Conlang relay [relocated] (aka "The Cursed Relay")

Substantial postings about constructed languages and constructed worlds in general. Good place to mention your own or evaluate someone else's. Put quick questions in C&C Quickies instead.
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Post by zompist »

The Spanish do have 'admirals', and their national hero is 'El Cid'.

I'm guessing words for 'king' aren't much borrowed (if nothing else, it's likely to already exist), but words for 'emperor' are-- as in English. Note the Germanic and Slavic borrowing of 'Caesar'.

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Post by Dewrad »

zompist wrote:The Spanish do have 'admirals', and their national hero is 'El Cid'.

I'm guessing words for 'king' aren't much borrowed (if nothing else, it's likely to already exist), but words for 'emperor' are-- as in English. Note the Germanic and Slavic borrowing of 'Caesar'.
For what it's worth, the Slavs also used loanwords to express "king" and "prince"- both from Germanic. The former being a Slavicised version of Charlemagne's name and the latter, *kŭnędžĭ being directly borrowed from the Germanic *kuningaz. Similarly, the Finns borrowed Germanic terms for royalty, although it is unlikely that the concept existed in Finnic society previously.

For another case where the concept existed and a loanword was used, compare ancient Greek basileus, borrowed from an unknown substrate language. It even replaced a native formation known from Mycenaean times- wanax.
Last edited by Dewrad on Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Corumayas »

Ok, ok. Of course the emperor can be called seathiauk. I still think his official title, at least at first, would be something different-- maybe something religious; but outside of the Rathedān one foreign emperor is probably equivalent to another, and the older Faralo title could easily be so widely used that it quickly becomes the normal way to refer to him.

So, about the expansion of the empire of Athalē. I imagine that the first step is expanding down the river valleys-- northeast from Khalanu, east from the vicinity of Nitazē, and maybe also southwest from Radias into the Tjakori valley, if we want to add that region. The northeastern river almost certainly joins the Eigə/Ēza above Lasomo; the southeastern one could probably do so too, but I imagine it flowing east first, maybe passing along the northern edge of the lands of the Hitatc Wan for a while before flowing north to meet the Ēza somewhere below Enčélade/Akeladada. (It's hard to tell exactly where the cities of the Rathedān should be on the larger maps, so if my understanding is wrong please correct it!)

Anyway, most or all of the plain between the two eastern river valleys could belong to Greater Thāras-- maybe that city has been expanding its influence there for some time, even before the empire. Similarly, the northeastern valley could be governed from Khalanu. The southeastern valley might be the first province that couldn't conveniently be governed from a preexisting Dāiadak city; maybe the Hitatc Wan have a town or two there, or maybe it's totally rural. These three provinces should probably be established before the war in Lasomo; from the southeastern one it's a fairly short step to the Tah Ici, where there are supposed to be Dā
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Post by Dewrad »

Corumayas wrote:(It's hard to tell exactly where the cities of the Rathed?n should be on the larger maps, so if my understanding is wrong please correct it!)
:coughs abashedly: The map on the old grammar page was actually just pretty coloured filler- I never expected it to be used by anyone for anything, as such it bears no resemblance to the larger maps (and is why it's not on the new page). Frankly, as long as the broad hints in the culture section are followed, you can stick the cities anywhere you fancy.
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Post by Radius Solis »

Dewrad wrote:Frankly, as long as the broad hints in the culture section are followed, you can stick the cities anywhere you fancy.
Argh, if only I had my own computer back... I don't have anything resembling a graphix prog on this machine, and probably cannot safely download anything (it's an elderly laptop that tends to blow up if you sneeze nearby). If I could, I'd take you up on that suggestion and re-map the Rathedan, Dew, to be more in line with the linguistic scenarios that have been posited for it.

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Post by Radius Solis »

It seems I had forgotten the existence of MS Paint. Well, let's see what I can do with it... :o

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Post by Radius Solis »

Okay, so. Here's the re-mapped Rathedan, showing its relation to the greater region. ACHTUNG: this is a product of MS Paint. So: low detail, no finesse, and no macrons. If somebody wants to clean it up, spell the cities properly, and add any detail they feel appropriate, be my guest!

