Ill Bethisad is a collaborative
alternate history project which had 58 active participants as of March 2021[update].[1] Originally created by Andrew Smith from
New Zealand,[2] it was initiated in 1997 as the Brithenig Project. It can be characterized as an instance of the subgenre of
steampunk. Ill Bethisad has a largely encyclopedic character, consisting of constructed languages, written histories, timelines, news items, maps, flags and other images, short movies, descriptions of cultures, religions and technologies, as well as short stories.
Constructed languages
Constructed languages play an important role in Ill Bethisad, and it can be said that Ill Bethisad is the central meeting point, if not the cradle, of an entire subgenre of conlangs, namely
alternative languages. To date there are over thirty languages at varying levels of construction that play part.[3] Among the languages spoken in Ill Bethisad are
Brithenig (a
Romance language with strong Celtic substrate influences, based on
Welsh),[4][5][6]Wenedyk (
Polish as a Romance language),[7][8][9] Bohemian (Pémišna: Germanized
Czech),[10] Dalmatian (a Romance language similar to
Romanian, based on the
actual extinct language of the same name), Xliponian (another Romance language with a superficial resemblance to
Albanian, spoken in our world's
Epirus) and several Finnish-like "
North Slavic" languages, including Nassian (spoken in our world's
Karelia).[11][12]
The name Ill Bethisad itself is Brithenig for the universe, a
calque from
Welshbydysawd or Latin baptizatum.[13]
In addition, many other languages from our world have been changed in some way, although some, like German, Italian, or Russian, appear to be exactly the same. In many cases, as with Spanish, English, or Japanese, the changes are relatively slight and mainly affect orthography or Romanizations. One example is the language of
Galicia, which is called
Ruthenian (rather than
Ukrainian) and is written with
Polish orthography (rather than
Cyrillic; see
Ukrainian Latin Alphabet for real-world examples).[14] Others are more drastic; Ill Bethisad Croatian, for example, is an invented Slavic language that in many respects is closer to Czech than our world's Croatian,[15] and the Dalmatian of Ill Bethisad seems to be influenced by Slavic languages more than its real world counterpart.[original research?]
Points of divergence
The central
point of divergence of Ill Bethisad is a stronger
Roman Empire. Nevertheless, history runs mostly parallel to the history of the real world, so that many countries and regions have their own separate points of divergence:[16]
A
Czech-like Germanic language developed in
Bohemia and
Silesia under pressure from the
Habsburg nobility, who wanted a unified language for the territory.[10]
The
American Revolution did not happen and therefore the
United States as we know it does not exist. Instead, there is a North American League, each state of which is still subject to a European crown.[citation needed]
In general, there are more independent countries than there are in the real world, and constitutional monarchies, federations,
colonies, and
condominia are far more numerous.[10] The history of Ill Bethisad, on the whole, often sees extinct or minority languages such as
Catalan,
Low Saxon,
Crimean Gothic as well as others remaining more widely spoken in their respective regions than they have become in real-world history. Also, technologies that have either fallen out of favor or failed to develop in our world are explored and broadly used.[12] For example,
zeppelins and
ekranoplans or ground-effect vehicles are still in use for both military and civil purposes. Computers are not highly developed, and there is no '
Silicon Valley' of North America, but information technology centres are instead found in
Ireland.[citation needed]
^"IB Languages". IBWiki. Ib.frath.net. 12 April 2012. Retrieved 21 December 2013.
^Sarah L. Higley. Audience, Uglossia, and CONLANG: Inventing Languages on the Internet. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000).
^Arika Okrent, In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language, 2009, str. 321.
^Mikael Parkvall, Limits of Language. Almost Everything You Didn't Know You Didn't Know about Language and Languages, 2008, p. 131.
^Dorota Gut,
: Now@ Mow@ ("New Language"), in: Wiedza i Życie, February 2004.
^Anna-Maria Meyer, Wiederbelebung einer Utopie: Probleme und Perspektiven slavischer Plansprachen im Zeitalter des Internets, p. 266, 2014,
ISBN9783863092337
^Tilman Berger,
Vom Erfinden Slavischer Sprachen, in: M. Okuka & U. Schweier, eds., Germano-Slavistische Beiträge. Festschrift für P. Rehder zum 65. Geburtstag, München 2004, pp. 24-25.