*shudders*
There should be a limit to how much a language can be allowed to become aesthetically offensive.
(and Novalatina already hovers around that limit on its own).
Look to the West Volume VII: The Eye Against the Prism
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
There should be a limit to how much a language can be allowed to become aesthetically offensive.
(and Novalatina already hovers around that limit on its own).
xsampa
Banned
Fields that don’t mind esthetics like science or business already find English workable, and Novalatina has
- A simpler phonology (five vowels vs English’s 14-20)
- Simpler morphology (no irregular tenses)
- Orthography (only slightly deeper orthography than Spanish)
I was not trying to imply that English as such is aesthetically offensive, and I am fine with deep orthography (though I'd like it consistent). Novalatina is, though. Where is it stated it has no irregular tenses?
This would likely be the easiest solution, reintroducing *American English into Carolina with Novalatina phrases kept around for diversity.
Realistically, I think LostInNewDelhi has the right of it. There will be an attempt to "reconstruct"*Carolinian English, which will be extremely arbitrary and probably based off of stereotypes held from the pre-Black Twenties era, which will make less sense than Novalatina in that both languages are artificial, but...to the victors go the spoils.
Honestly, I see that as a worst case. In a sane world, which is what present-day Timeline L mostly seems to be, they'll hopefully realize that nuclear immolation was painful enough for the Combine. If the new nations want to rediscover their heritage they can do that, and the ASN will probably fund relevant NGOs and state programs-- everything else can be left to future generations.
Also, here's hoping that after the Twenties Penzhab can be Panjab again, that state has no reason to stay in the Russian sphere when the Russians can barely hold down Central Asia and the Persians can probably help more substantively aganist Guntoor Societism.
Also I've been thinking about Punjab's demography and I think there's grounds for a Sikh resurgence, among plenty of other wacky phenomena:
***
The Great Jihad is something that obliterates both Hinduism, and Islam as it is known in India. A temple is the most proximate/immediate/relevant source of religious authority in a community. That temple may in turn be associated with a particular tradition or school, which forms the basis for regional organization and dialogue. Destroying these networks and their nodes amounts to destroying Hinduism as it is practiced within a particular place. So yes, Bengal and Bisnaga avoided the destruction that all the other places went through-- but you can't just transplant Bengali Krishna-devotion or Tamil Shiva-devotion onto other places and act like nothing happened at all. These traditions have the history of their places of origin woven into them, so what's lost now only truly exists in the memory of the survivors-- and as the generations pass in the Aryan Void, even this may be forgotten. So the destruction of Hinduism's "common ground" (unanimously revered places like Varanasi) will throw the differences between whatever remains into sharper relief. It's possible that in Timeline L Hinduism is considered a blanket term for a series of traditions-- the Bisnagan tradition, the Bengali tradition-- that draw from certain common characteristics but have no particular primacy over each other.
Indian Islam doesn't escape this either. The Caliphate [as an institution actively directing the entire Umma's policies] is long gone, Mecca an ocean away-- so who organizes religious life in the here and now? The most proximate source of authority is the mosque, but the mosque might exist within a dargah (a Sufi tomb/shrine complex) that organizes festivals and common meals, holds endowments of land and other property, and sets curricula for schools and institutions of higher education. That dargah might in turn be a nucleus or one of many nuclei within a Sufi order, and between them the Sufi orders define(d) Islam in the subcontinent. Even their rivals (perhaps more politically relevant today) bear their influence-- the Deobandi educational movement and Barelvi devotional movement both grew out of efforts to address the Sufis' failings, but incorporated Sufi ideas on how to do exactly that. The Great Jihad, however, had no ideological coherence-- it was a mix of factions with every flavor of orthodoxy and heterodoxy imaginable. One faction might protect a shrine, then the other burns it down and builds a school, then another loots that one for everything it's worth, and so on. Islam exists in the sense of "everyone agrees there's a Book and a Prophet and a God" but with no institutions it's hard to agree on anything beyond that-- I remember a mention of one Great-Jihad faction that saw literacy itself as a sin.
