Grand Culture Mod (Thread 2: Continuation of Finellach's)

[Semi-Lobster]

I actually agree with rather then making the Gallo provinces French, to make them Norman, infact Gallo, as does Norman, both borrow a number of Frankish and Scandinavian Germanic words from old French and Norman. but I have to disagree with the Gallo provinces becoming French in the two later scenarios. There was no great assimiliation of Gallo into French, there was no real political bond with Oil French either as Gallo was spoken freely in the courts and in the cities of Nantes and Rennes without outside influence from France. Gallo only became decimated by the adoption of French when the Treaty of Union of Brittany and France was signed in in 1532 AD. Brittany lost its independence and became a province of the Kingdom of France. Seven years later, in 1539, the Villers-Cotterêts Decree imposed French as the only official language in France. Gallo was replaced by French as the language of record and the courts, leading progressively to a situation of diglossia where French became language of the dominant minority and Gallo and Breton remained the unofficial languages of the majority.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

Erm ... the Moors weren't defined by skin color, although many Almoravid armies did contain large numbers of "Ethiopians" (i.e. Blacks brought from south of the Sahara), as well as Moors.

A Moorish Egypt sounds no worse than the Hungarian Egypt which I encountered in one game.

And moorish France? But it seems you've already decided. Anyway about the skin color, the skin color came later, but eventually it did come to mean those with darker (ie not black) skin. At the period of 1066 its hard to say where it is, but definatly geography and religion also were important.

Anyway as i said it seems you've gone with #1.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

I actually agree with rather then making the Gallo provinces French, to make them Norman, infact Gallo, as does Norman, both borrow a number of Frankish and Scandinavian Germanic words from old French and Norman. but I have to disagree with the Gallo provinces becoming French in the two later scenarios. There was no great assimiliation of Gallo into French, there was no real political bond with Oil French either as Gallo was spoken freely in the courts and in the cities of Nantes and Rennes without outside influence from France. Gallo only became decimated by the adoption of French when the Treaty of Union of Brittany and France was signed in in 1532 AD. Brittany lost its independence and became a province of the Kingdom of France. Seven years later, in 1539, the Villers-Cotterêts Decree imposed French as the only official language in France. Gallo was replaced by French as the language of record and the courts, leading progressively to a situation of diglossia where French became language of the dominant minority and Gallo and Breton remained the unofficial languages of the majority.

This isn't really supported by the documents on this site written by this person

Michael Jones
Professeur émérite d’histoire médiévale française à l’université de Nottingham, Parr’s Cottage, Main Street, GB-Norwell, Notts. NG23 6JN.

So he looks like a person who knows what he is talking about.


http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/document188.html#tocto1

 

[Semi-Lobster]

This isn't really supported by the documents on this site written by this person



So he looks like a person who knows what he is talking about.


http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/document188.html#tocto1

Mr. Jones focus is mainly on the situation between Breton and French and hardly mentions Gallo at all (he mentions it once) and when he does he calls it merely 'a distinct sub-language', while it is indeed, a 'Langue d'oïl', it developed more or less independantly from France much longer then the other oïl languages faired and because of the lack of pull from distant Paris, the Gallurese felt as a part of Brittany as their Breton country men at the time. The article isn't really that relavent to what I was talking about. The only source he mentions perrtaining to Gallo are 8 pages in the Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies by Jean Raymond Francois Piette, the author, was a rather brilliant celtic linguist who researched predominatly Cornish and Breton when he was at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales. The focus of it though was on Celtic studies, not on Gallo itself.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

Since the article is about the language spoken in Brittany I feel it is very much dealing with this subject.

It clearly says that French was the dominant language used by the nobles and clergy. And that the last 'breton' culture ruler was Alain the son of the starting duke in CK

The last duke to speak Breton as a native was probably Alain Fergent (1084-1113/16); his successors were almost certainly monolingual French speakers38

That he doesn't mention Gallo at all would rather suggest that its usage was neglectable.

And this article also says about the samething as Jonathan Sumption in his book about the HYW. That the Rennes and Nantes regions were as French as Anjou, Maine and Poitiou.

And since it is already stated by Calgalus that Norman = French culture, giving French culture to these 2 provinces would be the most correct thing.

 

[Third Angel]

While norman culture might be arguable for the northernmost part of Rennes county as the frontier is very unclear to this day, it is utterly inapropriate to have it in Nantes. You can make Nantes breton, french, even nantais if you will but certainly not norman.

