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

[Basilius]

...I though of the earliest migration wave.

I said it left a few langs genetically connected on the level of a macrofamily.

Now I realize that the same macrofamily must include all the langs of the NE continent and Zeluzhia. Including Proto-Isles.

Definitely, I must concentrate on the Isles langs. Speaking of which...

I couldn't find e. g. a sketch of sound changes from Proto-Isles to Ppãrwak. And some of them must be untrivial (just looked at case endings, the verb "compare", a few words in the texts - those word-final p's pop up quite unexpectedly...).

Who can I consult with?

Legion, for sure.

Proto-Isles is created by Ran.
Ppãrwak, by Avaja.
Zele, by brandrinn.
Fáralo (Edastean), by Zompist.

Are these people active participants as of today?

[Radius Solis]

Thank you! Then, I see AkanaWiki mentioning "the Ttirukan and Tymytan archipelagoes" as territories colonized by Isles peoples. What is the Tymytan archipelago?

Is there an accepted name for Ik'im-Wihe (I used this just because I couldn't find one)?

And, is there a better name for what I called "the Ttirukũ Zone"? (I don't like this name, actually.)

Also, is Zeluzh equal to Zeluzhia?

1. The Tymytan archipelago is far to the north of the Ttirikuan one, populated by speakers of other Isles languages. It's listed on this older map, for future reference. (That map is out of date in many regards, but most names remain correct.)

2. Ik'im-Wihe does not yet have any other independent name. When we speak of the Ttirukuan islands, we often mean to include Ik'im-Wihe, since they're all one big island chain together.

3. Zeluzh is a language, and since we had no other name for the continent it is spoken on, calling it Zeluzhia after the language has been a clear (if unoriginal) way to refer to it. It is likely that a more native name will be found for the continent, in due course.

[Radius Solis]

Avaja and Ran are rarely active on the ZBB these days. You are free to ask brandrinn what you like, he is still on the board, but he has not participated in Akana for three years now, and probably doesn't remember much... or even know that this conworld is called Akana now. I don't think he paid much attention to the conworlding aspect of it all, that I know of.

Legion and Zompist both remain active in Akana, but if you want Zompist's attention you should send a PM, as he reads this thread only irregularly (and even then it may take time to get a response; as the boardlord of the ZBB he gets a lot of PMs). But he and Legion would be the best to ask about Isles languages; Zomp even posted a reconstruction of proto-Isles once, before the grammar for it was made public, so he has made more study of the family than almost anyone else. But that was three years ago, now, so the extent of his memory on the subject may or may not be an issue.

You can just post your Fáralo questions here if you like, since I and others here know a lot more about it than about the Isles langs. We could probably answer a lot. But only Zompist can make authoritative decisions about the language and culture.

[zompist]

Actually I always read it, though I don't always have something to say.

[dunomapuka]

Radius: the language is called "Zele" -- "Zeluzh" seems to be the same as "Zeluzhia."

Here is the phonology of (Old) Takuña.

My third attempt but I think I'm sticking with this one . I haven't included any examples yet because I haven't yet applied semantic shifts to the lexicon. So here are a few:

PNT imújna /i."mui.n6/ [i~."mu~j.n6], "woman, she", becomes /i."mui.la_L/ [i~."mwi~.la_k!]
PNT ‘iriamukipaaní /?i.4i6.mu.ki.p66."ni/ [?i~.n4i@~.mu~.Nki~.mp6:~."ni], "water-dwelling creatures", becomes /i.ni:.mu.ki.pa:."li/ [i~.ni:~.mu~.gi~.ba:~."li]
PNT kij’mipi /"kii?.mi.pi/, "little finger", becomes /"ti:_L.m:i_L.hi/ ["ti:_k!m_k.mi_k!?.hi]
PNT miarutu /"mi6.4u.tu/ ["mi@~.n4o.tu], "hold in the hand; know", becomes /"mii.nu_L.su/ ["mIj~.no_k!?.su]

Planned features:
-more verbal morphology than PNT
-highly blurred distinction between nouns and verbs as lexical classes
-large sets of situationally-determined taboo lexis having much influence on the history of the lexicon

I'm really excited for more information on this. Namɨdu is going to have some words borrowed from Takuña, though a later form of it.

