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At 08:58 21.3.2004, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
>(First I wanted to send this privately, but then I thought it might be
>interesting for the rest too)
>
>Benct, I love your Raamaniyaan GMP. From the moment I first noticed the
>existence of the language (some two or three years ago, I think) I have always
>been extremely curious about it, and I'm glad something is finally coming out.
Me too! :) I always end up doing this kind of thing when I
really ought to do other things, though...
>Before I can give any preciser comments or make suggestions I'll need to study
>it very carefully. For now I can only say that it really looks extremely
>interesting. I would love to see some grammar and text samples!
Me too. I'm currently trying to absorb something of modern Persian
grammar. It is not too different from Middle Persian, but I never
bothered to learn the fine points of the latter, just as much as
necessary to grasp the contents. Also MP writing is decidedly weird,
with every other word written in Aramaic.
>I have two related questions, though.
>
>Can Raamaniyaan exist in the same universe as Persian?
Surely. In fact it should! I think of it as a Romance-Persian
pidgin which was U-turn relexified. The latter is a term for
what happens when a language community first *almost* switches
to a new language but then relexifies it with the vocabulary of
their old language for secrecy/ethnical distinction purposes.
This has actually happened with Romani in several places in
western Europe, and probably with the Ma'a language in East
Africa. There are also Swedish-Finnish border dialects which
may have undergone this process.
>As you might recall, in
>a very early stage of Wenedyk I played with the thought of having it coexistent
>with Polish; but then I thought it would be implausible that two neighbouring
>languages of different families went through exactly the same phonological and
>orthographical development.
Raamaniyaan and Persian actually don't have the *exact* same
phonological development. The idea is that R. has coexisted
in bilingualism with Persian since Middle Persian times, but
there are still differences, mainly the phoneme /J/ which is
not found in Persian and the distribution of /l/ which in
Persian derives from *rD (e.g. _palang_ < *parðanga 'leopard')
and sometimes from *ly (in loanwords from North-West Iranian,
cf. the ethnonym _Alani_ from *aaryaan-), while in R. Latin
/l/ remains except where it can conceivably be palatalized
and becomes /j/. I considered have r/l merger as in Old
Iranian, but decided against it -- it would be highly unlikely
as Middle and later Persian in fact did have an /l/ phoneme
even if it was of limited distribution. I took greater
liberties with Latin /s/ which becomes /h/ as in Old Iranian
on the at least possible assumption that Middle Persian had
only /T/ and no /s/. There is also /Z/ which is more frequent
and regular than in Persian.
> So I abandoned the idea, and made Wenedyk replace
>Polish in IB. The same happened with Brithenig vs. Welsh.
>
>Next question (related to question 1): where do you imagine Raamaniyaan is
>spoken exactly? Persia would be logical, but you also mentioned Russia as a
>possibility.
Somewhere in a backwater within the Persian sphere. I used to think
of the Soviet side of the Irano-Soviet border, and thus somewhere in
Turkmenistan. Anyway it is a minority language spoken in only four
villages (_kastreyaan_ < CASTRA) in some remote mountain area. The
idea is that a Roman legion was captured by the Parthians or Sassanians
and then used on some remote mountain front where cavalry was ineffective
>If you want to implement Raamaniyaan in IB (which I would welcome),
I have also thought along those lines! :)
>here are
>some thoughts. I think it has more or less been established that Persia speaks
>Farsi, although I'm not sure how firmly;
Very firmly I hope! An IB without Persian would have too
grave repercussions on both Turkic and Indic cultural and
linguistic history!
> perhaps it can be changed.
Unlikely! I would in fact be against it.
>Little or
>no work has been done on Persia as a country, although it is sometimes
>mentioned in other contexts.
>If you opt for a part of the territory of *here*'s Soviet Union, then it seems
>you have two options: either west of the Caspian Sea, in which case you would
>probably end up in Azerbaijan (nothing written at all) or the North Caucasian
>Federation (something written by me, but not much).
Both would be a possibility, except that Azerbaijan is too close to
Roman territory: the proto-speakers would simply have re-defected!
> Or east of it, which would
>place R. somewhere in Turkestan (in Turkmenistan, most likely; some work done
>by me, including a map). All possible solutions are open for discussion!
That, or even Khazakh or Uzbek territory would be a possibility.
I would not want an area which was Turkicized too early, though!
>Cheers,
>Jan
Halud,
Mihrasb
/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@hidden.email (delete X)
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