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Post by zompist »

As for the maps, here they are without text:

http://www.zompist.com/Kechaena-blank.png

http://www.zompist.com/EigeValley.png

Though I'm interested in this project, I'm wary of inviting it into Almeopedia since it's getting huge. It might need its own wiki.

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Post by Dewrad »

Radius Solis wrote:Okay, so. Here's the re-mapped Rathedan, showing its relation to the greater region.
w00t! That looks cool and more than acceptable.
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Post by Radius Solis »

So, given the new map, I've been trying to figure out what goes where. Of Adāta's immediate descendents, Ayāsthi, Mavakhalan, Kozado, and Pencek are already well-situated in particular regions. Æðadě and Aθáta are not - the latter is described as being spoken somewhere in Rathedan, and the former doesn't address the question at all.

Key to the question of figuring out where these two should go, is the fact that Erhadzy is situated a million miles away and we need a plausible way for it to get there. If I'm reading Zhen Lin's description correctly, then we need to arrange for Yhát to be spoken on the eastern coast somewhere below the Eige delta. Complicating this question is the fact that Naidda, Puoni, and Gezoro, and later their descendents, are already in that area. (Perhaps Gezoro has died out by that time, however. Or not.) So Yhát should probably be not too far north - the far SE peninsula looks appropriate.

There are basically two routes to this region: straight east through the Eige valley, or southwest through Tjakori and then east through Xsali. Unfortunately I can't come up with a very good way to make either of these work. Mass migrations just don't seem to happen very much in modern-Earth-like times. This is the best scenario I can offer (please offer a better one, any of you, if you can think of one):

Aθáta, descended largely from the dialects of Hiphago and Radias, came to be spoken in the Tjakori valley and eventually to dominate there. Later, by E'át times, conflict with the Xsali prompted the latter to invade the Tjakori valley once again, deporting thousands upon thousands of residents, resulting in a diaspora of E'át speakers throughout the Xsali empire. Over the next couple generations the E'át speakers tended to congregate in clusters in various points of the Xsali Empire. Most of these clusters later lost their languages in favor of surrounding dominant ones, but one that didn't was on Xsali's far eastern border, on or near the east coast. The variety of E'át spoken there evolved into Yhát. Erhadzy is descended from the Yhát speakers who migrated to Lesan; Öhat, from the Yhát speakers who stayed.


This would let us place Aθáta in Tjakori, and leaves Æðadě and its descendents free to be placed elsewhere. My vote is for Lasomo and perhaps the Nitaze river valley as well. Maybe it could be descended from the variety of Adata originally spoken in Nitaze and Mezaras?

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Post by Radius Solis »

On another topic entirely.....

--------------------------------

Because writing syntax sections is a borking task I dread, and that's pretty much all that's left to do with Pencek, I've been toying with something else instead! Namely, a new daughter of Ndak Ta. There was always supposed to be such a daughter spoken in the Dawaim islands... at one point Salmoneus was going to derive it, but then he vanished from the discussion and was never heard from again. So here I present a taster of Ndakta Dawaim, or natively, Z̃akt Dhavi.

This is nothing more than the original sample-text, run through the sound-changes.


Ṽi thif Thinki, no lo dhyak fels, no lo dhyak ag lo lath om Kazdhiz, no lo melkt ag tol on iṽ:

Isu zith i ov lo sfak ag lo mevu ag ben, isu im as efk lath si, selki. Ṽin thif lok lath si zi an los wims aks: "An lo mevu aks z̃on dhyak fels. Spizdh a oṽk lath si. This, an ta a z̃on nak; dhal lo maldh zi be with ov lo sfak ag mevu aks z̃on dheṽ."

