From: Jan van Steenbergen (ijzeren_jan@yahoo.co.uk)
Date: Thu Nov 07 2002 - 03:47:30 EST
--- Christian Thalmann skrzypszy:
> > I hadn't thought before that it might be a *revived* CL rather than one
> > carrying on from ancient Rome. If you are prepared to at least start it on
> > Earth it could be as follows: towards the end of the Roman empire, a party
> > of patrician Romans who could still speak Classical Latin escaped from the
> > collapsing empire to a place of relative safety - I would suggest North
> > Africa. There they found a new colony, which maintains the classical form
> > of the language as a riposte to the triumph of the common form of the
> > language in the old empire.
>
> Yeah, I've had such thoughts too... in my earliest versions, I had
> some elitist grouping of Romans (Something like a sect perhaps? The
> children of Jupiter? That would at least explain the name...)
I personally find that a very good idea. Well, you can have it both ways. Let's
say a group of Classical Latin-speaking patricians had to escape Rome because
they refused to embrace Christianity?
> founding a colony somewhere off the wars and invasions in Europe.
> However, I'd have to drop the German substrate completely... or
> maybe adopt something else as a substrate, but I'm afraid I'm not
> familiar with any language that was spoken at that time. =(
No no no!! I remember you first posting ever about Jovian, before the language
even had a name. I immediately "felt" the Germanic substrate (tho I think I
called it Gothic), without you even mentioning it!
> Of course, I could include the Germanic substrate in the form of
> a load of Germanic slaves carried along as workers... but surely
> the Germanic languages 2000 years ago were totally different from
> the German I know... =(
Well, Gothic is well-documented and far from ugly! And the Goths have another
advantage: they spread over all Europe, from the Iberian peninsula to the
Crimea, and met a lot of Romans along the way :)
So, if you want to justify Jovian's Germanic substratum, you could theorize
about a place where those Goths (or other Germans) adopted Classical Latin for
some reason as their language of communication; or you can assume a Germanic
superstratum, in the form of those Roman patricians who believed in Jupiter,
and escaped to a place controlled by Goths...
> As for Northern Africa, well, it would be a possibility, I guess,
> but it would introduce yet another substratum of pre-existing
> culture with which I have even less experience...
... and it would definitely get you in trouble with Moors, Arabs, etc.
BTW There are some "Afro-Romance" conlangs in circulation:
- Carthagenian (check RomanceConlang's archives),
- Afar (only one sentence in Conlang's archives), and
- Christophe's yet-unnamed Arabo-Romance language (did you realize this
language after all, Christophe?).
Jan
=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones
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