Ill Bethisad

Ill Bethisad is an ongoing, collaborative alternate history project which currently has over 70 participants,[1] originally created by Andrew Smith from New Zealand. It was initiated in 1997 as the Brithenig Project. It can be characterized as an instance of the subgenre of steampunk, and is known as one of the oldest and most elaborate alternate histories still functioning on the internet. Ill Bethisad has a largely encyclopedic character, consisting of constructed languages, written histories, timelines, news items, maps, flags and other images, short movies, descriptions of cultures, religions and technologies, as well as short stories.

Constructed languages

Constructed languages play an important role in Ill Bethisad, and it can be said that Ill Bethisad is the central meeting point, if not the cradle, of an entire subgenre of conlangs, namely alternative languages. To date there are over thirty languages at varying levels of construction that play part.[2] Among the languages spoken in Ill Bethisad are Brithenig (a Romance language with strong Celtic substrate influences, based on Welsh),[3][4][5] Wenedyk (Polish as a Romance language),[6][7][8] Bohemian (Pémišna: Germanized Czech),[9] Dalmatian (a romance language similar to Romanian, based on the actual extinct language of the same name), Xliponian (another Romance language with a superficial resemblance to Albanian, spoken in our world's Epirus) and several Finnish-like "North Slavic" languages, including Nassian (spoken in our world's Karelia).[10][11]

The name Ill Bethisad itself is Brithenig for the universe, a calque from Welsh bydysawd or Latin baptizatum.[12]

In addition, many other languages from our world have been changed in some way, although some, like German, Italian, or Russian, appear to be exactly the same. In many cases, as with Spanish, English, or Japanese, the changes are relatively slight and mainly affect orthography or Romanizations. One example is the language of Galicia, which is called Ruthenian (rather than Ukrainian) and is written with Polish orthography (rather than Cyrillic; see Ukrainian Latin Alphabet for real-world examples).[13] Others are more drastic; Ill Bethisad Croatian, for example, is an invented Slavic language that in many respects is closer to Czech than our world's Croatian,[14] and the Dalmatian of Ill Bethisad seems to be influenced by Slavic languages more than its real world counterpart was.

Points of divergence

The central point of divergence of Ill Bethisad is a stronger Roman Empire. Nevertheless, history runs mostly parallel to the history of the real world, so that many countries and regions have their own separate points of divergence:[15]

In general, there are more independent countries than there are in the real world, and constitutional monarchies, federations, colonies, and condominia are far more numerous.[9] The history of Ill Bethisad, on the whole, often sees extinct or minority languages such as Catalan, Low Saxon, Crimean Gothic as well as others remaining more widely spoken in their respective regions than they have become in real-world history. Also, technologies that have either fallen out of favor or failed to develop in our world are explored and broadly utilized.[11] For example, zeppelins and ekranoplans or ground-effect vehicles are still in use, both for military and civil purposes. Computers are not highly developed and there is no 'Silicon Valley' of North America, but information technology centres are instead found in Ireland.

References

  1. ↑ - accessed 14 December 2007.
  2. ↑ "IB Languages - IBWiki". Ib.frath.net. 2012-04-12. Retrieved 2013-12-21.
  3. ↑ Sarah L. Higley. Audience, Uglossia, and CONLANG: Inventing Languages on the Internet. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000).
  4. ↑ Arika Okrent, In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language, 2009, str. 321.
  5. ↑ Mikael Parkvall, Limits of Language. Almost Everything You Didn't Know You Didn't Know about Language and Languages, 2008, p. 131.
  6. ↑ Dorota Gut, : Now@ Mow@ ("New Language"), in: Wiedza i Życie, February 2004.
  7. 1 2 Ziemowit Szczerek, Świat, gdzie Polska nie jest Polską, on: Interia.pl, 26 September 2008.
  8. ↑ Anna-Maria Meyer, Wiederbelebung einer Utopie: Probleme und Perspektiven slavischer Plansprachen im Zeitalter des Internets, p. 266, 2014, ISBN 9783863092337
  9. 1 2 3 Jan Oliva, Virtuální vlasnictví (diplomová práce), Hradec Králové 2006, p. 6.
  10. ↑ Tilman Berger, Vom Erfinden Slavischer Sprachen, in: M. Okuka & U. Schweier, eds., Germano-Slavistische Beiträge. Festschrift für P. Rehder zum 65. Geburtstag, München 2004, pp. 24-25.
  11. 1 2 Jan Havliš, "Výlet do Conlangey", in: Interkom, 2008/3 (243), pp. 17-21.
  12. ↑ "Ill Bethisad - IBWiki". Ib.frath.net. 2009-08-26. Retrieved 2013-12-21.
  13. ↑ "Hołowna Storinka - IBWiki". Ib.frath.net. Retrieved 2013-12-21.
  14. ↑ "Croatian - IBWiki". Ib.frath.net. Retrieved 2013-12-21.
  15. ↑ Ytterbion's Rules of Creation
  16. ↑ "Republic of the Two Crowns". Steen.free.fr. Retrieved 2013-12-21.
  17. ↑ "RUSSIA in Ill Bethisad". Steen.free.fr. Retrieved 2013-12-21.
  18. ↑ "History of Castile and Leon - IBWiki". Ib.frath.net. Retrieved 2013-12-21.
  19. ↑ Jakub Kowalski, Wymyślone języki, on: Relaz.pl, 2 March 2007.

External links

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