zompist bboard

Can you show us some Dravian currency? How cheap are your cigarettes?

What are some of the customary cooking styles and dishes of your country? Have you been invaded by McDonalds yet?

Where did you learn to speak and write English so fluently? (I am ashamed of my own ignorance.)

Dewrad learned to speak and write English so fluently in fucking England*.


It stands to reason the rest of the letters are translations as well, especially since Tedur says in the first letter So much for all the English I know.

*Also fucking in England.

_________________

Common Zein Scratchpad & other Stuffs! OMG AN ACTUAL CONPOST WTFBBQ

Formerly known as Drydic.

What is this crematura thing?

Judging by context, it might be some kind of alcoholic coffee.

Breaking faykabe for a moment, there's actually a reason behind the colour choice. Dravia covers what in our timeline are the Hungarian counties of Tolna, Somogy, Baranya and Zala, with a bit of Veszprem and Vas. The county colours in this area are yellow and green or blue and white: I've combined them into what is admittedly a rather ugly mix. I've thought about changing the flag to a blue and white bicolour defaced with the coat of arms, but it turns out that's already used by San Marino. On the other hand, the present flag differs from that of Gabon only in the shade of blue used. Thoughts would be welcome on this.

Tedur, bless his little cotton socks, might not have been entirely clear here: the junta was the final stage of Dravia's communist government. Quoting from Jones' "Concise History of Dravia":



It is a reaction against this Junta, the Comitat which led to the subsequent Civil War and overthrow of Communism.

_________________

Well, the problem with blue and white is that it looks dangerously close to the Pan-Slavic Tricolour - slav nationalists encouraged slavic countries to adopt flags of white, blue and red (hence Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Russia, plus Poland has 2/3). If Dravea is keen on not being Slavic, they may have intentionally stayed away from blue and white.
Personally, from those four colours, I'd probably have gone with green, white and yellow - i.e. substituting in yellow for the red of Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria (given, I assume, Hungarian dominion in the past, the Hungarians might have liked to give them a Hungarian-style flag, which would not necessarily have been rejected afterwards). But it's not like your flag is impossible or anything.
[Actually, what I would do (if I were following my current whim, at least) would be to have Hungary give the region a horizontal yellow-white-and-green flag, which the Draveans then turned 90 degrees into a green-white-yellow vertical tricolour (i.e. to show their liberty by adopting the french design).]
[[But having said that, looking at those regions, it does seem as though blue is the dominant colour]]

I wouldn't worry too much about the Gabonese flag. Flags can be very similar, or even identical. Ireland and Cote d'Ivoire are just inverted. Malta and Indonesia both have the old flag of Hesse (though apparently they've adopted different sizes), which is the same as Poland upside-down. A more precise parallel: Chad and Romania have the same flag, except with very slightly different shades of blue in one stripe.

Oh, right, that does make more sense.
Although I'll note that technically the first female communist premier was Savka Dabčević-Kučar, and that if she doesn't count (because Croatia was a constituent republic, not fully independent), then Milka Planinc of Federal Yugoslavia should!

_________________
Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

the jews are the most powerful people on earth, do you not agree?

i've never seen that word spoonerised like that before
stealin it.

_________________
<Anaxandridas> How many artists do you know get paid?
<Anaxandridas> Seriously, name five.

What is the etymology of Tedur?

_________________


Adúljôžal ônal kol ví éža únah kex yaxlr gmlĥ hôga jô ônal kru ansu frú.
Ansu frú ônal savel zaš gmlĥ a vek Adúljôžal vé jaga čaþ kex.
Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh. Ônal zeh.

Tedur is, by his own admission, not a linguist. So if I intercede on his behalf here:

Dravian nickname formation is, as far as I can determine, a fairly regular pattern. You take the first syllable of the name and follow it with a stressed vowel: -ó or -ú for men, -í for women. So when I've skyped with Tedur he's called me Danó [dǝˈno] from Danèl [dǝˈnɛɫ]. Sometimes it's not the first syllable but the normal stressed syllable: the diminutive form of Alesandro [ǝleˈsaŋdru] is Sandrú [sǝŋˈdru] (although I have heard Alú and Lesó).

