Dragaera

Linguistics and population

Thu Jul 22 23:23:32 PDT 2004

See Below.


>From: Robert Sallade <zardoz at weirdness.com>
>To: dragaera at dragaera.info
>Subject: Re: Linguistics and population
>Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:03:34 -0700
>
>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. :-)

Visualize (the writing) Superior

James Griffin,
Still Another Vlad faN
See Above






>geez...Latin......I barely get English
>stab in the dark....."Clearly in Authority"?

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