At 05:23 PM 7/22/04, Mark A Mandel wrote:
># As far as the language goes, drift creates accents first, dialects
>#second, and new languages third.
>
>Eh, that's in lay language. "A language is a dialect with an army." The
>progression is generally right, -- though there may be some exceptions
>-- even though you cannot draw any clean boundaries between the
>"levels".
Yeah... there is also the flux from popular usage and slang that sometimes
blurs the distinctions.
># Even with a common dictionary English
>#speakers have managed to create three distinct dialectic groups: British,
>#American, and International.
>
>Far, far more. American English is no more unified than American chili,
>and British English is orders of magnitude more diverse. [...snip...]
Just trying to be general. Guess I was way too general
>#(Now we hit the generalities. The numbers that follow are a bit arbitrary
>#and probably fall quite short of the actual numbers.)
># Think about the size of the armies Morrolan and Fornia raise. Not
>#all of the Dragons will be in on that fight because of familial
>#obligations that preclude siding with either of the leaders, so possibly
>#one quarter of the House was involved. Each army was numbered in the tens
>#of thousands so let's call it 50,000 each. That's 400,000 in the House.
>#Times 17 Houses (yeah the Phoenix have a grand population of One, but it
>#should average out) makes 6.8 million. And that's the extremely
>#conservative estimate. This would indicate the Empire is the dominant
>#culture, at least in the immediate vicinity of that continent.
>
>Someplace or other Vlad says that the Teckla constitute 90% of the
>population.
The number of Dragons in the army is inflated anyway. The conscripts
(Teckla) helped fill out the numbers, but I think about 7 to 10 million is
a good guess. you mentioned in another post:
Now, *something* has held back technological evolution for both
races,
so maybe there is something. But it's not in the nature of human
language (counting both races as human) to be so stable.
I believe that in Dragon, Vlad relates why armor and the technology of
battle has been held in check. Basically because of the sorcerous arms
race. As technology is mostly driven by the need to improve defensive
capability, and the Dragaerans rely on sorcery, it is only logical that
they would stay much the same. Also look how many lifetimes we are seeing
in since the beginning of the Empire: about 100 lifetimes (at 2000 per). In
our terms that is about 7000 years (at 70 per). It's taken us about that
long to get where we are and we were lucky enough to have brilliant people
looking for technological answers to problems. The Dragaerans have
brilliant people looking for sorcerous answers to problems.
Where am I going with this? Not the foggiest...no wait, oh, yeah...
The technological state assumes that the Empire is still agrarian and
therefore cannot sustain an extremely large population so I'd think that 15
to 20 million would be the best it could do. With that number of people
there is bound to be socio-economic and geographical differences in the
manner of speech.
># Documentation is the one good way to preserve language.
>
>Written language, yes. The stabilizing effect of a writing system on
>spoken language is much, much weaker; and remember that many Dragaerans
>are illiterate.
Most, I would think, as most Teckla are illiterate (with notable
exceptions) and they constitute the majority of the population. The nobles,
including those at Vlad's low rank (read that how you will), seem to have
all their letters. I'm sure that there are a few of those that have no
problem having their peasants taught how to read. To allow someone to do
their own paperwork, especially their own taxes, relieves that burden from
the noble's shoulders. It is also evident that there aren't many that do
it, especially with the big turnouts for Kelly-and-crew's classes. Yeah,
enlightened subjugation hardly ever works, but this is fantasy after all...
>#[...] Now who controls the documentary evidence in the
>#Empire? the Lyorns. Kragar gets almost all of his information from the
>#records that they store. I'm sure that there must be some sort of research
>#facility like a library, but I'm also sure that there must be a great deal
>#that is meant to be disseminated only to members of the House the records
>#pertain to (hence the buttering-up and bribery). So I think it would be
>#that House that keeps the drift to a minimum.
>
>Vide supra. :-)
geez...Latin......I barely get English
stab in the dark....."Clearly in Authority"?