I see you chose to keep a sardinian Corsica in 1066. As a Corsican I feel as much insulted as Finellach would have been if you had merged Croats and Serbs under serbian, but you don't seem to care so I won't argue anymore about it.

 

[Semi-Lobster]

Since the article is about the language spoken in Brittany I feel it is very much dealing with this subject.

It clearly says that French was the dominant language used by the nobles and clergy. And that the last 'breton' culture ruler was Alain the son of the starting duke in CK

But I am not speaking abotu Breton as we've discussed that in the previous Grand Culture Mod Thread.

That he doesn't mention Gallo at all would rather suggest that its usage was neglectable.[/QUOTW]

Gallo WAS the dominant language in Nantes and Rennes, it was also the language of the Breton courts alnog with Latin. The lack of reference to Gallo I believe is a general disinterest in the topic and the French government backed dogma that all regional languages of France are infact, merely dialects of French.

And this article also says about the samething as Jonathan Sumption in his book about the HYW. That the Rennes and Nantes regions were as French as Anjou, Maine and Poitiou.

Sounds like an interesting read Care to scan a page or two that is relevant to Brittany and the linguistic situation during the time period?

And since it is already stated by Calgalus that Norman = French culture, giving French culture to these 2 provinces would be the most correct thing.

Then why bother having Norman in the first place?

While norman culture might be arguable for the northernmost part of Rennes county as the frontier is very unclear to this day, it is utterly inapropriate to have it in Nantes. You can make Nantes breton, french, even nantais if you will but certainly not norman.

Nobody is saying Rennes and Nantes are Norman but to differentiate the oil Gallo-Romance languages

I see you chose to keep a sardinian Corsica in 1066. As a Corsican I feel as much insulted as Finellach would have been if you had merged Croats and Serbs under serbian, but you don't seem to care so I won't argue anymore about it.

Well from what seems to from the few posts pertaining to Corsica is that there was a Sard influence on the Southern coast of Corsica that was eventually absorbed into Italian. If you have more information on the history of Corsica then please share it with us

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

Then why bother having Norman in the first place?

Well calgalus is/was thinking about removing the culture entirely since Normans are called Franks/Franci in all the sources says the grand master of the cultural thread

Gallo WAS the dominant language in Nantes and Rennes, it was also the language of the Breton courts alnog with Latin. The lack of reference to Gallo I believe is a general disinterest in the topic and the French government backed dogma that all regional languages of France are infact, merely dialects of French.

I don't see why a english professor in mediaval french would take interest in what the French goverment says about it. I strongly believe that this professor who you call mister Jones is more likely to be an expert on the subject than all the people on this forum. Unless of course you are also a professor on this subject.

Another dogma is that almost all dialectlanguages claim to be entirely different language who are all totally different from the main-language group. That doesn't make it true of course.

Can you give some sources where it says that Gallo was the dominant language in Nantes and Rennes.

Nobody is saying Rennes and Nantes are Norman but to differentiate the oil Gallo-Romance languages

So you are thinking about giving it Norman culture because the culture there wasn't Frankish, I don't see the logic in that.

Sounds like an interesting read Care to scan a page or two that is relevant to Brittany and the linguistic situation during the time period?

Are asking me to do something illegal ?

 

[Third Angel]

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90058


This apart from the sprite matter was the only argument of Calgacus for having the sard culture and merging corsican into it. To begin with languages then, digging deeper into this site, here is what I found:

Sardinian, Gallurese
A language of Italy
ISO/DIS 639-3: sdn

Population: No estimate available.
Region: Gallurese is in northeastern Sardinia.
Alternate names: Northeastern Sardinian, Gallurese
Dialects: Lexical similarity 83% with Standard Italian, 81% with Sassarese, 70% with Logudorese, 66% with Cagliare.
Classification: Indo-European, Italic, Romance, Southern, Sardinian
Language use: A growing movement to recognize Sard as an important part of their cultural and linguistic heritage.
Language development: Bible portions: 1861–1862.
Comments: Influenced by Corsican and Tuscan (Standard Italian). They call Campidanese and Logudorese 'Sard', and the people 'Sards', but do not include themselves or their language in those terms.