Matrix: Tedur has no idea, he just says he's just named after Tedur Sojanèsc, a famous wrestler from the 70s. On consulting an onomasticon, however, it turns out that it's a reflex of Greek Θεόδωρος, or "Theodore".

_________________

*A caman is a Turkish bath. They're still very common in Dravia.

_________________

I'm already booking tickets.

Who would be least trustworthy: a Jew, an American, a Russian, or a Gypsy?

_________________

Well?

_________________

You already have two characters named Sojanèsc/Sojanèsca... Yet Sojane is the capital city, nè c'est pas? I find it very unbelievable that you have such a common name derived from people living in the capital. Note that bloodlines - and thus surnames - usually move rural>city and then die out in the urban environment to be replaced with new ones... you have a lot of Frenchmen named after obscure little villages and very few named after Paris. Sometimes in a colonial context you see people named (de) France and (de) Paris etc. but these are usually colonials who made their names up anyway. Or were given them on a whim. I very much doubt Dravia had a colonial empire. You see this not only in France but in pretty much every country of Europe, and especially in the East (barring situations like Vilnius and Krakow that have been cultural millieus for forever (and people named after those cities usually tend to be Jews, not being anti-semitic, just descriptive)) because our capitals tend to have been villages of a few thousands until very recently (say a century and a half ago). So there are very few Serbians named Beogradski, Croats named Zagrebski, Macedonians named Skopski, Slovaks named Bratislavski (hahahaha) etc. Hungarians have Buday but Buda was a huge HUGE city in medieval times... you paint the Dravians as a rural, noncosmopolitan folk and I doubt Sojane has left much of an impression on history. It's true a lot of Romanians bear the name Bucurescu but keep in mind Bucuresti is the plural of Bucurescu, which seems to have been a large clan so and so many years ago. They're not named after the city, quite the opposite. I doubt this is true for Sojane whatever your etymology of it is. "People of the Soj clan"? Kek.

Another criticism. You seem to have some misconceptions about Eastern Europe. The first, that redubbed blackmarket DVDs and other 90s kinda shit is still prevalent here, which it really isn't, we've modernized massively; the average Eastern European listens to more rap than folk and any phenomenon you'd find memetically popular in New York or Paris will be so in Prague and Chisinau, in the original English too! The era of isolation of the east is over. Now, I say we've modernized, of course we're still poor as fuck. And lots of suicides, other concomitant baggage reflecting the culture shift, etc. but the impression I get from you is that you think all the "Ivan Drago" stereotypes are still active. Secondly, you seem to think French-style villages and towns are how Eastern Europe works, with your guy being born in some few-thousands-strong winemaking town that's active and fun and they make wine even today, how quaint & pretty ... all the villages are empty. Only old people live there. It was a bit different in the 90s, though, I have friends who grew up in villages that had other children, and young adults (!) so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

My third and final question. How did these pseudo-French, who don't even sound particularly Eastern Romance, get to the middle of the pannonian plain without getting assimilated/exterminated/enslaved like all the other ethnicities who've tried it? Balaton to Budapest used to speak Slavic, there were Avars in the grasslands, probably some of the old Romano-Illyrian stock hanging around and yet when Arpad came all these people in the lowlands got Magyarized. Took a few hundred years, yeah, but still. The only people under Hungarian dominion who successfully resisted this were highland shepherds like the Slovaks and Vlachs, even successive waves of German colonists got assimilated early on (the ones we see in the ethnographic maps of ~1880 arrived there much later, most in the 16th century but with the overlordship and umbrage of the Austrian state behind them). Then whence your Dravians. Either they came as refugees from France or are some population of Romance shephards moved West - which isn't too unrealistic - but there's not much for herders to do in farmland unless the farmers get killed, which the Hungarian crown would not support, and anyway Dravian doesn't sound anything like Romanian/Aromanian/Megleno-Romanian/Istro-Romanian. And if they're French, it would take a massive number of them moving there to form a self-sustaining community. Some Byzantine emperor settled 30,000 Slavs in Anatolia and they assimilated, while 60,000 Kurds were moved to Mashhad and managed to survive as an ethnos to the present. Let's say 50,000 is more or less the minimum, how did they get to southern Hungary? What did the Hungarian crown/existing Hungarian peasantry there have to say about it? Tons of problems with that theory. Lastly you could say they're remnants of the native Romance population but that's impossible as I showed above.