Sol i, no lo melkt ag tol on iṽ, ov lo sfak ag lo mevu ag ben, isu ta non i isu lum lath si zi as selki isu im, non i isu lod vwikt ag ṽas. Vwenun i as on sabvi i lon ton ag isu lom om fta. Ṽi thif i: "Dhas ag, no lo tol ag lok vwi! Thultun lon lath ni as lok wims ni fafi in "om dheb" in. This, fasti ta ak lok kak ag lo lath dhoti glig, dhas agi! Spis lon boln!"

Zadi ṽas los lev ag lo mavi ag. Oln a im on thib lon itum ag los vaṽu. Zaṽ zon lidh, spisi i this zi mog in. Spisi i as. Soln i on uktis, vos, on yavu, on filn i as isu lom lath ag Kazdhiz.


The phonemes appear to be:
/p t k b d g f T s v D z P~ z~ m n l w j a e i o u/
<p t k b d g f th s v dh z ṽ z̃ m n l w y a e i o u>

Does anybody want to adopt this language and make a real conlang of it? I don't think I can muster a grammar for it at this time, or maybe ever, despite the fact that I find the results rather delicious. If there's anybody who wants to go for it, have at...

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Post by Zhen Lin »

Hmm, nasalised fricatives, fun. I see yet more frication of voiced plosives, and, loss of initial vowels?

Curiously, how is it that Adāta and Fáralo both have the change /s/ > /h/? Coincidence, common substratic influence or...? (Admittedly old Ayāsthi does /s/ > /h/ as well in word-final position. Which is the opposite of Greek, so I gather.) Question: do these substrata (Gezoro, Faraghin) actually exist as conlangs?
Radius Solis wrote:Aθáta, descended largely from the dialects of Hiphago and Radias, came to be spoken in the Tjakori valley and eventually to dominate there. Later, by E'át times, conflict with the Xsali prompted the latter to invade the Tjakori valley once again, deporting thousands upon thousands of residents, resulting in a diaspora of E'át speakers throughout the Xsali empire. Over the next couple generations the E'át speakers tended to congregate in clusters in various points of the Xsali Empire. Most of these clusters later lost their languages in favor of surrounding dominant ones, but one that didn't was on Xsali's far eastern border, on or near the east coast. The variety of E'át spoken there evolved into Yhát. Erhadzy is descended from the Yhát speakers who migrated to Lesan; Öhat, from the Yhát speakers who stayed.
Yes, that would work, and nearly provides foreign influence at the same time, plus, motivation for deporting them far-away. Actually, there might already be a Dāiadak presence there, since it's part of an important trade route?
This would let us place Aθáta in Tjakori, and leaves Æðadě and its descendents free to be placed elsewhere. My vote is for Lasomo and perhaps the Nitaze river valley as well. Maybe it could be descended from the variety of Adata originally spoken in Nitaze and Mezaras?
The problem with Nitazē is that it is part of Greater Thāras. On the other hand Mezaras would probably have some importance attached due to it being the source of one of the major recensions.

But, seeing as Rathedān is highly mountaineous, perhaps linguistic diversity can be excused after all? Hmm.
Last edited by Zhen Lin on Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:09 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Corumayas »

The new map looks perfect, as far as I'm concerned... except for one minor detail: the name Hō Tan means "South Coast". That forest (where Pencek is spoken later on, right?) should I think be Atāx Pētan, if the name is inherited unchanged from Ndak Ta.
Radius Solis wrote:So, given the new map, I've been trying to figure out what goes where.
Your proposals sound plausible enough to me. There's one other kind of evidence that we should maybe take into consideration: which languages borrow from each other? Doesn't Pencek include borrowings from Aθáta, for example? Is that plausible if Aθáta is spoken in the Tjakori valley? Or would you consider borrowing from Æðadě instead if that's a closer neighbor?