Interesting that you still have <ñ> representing /N/, since to me it always suggests /J/... except in Tolkien's usage. It's hard for me to think of "Takuña" being anything other than [takuJa]!

[Radius Solis]

Whoops! Thanks for the correction. After all this time the memory goes wonky...


Also, I agree about ñ. Somehow it's as hard to assign [N] to it in my head as it would be to assign [x] to <s>.

[TzirTzi]

Funnily enough, I find it extremely hard to associate <ñ> with [N] as well - I used it because when I originally started work on PNT, someone (I can't remember who, now) said that they'd always imagined <Takuña> was [takuNa] . Thus it has stuck. I've been thinking of adding a [J] realisation before /i/, though.

It's coming along reasonably quickly now... The only difficulty is which features to lose, since I like them all. I think I'm going to get rid of PNT's close/distant possession, or possibly turn it into a proximate/obviate or other discourse-level feature. I might have one evidential lost.. and an increase of the number of positionalities.

I've also got quite a lot of ideas developing for Takuña cultural stuff. Could someone fill me in on how the Núalís-Takuña population fares after the original period of contact with the Isles people? Or is that somewhat up in the air still? I don't want to spend lots of time fleshing out cultural stuff that will then disappear without trace, but I've been finding it pretty hard to keep track of historical developments (Basilius - I've been very impressed with how quickly you've absorbed all the history and geography of Akana... I still haven't managed to get a lot of it down ).

[Cedh]

Could someone fill me in on how the Núalís-Takuña population fares after the original period of contact with the Isles people?

AFAIK all canonical information is in the Mûtsipsa' grammar. Basically, they get along rather well with the Mûtsinamtsys people, developing a shared philosophy and to a certain extent, culture, while remaining separate political entities. We were thinking that Siixtaguna eventually ends up as a strong naval power, succeeding the Fáralo in that role and even establishing "pirate footholds" in former Fáralo territory around 600 YP.

Núalís is only mentioned in passing in the Máotatšàlì grammar: "...while others speak the languages of the Núalís family."

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On synchronization [SNIP]

The Proto-Isles speakers are supposed to have spread to the various islands between -1800 and -1400 YP, with the daughter languages (Ppãrwak, Zele, etc.) developing there. We had the idea at one point that this migration could have been triggered by a different, more advanced group driving them off the NE continent.

Fáralo colonization, on the other hand, happened much later but might just not have been as successful despite their relatively advanced level of civilization (this hasn't been determined yet though). At any rate, their empire is in serious decline from 400 YP onwards, with a brief period of recovery in the second half of the 5th century, and I'm not sure whether any of the colonies would have stabilized sufficiently to get by on their own by then. I would guess that the Thokyunam (the old name for Legion's people on Ik'im-Wihé) at least would ultimately be in a stronger position.
(Although it would definitely be cool to have at least one or two daughter languages of Fáralo on the islands.)

Another possible invasion might be done by Peninsular peoples, who originated on the peninsula to the SW of the island chain. A group of these people migrated across the bay to Lotoka c. -500 YP, and Wihé is about the same distance, so there is definitely a chance that some of them might have reached Ttirukũ or an island near it.

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My suggestion for the beginning of a timeline:

c. -20000 to -15000: Humans first cross the Ttirukũ island chain to reach the NE continent. Zeluzhia is colonized soon after. (This is early enough so we won't have to worry too much about making languages of the two eastern continents appear related to each other, and late enough so eastern cultures don't have too much of a head start given their favourable environment)

c. -12000 to -8000: A second wave of migration from Peilaš to the NE.

c. -5000: A third wave of migration. ((The languages of this stock remain demonstrably related) About the same time, agriculture is first invented on Peilaš, but the migrating peoples are still hunter-gatherers.

c. -2500: Agriculture is invented independently on the NE continent (probably on the southern coast opposite NE Zeluzhia).

c. -2000: Agriculture spreads to the western tip of the NE continent (Proto-Isles culture).

c. -1800: Rise of the first major empire of the NE continent, conquering roughly the western third of the landmass. Proto-Isles peoples flee offshore and establish themselves on various islands in the Ttirukũ chain, bringing agriculture with them.

