Supposedly, if a civilization more or less comparable to Nile, Huang He or Indus sprang in the island of New Guinea, particularly in the southeastern part, with the possibility of spreading its influence in other parts of the island, what would be its impact on the New Guinean linguistic landscape?
AHC: Linguistic effects of a highly-civilized New Guinea
- Thread starter ramones1986
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twovultures
Donor
Is this civilization going to be able to overcome the formidable geographic barriers to rule most of New Guinea directly? If so, what Ridwan Asher said.
Will it not be able to rule directly, but just create a hegemony? In that case, it's language will become a lingua franca, but I think we'll still see the dizzying array of languages, especially in the highlands. Most people there will be vaguely aware of the power that sends soldiers whenever their wars or vendettas get out of hand, but will mostly be left alone.
Will it not be able to rule directly, but just create a hegemony? In that case, it's language will become a lingua franca, but I think we'll still see the dizzying array of languages, especially in the highlands. Most people there will be vaguely aware of the power that sends soldiers whenever their wars or vendettas get out of hand, but will mostly be left alone.
Well, it depended on the strength of this civilization if they're either able to conquer other peoples or create a hegemony.
In the case of the highlands, how about developing a pidgin/creole based on the said language/lingua franca?
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
I have read this before, that there is an unexpectedly large amount of linguistic diversity in New Guinea.
Those mountains are INCREDIBLY rugged. While each individual valley is nice and fertile, in many places it's essentially impossible to conquer the next guy over.
Given that the island's been settled for 40k years or so, and that each valley is relatively protected, and that there aren't any adjacent steppes (say) for warrior tribes to come sweeping in from, and the diversity is not at all UNexpected. In fact, it's precisely the sort of place you'd invent if you wanted that kind of diversity.
Compare the Caucasus : even with large neighbours and being near to the cauldron of civilization, AND to the Steppes, you still have dozens of languages, of wildly varying families.
But Ethiopia and the Andes are both rugged highlands which also created complex imperial civilizations under a centralized state. There aren't any nearby sources of (pre-European) barbarian tribes either.
twovultures
Donor
And both were/are super linguistically diverse. Don't let the language maps with a pink blob labelled "Quechua" over the former Inca empire fool you, people living in and near the Andes spoke languages from a variety of families, including Chibchan, Mochica, Aymara, and a couple language isolates.
Ethiopia has several branches of Afro-Asiatic languages, as well as Nilotic languages spoken. So despite the presence of unifying empires, geography allowed a large variety of languages to blossom in those regions.