RE: Politics of the Moon Kingdom
09-13-2023, 08:14 AM (This post was last modified: 09-13-2023, 08:15 AM by Bob Schroeck.)
09-13-2023, 08:14 AM (This post was last modified: 09-13-2023, 08:15 AM by Bob Schroeck.)
That's much the same reasoning, if in far more detail than I bothered with, when I did my planning for DW-S, and mostly why I settled on the 8th millennium BC for its version of the Moon Kingdom. (The rest was to be able to say "ten thousand years ago" and not be grossly inaccurate.) For my purposes it needed to be pre- (surviving) written history, but not nearly as long ago as ... oh, geeze, I can't remember the author's name, but they put the Moon Kingdom half a million years in the past. That just seems excessive to me.
Once I'd settled on that, and I eventually got around to actually thinking seriously about language, I settled on working with Proto-Indo-European because a) there's been a goodly amount of work done on reconstructing it; b) its cognates with modern languages would explain some of the linguistic weirdness Takeuchi created by using English for things that otherwise make no sense (although I do like your point that it serves as a "magic language" for her); and c) because there's so little of it, I can slot my own linguistic extrapolations into it without too much suspension of disbelief required.
As far as writing systems go, I don't remember if it's in a released part of DW-S or not, but I decided the written form of the Moon Kingdom's language would be analogous to PIE's vocabulary -- traces of it can be found in later writing systems. So when Doug looks at it, he can't read it, but he can recognize things that showed up in some of the earliest known writing systems. Ah... went looking, found it in chapter 3:
But what meets the needs of DW-S doesn't necessarily meet the needs of our project here. Still, it's interesting to see how similar our thoughts ran in these cases.
Once I'd settled on that, and I eventually got around to actually thinking seriously about language, I settled on working with Proto-Indo-European because a) there's been a goodly amount of work done on reconstructing it; b) its cognates with modern languages would explain some of the linguistic weirdness Takeuchi created by using English for things that otherwise make no sense (although I do like your point that it serves as a "magic language" for her); and c) because there's so little of it, I can slot my own linguistic extrapolations into it without too much suspension of disbelief required.
As far as writing systems go, I don't remember if it's in a released part of DW-S or not, but I decided the written form of the Moon Kingdom's language would be analogous to PIE's vocabulary -- traces of it can be found in later writing systems. So when Doug looks at it, he can't read it, but he can recognize things that showed up in some of the earliest known writing systems. Ah... went looking, found it in chapter 3:
Quote:What Luna's message was written in looked like a bastard hybrid of Harappan, Linear Elamite and Early Sumerian.
But what meets the needs of DW-S doesn't necessarily meet the needs of our project here. Still, it's interesting to see how similar our thoughts ran in these cases.
-- Bob
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber. I have been
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....