[Legion]

On the Coastal-Western civ: let's go with the idea of keeping several major western civs, without major unification, after all it's not necessary element of the civ I envision. So I think I'll slowly developp their history as I'll developp the languages (I have lots of ideas for the developpement of the whole coastal family).


On the Ikim-Wihe civ: they are indeed a isle-people, speaking the language of Nanxútayi (or Sošunanxútayi, which is a still-in-the-works complete revision of Thokyunèhotà). During the classical period (around the first century YP), they are a society which ressembles a mixture of Ancient Greece/Ancient Sparta and feodal Japan: a strongly territorial people, with a rigid and militaristic society, but little internal unity (several competing city states). They are, however, relatively open to commerce with other civs, and besides a few oversea colonies (one notably, on the Dægem islands), they are not expantionists. Oh, and they share the same religion that is practiced in Huyfarah and most of the Isle sphere.

But I haven't anything planed for their history ; they could stay here for a very long time, or ended up conquered (or at least vassalized) by another power.

We know that proto-isle speakers started migrating to their actual location around -1600 YP, probably following the invasion of their homeland (it was also theorised that other, yet to be developped Isle languages may still be spoken there).

The actual details are still very fuzzy and there's much room for orienting the whole thing one way or another as we'd like.


As for diachronical details of the Isle family, I guess Zompist is the one to ask, as I am more focused on the single developpement of my own daughter that on how the sister languages evolved.

[Corumayas]

Radius: the language is called "Zele" -- "Zeluzh" seems to be the same as "Zeluzhia."

I think that 'Zeluzh' is the north coast region where Zele is spoken, and 'Zeluzhia' was coined to refer to the whole continent.

BTW, Avaja described Ttirukũ's climate as tropical IIRC, although it doesn't appear to actually be in the tropics... in general I think Akana is a slightly warmer planet than earth.

c. -5000: A third wave of migration. ((The languages of this stock remain demonstrably related) About the same time, agriculture is first invented on Peilaš, but the migrating peoples are still hunter-gatherers.

I've been working with a slightly earlier date for the beginning of agriculture in Peilaš-- more like -7000 I think. I picture it starting more or less independently in the Xšali-Peninsular and Aiwa-Oltu regions, probably in that order. The PEI speakers definitely already have agriculture and pottery, and maybe some copper working.

Everything else you wrote looks good to me. We seem to be entering an exciting new phase of growth in Akana studies!

[Radius Solis]

On Earth, big flat river valleys in warm regions were the stylish places to initiate agriculture. So I suspect the main river of the Xsali plain might have been the original breadbasket. If so, then I need to revise its history to stretch back another couple thousand years! (Currently I have its recorded history beginning with invasions from the Western diaspora. But it shouldn't be hard to modify things so that there's an ancient culture there already by that time.)

[Corumayas]

Sure!

(That very ancient culture wouldn't have to be literate, of course... but I suppose it could be if you want!)

Maybe we can get talking about early agriculture again, in terms of stuff like where specific crops get domesticated and how they spread... I think the PEI-speakers will have two cereal crops (the Ndak's kil and borma), onions, and maybe a tuber and a squash or something. Some of those could be imports from further south. What are the oldest crops in the Xšali sphere?

[Radius Solis]

All I can say for sure is that the mainstays of the Xsali diet, as of 0-ish YP, are rice and sorghum, sweet potato, and gourds. They are also familiar with maize, millet, and barley, but make far less use of them. It doesn't seem likely that rice was first agriculturalized in that area, though, given its rather specific requirements, so I'm guessing sorghum is their most ancient grain. Rice may have originated in the Peninsular sphere; the geography there seems much more promising for it.

