Re: Piddlingest bit of catvacuuming^H worldbuilding

On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:22:38 +0100, Harry Erwin
<herwin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:1ipbzph.1x4l2b75e7sgmN%herwin@xxxxxxxxxxxx> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

Dorothy J Heydt <djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <4901fe49$0$90346$804603d3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Dan Goodman <dsgood@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Heather Rose Jones wrote:

My current I'm-still-pretending-it's-just-for-practice writing project
will at some point require significant language development that will
only show up in proper names. You see, the story is set in a European
country that doesn't exist in our own timeline (for a variety of
reasons, but mostly because I wanted a sandbox to play in that didn't
have fixed pre-existing baggage). Physically it's sandwiched in
somewhat vaguely between France and Germany. Linguistically, it has a
Romance language that will need to have sufficiently different
features that it "tastes" different from all the well-known Romance
languages in our time-line.

And none of the French dialects would do?

If Heather says not, I bet they wouldn't. She's going, I guess,
to have to make up her own whole new set of sound-changes and
apply them.

Look at Franco-Provencal, Friulian, Romansh, or Ladin.

Franco-Provençal has recognizable French (and recognizable
Occitan) characteristics; the Rhaeto-Romance languages may
have too Italian a flavor, though they'd certainly be less
familiar-looking, especially Friulian. Besides, one might
want to take into account the geographical placement
'somewhat vaguely between France and Germany'. One might,
for instance, start with Gallo-Romance and gradually diverge
from both French and Occitan/Catalan, perhaps picking up a
few High German sound changes and vocabulary by contact as
well.

(But I suspect that you and Dan are missing an important
point: Heather is going to enjoy vacuuming this cat. I'm
almost ready to reach for the dust-sucker myself!)

Brian
.

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