Anyway, as I recall, there's a fair amount of borrowing among some of the daughters at least as far down the chain as Yhát, so to preserve that the languages involved should probably stay in contact with each other. (I borrowed from both Zhaj and Yhát in Ghaf, but I'm willing to change that if it turns out to be historically impossible-- which I think it probably will.)
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Post by Dewrad »

Zhen Lin wrote:Question: do these substrata (Gezoro, Faraghin) actually exist as conlangs?
Gezoro did, briefly, have a somewhat evanescent existence as a conlang itself. All I recall of it was genders based on edibility and noun incorporation. I was discussing with Radius that eventually it might be fun to resurrect Gezoro's parent language, Proto-Western, and begin the whole process again in the West of the continent. If nobody wants to reconlang Proto-Western, I promise that eventually I'll get round to it myself, when uni work and my own projects permit.
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Post by Zhen Lin »

Hmm, actually, on second thought looking at the map, having Greater Thāras incorporate Nitazē and also stretch towards Khalanu would make it quite a large principality/province. Unless it just barely reaches midway between Thāras and Khalanu, and has Nitazē right on the border...

Athalē, being the capital, could plausibly be a region onto itself much as Greater London or Tōkyō are today (and even a few short centuries ago). The mountainous cities could plausibly be all merged into one region (due to periphery) or be a full-fledged region (due to isolation).
Radius Solis wrote:I also would be all for a wiki-type system for storing and keeping track of all this information. If people really want to use the KQ I won't argue too much, but... personally I am hesitant to use it for anything anymore. It seems like a high-risk place, there's a history of instability there. If you want to ask Zompist for his permission to use the Almeopedia, feel free... although I hate to clutter up his Almea wiki with too much stuff about this world. When we first moved the Ndak Ta info etc. there, he told me "dozens of articles is fine, but not hundreds." Neek would probably feel much the same way about it. It would be neat to have the freedom of having hundreds of articles, but I don't know of any good place to do that.
Free MediaWiki hosting is probably not easy to find. (MediaWiki being somewhat sysadmin-unfriendly is probably part of the problem.) Free general wiki hosting, on the other hand, is probably easier.

Google Groups has a pages feature which may be sufficient. Includes Javascript WYSIWYG editor, so no HTML knowledge necessary.
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Post by Corumayas »

Zhen Lin wrote:Hmm, actually, on second thought looking at the map, having Greater Thāras incorporate Nitazē and also stretch towards Khalanu would make it quite a large principality/province. Unless it just barely reaches midway between Thāras and Khalanu, and has Nitazē right on the border...

Athalē, being the capital, could plausibly be a region onto itself much as Greater London or Tōkyō are today (and even a few short centuries ago). The mountainous cities could plausibly be all merged into one region (due to periphery) or be a full-fledged region (due to isolation).
Yeah, maybe including Nitazē in Thāras province is not likely after all. (It could still be part of the later Kingdom of Thāras at its greatest extent, though.)

It looks like we have a scenario where (at first anyway) each of the Dāiadak cities is its own province, with some of them also incorporating extensive territories outside the Rathedān-- Thāras, Khalanu, and maybe Radias and Nitazē too. Maybe at some later point the smaller cities without such extra territories woud be reorganized into a province called "Rathedān" (e.g. in the 4th or 5th century).


I have no knowledge to contribute about web hosting or wiki software. I didn't think we would need an entire wiki, since most of the languages are already hosted elsewhere; but this project does seem to be growing a lot right now, and it would be neat to have a customizable site to put all this information on.
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Post by Radius Solis »

Corumayas wrote:The new map looks perfect, as far as I'm concerned... except for one minor detail: the name Hō Tan means "South Coast". That forest (where Pencek is spoken later on, right?) should I think be Atāx Pētan, if the name is inherited unchanged from Ndak Ta.
Whoops. Thanks for catching that. I'll fix it on my local copy and wait a couple days to see if anything else needs to change before uploading again. (e.g did we want to add any more cities in Lasomo? Surely there must be more than same old two, after all this time since the Ndak Empire...)


Corumayas wrote:There's one other kind of evidence that we should maybe take into consideration: which languages borrow from each other? Doesn't Pencek include borrowings from Aθáta, for example? Is that plausible if Aθáta is spoken in the Tjakori valley? Or would you consider borrowing from Æðadě instead if that's a closer neighbor?