[Legion]

Okay, so. I have worked out a chronology for the coastal-western civ, while trying to keep in mind what has been said. Opinions and advices are welcome.

c. -3500: The Proto Western speakers start to spread from their homeland over the north-western part of Peilaš, but do not uphold much unity beyond the tribal level.

c. -2300: legends dating back to this time, and corroborated by archeological evidence, tale how a man named Khà7àmazè ("Black Moon"), a powerfull warrior inspired by spirits (or, by some modern interpretations, a schizophrenic psychopath), managed to conquer and unify the tribes of the southern coast into a single nation. He had a profound impact on the culture and religion of the coastal-western civ, and after his death, he became a divinity in the mind of his people (though it seems it didn't happened immediatly, but with generations passing, as his figure grew more legendary).

This was also the period where Proto Coastal Western was spoken.

c. -2000: the initial unity brought by Khà7àmazè started to weaken at this point. The cultural and religious changes which had marked the begining of the coastal people as a distinct identity was more axed on human sacrifice and cannibalistic practice, which require them to frequently perform raids against their direct neighbours of the Steppe. As those grew more powerfull, this became more difficult, and coastal tribes started to turn against each other instead.

c. -1400: by this time, the unity was virtually gone, coastal people had effectively regressed to the tribal level (the biggest tribes rarely encompassing more than four or five towns). This paradoxaly made the region safer for stangers, notably explorers. The first accounts of the coastal-western languages date from this period (those accounts were the doing of foreign observers, as writting didn't existed in the coast by that time).

c. -770: a [yet to be named] new king emerges from a powerfull tribe, and lead it to the conquest of the other tribes, effectively reinstauring the unity of the coast. He is also said to have introduced writing around this time. Start of the historical period and of the Golden Age.

-766 to -752: series of war with the Steppe nation.

-752: a truce is signed, temples are implented in the Steppe nation, functionning in a way akin to the thugees, providing victims for sacrifice and cannibalism, while expending the faith over the border.

-739: death of the new king, establishing a ruling dynasty. He is later assimiled as the second avatar of Łàxo7ùka (originally a minor demon of the coastal religion, which progressively became perceived as the chief deity of their pantheon), the first avatar being Khà7àmazè.

c. -400: by this time, most of the Steppe nation has converted to the coastal religion.

-201: a succession war coinciding with a theological conflict brings an end to the second period of unity, with the coast splited in two rival countries.

c. -50: a new ruler brings forth a short period of unity, and even conquer part of the Steppe nation, but died during battle, without heir. After his death, strife and divisions quickly reduce the coast to a mosaic of rival baronies. End of the Golden Age.

c. 320: founding of the Renovation Movement, a school of theologists whose goal was originally to better organize and codify the coastal religion, but who ended up reforming it profoundly, generating tremondous cultural impact in both the coast and the steppe.

387 to 409: a king, follower of the Renovation Movement, manages to reunify most the coast untill his death in 409. His son takes over his task.

422: the totality of the coast is reunified.

457 to 459: a religious conflict between the Renovation Movement and the traditionalists occure in both the coast and the steppe. The Renovation Movement is eventually victorious, the traditionalists are massacred (with lot of refugees fleeing the zone) or converted by force, and the faith as conceived by the Renovation Movement becomes the official religion in the coast and in the steppe.

530: the covenant; the coastal Kingdom and the Steppe Nation are unified into a single Holy Empire (ruled by a religious leader + two kings, one for the coast, and one for the steppe).

578 to 650: the Holy Empire conquers and/or vassalizes most of the western sphere.

692 to 699: an exceptionally violent epidemic disease strikes the Holy Empire. Ensuing popular uprising and political strife allow several vassal states to claim their independance back. A period of stagnation and recovery follows (the epidemy doesn't spread outside of the western sphere, because during this period the trade route has already been lost).

843: the Holy Empire is back at its heigh, splinter states having been reconquered.

906: the trade route toward the Xoron Eiel is rediscovered.

[Radius Solis]

My general reaction: tentatively positive; I think some details may require adjustment, depending what other interested parties decide, but overall I think the picture you present sounds like an excellent starting place for working out Western history.

The one way that this impinges on my plans is in finding a place to fit in a non-Western coastal people, somewhere in the middle range of that timespan. I am assuming several things here:
1. the "coast" is quite a long area
2. there will have been non-Western peoples in this area before the Western diaspora
3. the Westerners realistically should not wipe out all native groups immediately
thus 4. there probably should be room for coexistence of multiple peoples, at least early on.

Based on this, I would like to flesh out one of the non-Western groups. My plan is to have a native group that speaks multiple but closely related languages, somewhere either in the middle of the coastal zone or the area where the coast joins the steppe. I would like for them to be more peace-oriented than the Westerners and have a string of moderately successful small city-states (more like town-states) along a 100-mile stretch of the water, or so. Eventually these will be taken over by Western groups and the languages lost, but not before providing Coastal Western langs with a large set of loanwords in two main semantic fields: A) terms for urban life and civilized governance (these folks were learning to build towns while the Westerners were still nomadic) and B) nautical and marine terminology (P-Western has very few sea-related words).

Looking at your timeline, it appears that between about -1500 and -770 there is a period of little unity or organization for the Westerners - they're having some downtime. This seems like a good window for my fishing towns to be flourishing, and then they can go downhill in the -700s with renewed Western expansions.

Conlinguistically, I'm envisioning these people's languages as descending from an isolate ancestor sbout a thousand years prior, so the Westerners of Khà7àmazè's time would have already been encountering the mother language.

So...
c. -2000: Common Fishermanic
c. -1200: Fishermanic languages gradually diverging between the individual towns, which are becoming more successful
c. -800: At their peak, Fishermanic languages are no more diverse than the modern Norse languages, though far more geographically confined
c. -600: The family is going extinct, as the towns' slight technological advantage has failed to provide enough edge over the much more warlike Westerners.


Externally, my plans are to build the whole family together, mother language and its several daughters, as a diachronic and lexical exercise. Grammatical sketches will be brief and focus on morphology, or even be absent. I don't intend to provide texts, since there would likely be little if any attestation of these langs, and their external purpose is to provide a source of loanwords.

[Radius Solis]

ALSO:

Can we please have a roll call for all Akanans who intend to create a Coastal Western language? I suspect that as many as three people may be under the impression that they alone are producing Proto-Coastal-Western. If so, then some negotiation is clearly in order.

(To be clear, I am not among them. I have dropped all intention of making a direct daughter of proto-Western.)

[Dewrad]

Based on this, I would like to flesh out one of the non-Western groups. My plan is to have a native group that speaks multiple but closely related languages, somewhere either in the middle of the coastal zone or the area where the coast joins the steppe. I would like for them to be more peace-oriented than the Westerners and have a string of moderately successful small city-states (more like town-states) along a 100-mile stretch of the water, or so. Eventually these will be taken over by Western groups and the languages lost, but not before providing Coastal Western langs with a large set of loanwords in two main semantic fields: A) terms for urban life and civilized governance (these folks were learning to build towns while the Westerners were still nomadic) and B) nautical and marine terminology (P-Western has very few sea-related words).

Some points to note, which may or may not impact on your plans:

The Proto-Westerners were not nomadic. They lived in settled villages, surrounded by farmland and practicing agriculture: at best they were semi-transhumant. While some of their descendant groups did indeed definitely end up as nomads (these being the ones who domesticated the horse and ended up in the Ndak sphere as the Gezoro), I think it's implausible to posit or imply that they all upped sticks and became nomads: the terrain where the "core" of Proto-Westen speakers were is simply inimical to it- they didn't live in the steppes. They lived in the forested inland valleys between the sea and the mountains.

Note that the domestication of the horse was not a Proto-Western innovation. To take the Indo-European family as an example, it's as if horses were domesticated by the Indo-Aryans, not the Proto-Indo-Europeans themselves.

The Proto-Western homeland extended to the coast (I don't for a minute think that it dominated the whole coast- it's a long damn coast- nor was it "centred" there), and these coastal Westerners fished in rafts on the sea. The vocabulary I uploaded is threadbare, but that doesn't mean that Proto-Westerners wouldn't have had, uh, pisciculture (?) vocabulary. In fact, it might be interesting to have this vocabulary loaned from your Proto-Fishermen at a very early date: possibly the PWs expanded from the interior while still a "unified" speech community (before the family's break up) and learnt fishing from the Proto-Fishermen, but got out-competed by the Proto-Fishermen's better fishing technology as the Proto-Westerners were more concerned with raiding each other for slaves and drinking each other's jizz.

Legion: I'll confess that I'm a little adverse to your godking idea- I'd like to see how you derive loon-becomes-god from a belief system based on the PW one. In addition, the later development seems a tad on the Unholy Empire side- it's almost a little bit too much parodically "evil". PW beliefs might well have been gross, but they were internally coherent in their grossness: I tried to shy away from comic-book nastiness. Also, we already have an empire which began with a loon who thought he could talk to the gods on the other side of the continent.

[Radius Solis]

Hmm. Well, alright, possibly I could lengthen the time depth for Fishermanese so that the PWers could borrow from them. It doesn't quite fit with the recent-divergence plan so well, though, if I'm to have the time they flourish be some 2500 years later. I think my preference would be to reduce the importance of their maritime vocabulary.

Also, my choice of the word "nomadic" was not pivotal. The PWers were more socially primitive, is the main point that matters; they had their little towns, but the organization of them by gender and caste was quite different from that of a more classical proto-urban town.

As well, to clarify, I'm not picturing the Fishermen as some kind of early utopia; they had their squabbles and stratification and stupidity too, but just as a cultural trait they did not, in general, put especially high value on war and warriorship. I'm picturing something vaguely resembling the Minoan civilization - minus the bulls and matriarchy, but still ahead of their time as regards building, professional specialization, and other urban concerns. They may have even had a couple philosophers knocking about. For fun we can have them practicing human sacrifice and bizarre fertility rites too. Actually, on that note, for a while I've had a comically super-whacko con-religion idea without a home, that might actually fit for this.

[Dewrad]

Hmm. Well, alright, possibly I could lengthen the time depth for Fishermanese so that the PWers could borrow from them. It doesn't quite fit with the recent-divergence plan so well, though, if I'm to have the time they flourish be some 2500 years later. I think my preference would be to reduce the importance of their maritime vocabulary.

That's not a problem at all- I wasn't aware exactly of how far you were intending on going back with them.

[Corumayas]

Are we still thinking of doing a relay for the Western family?


I'm not sure we're all on the same page about the size of either the family itself or the area it's spoken in. I'm picturing quite a large family, maybe even comparable to IE or Niger-Congo. On this map (inasmuch as it's still valid for Peilash), I imagine Western langs spoken in at least three areas:

1. The whole pale yellow "Mediterranean" region, plus probably some of the red "desert" area to the south of that (this includes the original homeland, nicht wahr?) -- presumably this is the "Coastal" region, but I'm not sure we're all agreed on how big it is.

2. The pink "sahel" region around Tjakori, bordering on Xshalad and the Rathedan.

3. The gold-colored "steppe" region, from the northwest coast all the way to the Gauron Emwel.

The family might also extend into other areas, e.g. up the coast into the dark green "temperate maritime" region in the northwest (which would be a further extension of the "Coastal" region).

Both because they include (or are near to) the original homeland, and because the coastal area might extend quite far to the northwest, IMO the "Coastal" group of Western langs should be very diverse, and needn't descend from a single common ancestor more recent than PW itself.

For reference, here's the tree I suggested for the Western family a few pages back:

Code: Select all

Proto-Western
|--Southwestern Group: langs of the original PW homeland and nearby
`--all others
   |--Southeastern Group: Gezoro, Tjakori, any other close relatives of theirs
   `--all others (Northern Group)
      |--Northwestern Group: langs of the coasts and hills of the northwestern lobe of Peilas
      `--Northeastern Group: northern Steppe langs

I'm not so sure of the exact relationships I suggested there, but I still think the broad picture is right: the greatest diversity and deepest divisions in the family should be in the southwest (the original homeland), while the entire Steppe group could be a single, large but closely related, sub-sub-family (cf. Indo-Aryan or Bantu).


