(i) The twenty-first century: English and other national languages. (No change yet.)
(ii) The Solar Commonwealth period: League Latin, Anglic etc.
(iii) The Terran Empire period: Anglic, Fransai, Ispanyo etc.
On Dennitza: Serbic, Anglic and archaic Merseian Eriau.
(iv) The Long Night: Anglic semantic divergences.
(v) The Allied Planets period: planetary languages derived from Anglic etc.
(vi) The Commonalty period: Anglic is now described as ancient.
In (i), other national languages include Romance languages descended from Latin and English includes many Latin-derived words. Do any Latin roots survive into the galactic languages of the Commonalty period?
Think how much fictional history this implies. How many generations speak a language before it becomes a different language?
"'We're a long way from home in space, and even longer in time. It's been twelve hundred years since the breakup of the Commonwealth isolated [the Gwydiona]. The whole Empire rose and fell while they were alone on that one planet. Genetic and cultural evolution have done strange work in shorter periods.'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Night Face" IN Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (Riverdale, NY, June 2012), pp. 541-660 AT I, p. 549.
"'Sir, the League, the troubles, the Empire, its fall, the Long Night...every such thing - behind us. In space and time alike. The people of the Commonalty don't get into wars.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Starfog" IN Flandry's Legacy, pp. 711-794 AT p. 722.
These quotations span nearly the whole Technic History.
27 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Considering how MANY proto-Indo-European words/roots survived into modern languages, it makes sense to think many Latin/Anglic roots survived into the languages used in the post-Imperial eras.
If Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Musical Instrument" needed to be translated into the Anglic of Flandry's time, then it has to be at least as different from our English as the Middle English of Chaucer's lifetime. Which has made me wonder how much of one or two pages of Imperial Anglic I could puzzle out.
Ad astra! Sean
Languages all change, but they change at very different rates.
For example, Icelandic today would be mutually comprehensible with Icelandic of 1000 CE -- Poul used this in one of his stories, THE MAN WHO CAME EARLY.
Lithuanian is only about as different from Proto-Indo-European as Sanskrit is... but Sanskrit hasn't been spoken for 3,500 years.
Which means that Sanskrit changed as much between 3000 BCE and 1,500 BCE as Lithuanian did between 3,000 BCE and 2023 CE. It changed as much in 1,500 years as Lithuanian did in 5,000 years, in other words.
And the rate of change varies quite widely over time.
Eg., We could understand Shakespeare's (London) English without much trouble.
But someone from the London of 1600 transported back to 1400 would have much more difficulty -- the Great Vowel Shift, which drastically altered the way English -sounds- took place between those dates.
Furthermore, we don't know how universal literacy and (especially) recorded sound will alter the speed at which languages change.
The initial evidence indicates that it will slow it down. If you listen to recordings of middle-aged adults from the 1910-1920 period (Theodore Roosevelt's speeches, for instance) they're pellucidly clear. Recordings from the 1950's show even less change than the 1920-1950 period.
The main change over my lifetime has been a convergence, the decline of regional and social accents.
NB: a Lithuanian can understand chunks of written Sanskrit if it's in our alphabet. Some phrases, and about every second or third word, with a good guess at what the declensions of verbs and nouns mean.
There's a famous comparative translation, of "God gave teeth; God will give bread."
Lithuanian: Dievas davė dantis; Dievas duos ir duonos.
Latin: Deus dedit dentes; Deus dabit et panem
Sanscrit: Devas adadāt datas; Devas dāt api dhānās
Note that the Latin and Lithuanian are about as similar to each other as both are to the Latin -- Sanskrit from 1000 BCE, Latin from 0 CE, and Lithuanian from 2023 CE.
This despite the fact that Sanskrit and Lithuanian are more closely related in a family-tree way than either is to Latin -- Latin is a "centum" language, which retains PIE initial "k" (Latin words starting with 'c' are actually pronounced with a 'k').
Lithuanian and Sanskrit are both "satem" languages -- the PIE initial 'k' sound becomes an 's'.
(PIE numeral 100 is *ḱm̥tom, Latin centum -- pronounced kentum -- but Lithuanian 100 is šimtas and the Sanskrit is satim.)
I think I have asked this before. How is it known how English sounded centuries ago? (Clues from spelling?)
