Re: CONLANG: Running Bear loved Little White Dove....

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

Andrew Smith wrote:

> The name of the language came first, Brithenig, literally 'British' or
> 'Britannic'.  Then after a while I began to consider who were these people
> who spoke Brithenig.  The latin name for Wales was Cambria which I adapted
> into Brithenig as Kemr.  The people who speak Brithenig are the Chemran
> and an individual speaker would be refered to as a Kemran (male) or a
> Kemranes.  An alterative name for Brithenig would be Kemrenig, 'the
> Cambrian Language'.
> 
> Now, if I was entirely thorough in this reconstruction I should go right
> back to the old Welsh stem *combrog- 'fellow-countryman, compatriot',
> which became Cymru in modern Welsh and Cambria in Latin.  That would give
> the forms: Comro (f), ill comro, lla gomroes, comroig.  Perhaps not so
> euphonic but a more accurate etymology; I shall have to think about that.
> Thoughts?

My feeling is that "kemran/es" would mean "a citizen of Kemr", whereas
"comro/gomroes" would mean "a Cambrian, a person of 'Welsh' ancestry".
Since the borders are open, there would surely be English people
residing in Kemr --- they would be the former but not the latter.
There is a similar distinction in China between "Zhong1 guo2 ren2" (a
citizen of the nation-state) and "Han3 ren2" (a member of the ethnic
majority, one of 60-odd ethnicities).  "ren2" = "person".

A few "historical" questions:

	What's the status of the Welsh language in Kemr?  Is it
	still spoken there?

	What happened after the Wars of the Roses, beyond the
	Severn?  Did a Kemran family rule England for a time?
	(Do they still rule today?)

	Did Chemran, individually or collectively, participate
	in the, er, English Empire?  Is Brithenig now spoken in
	the Southern Hemisphere?

> Of course the Saeson would refer to them by the same name they always
> called them: the Waelh 'foreigners'!

Tolkien believed (see "English and Welsh") that a more adequate
translation would be "person of Celtic/Romance speech".  Of course,
the Chemran qualify on both counts!

-- 
John Cowan						cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban