I've had this alternate history in my mind for a while. Don't know if I'll ever do anything with it except to amuse and torment myself. Basically it reverses the historical place of the Romans and the Thracians, so that the former are a once formidable but now forgotten band that once roamed Italy, while the latter ruled most of the known world from east of Greece. I won't go into all the differences, which are quite capable of shifting in my head anyway. But here are some key ones.
- Southeastern Europe, and a little bit of Asia Minor, is considered the height of Western Civilization. So that's where the prestige is, at least through the Middle Ages and early Renaissance.
- But the countries of Western Europe still become global powers during the exploration and colonization of the Americas. This is because they're right on the Atlantic so don't have to cross other people's territories for access.
- Odrysos did settle these places, but it wasn't the same kind of unifying force that far west as Rome was in our timeline. So the equivalents of, say, France, Spain, and Britain are more disparate. Thus, so is their influence in the Western Hemisphere.
- Otherwise things are just different, sometimes in unpredictable ways.
Anyway, thinking along these lines has made me also think about the relations between language, culture, and nationhood. There's an adage, attributed to linguist Max Weinreich, that "A language is a dialect with an army and navy."
This is pithy and witty, but not quite accurate. The United States, Mexico, and Brazil all speak languages that originated in countries that they could wipe out militarily. Catalan and Occitan are among the languages that don't have their own nations, although they might wish otherwise. India is a stew of thousands of languages, with the middle classes retaining English to smooth things over. And of course China is a whole can of worms.
It's more that a dialect is a language that hasn't started thinking of itself as a separate language. The US, again, is a prime example. The various strains of American English differ from British dialects on a number of matters. "Separated by a common language" and all that. But despite being separate from the British Commonwealth for about 2.5 centuries, Americans still think of themselves as an English-speaking people, and thus remain so. The same is true in a number of former colonies, including some that have also managed to preserve their native languages.
The same is true of old literary language. Shakespeare's English being called "modern" for example. It takes nothing away from his accomplishments to say that he remains "modern" in large part due to the efforts of good teachers, actors, directors, etc. Because they approach his words as revealing psychological dialog instead of pretty-sounding metered gibberish.
2 comments:
Thracians? I have to admit when it comes to Thracians what I know about them could be written on a small envelope and still leave room for the address and a stamp. Naturally, in light of this revelation of your interest in writng an alternate history having Thracians take the place of the Romans I had to look them up as a culture and society. You're right that they appear to have been an extraordinary people who apparently continue to be a mystery to many archeologists. One of my favorite websites to explore when I've had enough of news and opinion is Ancient Origins and they do have a collection of articles about the Thracians which I'll explore further next time I go there. From what I've seen up to now the language they used hasn't yet been deciphered.
I haven't read much in the way of alternate history, but one novel I remember having enjoyed for the most part, although it drifted to a somewhat disappointing conclusion, was Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. In it he proposed that the white European race was decimated by the medieval plagues leaving the lands (and sea routes) open to other tribes - beginning with the Mongols who swept acoss the continent. For the most part it was an interesting thought experiment, one that allowed for the passing centuries to something like our present that had a group of kindred souls who met in the Bardo between incarnations. There were some major differences, of course, like No. America having a very different outcome as regards their native populations, but overall they ended up making the same mistakes as our culture with pretty dismal results. Maybe that was his point.
It's interesting you mentioned Catalan as one of the languages that doesn't have its own country as Stephen Maturin's parents in the O'Brian novels are Catalan and Irish and he is very much in favor of both countries ruling themselves rather than being conquered dependencies. The idea of English not being the major language in the world as it has been for quite some time is pretty stimulating. I never got far with incorporating a second language into my daily life but taking French for four years and Latin too certainly made me understand that there are concepts essentially untranslatable in English. One can only imagine how differently things are understood in even more foreign tongues.
Still, we have to be glad that up to the present we can still appreciate Shakespeare's descriptions of the human heart and mind. Living languages change constantly but I'd hate to see technological English conquer literature.
Of course, you're not alone in not knowing much about the Thracians. Overall I don't know much about them either. More information about them has been lost than not. There are a couple of different reasons for this. One is that they were illiterate, not having their own writing system. So no one within the culture was writing their history down as it happened. Eventually people of Thracian descent started learning Greek and Latin, Democritus being one famouTs example. But by that point they were considered more Greeks and Romans than anything else. One result is that the known glossary of the Thracian language(s) consists of only about 150 words. Interesting, but fragmentary.
I've read a few works of alternate history fiction. Years of Rice and Salt, which you sent me, is certainly a memorable one on that list. I get the feeling that Robinson is more interested in writing about ideas than about characters. Well, they're pretty cool ideas, so he can get away with it. Probably you're right in thinking that they'd make many of the same mistakes as European settlers was an intentional idea. That's part of my answer, I guess, on the problem of evil. People need to do the wrong thing for us to know both that it's possible and that it's wrong.
It does look like I'll have to look into the Aubrey Maturin books. Castilian being the dominant language of the Iberian Peninsula - outside of the Portuguese far west - seems to be an accident of history in some ways. The Moorish Arabic occupiers being where they were and for how long probably favored one over the other for when they left. Of course, Spanish has a sizable Arabic influence to begin with. When you see a single word in a foreign language that has to be translated via a lengthy phrase in English that's a reminder of how some things are basically untranslatable. Of course the same is true of some English words in other languages.
The language of Shakespeare's plays and poems is the gift that keeps on giving, as far as beautifying the language. As a culture we're in deep culture if it becomes devalued.
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