Anyway, as I recall, there's a fair amount of borrowing among some of the daughters at least as far down the chain as Yhát, so to preserve that the languages involved should probably stay in contact with each other. (I borrowed from both Zhaj and Yhát in Ghaf, but I'm willing to change that if it turns out to be historically impossible-- which I think it probably will.)
I did consider that. The loans in Pencek are from Æðadě, though, not Aθáta, which is one reason I proposed having Æðadě be more to the east or southeast instead of up north in the Xoron Eiel. But yes, if it's called for I'm willing to change which langauges it loans from.

As for loans from Yhát, I'm not sure I see how more than a couple could be plausible unless Zhen Lin changes his mind about where it's located. :(






Corumayas wrote:It looks like we have a scenario where (at first anyway) each of the Dāiadak cities is its own province, with some of them also incorporating extensive territories outside the Rathedān-- Thāras, Khalanu, and maybe Radias and Nitazē too. Maybe at some later point the smaller cities without such extra territories woud be reorganized into a province called "Rathedān" (e.g. in the 4th or 5th century).
Well, it's pretty clear from the culture notes that Dewrad intended each citystate to have its own cultural flavor and its own "foreign policy" outlook (e.g. language examples like "our citystate trades with the Xsali" and the bit about how the Daiakak would argue there is no overall Rathedan culture). Given this it seems not only reasonable but expectable that, at least early on, some of them would have a more expansionist outlook than others. The expansionist citystates have already pretty much been identified - Athale and Tharas top the list, with Khalanu and Nitaze and Radias somewhere in the middle and Hiphago and Mezaras and Zophis probably nearer the stay-at-home end of the scale. Although the Zophis does look like a good location or source for any future 1st-generation daughter of Adata that may be created in the future, so perhaps we should leave that door open for the time being.


---------


Once we get more of this hammered out, I'd like to start making a series of derivative maps - based on the new Rathedan map - showing which langauges are spoken in which areas, over the first couple millennia YP.

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Post by Corumayas »

Something just occurred to me: many of the people whose languages were early in the relay chain haven't been part of this discussion so far, and probably aren't reading the thread. Shouldn't we try to contact them to get their permission before making major decisions about their languages' locations and histories, and also to see if they want to get involved?
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Post by Radius Solis »

Zhen Lin wrote:Hmm, nasalised fricatives, fun. I see yet more frication of voiced plosives, and, loss of initial vowels?

Curiously, how is it that Adāta and Fáralo both have the change /s/ > /h/? Coincidence, common substratic influence or...?
I missed this part earlier. I've got this sound-change list dropping not initial vowels per se, but rather all unstressed vowels. Then sonorant consonants syllabify to make up for the loss, and subsequently vocalize.

the s > h change happened not only in Adata and Faralo, but in Naidda as well! We all seem to have independently had that idea, at the time. It may perhaps sound implausible, but of course it isn't - it may have happened early on in Ndak Ta before the dialect divergence was complete, or perhaps it was conditioned by Ndak Ta's /s/ already being weakly articulated or having some other phonetic trait predisposing it for lenition. Such things are of course attested on Earth; in Germanic, z > r happened seemingly independently in more than half of P-Gmc's daughters, at various points over the millennium after it split up. AFAIK the prevailing explanation relies on P-Gmc's /z/ having already been phonetically predisposed to have such a thing happen.

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Radius Solis wrote:So, given the new map, I've been trying to figure out what goes where. Of Adāta's immediate descendents, Ayāsthi, Mavakhalan, Kozado, and Pencek are already well-situated in particular regions. Æðadě and Aθáta are not - the latter is described as being spoken somewhere in Rathedan, and the former doesn't address the question at all.