Mind-blowing language comparisons.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree! It would need a philologist like JRR Tolkien to adequately respond to Stirling's comments.
Yes, Iceland's remoteness and isolation would enable the Norse spoken there today being still comprehensible to King Harald Hardrede in 1066.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: clues from spelling, things like rhymes in poetry, length of syllables from things like alliterative poetry, and comparison with a number of other related languages, which have changed in different ways and/or haven't changed something English has.
Eg., in English the word night is pronounced as if it were spelled "nite" -- with the final e determining how the 'i' is pronounced. (Long 'i' as opposed to short 'i' in 'nit', the insect.)
If you compare it to other Germanic languages, you get:
Dutch: nocht
Frisian: nacht
Germabn; nacht
Lallans (lowland Scots): Nicht
Yiddish: nait
Danish; nat
Icelandic: nótt
Swedish: natt
And then there are other words with similar spelling.
You have to be able to weight things -- for example, Lallans is very conservative compared to Standard English.
And you also run the Great Vowel Shift in reverse, and a few other things.
So back around 1500 or earlier, "night" in English would be pronounced more or less 'n - long o -- guttural sound expressed by 'ght'.
The latter would be a hard 'g' followed more or less by a spitting 'khhhht' sound.
Note that words like 'bright' and 'flight' rhyme with night in Chaucer, and a bunch of other clues.
Likewise 'sought', which we pronounce the same as 'sot' (drunkard), originally sounded like: 's long 'o' slight breathed 'w' sound, long 'u' (uuuu, basically) followed by the same gguu-hhht final sound as 'night'.
English back then was slower, pronounced further back in the mouth, and had a lot more gutturals.
Note that recorded sound is a -completely new- phenomenon.
Before that, people generally couldn't -know- how their great-grandparents sounded. Now we can.
Oh, and btw, knowledge that languages change is not a new thing. Here's Chaucer on just that:
Ye knowe eek, that in forme of speche is chaunge
With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho
That hadden prys, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do;
Eek for to winne love in sondry ages,
In sondry londes, sondry been usages.
— Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, Book II.
Translation:
"You know that language changes over a thousand years, and words that were then in use now seem strange to us; but they really did talk that way, and they spoke as eloquently about love as anyone did in any age or country.
Note in the above that "ages" and "usages" rhyme, which they wouldn't now, which shows how the latter was pronounced.
Thank you. I have just returned from a day trip to Manchester and might not be very active this evening.
To All:
All I can really say is that Tolkien would love these philological comments by Stirling!
Ad astra! Sean
"'Sir, the League, the troubles, the Empire, its fall, the Long Night...every such thing - behind us. In space and time alike. The people of the Commonalty don't get into wars.'"
-- as I think someone points out, this only works if there aren't any strangers around.
Because it takes two to make peace, but only one to make war.
"Because it takes two to make peace, but only one to make war."
The observation that wars *between* democracies are vanishingly rare, is of limited consolation. Not all societies are democracies & even if all countries on earth became democracies, would they all *stay* democracies.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I think I was the who said the Commonalty would only need to bump up against aggressive barbarians or hostile civilized powers--and then the wars would start!
Real life is making me fall behind again. Job, house cleaning, dentist appointments, bill paying, etc.
And I don't in the least believe democracies can't fight wars against each other!!!
Ad astra! Sean
"And I don't in the least believe democracies can't fight wars against each other!!!"
I will accept the observed "tremendously less likely" as much better than nothing.
The problem with the 'democracies don't fight each other' thing is that we've only had democracies for a limited amount of time, so our sample range is small.
Eg., in 1914 Russia was unambiguously undemocratic by both the contemporary standards and ours, but had lately introduced some elements of democracy (elected legislature, etc.).
Germany was "less undemocratic" than Russia, but more so than, say, France and Britain.
By contemporary standards France and Britain were unambiguously democratic, at least at home.
Now, if you examine this in more granular detail, you can say that the -undemocratic- elements in Germany were the ones which started the war; the decisions were taken by a small slice of people, few of whom were elected representatives.
Eg., the German chancellor was appointed by the (hereditary) Kaiser; the Kaiser was born to his job; and the Supreme General Staff were a bureaucratic elite partly self-appointing and partly appointed by the Kaiser, mostly composed of hereditary nobles.