Legion, the union of coastal and steppe states you propose still seems unlikely to me. Nomads may certainly convert to their neighbors' religion, but I find it hard to imagine them voluntarily joining together with farmers in a political union. Nor does the coastal state conquering the steppe seem likely. (Can anyone think of a time when this happened on Earth? China is the closest thing I can think of, but I think their steppe empire was pretty precarious, with barbarian nomads always threatening just outside the walls, and often enough coming in and overrunning the whole country.)

What does happen often is nomads conquering a settled region. If the two regions are to be united, I think it would more likely happen that way. But honestly, even then I don't think such a union would last; the whole mode of life of the two areas is just too different.

[Radius Solis]

Hmm. I had pictured a somewhat flatter trunk of the family tree than that, with fewer groups than mentioned on the wiki. If it was just me, I would make three basic groupings:

1. The steppe languages; a single genetic subfamily like Bantu, as you propose, and containing majority of Western langs (say 60%); this would be ideal ground for the future relay.
2. The "coastal" languages; not a genetic grouping but a diverse grab-bag of languages (including some larger subfamilies but also isolate branches) that includes all the languages of the Western urheimat, and does not extend north of the steppe-coast juncture point (at the tip of the great western bay), all of these together having developed under considerable areal co-influence, and adding up to maybe 30% of the total;
3. Small isolate outlier groups, including the Tjakori-Gezoro group, each a separate direct descendents from PW, as holdovers from the original diaspora, and none of them showing the areal traits of the coastal group (Tj-Gz really has no need of being its own *major* branch, as there's only two languages in it). This set of languages would be a small minority, 10% of Western langs, and be perhaps comparable to Albanian, Armenian, and Tocharian within IE in regards to being scattered randomly across half a continent. Tjakori: the Armenian of Akana!


That's my proposal, and having made it, I will step back and not argue it further, so that the group can get what it wants out of Western.

[Legion]

Radius >

Well, as I have said, I had envision this western-coastal civ. to be on the southern coast – this leaves room for your non western group in the western part of the coast.

On the other hand, we could also envision that this non-western group originally occupied the whole coast, and that they later lost/were assimilated by westerners in the southern part, with, however, substrate influence (and maybe, as you suggest, remaining pockets between the southern coast and the steppe); while they would survive and florish longer in the western coast.

This would leave room for multiple stages of borrowing in the western languages, some as early as Proto Western itself.


Also, yeah, as I said to you, I intend to create a coastal western language. I actually already have started to write down the proto-lang and I have the developpement of several daughters already planed ahead. If we gonna envision the coastal languages as an sprachbund of unrelated western languages, it would be good if other persons interested in doing so communicate with me, so we can bring some unity into the thing (and not just create a bunch of really different languages which just happen to all have tones).

I also like your proposals of grouping for the western family, btw.


Dewrad > Well the legend of Khà7àmazè states that he was one of the elder of his tribe. He suggested to the eldest member of the tribe to seek unity with other tribes, as this would make them stronger. But the eldest disagreed, and called him a fool. Out of anger, Khà7àmazè killed the eldest, and ate his flesh, then claimed power over the tribe. Several other elders opposed him, but he killed them single-handedly, and shared their flesh with the rest of the tribe. These acts subjugated the tribe, and they accepted him as leader. He then managed to either ally with or defeat most of the other coastal tribes.

Now this is the *legend*. It is not known if Khà7àmazè was a real historical figure (and if he was, to which degree the events told in the legend are true), or an amalgam of several different historical figures, or a purely legendary, metaphorical character. Archeological evidences point out to the fact that, during the period where the legend originates, there was indeed a sudden movement of unity in the coast, accompanied by important religious and cultural evolutions.

That is, in contrast with Tsinakan, an actual, historical ruler, who created a real empire with prolongement to the modern time, Khà7àmazè is more a religious symbol than anything else.