PS: Eastern Europeans, especially bydlo ones like your specimen, get drunk for the first time before 10-11 y.o... "How could this be" you ask in a shocked tone from an enlightened Occidental viewing platform high in the clouds above North America, watching the world through red-white-and-blue tinted telescreens. Well, mate, the East is as it is. Mores and customs are very different here. I find occidental writers do too much projection when they portray foreign cultures; it's very close minded to believe all people act the same and have the same belief systems/general life milestones and ages when those occur etc. etc. I suppose they do so as a consequence of egalitarianism.

_________________
Slava, čĭstŭ, hrabrostĭ!

I can't believe Dewrad managed to find a non-racist Eastern European.

_________________

You did expect to find magic there, so what makes the odd non-racist so unexpected?

_________________

"There was a particular car I soon came to think of as distinctly St. Louis-ish: a gigantic white S.U.V. with a W. bumper sticker on it for George W. Bush."

Can someone tell me if Eddy's post is worth reading? I still have him foed.

_________________

Actually, 'Paris' is the 123rd most common surname in the whole of France. In terms of frequency, it would be the equivalent of being called Macdonald or Johnston or Carr or Hart in the UK - more common than Williamson or Barker or Lawson or the like. That makes it the sort of name it's really not unusual to encounter multiple holders of.

Regarding Dravean - Dew knows a lot more about eastern romance than you do, I'm sure.

_________________
Blog: http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/

But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

_________________

Common Zein Scratchpad & other Stuffs! OMG AN ACTUAL CONPOST WTFBBQ

Formerly known as Drydic.

Of course westerners inherently know more shit than anyone else, including locals, on any subject and I'm remiss to think otherwise /s

Feel free to be wrong.

_________________
Slava, čĭstŭ, hrabrostĭ!

First, quit saying pseudo-french, it makes you sound like an idiot. Secondly, if I remember correctly Dravean is suppose to be descended from Dalmatian or related romance language. It is suppose to lack the palatalization of the velars like Dalmatia did. So if it doesn't sound like Romanian and so on, then well good because it isn't suppose to. I don't know why you obsess over this idea that it is french.



And this is where it becomes obvious how full of shit you are. Dewrad isn't american in any sense of the word. He is welsh and I assume you have been here long enough to see the video of him doing the yard of ale, so this mistake is really unforgivable. I haven't had to many interactions with you or read your posts that much, but all this general idiocy and xenophobia doesn't come off as a surprise when your avatar has the symbol it has in it.*

*yes I know it is just a pagan symbol, but paganism in eastern europe is heavily infiltrated with racists and fascists. Also the fact you put that symbol over Romania and Hungary and I think Albania shows a bit more of what type of trash you really are.

_________________
Proto-Karasuk
Unthahian

FKA Vortex

On another subject, excuse me if I missed it, but I would be interested to know whether your penpal votes, and if he does, whom he votes for and why.

You say that I have some misconceptions about Eastern Europe. You, however, have some misconceptions about me. For the past fifteen or so years I worked in hotels, bars and restaurants, both front and back of house. Not in North America, but here in southern England. An interesting thing about the industry here is how dominated it is by immigrants from former Eastern bloc countries. I have known, drunk with and worked with these people for years, some of them I count as close friends who I see on a fairly regular basis. Tedur Covaç is, essentially, a composite character based on some of the Eastern Europeans I've known. For example, his recollection of his childhood owes a lot to conversations I've had with a close friend of mine: he's about my age, a chef, and comes from Katowice in Poland. Tedur's description of Vailana is based on how my old commis chef, a Hungarian from Villány, describes his home town (for what it's worth, the current demographics of Villány show the majority of the population being in the 18-59 age bracket: it's not just the elderly there.) So yeah, while I'm hardly a local, I'm not entirely uninformed. Also, Dravia is fictional, and a touch satirical at that; I'm well aware that Central Europe produces more than gay porn and uranium, but emphasising the latter is funnier.