Sardinian, Sassarese
A language of Italy
ISO/DIS 639-3: sdc

Population: No estimate available.
Region: Northwestern Sardinia.
Alternate names: Northwestern Sardinian, Sassarese
Dialects: Lexical similarity 81% with Gallurese, 76% with Standard Italian.
Classification: Indo-European, Italic, Romance, Southern, Sardinian
Language use: There is a growing movement to recognize Sard as an important part of their cultural and linguistic heritage.
Language development: Bible portions: 1863–1866.
Comments: Influenced by Ligurian and Pisan (Pisa, northwest coast of Italy). They call Campidanese and Logudorese 'Sard', and the people 'Sards', but do not include themselves or their language in those terms.

I also found this which confirms the two statements in bold:

Sardinian and Corsican
Most of the modern linguists, specialists of Romance languages, consider that Gallurese and Sassarese are dialects of Corsican. The plural form in -i (and not in -s like in proper Sardinian) and many other syntaxic forms

http://www.answers.com/topic/sardinian-language



I think this clearly settles the matter of the sard pseudo-influence in southern Corsica. The truth is that there was a corsican, that is tuscanian at the time, influence in northern Sardinia and not the other way around.

You should also know that corsican is not a dialect of tuscanian, actually both corsican and italian diverged from tuscanian but in CK-time they were still pretty much the same language because Corsica had been under tuscanian influence for nearly 250 years. This continued for a long time even after 1453 since the Genoese also used tuscanian/italian.

Corsican was only a spoken language until early XIX century, so during all this time tuscanian/italian was the written language in the island, hence probably the confusion having corsican as an italian dialect.


Regarding before-1066 history the two islands followed pretty much the same road until early VIII century (Western Empire, Vandals, Eastern Empire). After that things get very unclear when both of them were overrun by muslims. But Corsica was back in the Empire as soon as early IX century under the Marquis/Margraves of Tuscany, while Sardinia was divided into four small more or less independant kingdoms fighting each other and still under hard pressure from the Moors.


As a note, I really thought there had been some kind of consensus about the introduction of sard culture, but re-reading through the thread this is all I could find:

Ehh, is sard culture really necessary, it's an awful small culture, and it's a latin culture, and we have merged the other latin cultures near Italy with italian anyway.

I to am starting to have doubts about the need of shaving a Sard tag around, naming wise they where very similiar to Italian.

I also think that separate Sardinian-Corsican tag is unnecessary. It can fit just fine within Italian tag

Well, I'd personally like GG better than Sard, since I bet it'd be more used as a ruler culture.

Uh I think you'd best just keep Italians all one culture, that's a can of worms right there. If you're introducing Sard then what about Venetian, Neapolitan, etc?

EDIT: re-reading more of it, I found that some of the above posters might have changed their mind in the following days, mostly due to Calgacus' intransigeance.
This was just meant to show that when the question was seriously arisen there was a strong consensus against it.

 

[Calgacus]

but I have to disagree with the Gallo provinces becoming French in the two later scenarios. .

This merely follows the absence of Norman culture from any province in the two later scenarios.

And moorish France?.

I don't follow your point here, Jinnai.

 

[Third Angel]

About Britanny, Gallo was spoken in and around Nantes and Rennes.

Gallo is a french dialect, so is norman, as clearly stated by the now famous site:
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=fra

FRENCH
(...)
Dialects: Standard French, Norman (Normand), Angevin, Berrichon, Bourbonnais, Bourguignon, Franc-Comtois, Gallo, Poitevin, Santongeais, Lorraine

They could definitely fit under the french tag, but as they were in fact french influenced by breton they could just as well be breton too.
Note that the current Duke in the 1066 scenario was Count of Nantes before his marriage with the duchy's heiress, and he is named Hoël, which sounds breton enough to me.

 

[Calgacus]

As a note, I really thought there had been some kind of consensus about the introduction of sard culture, but re-reading through the thread this is all I could find:

That was a very distorted picture you created. As far as everything goes, Sard culture will stay, for all the reasons I've previously outlined. IMHO, the cultures most expendable are Norman and Prussian (purely because it can be merged as Baltic coherently). However, there are not at this stage any more powerful single contenders, except perhaps the Lapps.

Corsica wasn't taken over by Italians until 1077. As you will note, it is Italian for 1187 and 1337, as was agreed in a previous discussion Personally, it's no big deal to me. The argument was never that Sard spread to Corsica (as you seem to think it was); rather, that for 1066 Sard might just be more appropriate in cultural and sprite terms. But, if people want Corsica to be Italian for all three scenarios, then that's fine.

Note that the current Duke in the 1066 scenario was Count of Nantes before his marriage with the duchy's heiress, and he is named Hoël, which sounds breton enough to me.

