CHAT: International relations in concultures (Was: Re: CHAT: University Advice (was Re: A bit of advice))

On Mon, Sep 11, 2000 at 09:17:42AM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
[snip]
> ObConLang: international relations in *your* concultures/conlangs: lingua
> franca?  Pidgins/creoles?  (If I ever *have* enough languages sketched
> out, I'd *love* to do a pidgin!  I've always thought they sounded Really
> Neat.)  General hostilities?  Host country or dominant country's language
> for any given encounter?  No or limited history of diplomacy?  Special
> forms or registers for diplomacy?
Hmm. I haven't really thought that much about IR in my conculture. But
there have been interesting changes in how people related to each other
through the history of my con-universe:

Era of the Wanderers: The earliest eras in my con-universe basically had a
bunch of randomly wandering nomads. Sometimes they fight with each other,
sometimes they join forces. Soon, slight technological advances enabled
many nomadic tribes to find a more-or-less permanent settlement, and so
the Era of the Villagers began.

Era of the Villagers: Travel was pretty hazardous back in those days; so
after the nomadic tribes settled, there wasn't much communication /
encounters between them except for the bold few who still preferred to
live (or risk!) their lives travelling. Travellers are often regarded
highly by the less courageous villagers, and sometimes, they became the
messengers between nearby villages. In this era, many different languages
developed, most of which are very divergent from each other because of the
lack of mutual influence.

Era of the Kingdom: I'm skipping the details of how the Kingdom came
about, but basically, my current conlang is positioned in the later parts
of this era. This era brought with it vast technological breakthroughs
pioneered by the Experts (see my previous post). The Experts are a
semi-exclusive group that developed their own language based on their
philosophies and their interpretation of the physics of their universe.
Because of their great influence in this era, towards the end of the era
this language has been adopted as the Official Language of the Kingdom.
Also during this time, the Kings actively searched out distant communities
(here's the IR part :-) and basically recruited them into the Kingdom. As
I've mentioned before, there are three main sections in this con-universe,
and the unified Kingdom has to keep the officials in each of the three
domains happy. As far as creoles/pidgins are concerned -- these are
basically kept to a minimum by the widespread teaching of the Official
Language in all parts of the Kingdom. There *are* stubborn remnants of
local dialects that remained in the background of the scene throughout the
Kingdom Era, which would emerge after the Fall of the Kingdom:

Era of Scattering: I'm skipping the details of the demise of the Kingdom
here, but basically, it involved a widespread mass-destruction and when it
was over, all the peoples were scattered; the three main sections of the
con-universe lost communication with each other. As a result, the local
dialects that remained throughout the Kingdom Era began to re-emerge, and
merge with the Official Language. Because of the strong influence of the
Official Language which still carried over after the collapse of the
Kingdom, however, most of the language changes here are additions of local
dialect elements into the language -- there was no conscious effort to
leave the Official Language and go all the way back to the local dialects.
Towards the end of the Era of Scattering, commerce emerged, and in each of
the three main sections of the con-universe (which remain disconnected
from each other) the various divergent dialects that have developed from
the old Official Language were merged back into a common language of
trade.

I could go on further, as I've sketched out two or three more Eras after
this, but that's wayyy too far into the future as far as my current
conlang is concerned, so I'll skip that for now (unless people are
actually interested in this stuff). :-)

As far as special forms for diplomacy are concerned... in the Era of the
Kingdom, the forms of the Official Language *is* the special forms used
for diplomacy. "Unofficial" forms are basically pidgin-like derivatives of
the Official Language from the original local dialects. However, education
in the Official Language is strong enough and pervasive enough that these
pidgins aren't very different from each other, and could be considered as
mere dialects of the Official Language. (Dialects, of course, as in the
difference between British English and Texan :-P not Chinese "dialects"
which are properly completely different languages with the same writing
system -- at least as far as mutual intelligibility is concerned.)

> (That *is* a bit of a stretch from the above to this, but hey--I like
> stretching.)
[snip]

You're awesome. You managed to bring a wayyy off-topic thread back to
something about conlanging ;-) (Though I might've brought it off-topic
again since this stuff is more conculturing than conlanging :-)


T