Enter Sikhism. Judging by how the Durranis treated the Sikhs OTL, I don't imagine there was anything enjoyable about Neo-Mogul rule for them TTL. However, with the POD in 1727 that means the Sikhs were already in on-and-off conflict with Delhi's authority for a like a century before Divergence. It also means that despite the continued existence of small spinoff sects like the Minas built around rival claimants to the Guruship, "mainstream Sikhism" at the time of the Great Jihad exists as a coherent concept-- Guru Gobind has founded the Khalsa and ended the wars over Guru status by transferring the office not to a man, but to a book. And finally, it means that the rebellion of Banda Singh Bahadur, and consequent entry of large parts of the Jat social group into Sikhism, still happened in the first decade of the 1700s. So we're talking about a group that at the time of the Jihad, has been militarized for nearly two centuries; has had a codified religious tradition with wide acceptance for about one century; and has been open to bringing new members into the fold. Things are going to be very bad for them at first, and probably afterwards with famine and disease (people tramping around and not planting crops) but there's few groups more capable of a rebound in the Void. If it survives, Sikhism can be the organizing principle of a new order in the Punjab, and will probably receive new converts for that reason alone. But I think it can grow at the expense of not just Hinduism, but Islam. The dargahs are destroyed, but their reformers lie in the dust along with them; it's a crisis like none that has ever existed. In such a situation, Sikhism, with its pirs and langars (both borrowings from Persian, with the meaning mostly unaltered too), represents the most familiar form of worship to most Muslim commoners. Conversion out of Islam/heavy involvement in non-Islamic traditons is also not without precedent.
If all that sounds too optimistic, don't worry-- there's enough caveats to go around. Sikhism's constituent communities (Khatris, Jats, Dalits, etc.) largely remain distinct even today, and even something as seemingly inseparable from Sikhism as the Khalsa and its "Five Ks" aren't actually shared by everyone. Those spinoff-Sikh sects I mentioned? Those would probably recognize the primacy of the orthodox faction until the danger's passed and then reconstitute themselves when the moment is right. Then there's the OTL phenomenon of "deras"-- organizations that claim affinity with Sikhism but don't submit to the orthodox organizations' leadership. Many of the members of these deras turn out to be Dalits who don't feel at home in the normal Sikh organizations (in which they are pretty much absent from leadership positions). Maybe in Timeline L there's "para-Sikh" organizations that have a great deal of Muslim flavor, or more open dissenters who resent Sikh encroachment. An outsider looking in would probably not see Sikh domination but instead a "Punjabi family of traditions" like the "Bengali family" or "Bisnagan family"-- a bubbling stew, cautiously watched over and prodded at by the Khalsa. This state of affairs might well be mirrored in the politics of Pendzhab-- as the largest para-state organization, the Khalsa may well have become the nucleus of the new state, or maybe they share that status with Russian mercenaries and advisors.
And, as an epilogue, Panchala. To the west is Punjab; to the east, Bengal. Buddhism has already been confirmed to be part of the Chinese and Corean projects for India, from pilgrimage tour agencies to naming local puppet states after places from Buddhist scripture. And soon there'll be Societism too. But while this is bleak, it's also liberating. The fact that Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism have all long since moved their centers out of the Gangetic plain means that the region's thinkers are responsible to no one but themselves, and are free to decide what they like. Any interpretation of any text can be valid, so long as it is for the good of Panchala-- so long as it fosters respect for law, respect for custom, and an iron resolve to protect the homeland against any threat. This Ram Kumar regime that's been alluded to? It has the potential to be the most cynical, contradictory, and self-serving society (well, besides the Combine) in the neighborhood, and it's almost hard to see it turning out any other way.
Also I've been thinking about Punjab's demography and I think there's grounds for a Sikh resurgence, among plenty of other wacky phenomena:
***
The Great Jihad is something that obliterates both Hinduism, and Islam as it is known in India. A temple is the most proximate/immediate/relevant source of religious authority in a community. That temple may in turn be associated with a particular tradition or school, which forms the basis for regional organization and dialogue. Destroying these networks and their nodes amounts to destroying Hinduism as it is practiced within a particular place. So yes, Bengal and Bisnaga avoided the destruction that all the other places went through-- but you can't just transplant Bengali Krishna-devotion or Tamil Shiva-devotion onto other places and act like nothing happened at all. These traditions have the history of their places of origin woven into them, so what's lost now only truly exists in the memory of the survivors-- and as the generations pass in the Aryan Void, even this may be forgotten. So the destruction of Hinduism's "common ground" (unanimously revered places like Varanasi) will throw the differences between whatever remains into sharper relief. It's possible that in Timeline L Hinduism is considered a blanket term for a series of traditions-- the Bisnagan tradition, the Bengali tradition-- that draw from certain common characteristics but have no particular primacy over each other.
