Hallo conlangers!

On Thursday 29 November 2012 17:42:19 R A Brown wrote:

> On 29/11/2012 15:33, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo conlangers!
> 
> > On Thursday 29 November 2012 15:46:50 R A Brown wrote:
> [snip]
> 
> Although snipped, O agree with all the comments Jörg made;
> but there didn't seem much point in having a lot of quotes,
> each followed by "Yes, indeed" or "I agree.   :)

Sure!
 
> [...]
> 
> >> I agree - the traditional fantasy races are IMO more
> >> than played out.  When I see yet another bunch of
> >> Elves, Dwarves (always, of course, Dwarves and never
> >> traditional Dwarfs), Goblins, Dragons etc., I give a
> >> yawn and move onto something else.   ;)
> > 
> > Sure.  The only meaningful use of them is to add some new
> > spin to them.  My conlang Old Albic is meant to be spoken
> > by "Elves" - but not the usual Tolkienian or D&D-style
> > Elves: they are a *human* culture without any biological
> > peculiarity
> 
> Coming IIRC from *alb, a name connected with Albion, and
> "Alba" (the Gaelic name for Scotland).

Just that.  I fancy the Germanic word *albaz/albiz (there seems
to be some vacillation regarding the stem-forming suffix here)
as well as _Albion_ to stem from the self-designation of the
Elves (_Elbi_, sg. _Alba_ in Old Albic).  I also have a little
story behind that name.  It is from Proto-Hesperic *xalb-,
whose meaning seems to have been 'white' or 'bright'.  In Old
Albic, there is an adjective _ilb_ 'clear, clean (of water);
shiny, untarnished (of metal)' which comes from PHesp. *alb-i-
(i-stem adjectives are common in Hesperic).  The Hesperic root
in question also appears to be a cognate of PIE *h2albh- 'white'.

While none of the Hesperic languages on the continent attests
*xalb- as the base of a self-designation (except perhaps
Alpianic, a branch spoken in Switzerland, where we have
*alp-jan-, but this *alp-, which looks like the regular
development of *xalb- in that branch, means 'mountain' (the
whole designation 'mountain-child') and may be unrelated to
the other root; though the mountain-word may be related to
'white' because high mountains such as those found in the Alps
are snow-capped and thus white), some languages have words for
mythological ancestors or ancestor spirits that are based on
*xalb-, and this may mean that the speakers of Proto-Hesperic
may have called themselves *xalb-as.

Now, why did they call that?  Because they were lightly
pigmented!  Blond hair and blue eyes are traits that occur
only among Europeans, and I seem to remember reading somewhere
that these originated in a population that lived in Europe
about 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.  These could have been the
common ancestors of the Indo-European and Hesperic language
families.  Now we have a tribe of people living perhaps where
now is the Bay of Odessa, and they are the only light-haired
people in a world where everybody else's hair is black.
Obviously, they are "the white ones" or "the fair ones".

>        It's when I see the
> whole caboodle of predictable fantasy races, I yawn and move on.

Yep.

--
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http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1