These are the elements that made the decision for war; ditto in Austria-Hungary, ditto in Serbia.
Note that in 1914, nobody (or virtually nobody) would have argued that democracies couldn't make war on each other.
Kaor, Jim and Mr. Stirling!
Trying to do some catching up.
Jim: I still disagree. I do not have such a high opinion of the sweet reasonableness of human beings that I can believe it's merely less likely that democracies will fight each other.
E.g. as late as the 1920's the US equivalent of a General Staff had plans for how the US might fight a war with Great Britain. Up to about then the British Empire was considered the natural rival of America. WW I and its consequences forced a drastic reevaluation of the geopolitical situation faced by the US. And some prominent Americans of that time, such as FDR, remained at least somewhat anti-British.
I believe democracies can think of going to war with each other. And there's nothing sacred about democracy. It's a form of gov't that sometimes work if the right factors, circumstances, institutions, customs, precedents, etc., exist in a country.
Mr. Stirling: I don't think being an "elected guarantee" that wise and sensible decisions will be made. I have nearly zero confidence in the good sense of VP Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, or the Democratic House Minority Leader. They, along with appointive officials like the Secretaries of State and Defense, the WH Chief of Staff, are the ones making the real decisions.*
Ad astra! Sean
*I sure as heck don't believe the aged and senescent "Josip" is actually making the decisions! He just repeats what his staff programs him to say.
My leaning toward believing "Democracies don't fight other democracies", to a large extent comes from "Never At War" by Spencer Weart.
His evidence for this comes not just from the last 2 centuries, but also from analysis of conflict between city states in Medieval/Early Modern Europe. Also to a lesser extent Classical Greece, though getting good data on the extent to which various states could be reasonably considered democratic is harder that far back.
Sean: Why do have such an extremely low opinion of Biden?
I'm not wildly enthusiastic about him, I just think that compared to Trump he looks like a sensible adult.
Kaor, Jim!
I still disagree. And mention of Medieval city states and republics reminded me of how quarrelsome and war like they were. And, until crushingly defeated by France at the Battle of Marignano around 1616, the republican Swiss cantons were as warlike as any duke, prince, or king. AND exported mercenaries afterward.
Medieval Italian republics were notoriously violent and warlike, esp. those two bitter enemies, Genoa and Venice. Ditto the much vaunted Greek democracies. Recall how ruthlessly Athens treated Delos.
IMO, it's a cardinal mistake trying to shoehorn current fads, whims, ideas, beliefs, etc., into past times when they did not exist and very likely would have been rejected by the peoples of those days.
And "Josip" is not what I would call an adult! I loathe him, because as the most radical leftist President the US has been cursed with, he has been a bungling catastrophe. He has done almost NOTHING right.
Ad astra! Sean
According to Weart, when two city states were both democracies they did not fight each other, when at least one was oligarchic or autocratic they would fight each other. Also two oligarchies seldom fought each other.
Weart's hypothesis on the why of the pattern is that citizens of democracies see citizen of another democracy as part of the same in group, and see oligarchic or autocratic rulers as oppressors of people who at least could be part of their in group.
Kaor, Jim!
And I don't believe a word of that! But, I am wary and skeptical of all kinds of Utopianism.
Ad astra! Sean
A situation doesn't have to be perfect to be better than another situation.
I would consider my situation in Canada to be Utopian compared to the situation of someone in Somalia or N. Korea.
Kaor, Jim!
Of course! And that is my problem with the Utopian crazies: The UK or US are not perfect, so some fanatics are more than willing to destroy them to impose some impossible fantasy of a perfect society--and all we will get are more hells on Earth.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
"Not perfect" is an understatement.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And crazy fanatics and blood drenched revolutionaries will NEVER make things better. The ruthless and brutal methods they use creates bloody chaos ending with cruel and tyrannical regimes vastly worse than their predecessors.
Which is why I have only loathing and scorn for monsters like Robespierre, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, and all their fellow ideological despots.
My view is that of Edmund Burke: REAL reform has to be cautious, incremental, and based on conciliation, persuasion, compromise. Which Anderson would agree with!
Ad astra! Sean
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