Key to the question of figuring out where these two should go, is the fact that Erhadzy is situated a million miles away and we need a plausible way for it to get there. If I'm reading Zhen Lin's description correctly, then we need to arrange for Yhát to be spoken on the eastern coast somewhere below the Eige delta. Complicating this question is the fact that Naidda, Puoni, and Gezoro, and later their descendents, are already in that area. (Perhaps Gezoro has died out by that time, however. Or not.) So Yhát should probably be not too far north - the far SE peninsula looks appropriate.

There are basically two routes to this region: straight east through the Eige valley, or southwest through Tjakori and then east through Xsali. Unfortunately I can't come up with a very good way to make either of these work. Mass migrations just don't seem to happen very much in modern-Earth-like times. This is the best scenario I can offer (please offer a better one, any of you, if you can think of one):

Aθáta, descended largely from the dialects of Hiphago and Radias, came to be spoken in the Tjakori valley and eventually to dominate there. Later, by E'át times, conflict with the Xsali prompted the latter to invade the Tjakori valley once again, deporting thousands upon thousands of residents, resulting in a diaspora of E'át speakers throughout the Xsali empire. Over the next couple generations the E'át speakers tended to congregate in clusters in various points of the Xsali Empire. Most of these clusters later lost their languages in favor of surrounding dominant ones, but one that didn't was on Xsali's far eastern border, on or near the east coast. The variety of E'át spoken there evolved into Yhát. Erhadzy is descended from the Yhát speakers who migrated to Lesan; Öhat, from the Yhát speakers who stayed.


This would let us place Aθáta in Tjakori, and leaves Æðadě and its descendents free to be placed elsewhere. My vote is for Lasomo and perhaps the Nitaze river valley as well. Maybe it could be descended from the variety of Adata originally spoken in Nitaze and Mezaras?
I'd recommend we leave Tjakori outside of the Adāta sphere for now, as this seems the best place if someone wants to create a more divergent new daughterlang. Given that Æðadě and Aθáta do have some common developments, I'd suggest they both go east of the Rathedān. Placing Æðadě in the lower Nitazē valley towards Lasomo seems like a good idea. As for Aθáta, I'd say this could be descended from the Nitazē and Mezaras dialects, which extended into the valley of the unnamed southern river, and was superseded by Old Ayāsthi in its original homeland when Thāras incorporated Nitazē City. So, basically the Late Aθáta/E'át area would be in southern Hitatc Mlir territory.
Mass migrations just don't seem to happen very much in modern-Earth-like times.
The Ayāsthi grammar states that the printing press is invented in 1289 YP. This period could correspond to an early modern age as *here*, but it's conceivable that the Romans could have made this invention already. So the 13th century YP is definitely not too late for mass migrations, and if computers aren't invented before c. 2800 YP as the Erhadzy grammar suggests, "modern times" are still a long time to go when E'át is spoken (c. 1800 YP). So all we need are a couple of barbarians...

...and why not turn the E'át speakers into some? The Hitatc Mlir area was described as not too fertile, so I guess a nomadic lifestyle could persist long in that area. Maybe this lifestyle spreads to the neighbouring E'át speakers, and around 2000 YP the nomads start some invasions, the heirs of the Mlir north towards Lasomo and the E'át south into the crumbling or already disbanded Xšali empire? They could stay there and settle down, and create their own state which then becomes the home of Yhát...

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Post by Zhen Lin »

Radius Solis wrote:I did consider that. The loans in Pencek are from Æðadě, though, not Aθáta, which is one reason I proposed having Æðadě be more to the east or southeast instead of up north in the Xoron Eiel. But yes, if it's called for I'm willing to change which langauges it loans from.

As for loans from Yhát, I'm not sure I see how more than a couple could be plausible unless Zhen Lin changes his mind about where it's located. :(
It doesn't have to be located near the coast - it simply makes things more plausible. That said, geographic distance never stopped large-scale loaning, c.f. America/Europe and Japan. It just needs to be contextually justified.

As for the expansion of the area of influence of each of the city-states... this will result in the somewhat unusual situation of many (most?) states having their capitals in the periphery, relative to the geographic centre of the expanded region. One idea, therefore, is to have the expanded region of Nitazē gain a new capital (New Nitazē, anyone?) nearer its geograpic centre, losing the old city to Greater Thāras. (But this seems diplomatically unlikely?).

