The first Dieophí of Burgundy moved with the whole of his Vienese court and bureaucracy to Deujó and most notably brought along all his notaries and scribes, who continued to write in Vienay, and even took in new apprentices from the Vienay area or trained apprentices from Burgundy and Lojunay to write in the Vienay dialect. Thus the language of the royal chancery became Vienay with a strong Burgundian and in particular Lojunay admixture. Each new Dieophí before his father’s death served as count of Vienay and brought with him a fresh batch of Vienay scribes, secretaries and notaries at his ascension as duke of Burgundy. The move of the court to Lojú under the reign of the nth Dieophí — motivated by a desire to keep a close check on the powerful patriarch of Lojú — could only strengthen the use of this hybrid Vienay, because the Lojunay dialect was closer to the Vienay dialect than the dialects of Burgundy proper. Inevitably however the misnomer Borgonzay ‘Burgundian’ became attached to this princely chancery language especially after the nth Dieophí decreed that all courts, and parliaments throughout his domain, and the university of Deujó must use the language of the princely chancery. The patriarchal and episcopal chanceries soon had to follow suit as well.
7 April, 2009
6 April, 2009
How Corsica and Sardinia became the Mediterranean Republic
Lucally the unification of Italy involved a mostly1 failed attempt (by Garibaldi) at overthrowing and annexing the Sikelian empire. Most of the population of the empire were Greek (or rather Italiot) speaking, but there was widespread discontent with the rule of Napoleon’s brothers and nephews, who with the exception of Loukianos and his family had immaculately slipped into the rôle and behavior of a Byzantine imperial family, which Garibaldi seized on. In the end the end Garibaldi failed at gaining popular support, while Loukas Napoleon Kalomeros played out Sikeliot nationalism, lambasting Garibaldi as a Latinos foreigner. In the conundrum Corsica and Sardinia seized the chance to together declare a Mediterranean Republic, with the support of the Republic of Catalonia — still a considerable naval power in the Mediterranean —, thus each revolting against one of the combatants in the Italo-Sikelian conflict. The Mediterranean Republic managed to maintain its independence after the peace between Italy and Sikelia, since both of these laid claims to both islands, and neither wanted to disturb the peace by taking military action against the islands: each would have to pass through waters claimed by the other to get to the island each of them had controlled before the war, let alone their respective claims to the other island.
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Garibaldi’s only claim to success in the Sikelian campain was his successfull support of popular uprisings in the Italian-speaking border regions of Molise and Foggia which thus went over to Italy. Petros Napoleon Kalomeros, who initially opposed his imperial relatives, mockingly nicknamed Garibaldi “The Latin Hannibal”. ↩
27 March, 2009
How Burgundy became Borgonze, part one
There were dynastic troubles for both Burgundy and Vienay in the early 14th century, but there was one important difference: Lucally there was no rule of priestly celibate in the western churches. Rather the rule was like in the OTL Orthodox churches: if a priest wanted to marry he had to do so before he got ordained. In the Gaulish churches even bishops could be married, and although bishoprics formally could not be inherited — bishops were elected by a college of presbyters and metropolites and patriarchs were elected by a college of bishops — in practice bishoprics were often conferred on a son or nephew of the previous bishop, especially if the bishop was also the secular ruler of his diocese. The most notable such prince-bishopric was Proence.
Thus Herrig Dieophí, bishop of Meç (OTL Henri Dauphin, bishop of Metz) was married to Mary, daughter of Duke Robert II of Burgundy. Just as OTL Guighe de Vienay died young and childless and was succeded by his brother Hombert II of Vienay. Hombert was incompetent and uninterested in government and left it to his uncle, bishop Herrig, and when Herrig died in 1349 the likewise childless Hombert abdicated in favor of Herrig’s (unordained) second son, also named Guighe (1320-1386), and when Philip I of Burgundy died of the plague in 1361 Guighe IX of Vienay also became Guighe I of Burgundy. Guighe realized that the war over the succession to the throne of France, raging between the houses of Burgundy, Normandy and Valois could not be won as long as it was an all on all war with three parties.
7 February, 2008
Philological near-omniscience
On Romconlang Peter Collier wrote:
Once more I find myeself torn, BP, between awe at your philological near-omniscience, and despair as yet again I find myself reconsidering linguistic points I thought I had firmly pinned down….
Trying to sort even the bare bones of this language is like trying to herd cats.
P
I sure hope I haven’t achieved even near philological omniscience. For one thing the leading passion of my life would be spent already in mid-life, and for the other I know best how many books I’ve read only cursorily or not at all — I do hope they were not written in vain!
30 January, 2008
Northern Romance chronology and phonology
Date of the Gallo-Romance/Northern Romance POD.
IMHO the 2nd century is too late a date for the Gallo-Rmc.-NRmc. divergence. It is important to remember that two dialect areas which remain in contact with each other don’t break, but rather slide apart. Moreover I think we want Germanic phonology to have an influence from the outset, since that’s rather the idea with a substrate: when a language spreads into an area where it wasn’t spoken before the first generation will speak it with a broken accent, part of which will transfer to the native accent of the second and third generations. Also there is no need to assume that all Gallican innovations during the first century spread into Germania.
MGR-Northern Romance
Want to post this to your blog? it doesn’t really fit in as a comment on an exisiting post, and I can’t make an original post myself of course.
With the sound changes now more or less in place, I’ve also been working on some grammar basics (pronouns, articles, etc) but I’m too tired to write up all of that right now!
24 January, 2008
Thoughts on Mundus Germaniae Romanae
Of course each of us — and I’d love to recruit more — should work on their own language(s) and be free to make their own decisions. Likewise with the alternative history. The thing about having a shared alternative world is not to take all decisions by committee — that would rather ruin the fun — but to ping-pong ideas about the various mighthavebeens. IMHO it is not even necessary to nail down what ‘actually’ happened in the ATL or get as full a picture of the world. After all the whole idea with ATLs is that time forks continually. Actually I think the most interesting results are reached with small occasional divergences from OTL, rather than big and drastic ones. It is tempting to try to set history right in an ATL, but it seldom leads to the most interesting, or believable, results since real history tends to be so very more complex than imagination can come up with.
The funny thing is that an earlier Roman split-up with less internal strife for supremacy might have made each part more consolidated and able to resist barbarian invasions, as well as given the barbarians less room for playing out different emperors against each other as Alaric did with such skill. A more advanced border to begin with in Germany would of course have meant fever barbarians to deal with, since Franks, Longobards and Alamans would have been Romans already! Still eastern Suebians, Goths, Huns and Vandals might have done their thing much like in OTL.
17 January, 2008
Why I do the things I do
Thinking of what might have happened if the Romans had won the Battle of the saltus Teutoburgiensis I came to think of the general conditions and motives behind my preoccupation with [althistory][], [conculture][] and [conworlding][]. What is it that I’m doing and why, other than, as [Tolkien][] rightly saw as compelling[^stones], providing a place to be spoken for my [artlangs] [artlang]?