Verse:Irta/Fêrrith Michaelidh: Difference between revisions

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Aeno Michaelidh, a mystic and comparative linguist; the first conlanger in the Irtan Western world
Fêrrith Michaelidh, a mystic and comparative linguist; the first conlanger in the Irtan Western world
**Influenced by her missionary work in Southeast Asia
**Influenced by her missionary work in Southeast Asia
**Writes groundbreaking works in historical linguistics (equivalent to our timeline's William Jones) and proposes Proto-Indo-Uralic
**Writes groundbreaking works in historical linguistics (equivalent to our timeline's William Jones) and proposes Proto-Indo-Uralic
***Unlike William Jones, Michaelidh is not surprised by Sanskrit's relation to Latin and Greek; she expects it and travels to Southeast Asia partly to verify her belief in a common ancestor for all human languages which was close to Latin and Koine Greek
***Unlike William Jones, Michaelidh is not surprised by Sanskrit's relation to Latin and Greek; she expects it and travels to Southeast Asia partly to verify her belief in a common ancestor for all human languages which was close to Church Latin and Koine Greek; she also discovers ancient Indo-Iranian loanwords in her native Medh Chêl
**Latinizes her name, originally of [[Medh Chêl]] origin, to Aenō, Aenōnis
***She doesn't expect Old Chinese
==Michaelidh's conworld==


Michaelidh's conworld is multilevel and full of religious allegories. It resembles Dante in many respects.
==Linguistic philosophy==
Like Tolkien, Michaelidh delighted in and drew a lot of inspiration from the grammars of languages, and as a native speaker of Medh Chêl, a Uralic language, she felt novelty in features of Indo-European languages. As a child she studied Latin and Greek, and considered them mystical and beautiful. Her studies started with the Vulgate Bible and the Greek New Testament, but in addition she broadened her studies to older pagan and philosophical texts in those languages, which she accepted on the basis that the languages' inherent divinity seeped into the texts. She also studied Azalic and English, which she praised for its simplicity, and Riphean, more for practical purposes. Her favorite language in childhood was Irish, and she experimented with various constructed languages in her childhood as well, mostly based on Latin and Greek grammar.


[[Rõktiap]] is the language of "heaven" in that world; its grammar is based on Michaelidh's idea of what the first full-fledged human language was like (though the actual details were not a reconstruction); unlike Earthly languages Rõktiap doesn't evolve into descendants all that much (Sõiptram is an exception). Earth languages in Michaelidh's world are all descendants of Rõktiap as a fictional take on her beliefs, and in her actual writings these are represented by Earth languages in translation LOTR style. Earth languages in Michaelidh's world are specifically descendants of Rõktiap with one major grammatical change that is common to all such languages -- it's a change that both makes the languages human-usable and makes Rõktiap fundamentally unintelligible by incorporating a false friend.
Her first conlangs started as childhood play, but as she studied the Bible her conlanging efforts grew more serious. Her studies of IE morphology had a notable Christian bent to them -- for instance, she connected the early PIE animate and inanimate genders to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the grammaticalization of the collective to the Son.


Michaelidh's work in both linguistics and conlanging are popular among Catholics for having an accurate analogy for the Trinity. Remonitionists, on the other hand, think of Michaelidh's work as a treasure trove of mystical and occult symbolism as well as paradoxes; a major Remonitionist author and critic cited Michaelidh's conlanging as a challenge to her belief in "the original language of humanity" by considering the possibility that societies could make up and pass on new languages that, like Rõktiap, were unrelated to the real original language. This controversy persists to this day in the way Irtan linguists look at pidgins and creoles; historically Remonitionist countries follow the theory that creoles are made ex nihilo and should be grouped into separate language families whereas Catholic countries follow the theory that creoles are descendants of their lexifiers.
Her travels in Asia were a defining moment when she discovered two important classical languages: Sanskrit and Old Chinese.
...
Sanskrit appealed to her because of its IE origin and Old Chinese because of its telegraphic syntax suggesting the state of humanity before the Fall of Adam. It's after her discovery of Old Chinese that she started sketching Rõktiap.

Latest revision as of 04:56, 26 March 2023

Fêrrith Michaelidh, a mystic and comparative linguist; the first conlanger in the Irtan Western world

    • Influenced by her missionary work in Southeast Asia
    • Writes groundbreaking works in historical linguistics (equivalent to our timeline's William Jones) and proposes Proto-Indo-Uralic
      • Unlike William Jones, Michaelidh is not surprised by Sanskrit's relation to Latin and Greek; she expects it and travels to Southeast Asia partly to verify her belief in a common ancestor for all human languages which was close to Church Latin and Koine Greek; she also discovers ancient Indo-Iranian loanwords in her native Medh Chêl
      • She doesn't expect Old Chinese

Linguistic philosophy

Like Tolkien, Michaelidh delighted in and drew a lot of inspiration from the grammars of languages, and as a native speaker of Medh Chêl, a Uralic language, she felt novelty in features of Indo-European languages. As a child she studied Latin and Greek, and considered them mystical and beautiful. Her studies started with the Vulgate Bible and the Greek New Testament, but in addition she broadened her studies to older pagan and philosophical texts in those languages, which she accepted on the basis that the languages' inherent divinity seeped into the texts. She also studied Azalic and English, which she praised for its simplicity, and Riphean, more for practical purposes. Her favorite language in childhood was Irish, and she experimented with various constructed languages in her childhood as well, mostly based on Latin and Greek grammar.

Her first conlangs started as childhood play, but as she studied the Bible her conlanging efforts grew more serious. Her studies of IE morphology had a notable Christian bent to them -- for instance, she connected the early PIE animate and inanimate genders to the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the grammaticalization of the collective to the Son.

Her travels in Asia were a defining moment when she discovered two important classical languages: Sanskrit and Old Chinese. ... Sanskrit appealed to her because of its IE origin and Old Chinese because of its telegraphic syntax suggesting the state of humanity before the Fall of Adam. It's after her discovery of Old Chinese that she started sketching Rõktiap.