Indian Islam doesn't escape this either. The Caliphate [as an institution actively directing the entire Umma's policies] is long gone, Mecca an ocean away-- so who organizes religious life in the here and now? The most proximate source of authority is the mosque, but the mosque might exist within a dargah (a Sufi tomb/shrine complex) that organizes festivals and common meals, holds endowments of land and other property, and sets curricula for schools and institutions of higher education. That dargah might in turn be a nucleus or one of many nuclei within a Sufi order, and between them the Sufi orders define(d) Islam in the subcontinent. Even their rivals (perhaps more politically relevant today) bear their influence-- the Deobandi educational movement and Barelvi devotional movement both grew out of efforts to address the Sufis' failings, but incorporated Sufi ideas on how to do exactly that. The Great Jihad, however, had no ideological coherence-- it was a mix of factions with every flavor of orthodoxy and heterodoxy imaginable. One faction might protect a shrine, then the other burns it down and builds a school, then another loots that one for everything it's worth, and so on. Islam exists in the sense of "everyone agrees there's a Book and a Prophet and a God" but with no institutions it's hard to agree on anything beyond that-- I remember a mention of one Great-Jihad faction that saw literacy itself as a sin.
Enter Sikhism. Judging by how the Durranis treated the Sikhs OTL, I don't imagine there was anything enjoyable about Neo-Mogul rule for them TTL. However, with the POD in 1727 that means the Sikhs were already in on-and-off conflict with Delhi's authority for a like a century before Divergence. It also means that despite the continued existence of small spinoff sects like the Minas built around rival claimants to the Guruship, "mainstream Sikhism" at the time of the Great Jihad exists as a coherent concept-- Guru Gobind has founded the Khalsa and ended the wars over Guru status by transferring the office not to a man, but to a book. And finally, it means that the rebellion of Banda Singh Bahadur, and consequent entry of large parts of the Jat social group into Sikhism, still happened in the first decade of the 1700s. So we're talking about a group that at the time of the Jihad, has been militarized for nearly two centuries; has had a codified religious tradition with wide acceptance for about one century; and has been open to bringing new members into the fold. Things are going to be very bad for them at first, and probably afterwards with famine and disease (people tramping around and not planting crops) but there's few groups more capable of a rebound in the Void. If it survives, Sikhism can be the organizing principle of a new order in the Punjab, and will probably receive new converts for that reason alone. But I think it can grow at the expense of not just Hinduism, but Islam. The dargahs are destroyed, but their reformers lie in the dust along with them; it's a crisis like none that has ever existed. In such a situation, Sikhism, with its pirs and langars (both borrowings from Persian, with the meaning mostly unaltered too), represents the most familiar form of worship to most Muslim commoners. Conversion out of Islam/heavy involvement in non-Islamic traditons is also not without precedent.
If all that sounds too optimistic, don't worry-- there's enough caveats to go around. Sikhism's constituent communities (Khatris, Jats, Dalits, etc.) largely remain distinct even today, and even something as seemingly inseparable from Sikhism as the Khalsa and its "Five Ks" aren't actually shared by everyone. Those spinoff-Sikh sects I mentioned? Those would probably recognize the primacy of the orthodox faction until the danger's passed and then reconstitute themselves when the moment is right. Then there's the OTL phenomenon of "deras"-- organizations that claim affinity with Sikhism but don't submit to the orthodox organizations' leadership. Many of the members of these deras turn out to be Dalits who don't feel at home in the normal Sikh organizations (in which they are pretty much absent from leadership positions). Maybe in Timeline L there's "para-Sikh" organizations that have a great deal of Muslim flavor, or more open dissenters who resent Sikh encroachment. An outsider looking in would probably not see Sikh domination but instead a "Punjabi family of traditions" like the "Bengali family" or "Bisnagan family"-- a bubbling stew, cautiously watched over and prodded at by the Khalsa. This state of affairs might well be mirrored in the politics of Pendzhab-- as the largest para-state organization, the Khalsa may well have become the nucleus of the new state, or maybe they share that status with Russian mercenaries and advisors.
And, as an epilogue, Panchala. To the west is Punjab; to the east, Bengal. Buddhism has already been confirmed to be part of the Chinese and Corean projects for India, from pilgrimage tour agencies to naming local puppet states after places from Buddhist scripture. And soon there'll be Societism too. But while this is bleak, it's also liberating. The fact that Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism have all long since moved their centers out of the Gangetic plain means that the region's thinkers are responsible to no one but themselves, and are free to decide what they like. Any interpretation of any text can be valid, so long as it is for the good of Panchala-- so long as it fosters respect for law, respect for custom, and an iron resolve to protect the homeland against any threat. This Ram Kumar regime that's been alluded to? It has the potential to be the most cynical, contradictory, and self-serving society (well, besides the Combine) in the neighborhood, and it's almost hard to see it turning out any other way.
