I thought the Elves were the pre-Germanic inhabitants of Scandinavia, the
ones who sacrificed to Freyr and Freya in Elfblots.

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 10:21 PM, Jörg Rhiemeier <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Hallo conlangers!
>
> On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:59:30 +0100 And Rosta wrote:
>
> > George Corley, On 28/03/2012 20:22:
> > > Wait, what?  I suppose you could ask the creator.  Or are you creating
> > > this
> > > "Old European" yourself?
> >
> > Old Albic (and the hypothesized Hesperic and Europic families) is Joerg's
> > creation. As a conlang it is IMO quite conspicuously interesting because
> it
> > fuses orthodox linguistic scholarship with conlanging: Joerg tries to
> make
> > Old Albic consistent with what we know about Old European and Insular
> Celtic
> > and with what we might expect Early Europic lgs to be like. (It also has
> a
> > secondary aim of fashioning a 'real world' -- conhistorical --
> counterpart
> > of the Eldar, which to my thinking conflicts with the other aim somewhat
> > unsatisfactorily (tho certainly no less unsatisfactorily than the
> > conflicting aims of my own conlang).) It's similar to Brithenig and its
> ilk
> > -- conlanging that is consistent with a body of facts about particular
> > natlangs.
>
> The "real world Eldar" of my conlang aren't really a separate race
> with properties unlike those found in real humans (such as relative
> immortality or "magical" or superhuman powers etc.); they are just a
> human ethnic group, even if they are considerably more "enlightened"
> than most other peoples of their age.  Think of a civilization on
> a par with ancient Greece.  The connection to Tolkien's Elves is
> that my Elves are the people on which the Germanic and Celtic tales
> of Elves on which Tolkien based his Elves are based.  Also, the Greek
> tradition of the Hyperboreans, an enlightened people living on an
> island "opposite the land of the Celts", and maybe even contributing
> to the Atlantis myth.  I sometimes stop and think "How realistic is
> all this?" but I think I can "get away" with it, and I have invested
> so much dedication in it that it is simply too late to stop and scrap
> it ;)
>
> > I've thought over the years about doing something akin to Proto-Europic,
> but
> > I don't have the dedication to do the project justice, and in my hands
> the
> > project would involve larger imaginative leaps away from the terra firma
> of
> > established scholarship that Joerg's Old Albic rests more securely on;
> it's
> > the comparative conservatism of Joerg's approach that makes it more
> > interesting to the audience. (I.e. I'd have more fun doing Proto-Europic
> my
> > way than Joerg's, but the results are more interesting  when things are
> done
> > Joerg's way.)
>
> Thank you for your appreciation of my project!  I can assure you
> that working on Old Albic and all the stuff connected with it is
> very much fun to me - otherwise I wouldn't have found the dedication
> to follow through this sophisticated project ;)  I don't know, of
> course, what would result if one was doing it your way, and whether
> that would be "more interesting" (to whom?  Some people find interest
> in projects others would consider a waste of time).
>
> --
> ... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
> http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
> "Bęsel asa Ęm, a Ęm atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Ęmel." - SiM 1:1
>