From: ijzeren_jan (ijzeren_jan@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Tue Aug 13 2002 - 19:53:25 EST
Hello,
Yesterday I joined this list. Although most of you will know me
already from Conlang, I think I will introduce myself anyway, in
particular for those who are not on Conlang.
My name is Jan van Steenbergen, 32 years old, and living in Zaandam,
the Netherlands. By education I am both a Sovietologist and a Polish
translator, but at last, after years of being a freelancer, I finally
found some stability as a Cool:Gen programmer in a bank. Apart from
that, I like to think of myself as a semi-professional musician
(composer, singer), but after my daugher was born exactly seven
months ago, I have never really had any time left for such time-
consuming hobbies.
Conlanging is another thing. I've done that since my childhood, but
about six years ago I started to take it a bit more seriously.
Currently, I have six conlangs:
Hattic, Askaic and Megza form together a separate branch of the Indo-
European languages.
Vozgian, Motyak and Slopik are North-Slavonic languages; this project
is currently dormant, but who knows?
For a long time, I have had the idea of a Slavonik-based romlang in
the back of my head. A few weeks ago I started to work on it
seriously, and that's why I joined this list. It is called Slovanik
(for now, at least).
Now, the idea causes me a few problems:
With the possible exception of some North-Dacian outskirt, no Slavs
ever inhabited (West-)Roman territory, even at its peak. As a result,
much more "history bending" is required to make such a language
historically plausible than is the case for a language like Brithenig.
Besides, I want the language to relate to Polish in the same way
Brithenig relates to Welsh. But this wouldn't be likely if those
Slavic tribes that later became the Poles were entirely romanized.
And finally, I can't make up my mind regarding orthography: will it
be more Polish or more Czech? The more I think about it, the more I
move in the direction of a Polish orthography, which is after all
closest to me.
I think I will go for the following solution: the Roman Empire was a
bit stronger than it actually was in reality, and encompassed some
small territories on the other side of the Danube as well. Let's say
part of what is now called the Czech Republic. Those territories were
inhabited by some small West-Slavic tribes, who were known to the
Romans as Venedi and called themselves Slov'eni. The Romans brought
them not only their language, that become more and more locally
flavoured with the centuries, but also a technical advantage to their
fellow Slavs more to the East, which allowed them to maintain both
their language and their sovereignty.
Later, when threatened by invasions of Huns, Avars and Magyars, they
moved a bit North, to more quiet regions, into the Southern part of
contemporary Poland, Silesia. From that time on, their development
took place together with that of the (real) Poles, who were their
Northern neighbours. When the Slovani started to develop a written
language, they did this following Polish standards.
Since the Slovani live on Polish territory and almost every speaker
of Slovanik is at least bilingual, the language has been under strong
Polish influence for ages.
Later, if you allow me, I will surely post a lot about the language
itself.
For now, I have two questions:
- What do you think of this plan?
- Can someone advise me some good Internet resources for Vulgar Latin?
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Jan
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