Or perhaps, if we adopt a Byzantium-type scenario, whereby Thāras becomes the successor to Athalē, then, maybe some of the adjacent provinces may be split up in such a way that the old urban centres end up in the new kingdom (inverse-separatism, perhaps), while the new territories end up as independent states.
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Post by Cedh »

Zhen Lin wrote:As for the expansion of the area of influence of each of the city-states... this will result in the somewhat unusual situation of many (most?) states having their capitals in the periphery, relative to the geographic centre of the expanded region.
This could be resolved by saying that after the formation of the empire, newly conquered lands were usually made a province of their own, so the city states more or less kept their original territory only. This would make sense from the perspective of Athale City: new provinces led by loyal governors would counterbalance the ambitions of rivalling Rathedan cities, should they attempt to question the dominance of Athale itself.

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Post by Radius Solis »

cedh audmanh wrote:
Zhen Lin wrote:As for the expansion of the area of influence of each of the city-states... this will result in the somewhat unusual situation of many (most?) states having their capitals in the periphery, relative to the geographic centre of the expanded region.
This could be resolved by saying that after the formation of the empire, newly conquered lands were usually made a province of their own, so the city states more or less kept their original territory only. This would make sense from the perspective of Athale City: new provinces led by loyal governors would counterbalance the ambitions of rivalling Rathedan cities, should they attempt to question the dominance of Athale itself.
What's more, it would keep Athale secure that none of the other main citystates would be able to muster an army large enough to come against it, if things ever got that far. So on a political basis, I definitely approve. But we must distinguish political from linguistic: the spheres of cultural/linguistic influence of some city-states are going to be huge in comparison to those of others, and there's no way around it (nor should there be).

So I propose the following: on a political basis, newly conquered territories (no matter who did the conquering) were under the provisional supervision of Athale for a few generations until they could govern themselves as member provinces of the Empire. With all provinces new and old being ultimately under Athale's reign overall, as well. Meanwhile, linguistically, newer provinces showed strong cultural and linguistic affiliations with particular city-states, those which actually sent the invading armies.

This way we can get all the linguistic-influence regions we want without having to worry too much about the internal politics of central Rathedan.Though of course if somebody wants to flesh that out more completely, it would be a welcome addition. Then, later on, by the post-empire period, kingdoms and regions can re-organize along linguistic and cultural lines, and everything already stated in people's histories will thus all come out in the wash.

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Post by Legion »

Radius Solis wrote:On another topic entirely.....

[snip]

Does anybody want to adopt this language and make a real conlang of it? I don't think I can muster a grammar for it at this time, or maybe ever, despite the fact that I find the results rather delicious. If there's anybody who wants to go for it, have at...
I would be interested in doing so. Before of course, I must finish work on Kozado (expension of the lexicon, especially since Kokakode is willing to derive a daughter) and do work on Koyek, but I'll be happy to do something in a quite different direction, could you hang me the sound change list then ?


Also : we shouldn't forget there is an entire other family spoken in the same conworld (the second team from the original relay). I've still had the grammar I've done at that time, though it need revisions.

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Post by Corumayas »

Radius Solis wrote:So I propose the following: on a political basis, newly conquered territories (no matter who did the conquering) were under the provisional supervision of Athale for a few generations until they could govern themselves as member provinces of the Empire. With all provinces new and old being ultimately under Athale's reign overall, as well. Meanwhile, linguistically, newer provinces showed strong cultural and linguistic affiliations with particular city-states, those which actually sent the invading armies.
Or the colonizing farmers, or the merchants or administrators or priests... Yeah, that seems like a good scheme. (These affiliations don't always have to be with the nearest city-state, either: people from any city could settle a new province, especially once the empire is well-established.)

If there are no objections, I think I'll send a pm to ebilein, RHaden, etc. so they know what we're doing, and can join in if they want.
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