Also, for the "evil Empire" side, actually I've tried to avoid this cliché, but I didn't emphatise it enough I guess. I envisioned the evolution of the religion (supposedly) under Khà7àmazè as simply putting more emphasis on cannibalism and human sacrifice – barbaric, but not evil, it's just a prolongement of the already barbaric practices of the original westerners. And even then, there were some positive evolution (notably a formal end to the practice of slavery, and overall a better status for women).

I've actually tried to show that these practices were not sustainable in the long run, effectively keeping the coastal people down and often directly (as in -1400) or indirectly (as in -201) destroying their unity.

It's no coincidence that one of the premice of the Holy Empire was the founding of the Renovation Movement, whose reforms are supposed to considerably *tone down* the cannibalism and human sacrifice aspects of the religion. So in fact I do not envision *at all* the Holy Empire as an "evil Empire", but simply as a religous-based Empire (even if said religion still has some barbaric sides compared to eastern standards).


Corumayas >

As I understood what Dewrad said, the steppe people are *not* nomads – the only western people that went nomadic are the Gezoro and Tjakori, and most of the other western nations remain sedentary and semi-sedentary. So actually I wasn't picturing the coastal and steppe nation as being *that* different culturally. Also, the coastal people are not really "farmers" – if anything, *they* were more barbaric than the steppe people, especially early on, as their religion almost made war an obligatory duty for them.

Even if there were important differences, that's besides the point of an Empire, which is precisely to encompass several people with very different traditions and cultures (I mean, just take *any* real life empire, and see the variety of people that were ruled under the same political denomination). But, I wasn't envisioning the Holy Empire as a political union, but really as a religious union; the religious leader would not command *over* the two kings, he would *shares power* with them – as each king would be in charge of his own region, without interference of the other, that would not actually impose many things on one or the other people, who would mostly be able to preserve their culture and language. So this is really more like a religious *union*, but a political *alliance*.

[Cedh]

I have done a little bit of mapping today, visualizing a tentative scenario for the spread of western languages. This scenario more or less sums up what Dewrad and Corumayas have said about the issue, with some ideas of mine added. (NB: I made these maps before reading the last two posts by Radius and Legion.) The scenario has Tj/Gz as an early offshoot of the steppe branch, which is based on what Dewrad said about the domestication of the horse.

Having read Radius' post though, I have to agree that the steppe group would be a great relay playground. Accordingly I'm leaning to a scenario where two linguistically distinct but maybe culturally related groups of western speakers adopt nomadism - in the northwestern steppe region -, and one of these groups later migrates southeast into the Tjakori valley. (This sounds rather similar to the history of Tocharian indeed...)

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Re: Roll Call:

I'm not working on a Coastal-Western language, but on one that would probably belong to the "isolates group" (Radius' proposal) or to the "homeland group" (Corumayas' proposal). It would be the language that ends up in the bright red area on the last of my scenario maps. I also have some interesting ideas for a second language of the same group, branching off around the early 2nd millennium BP.

Geographically, my language could also fit in the Steppe group, even though I don't picture the ancestors of this culture as ever really having lived in the steppe. So, if you're willing to wait, I could offer to work out an early proto-form of my language as Proto-Steppe-Western. However, my time budget is rather limited at least until March, so it might be better to start the relay without waiting for my project to get somewhere.

[Dewrad]

As I understood what Dewrad said, the steppe people are *not* nomads

Not particularly. I always envisioned this scenario:

The Proto-Western Urheimat is a relatively narrow area between the coast and the mountains, marked by a multiplicity of lightly wooded valleys. To the north is the steppe, and as the Proto-Western community became more populous, they encroached on this area. PW languages were already starting to break up at this point, so let's call these people the Proto-Steppe. The Proto-Steppe domesticated the horse (previously known only as a prestigious game animal) and either developed or got hold of the wheel (or maybe they used travoises?) and it was these people who became nomadic, precipitating the wide spread of the Western languages. Which pretty much echoes Rad's division of the Western languages (although I kinda assumed that the Gezoro-Tjakori were part of this Proto-Steppe family. This doesn't have to be the case.)

[Legion]

Well ok. I like this scenario you and Cedh are proposing, but I don't see any major incompatibility with what I'm proposing (or am I missing something?)