I made the Breton aristocracy Breton for 1066.

About Britanny, Gallo was spoken in and around Nantes and Rennes.

Gallo is a french dialect, so is norman, as clearly stated by the now famous site:
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=fra

Yeah, everyone here knows that already.

 

[unmerged(27913)]

I find it funny that you disregard a Corsican on the issue he knows far better then you...

 

[Calgacus]

I find it funny that you disregard a Corsican on the issue he knows far better then you...

Thanks for yet another constructive comment Finellach.

... Well, I assume it's constructive, although I've got totally no idea what you mean. :rofl:

 

[Semi-Lobster]

Well calgalus is/was thinking about removing the culture entirely since Normans are called Franks/Franci in all the sources says the grand master of the cultural thread



I don't see why a english professor in mediaval french would take interest in what the French goverment says about it. I strongly believe that this professor who you call mister Jones is more likely to be an expert on the subject than all the people on this forum. Unless of course you are also a professor on this subject.

Another dogma is that almost all dialectlanguages claim to be entirely different language who are all totally different from the main-language group. That doesn't make it true of course.

Can you give some sources where it says that Gallo was the dominant language in Nantes and Rennes.



So you are thinking about giving it Norman culture because the culture there wasn't Frankish, I don't see the logic in that.




Are asking me to do something illegal ?

Well Veldmaarschalk, I respect your opinion so therefore do whatever you want, I'm sure what ever it is you think is right probably will turn out to be correct.

 

[Third Angel]

That was a very distorted picture you created.

EDIT: some posters did change their minds after the quotes I posted but that was only intented to show the strong consensus against it when the matter was seriously risen, I don't really mind about the sard introduction.

As far as everything goes, Sard culture will stay, for all the reasons I've previously outlined.

I'd like to know about those because I've been reading this thread and the previous one for a while now, I've also used the search function looking for "sard" and "sardinian" and I didn't find any argument of yours except for the sprite and the page from ethnologue.com.

Corsica wasn't taken over by Italians until 1077.

That is untrue as I stated in one of my previous post on this very page which you chose do disregard.

The argument was never that Sard spread to Corsica (as you seem to think it was)

Corsican as I understand it is very mixed and has come under heavier Italian influence, but in the south preserving traces of Sardinian-like influences. That's why I had 1066 and 1187 as Sard.

Well from what seems to from the few posts pertaining to Corsica is that there was a Sard influence on the Southern coast of Corsica that was eventually absorbed into Italian.

I made the Breton aristocracy Breton for 1066.

What about Rennes and Nantes, still norman?

 

[unmerged(21937)]

EDIT: Nevermind what I wrote earlier.

So, what you argue about is the name of the culture, right? Sard and Corsican seem quite more closer to each other than to Italian, so they would make sense in one group than just other being Italian. Mayhaps "Sardo-Corsican"?

EDIT2: Argh, you're too fast. o

 

[Third Angel]

EDIT: Nevermind what I wrote earlier.

So, what you argue about is the name of the culture, right? Sard and Corsican seem quite more closer to each other than to Italian, so they would make sense in one group than just other being Italian. Mayhaps "Sardo-Corsican"?

EDIT2: Argh, you're too fast. o

EDIT: (this is getting messy )
I already proposed a corso-sard tag, but that was mostly for fun. And now that Calgacus has agreed to change it for 1187 and 1337, this would leave us with a weird sardo-corsican Sardinia in the two latter scenarios.
So, given what I said earlier about Corsica being under tuscanian influence for the whole IX and X centuries while Sardinia was mostly independant under moorish pressure, Corsica should be italian instead of sard.

I won't provide any links because this comes from personnal knowledge accumulated in the past few years, and I don't want to spend more time arguing about the matter as I feel this is pretty useless with Calgacus disregarding my points.

 

[Calgacus]

I'd like to know about those because I've been reading this thread and the previous one for a while now, I've also used the search function looking for "sard" and "sardinian" and I didn't find any argument of yours except for the sprite and the page from ethnologue.com.

Distinctive culture, language and sprite.

What about Rennes and Nantes, still norman?

What about it?

 

[unmerged(27913)]

Thanks for yet another constructive comment Finellach.

Constructive comment or not it doesn't work either way for you because on what you set your mind on even the hardest evidence can make you change your mind....childish...

... Well, I assume it's constructive, although I've got totally no idea what you mean. :rofl:

I am sure you don't...