Re: Alternative history - a plea!

[Padraic Brown <pbrown@nova.umuc.edu>]

il di le sol (aprils le 19) Raymund Bryn yscreus:

> At 2:48 pm 16/4/98, John Cowan wrote:
> >Eo yscrifef:
> >
> >> Quite so, but probably not without leaving some interesting traces on
> >> the *langue d'oil*, which I am not competent to reconstruct.
> >
> >But I posted too quickly.  Frank George Valoczy has just posted on
> >Conlang about his Brzhoneg (spelling?), the Latin-derived Celtic
> >substrate lang of Prydain-Fuin.  This is too good an opportunity
> >to lose.  So the Brzhoneg-speakers have held out, perhaps not too
> >well, against Standard French despite its being much less of a
> >language barrier, which suggests that maybe Occitan has held out too.

I quite agree.  We must work out when and whence the Brzhonegh speakers
come from and how they fit.  They will fill Bretten Beq very nicely,
though, as the Breotu speakers (origianlly from Kernow) were never
especially numerous.  Certainly more than the currently mythical Armorican
speakers, but not too populous.

> 
> Yeah - but you'd have to change the history of France quite a bit,
> methinks.  The one thing that united both the French monarchy and the
> revolutionary republicans was the notion that France has "natural
> boundaries: Pyrrhenees, Jura Mts, Alps, the Rhine & the Atlantic Ocean.
> Everything inside this area must be _French_.  It's only very recently that
> the French state has taken a more enlightened view towards Breton &
> Occitan.

Why not?  Haven't we already entirely mucked about with English History?
(Not to mention the collateral Histories of America (N.), Australia, NZ,
Africa, India, etc.?)  I think the French should be enitled to Their Share
as well.

> 
> >(I'm a modern American, and I favor multicultural states.
> 
> So do I - I want to see the old nation states of Europe go & the new Europe
> to be a conferation of regions.
> 
> >Maybe France *There* isn't quite so centralizing as *Here*: the
> >collapse of Occitan didn't really come till after the Revolution.)
> 
> Quite so - and it was the revolutionaries that closed down the old Breton
> parliament.
> 
> This reminds me that two years or so back someone was engaged in another
> alternative history/ language project.  This imagined Muslims actually
> establishing themselves in Provance and a romance influenced Arabic lang
> developing there.  It was one of our female colleagues, but I don't recall
> which one now.
> 
> Ray.
> 
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> Written in Net English        Humor not necessarily marked
> 
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> 
> 
> 
Padraic.