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Bit of a random thought, how do the Societists render Sanchez' name in Novalatina? Pablus Sanctus? Or does he just remain Pablo Sanchez?
Thande
Donor
Happy Good Friday everyone!
Thanks for the analysis, that's very helpful.
This is one I've thought about, and I've decided that they keep his name in the original Spanish, as one of those cases (common in OTL) where one is so used to that and it's so iconic that it can't be changed, even though it seems to contradict their policies elsewhere. I'm still deciding on whether the Biblioteka Mundial would Novalatinise the names of other pre-revolutionary figures, however.
xsampa
Banned
Post colonial states will face several different dynamics than OTL. IOTL, newly independent states were “recruited” eventually one way or another to an ideological side, even if the fiction of the Non Aligned Movenent was still there. Also, local elites decided that wars of conquest were generally unprofitable; sovereign nations could not just invade each other (rebel factions being something different). ITTL, with nationalism inflamed by Diversitarianism, and an environment where all _nations_ are automatically on the same side, invasions (Panchala-Delhi wars for example) become a possibility and even a necessity.
This may mean post colonial states have stronger state structures, due to wars of conquest (and the Societist threat) fueling nationalism, and the state expanding its tax powers in wartime.
This may mean post colonial states have stronger state structures, due to wars of conquest (and the Societist threat) fueling nationalism, and the state expanding its tax powers in wartime.
I don't think major international wars among Diversitarian post-colonial states are likely to be very common. There would be a huge fear that Societists could exploit them to expand. Diversitarianism does not necessarily inflame nationalism of the aggressive sort - celebrating diversity it implicitly suggests that the other side's nationalism is as legitimate as one's own and this may actually encourage peaceful coexistence - albeit maybe a wary one.
I will avoid to restate here the case for my extreme conjectural reading of Iversonian Diversitarianism as "Societism by other means" but I think it has been implied often in canon that the sort of rabid, violent nationalism Societism emerged to stand against is not an accepted Diversitarian core tenet.
Thande
Donor
As said above, I find these discussions fascinating and help me come up with ideas for the future, so please feel free to use this thread to continue them even though this volume has ended.
Happy Easter from me - and if any of you are interested in my other writings, if you are not aware I also write weekly articles like that one for the Sea Lion Press blog.
If this timeline has the big two juggernaut ideologies of Diversitarianism vs Societism paralleling OTL's Capitalism vs Communism, then will there also be an ideology paralleling Fascism for which they set aside their difference and destroy in one of the mid-20th century wars?
Maybe they'll call their party the National Societist German People's Party and even more absurdly pander to the societist vote than the Nazis did to the socialist vote.
My guess would be that the Fascism-Analogue would be some Societist splinter. Maybe one that abandons or even becomes hostile to Societism's pro-nobility attitude, taking an anti-landlord position in general, in favour of ?democratic rule by capitalists, but maintains Societism's anti-nationalism angle. It seems like it would be a good fit for the Directorate of Guinea, but I don't see them positioning to attempt to take over the world.
Maybe they'll call their party the National Societist German People's Party and even more absurdly pander to the societist vote than the Nazis did to the socialist vote.
My guess would be that the Fascism-Analogue would be some Societist splinter. Maybe one that abandons or even becomes hostile to Societism's pro-nobility attitude, taking an anti-landlord position in general, in favour of ?democratic rule by capitalists, but maintains Societism's anti-nationalism angle. It seems like it would be a good fit for the Directorate of Guinea, but I don't see them positioning to attempt to take over the world.
There already is Jacobinism/Linnean Racialism. Who knows it that will flair up anywhere again though. In Portugal, the local Jacobins were overthrown by a more standard military junta if I remember correctly.
It could just be Russia as the fascist analogue. Russia, as is apparent, is an expansionist and powerful empire - hell, ITTL, I think it might be the largest empire in history. Of course, we know that Russia eventually suffers from severe problems and I don’t think we’ll be seeing a Diversitarian/Societist team up against Russia. I don’t think we’ll see Turtledove-style obvious parallels as you suggest.