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Out your fantasies: Carthage prevails | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4940 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 15 23 December 2011 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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So, Carthage vanquishes Rome. I don't mean merely win the 2nd Punic war and let Rome escape. I mean complete subjugation, leading to:
1) Latin never expands beyond Latium and Campania. 2) Other Italic dialects like Oscan, Umbrian, etc, survive. 3) No Roman Empire in Hispania, Gaul, Dacia, Britania. 4) No influence on Germanic tribes 5) No Norman vernacular pervading England. How would the linguistic map of Europe look today? Remember, unleash your imagination, no "buts" allowed, and no idea is too quixotic. I'll expound my opinion later. I don't want to poison other replies. Edited by outcast on 23 December 2011 at 9:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| a3 Triglot Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5247 days ago 273 posts - 370 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English, Russian Studies: Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish | Message 2 of 15 23 December 2011 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In the first place Basque would have many more speakers and probably there would exist a few more languages of its family
English would be much closer to Dutch and to Norwegian in some extent More celtic languages and Dacian would have survived Also, with no clasical latin thing, languages would have to come up with their own terminology for every latin word we use today 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5311 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 3 of 15 23 December 2011 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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AFAIK, manumit is only used with the specific meaning "to release from slavery" and is primarily found in lists of obscure words. Has it lately taken on a different meaning in the US that I'm not aware of?
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 15 23 December 2011 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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- The word-stock in most European languages shows greater similarity to Semitic languages via Punic. The greater similarity of Punic to Aramaic (i.e.the probable language of Jesus) makes it plausible that Aramaic could have been accepted as a liturgical language of Europeans (assuming that Christianity would take off as strongly in the alternative history as it has in reality). The idea here is that Punic could have been passed off "just like" His "language" and tacitly is a supposedly "truer" representation of His speech than using Coptic, Latin, Ancient Greek or Old Church Slavonic.
- However if we merely substitute the Carthaginian Empire for the Roman Empire and leave everything else the same, it's doubtful that the distribution of languages in the rest of Eurasia would change much. That is to say the Germanic tribes would have infiltrated and affected the expanded Carthaginian Empire just as they did in the Roman Empire because of the weakening of imperial power over the centuries. The Vikings would have happily travelled up and down the seas and rivers, the Hungarians would have settled for good in the Carpathian Basin, the Mongols would have destroyed Kievan Rus only to fade and have most of their sucessor Khanates east of the Urals replaced by Russian administration, etc. The biggest "loser" would be the Italic languages and perhaps their profile today would be comparable to what we see for Albanian today - minor and of most interest to linguists and specialists in the Balkans.
Not that I know of. Its use in the title seems rather incongruent or even affected to Americans if they even know what the word means. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4940 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 5 of 15 23 December 2011 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
In purist terms you are correct, and I am a aware of this; however, it can also be interpreted as "to let free or emancipate something you possess". Since only a slave owner could "manumit" his/her own slaves (you can "emancipate" other slaves or things by law or persuasion)... I used the verb figuratively in this case since only YOU can liberate your own imagination and no one else. I tend to be a purist myself, but I don't think using the word in this fashion blurs in any way this distinction. I can manumit my fantasies, but you cannot. I don't see a problem with using a verb in a figurative sense beyond it's specific original purpose as long as you don't essentially alter it's signification. It's funny because I thought about this before choosing the word. In the end it comes to personal interpretation: I believe many people "enslave" their imagination as adults to conventions and standards, and stop thinking outside the box... So in using the word I was attempting to stress the fact one should not repress their imagination in a slave-like manner because they believe what they fantasize may elicit quizzical commentary. I also used it as an example of how English is pervaded by Norman-French terms... Which I thought would be apposite (though not necessarily Germane) to the general topic of the thread Edited by outcast on 23 December 2011 at 8:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 15 23 December 2011 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Not really. "Manumit" bears a specific meaning in that one frees his/her slave(s). "essentially alter its signification" is debatable and it seems that you could indeed be in a minority since Dicionary.com, answers.com, Merriam-Webster, Wiktionary and Oxford Dictionaries haven't recorded a usage that matches yours (yet). If we use your logic, then "hound" should be unambiguously acceptable as a synonym for "dog" even though the former today bears a specific meaning unlike the German cognate Hund, or "arraignment" ("answer for charge or behaviour before a judge") is synonymous with "being taken to task" (no legal connotation at all) because the usage doesn't "essentially alter its signification". I aplogize if I come off as being anal but this degree of semantic divergence/manipulation can be quite jarring and can make even predominantly descriptivist people like me flash their prescriptivist side. It's a bit like how I recoil at how a word like "rendition" (I've understood it and learned it as meaning most often "musical or theatrical performance") can acquire a less cheery meaning after having been (over)used by bureaucrats and politicians to mean "handing over/surrendering of prisoners or suspects on questionable legal grounds for torture or interrogation in another country" in an attempt to obfuscate or gloss over the deed. There's a link (arguably tenuous) between the meanings involving "giving" or "presenting" but the results are so different (not to mention that the connotations are very much at variance) that you're bound to get strong reactions.
You could have probably used "liberate" (instead of the Germanic "free") since it covers more ground semantically, is more widely-known (as opposed to the specialist and more obscure "manumit") and still prove your point about how noticeable the indirect and direct influence of Latin is in English. Edited by Chung on 23 December 2011 at 9:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4940 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 7 of 15 23 December 2011 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Ok, out of respect for everyone's opinions I have changed the title. That way the topic is not lost.
edit: Thinking over what you wrote Chung, I can see you point more clearly now. So I agree with everything pretty much (except the use of "liberate", which is actually clearly inappropriate for this case), and will keep the narrower view on prescriptive usage in mind for next time. Thanks for the input. Edited by outcast on 23 December 2011 at 11:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| rivere123 Senior Member United States Joined 4821 days ago 129 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 8 of 15 23 December 2011 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Alright, let's see. In the big picture, I think Germanic and a Semitic language would prevail across Europe. Germanic would probably influence pretty much everything there, while the other language would heavily affect southern Europe.
-The primary languages of much of the European continent, Ireland, and the UK would be Celtic. The British Isles and France would have a little Germanic thrown in. -Basque would dominate northeast Spain and southwest France. -Greek would prevail in Greece, but eventually fuse with Arabic or some other Semitic language. Much of Italy, Spain, and the Balkans would probably follow this. -Germanic languages would probably gain a lot of popularity in present-day northern and eastern Slavic language communities as well as Hungary and Finland. Languages imported from Asia would probably have a major influence on them as time goes on for a few reasons; Europe would probably be a lot less stable continent with out the unification that Rome provided, so infamous conquerors like Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun would influence the linguistic scene and the Germanic tribes would get pretty powerful (although English would not be as affected by Germanic languages, mostly because the Anglo-Saxons would never step foot on Britannia). -The Americas would have been discovered much later, if ever. Middle East had direct links to Asia. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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