical Latin. I do envisage an earlier, Minoan-style civilization having lived in the vicinity of the Aqilonian/Aqileian, and I have considered using vocabulary taken from Arawakan/Maipurean languages (like Taino and Wayuu) for "pseudo-Minoan", and then letting Aqilonian/Aqileian borrow words from this language, but because I have not yet worked out the details of "pseudo-Minoan", my pseudo-Italic languages do not yet have any pseudo-Arawakan/Maipurean loans (though it would entertain me to allow something like Taino "mais", maize, be reinterpreted as a PIE or Italic i-stem noun! :)).
Speakers of Aqilonian/Aqileian family remain close to the now-flooded Mediterranean/Caribbean+Gulf-of-Mexico, known as the "Blue Sea" or (in Aqilonian/Aqileian) the "Mari Mobrom". If you imagine this sea as being oriented roughly like the real Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, then Kûriac is spoken along the northern Gulf coast, centered on a powerful city-state in the position of New Orleans, while Ausonic spread from Florida down along the islands to northern South America (with another powerful city state in the vicinity of Maracaibo or Cartagena. There is a bit of a Roman/Helenistic and Roman/Byzantine vibe in the distinction between Kûriac and Ausonic.
There is, however, a dialect continuum between Kûriac and Ausonic, much as in the modern Western Romance languages -- at least until "Florida" (probably rugged and mountainous as opposed to flat and swampy) is conquered by non-Aqilonian/Aqileian speaking barbarians. Even thereafter, there is considerable contact between speakers of both dialects through trade, etc. in the Mari Mobrom, and a kind of koine or lingua franca called Komoinâ develops in this area. I am not yet quite sure how the history of Komoina will play out, but I am imagining it heading in something like the direction of Italian and/ or Spanish. A separate daughter dialect of Kûriac develops in northern territories conquered by the Kûrians; this I see as turning out more on the model of Occitan.
The text quoted below is an example of a slightly Kûriac-flavoured Aqilonian/Aqileian; changes into a later Kûriac version of the text would be relatively slight. I am still working out what an Ausonic version would be like; I envisage Ausonic as a "P-dialect", much like Oscan (and a bit like Greek) in comparison with Latin, but haven't worked out much about other likely changes. Obviously, figuring out Komoina will depend somewhat on how Ausonic turns out. The Occitan- style descendants of Kûriac will be easier to work out (since Kûriac is more like Latin to start with), but I haven't come up with a "Late North Kûriac" version of my "Nemedian Chronicles" Babel text yet.
Cheers, Carl On 09 Jun 2009, at 12:28, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
I have completed a first pass at the complete "Nemedian Chronicles" quotation from the open of R.E. Howard's _The Phoenix on the Sword_ (available at: <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/ The_Phoenix_on_the_Sword/Chapter_I>) into my Aqilonian/Aqileian proto- language, which is intended to be an "alternate Proto-Italic", itself ancestral to two daughter languages/dialects, Kuriac and Ausonic: Sapi, nêr, qâi enter annons en qeis mariâ Atlantidim kiwitâtensqe splendêntens bibânt eti adskensom puklom Ariî, îâ-psi essied aiwotâss ne somnîsêt qamdô regnâ radiantâ kubâsênt tendentâ trâns ôrbim terrôm qomodo mantâ mobrâ sub stêrlâis -- Nemediâ, Ophir, Brythuniâ, Hyperboreâ, Zamorâ kom suâis thêminâis maurênâis forkfosqe arkânî obsessî wofnâis, Zingarâ kom suôd eqitâtûd, Koth qâi adjakesêt pâgois pastoralifos Shemes, Stygiâ kom suois sepulkrois kustôditois abo omfrais, Hyrkaniâ qosiia eqites vestiesênt akiâsiom wolûkriomqe ausomqe. Adqi regnom keltisemom Aqiloniâ esât, qâi en okkidente somniente regnâsêt. Ekke hoike wênit Kunognos Kimmeriânos, kapellôd melnôd, okolois thuskois, gladiôd en manûd, fûr, praidô, sîkarios, de treistitiais alakriaisqe grandifos, peri ad pinsere sodiom gemmâtom tersâsôm sub suois pedfos kalkeâtois. You can probably see that this is basically an archaic Latin, though I have tried to actually anticipate some features of Vulgar Latin and later Romance as well. In place of Latin words of Greek or other more mysterious origins, I have usually tried to create a suitably "Proto-Italic-style" word from IE sources.
-- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/