I think that covers the bulk of accusations leveled at me in your first two paragraphs? Salmoneus has already discussed the issue of Sojanèsc as a surname. (Also, I happen to like it, and Sojane has historically always been a small town. The etymology is of Imperial vintage, fwiw: Sopianae.)

As for the final paragraph, there is more to address. You think that Dravian isn't very Eastern Romance, that it is mere pseudo-French. Well, that is your opinion and you are entitled to it. On the other hand, you clearly know fuck all about Eastern Romance so I find it difficult to give your opinion the time of day. I could always explain further if you'd like? Briefly, however, Vortex is quite right in remembering that Dravian's closest relative is (Vegliot) Dalmatian. It also has a lot in common with North-Eastern Italian varieties, particularly Venetian. Varieties of Romanian occur at the opposite geographical end of this dialect continuum: expecting Dravian to sound particularly like Romanian is much like expecting Andalusian Spanish to have a strong resemblence to Walloon.

Now, how did the Dravians get to "the middle of the Pannonian plain"? Well, for a start, they didn't. They aren't in the middle of the Pannonian plain, but in the hill-country of Transdanubia. The Dravians themselves claim to be autochthonous, pointing to a glorious unbroken history going all the way back to the province of Roman Pannonia and the time of the Caesars: as the Romanians claim to be the descendants of Trajan's legionaries, so the Dravians claim they have been there all the way through: an island of pure Romanitas in a sea of Slavonic and Magyar barbarians. On the other hand, they would: since the 19th century the varying ethnicities of central and eastern Europe have been playing out the "we were here first" game with various bloody and distasteful results. Dravia hasn't escaped that particularly unpleasant aspect of post-Habsburg nationalism. Like most Eastern and Central Europeans, the truth of their origins makes them uncomfortable.

However, their claims to have been in the general area since the fall of the Empire does contain a grain of truth. Romanised populations survived the influx of the Goths, Lombards and Slavs: at one time Dravian (or rather "Proto-Dravian") was spoken in communities much further to the west of modern Dravia: remnant populations in what is now northern Slovenia attest to this. However, as a rule they retreated from the fertile lowland areas to the hills, ceding the valleys and plains to the incoming Slavic-speaking populations. That there was a great deal of admixture is clear: Slavic loan-words penetrate even the oldest strata of the Dravian lexicon (interestingly, Dravian has separate words for maternal and paternal grandparents: the latter are loans from Slavic, while the former are native Romance). In the early Middle Ages, the area was characterised by transhumant Romance-speakers in the hills and sedentary Slavic-speakers in the valleys and plains, all ruled over by a warrior elite of Avar extraction. Following the Avar defeat by Charlemagne, the area was organised as a border principality with a Slavic-speaking elite (again, this is shown in the Dravian lexicon: vocabulary relating to law, nobility and so on is often from Slavic sources). Through a few twists of fate, this Slavic-ruled principality survived the initial Magyar invasion and only became part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the 1100s somewhen, much along the same lines as Croatia-Slavonia. Magyarisation was relatively light, with little in-migration by ethnic Hungarians: mainly nobles and landowners.

Then the Ottomans invaded and conquered what is now southern Dravia. The area was part of the military frontier for several centuries and much of the native nobility and the settled population was killed, deported or fled. When the area was reconquered, the Romance-speakers simply moved down from the hills, as it were. New settlers joined them from the German-speaking areas of the empire, and a number of Serbs were resettled. Again, not many Hungarians (there weren't really enough to go round): Hungarian linguistic influence on Dravian varieties has historically been negligible in the southern heartlands: the lands to the north of lake Balaton (Latèsca in Dravian) which remained part of Royal Hungary had far more Magyar influence.

(Also, Tedur is not impressed at being called a bydlo. He's not even Polish, for a start. He comes from a very nice respectable family: his father was a school teacher. He suspects you're Serbian, but that's only because he's rabidly Serbophobic. That's not actually a very common prejudice in Dravia. I suspect it's rooted in women troubles, as he refuses to discuss it.)

_________________