Vreleksá

achemel · Joined: 29 Mar 2009 Posts: 556 Location: up for debate

I've been reworking the history of the world in which my most developed languages are spoken, but I've hit something of a rut - I don't really know how to proceed in the history without considering alterations in language, which could ultimately mean my languages will change into completely new creatures and leave the current forms obsolete, which I don't want to happen. And, I already know generally how I want history to go, but that still means I'd have to take into account cultural and linguistic exchanges I hadn't considered when I was working only on the languages, so it almost seems like a choice between altering the history or altering the languages (or, one more than the other).

Does anyone have any advice on how I could handle this? I've already made changes to the geography of the world so that some of the history makes more sense, as well as adjusted the timeline to allow for some changes in the land itself as well as later technological advancement, but I'm really hung up on the idea of having to entirely rework my languages. Any thoughts would be very welcome...

Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 4:27 am Post subject:

Hmm, that's a tough one. I don't know that there's much you can do. Like you said, you pretty much have to decide how much of each you want to change.

If the problem is unexpected contact, you can probably get by with a few loanwords here and there (if it's not really strong). If it's unexpected lack of contact, there's not much you can do besides remove what's already there.

achemel · Joined: 29 Mar 2009 Posts: 556 Location: up for debate

Well, there's definitely contact, and I think the general flow of people from the origin point to the rest of the world is going to remain basically the same. Some of the trouble, though, is that I'm not sure how much exchange might feasibly happen before, say, a war, and how much it would be cut off or continued during the war, and how it might pick up again afterward. Then there are the native races, which I have currently as contributors to both culture and language, but also as receivers, and it's hard to find a good point to pull them apart and say "this is about when they made first contact, and everything before is purely native." The more problems I come across the more discouraging it is. (-_-)''' I'm okay with making a certain amount of lexical changes to the languages, but if I can avoid major grammar changes in the modern forms that'd be awesome. I can imagine grammar and lexical shifts in dialects enough in the past that the modern forms are separate languages... I suppose that's something to think about.

Tolkien_Freak · Posted: Wed Feb 09, 2011 4:01 pm Post subject: