Verse:Chlouvānem Inquisition: Difference between revisions

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Since the early-mid 5th millennium, the Chlouvānem people have been spreading their religion and influence across most of the continent of Márusúturon, outside the original homeland on the Jade Coast. Patterns of Chlouvānem settlement have varied depending on the area - but the Chlouvānem people's predisposition to exogamy has been an important factor in shaping the history of this part of the world: almost everyone in the Inquisition has at least one mixed-blood ancestor, and - even today - the definition of "ethnic group" as for Western (Calémerian and Earthly) standards is extremely challenged by the situation - and self-definition - among Chlouvānem people.
Since the early-mid 5th millennium, the Chlouvānem people have been spreading their religion and influence across most of the continent of Márusúturon, outside the original homeland on the Jade Coast. Patterns of Chlouvānem settlement have varied depending on the area - but the Chlouvānem people's predisposition to exogamy has been an important factor in shaping the history of this part of the world: almost everyone in the Inquisition has at least one mixed-blood ancestor, and - even today - the definition of "ethnic group" as for Western (Calémerian and Earthly) standards is extremely challenged by the situation - and self-definition - among Chlouvānem people.


The Chlouvānem concept of ''lailnekā'', roughly translated as "ethnicity", is the only indicator used in the Chlouvānem world for ethnicities and nationalities; in many cases, language is not the defining factor. Officially, ''lailnekai'' are some groups that are defined as such mostly because of historical conditions - they include social groups that were at the edge of society in the pre-modern era; ethnicities that were semi-independent in respect to the centralmost areas; nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples<ref>Nomadism and semi-nomadism has virtually disappeared since the Kaiṣamā period. After the latter's fall, some traditionally nomadic peoples - especially Soenjŏ - in other countries have gone back to nomadism, but in the Inquisition this phenomenon has not happened.</ref>; ethnicities with a distinct, not fully Chlouvānemized culture well into the contemporary era; and foreigners. All other people are simply considered Chlouvānem as far as ethnicity is concerned, more as a catch-all category rather than a distinct ethnicity; the Yunyalīlta as religion and the use of Chlouvānem as a lingua franca is nearly universal among all ethnicities today, and it has been such for more than a century now.<br/>
Unsurprisingly for its size and population, the Chlouvānem Inquisition is one of the most diverse nations on Calémere, with national censuses counting 949 ethnicities (''lailnekai'') as native inside its borders. However, it is to be noted that while all of the non-Chlouvānem ethnicities together count for around 154 million people, they only make up 10.5% of the total population of the Inquisition.
Today, 13 non-Chlouvānem ''lailnekai'' are titulars of an ''ethnic diocese'', a diocese considered "homeland" of that particular ethnic group and where members of that ethnic group have certain privileges. Except for Bazá people in Tūnambasā diocese, however, all of these ethnicities are rather small minorities in their own ethnic dioceses.


The Chlouvānem Inquisition recognizes 949 ethnicities (excluding Chlouvānem and "foreign" ethnicities<ref>Foreign ethnicities are those considered native of foreign countries, excluding the Bazá and the Čathísǫ̃́g due to them having ethnic dioceses inside the Inquisition; Ogotet' people are also considered not-foreign due to their historical presence in Chlouvānem lands.</ref>) as native inside its borders; despite this large number, they only amount to 10.5% of the Inquisition's total population (about 154.3 million people): their percentage is highest in the dioceses of the Southern rainforest, which are however thinly populated (for example, 95% of the inhabitants of Kīkañjaiṭa are divided into 22 non-Chlouvānem ethnicities, but in actual numbers it's about 72,000 people). These "ethnicities" are also sometimes just descendants of particular castes, not otherwise culturally separated from other Chlouvānem, and many of them just number in the tens of thousands of people or less.<br/>The actual largest non-Chlouvānem ethnicity is Bronic people (''bronai'' in Chl.; they also include people of Fathanic origin), 1.3% of the total population of the Inquisition (about 19.1 million people) - a figure also explained by one of the historically main Bronic lands being a Chlouvānem diocese (Hivampaida) and by the large internal migration during the Kaiṣamā (Fathan has also been a diocese of the Inquisition for a large part of that period).
The Chlouvānem concept of ''lailnekā'', translated as "ethnicity" or "ethnic group", actually conflates ancestry, language, and historical caste membership. Many of these ethnicities share languages, and some of them may simply be formerly-itinerant subgroups of certain true ethnic groups, sharing most of their culture with; this partially explains the small percentage of such a high number of ethnicities, many of which only number in the tens of thousands of people. Actual ethnic diversity is however a distinct feature of many areas of the West (except for the Far Western Inquisition), the Southern rainforests, most of the mountainous areas north of the Plain, the North, parts of the Northeast, and the areas of the East outside the main cities and valleys. 13 of the non-Chlouvānem ''lailnekai'' are titulars of an "ethnic diocese", a diocese that is centrally recognized as the homeland of its titular ethnic group and where people belonging to that ethnicity have certain residency privileges. Except for the Bazá people in the Tūnambasā diocese (at the far westernmost end of the continental Inquisition), however, none of these ethnicities are majoritary in their dioceses, with most of them not even approaching 25%.


In popular usage, Chlouvānem people are those who:
However, it is similarly misleading how 84.3% of the population is ethnically Chlouvānem, as this ''lailnekā'' is most commonly defined as the result of interbreeding between other ethnicities, as the result of a union that would result in more than two different ancestries. As a practical example, the child of a Skyrdegan mother and a Toyubeshian<ref>Toyubeshians, when referred to as a contemporary ethnicity, is a term for the peoples living in hilly areas of the East, speaking some variety of Modern Toyubeshian and defining themselves as ''lánh Từaobát'' or similar terms. These are '''not''' the historical Toyubeshians (albeit closely related genetically and linguistically), whose kingdoms ruled most of the East before the Chlouvānem.</ref> father would be counted as ethnically Skyrdegan-Toyubeshian, but the child of this person and any other person, neither Skyrdegan nor Toyubeshian, would simply be counted as Chlouvānem. While this statistic as it is, applied also to non-Chlouvānem ethnicities, is the result of the spread of the Yunyalīlta and of Chlouvānem culture to the whole Inquisition, this is also the continuation of the general custom that since ancient times has created the Chlouvānem civilization, through the intermixing of a comparatively small number of Lahob people and the local peoples of the pre-Classical Jade Coast.
* are followers of the Yunyalīlta;
* are part of a cultural group entirely based on Yunyalīlti practices of Chlouvānem tradition, or has been considerably influenced by it (inherently linked with being Yunyalīlti believers);
* are part of a cultural group linguistically in a state of diglossia with a local, regional “word” (''babhrāmaiva''<ref>Broad legal term that encompasses all regional languages in the Inquisition, whether daughter languages of Chlouvānem or not.</ref>) and Classical Chlouvānem, the latter inherently tying said cultural group to all other Yunyalīlti ones with similar characteristics.


Being a follower of the Yunyalīlta is, in most cases, enough to make the other two points true, and inside the borders of the Inquisition that’s almost always the case; in fact all Yunyalīlti who are not originary of either Brono, Fathan, Qualdomailor (countries with overwhelming Yunyalīlti religious majority), of Greater Skyrdagor (where about a quarter of the population is Yunyalīlti, up to 54% in the country of Goryan), or of a few other traditional minorities around the world (most notably Holenagic Yunyalīlti) and live in the Inquisition are Chlouvānem.<br/>
The Chlouvānem ''lailnekā'' being misleading is also due to the existence of different cultural areas that would practically be counted as distinct peoples in any other country: there are many differences between Chlouvānem people from the heartlands and the Ancient Toyubeshian-influenced Chlouvānem from the Northern Far East, or the heavily Dabuke-influenced Chlouvānem from the Far West - yet all of these groups from different extremes of the continent are statistically considered to be part of a single ethnic group. All of the main Chlouvānem subgroups, furthermore, have a set of pretty distinct identities inside them.
In fact, during the reign of Great Inquisitor Nāɂahilūma, no such distinction was included in censuses, as the only possible distinction to be done among humans was either Yunyalīlti or heretic.


According to this broad popular definition, many actual recognized ethnicities are simply Chlouvānem. Under official statistics (counting the 949+ different ethnicities, though often grouped in larger groups for practical purposes), 84.3% of the population of the Chlouvānem Inquisition is ethnically Chlouvānem; it is to be noted, anyway, that this broad definition allows inside of it extremely large cultural variations, often also shaped by climate and environment and not just because of different cultural substrata: among themselves, Chlouvānem people recognize four or five major cultural areas: the Plain (incl. the South), the Eastern Chlouvānem (former Toyubeshian area and the Northeast), the Hålvarami or Northerners, the Western Chlouvānem, and, sometimes, the Southern Far Easterners (often culturally grouped with the Plain, but with important Eastern Chlouvānem traits).<br/>It is to be noted, however, that regions are often heavily multicultural inside and there's a tendency towards cultural fusion, ignited by the deportations (''paṣadimbhanah'', pl. ''-nai'') that were particularly common in the first 60 years of the Inquisition, and continued with the later internal migrations; deportations are still sometimes made, however, in order to avoid overpopulating some areas and to settle and cultivate more some remote areas.
Overall, the Chlouvānem Inquisition is ethnically heterogeneous despite the dominant Chlouvānem ''lailnekā'' - the borders between different ethnicities are often not clear-cut and are more noticeable because of local customs rather than the actual ethnicities of the inhabitants. As a general pattern, the areas with higher population density are more predominantly Chlouvānem, while local ethnicities thrive the lesser the population density is; it is however to be noted that, at a regional level, even mountainous or hilly areas are always ethnically heterogeneous and usually no absolute majority of any ethnicity. Urban areas often share the ethnic composition of the surrounding regions, but generally with a higher share of Chlouvānem people, also due to internal migrations and to the deportations (''paṣadimbhanah'', pl. ''-nai'') that were particularly common in the first 60 years of the Inquisition and the early Kaiṣamā period. Internal migration greatly contributes to the heterogeneous population of the biggest cities, where ethnicities from all over the country (and foreign immigrants) are represented.


The Chlouvānem ethnicity and culture were historically born through interbreeding of various peoples in prehistoric times, to the point that different ethnicities came to identify as one; there are various theories on why among all of those languages Chlouvānem - the last one to come there chronologically - came to be the dominant one, but most probably there was a religious background, namely that it was the first language of the Chlamiṣvatrā, and the language she spoke the most during her predication<ref>It is however widely thought that the Chlamiṣvatrā spoke a Chlouvānem dialect that was not the one of the majority of people and that came to be Classical Chlouvānem, on the basis of some religious terminology like most notably ''lillamurḍhyā'', which would have been ''lilāmmūrḍhiyā'' (morphemically ''lil-ān-mūg-ḍhiyā'') in the "standard" dialect.</ref>. Chlouvānem people are quite often defined through the lack of another definition. So, for example, the child of a Skyrdegan mother and a Toyubeshian<ref>Toyubeshians, when referred to as a contemporary ethnicity, is a term for the peoples living in hilly areas of the East, speaking some variety of Modern Toyubeshian and defining themselves as ''lánh Từaobát'' or similar terms. These are '''not''' the historical Toyubeshians (albeit closely related genetically and linguistically), whose kingdoms ruled most of the East before the Chlouvānem.</ref> father would be counted as Skyrdegan-Toyubeshian, but the child of this person and any other person, neither Skyrdegan nor Toyubeshian, will be counted statistically as Chlouvānem for they being the product of the intermixing of three or more ethnicities. No actual "Chlouvānem" person can be considered to have not been born as the result of intermixing, even if this is, for some people, likely to have happened as far as 2500 years ago.<br/>
Foreign ethnicities represented in the Inquisition are mostly those from other countries of the Eastern Bloc and especially of the former Kaiṣamā, with Bronic, Qualdomelic, Soenjoans, Skyrdegans, and Kuyugwazians being particularly numerous. However, there are also notable quantities of immigrants from countries of Védren (and, to lesser extents, from Ovítioná and Fárásen), as well as pockets of Western communities (Auralians, Cerians, Majo-Bankrávians, and to a lesser extent Nordûlaki) in the Northwest, legacy of the former Western colonies there.
Outside the Inquisition, self-definition and native knowledge of any Chlouvānem language is the main definition of Chlouvānem ethnicity.


Most "foreign" non-Chlouvānem inhabitants of the Inquisition come from countries of the former ''Kaiṣamā'' - the Union of Purified States - (Kŭyŭgwažtov, Soenjŏ-tave…) or are Bronic and Fathanic which not just were part of the Kaiṣamā (Fathan was even a diocese of the Inquisition until 6385 (3841<sub>12</sub>)) but border the Inquisition for most of their frontiers' extension. Other sources of non-Chlouvānems are:
Linguistically, the Chlouvānem Inquisition is as heterogeneous as it is ethnically, with a distinction to be made between vernaculars - the locally used languages in informal contexts, usually the one of the local ethnicities - and the standard language, Classical Chlouvānem, which is the lingua franca of inter-ethnic communication and therefore the language used in all formal context, a role it acquired by being the liturgical language of the Yunyalīlta<ref>It is however widely thought that the Chlamiṣvatrā, the Yunyalīlti "prophet", spoke a Chlouvānem dialect that was not the one of the majority of people and that came to be Classical Chlouvānem, on the basis of some religious terminology like most notably ''lillamurḍhyā'', which would have been ''lilāmmūrḍhiyā'' (morphemically ''lil-ān-mūg-ḍhiyā'') in the "standard" dialect.</ref>.
* Titular ethnicities of “ethnic dioceses”, a few dioceses where there often is a local indigenous pre-Chlouvānem language with legal recognition there. These titular ethnicities are rather small because, like all other Chlouvānemized peoples, they have interbred with Chlouvānems and taken cultural influences, as well as converted to the Yunyalīlta, and the “purest” form of their culture mostly survived in remote valleys or plateaus; in fact, in most ethnic dioceses the local titular ethnicity does not count for more than 10% of the population, with the majority of people having origins in both that ethnicity and in not-better-defined Chlouvānem;
* People of Western (Evandorian) origin in the Northwestern coastal dioceses, which were formerly colonies of Evandorian powers (some small lands of Auralia, Ceria, and the late Kingdom of Bankráv). Auralian, Cerian, Majo-Bankravian, and Nordûlaki are all minority official languages in parts of this area. Still, most of them have cut ties with their ancestral homeland and they're becoming part of mainstream Chlouvānem culture, even though with this regional influence.
* Some ethnically and linguistically Bronic or Skyrdegan peoples near the borders with Brono and Greater Skyrdagor. Deportations of native Chlouvānems to these areas and of ethnically Bronics and Skyrdegans to other territories, however, have somewhat weakened the regional identity of these areas.


===Languages===
===Languages===
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