Tei and the rest of Chia-Sha

WeepingElf · Post by **WeepingElf** » Sun Sep 17, 2006 9:45 am

Hallo!

How different is Tei from the rest of Chia-Sha? I have noticed in the Historical Atlas of Almea that Tei is spoken far away from the rest of Chia-Sha, and that it must have separated from it around 0 Z.E.

dunomapuka · Post by **dunomapuka** » Thu Sep 28, 2006 4:29 pm

I have wondered the same. Tei seems to get a disproportionate amount of attention, doesn't it? I suspect that everyone has the same reasons as me...it's small, and weird (its closest relatives are thousands of miles away?) and...sort of cute. I like how they keep popping in and out of history.

BGMan · Post by **BGMan** » Sun Oct 01, 2006 8:51 pm

They're Jippirasti and they are a minority in their largest city Merap because it's very prosperous. Most of Belshai speaks a Lenani or Mei language and are apparently Jippirasti... I don't know what language is considered "official" there.

hwhatting · Post by **hwhatting** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 7:37 am

There's now an article on Belshai in the Almeopedia. It says there are "half a dozen" languages spoken there. The impression I got is that they are all official languages, but the article doesn't explicitly say so.

Post by **zompist** » Mon Oct 02, 2006 10:22 am

There's no single standard language. I hesitate to talk about 'official' languages, as this seems to imply a modern bureaucracy.

hwhatting · Post by **hwhatting** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 2:03 am

zompist wrote:There's no single standard language. I hesitate to talk about 'official' languages, as this seems to imply a modern bureaucracy.

That's understandable. But even in pre-modern bureaucracies there were chancery languages - e.g., in the Holy Roman Empire Latin and forms of German that varied regionally with the chanceries, being neither one unified standard nor just written local dialects.
So, to put the question differently, what language(s) is/are used in the meetings, instructions and (if they have that) communications and publications of e.g. the Belshai Road Agency?
Best regards,

Hans-Werner

Glenn · Post by **Glenn** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:17 pm

hwhatting wrote:So, to put the question differently, what language(s) is/are used in the meetings, instructions and (if they have that) communications and publications of e.g. the Belshai Road Agency?

Hmm...well, the Almeopedia article on Belšai says the following:

Almeopedia wrote:Multilingualism is common, but the two most widely spoken dialects are the Sevisre dialect of Teland and the Tžuro dialect of Čibri.

Teland is the home of the Cantonal Council (and, in a sense, the closest thing Belšai has to a capital city), while Čibri is the headquarters for external defense, so either of these dialects seems like a good possibility for a chancery language or a governmental "lingua franca", if any; given Teland's role as home to the council, I might lean toward Sevisre.

The Roads Commission is located in Murap, which is in Tei territory, but the Tei are a minority in the city itself, which makes me doubt that Tei is the language used for the commission's affairs. (On a side note, the article on the Tei discusses their conversion to Jippurasti under Tžuro rule, but Mark's additions to the article include a reference to "Tei polytheism" in northern Belšai; this presumably refers to surviving pre-Jippurasti beliefs.)

Another interesting question: if there is indeed a chancery language, what script is it written in?

The map in the Historical Atlas portrays Belšai as lying at the intersection of regions where the Axunaic, Sevisre, and Jippurasti scripts are used. (The anwer may depend on the chancery language itself -- e.g., if Sevisre, than the Sevisre syllabary -- but this is not necessarily the case.)

p@,
Glenn

EDIT: Incidentally, there seems to be little information available on Sevisre or the nation of Sevisor; it would be neat to learn more.