Global InformationBrithenig information
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| Brithenig | |
|---|---|
| Brithenig, Comroig | |
| Pronunciation | [bɾɪθɛˈniːɡ] |
| Created by | Andrew Smith |
| Date | 1996 |
| Setting and usage | A thought experiment in alternate history, Ill Bethisad, if Latin had replaced the Brittonic languages |
| Purpose | Indo-European
|
| Sources | A posteriori Romance language[1] constructed from Vulgar Latin with a Celtic substrate |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | bzt |
Linguist List | bzt |
| Glottolog | brit1244 |
Brithenig, or also known as Comroig,[2] is an invented language, or constructed language ("conlang"). It was created as a hobby in 1996 by Andrew Smith from New Zealand, who also invented the alternate history of Ill Bethisad to "explain" it. Officially according to the Ill Bethisad Wiki, Brithenig is classified as a Britanno-Romance language, along with other Romance languages that displaced Celtic.[3]
Brithenig was not developed to be used in the real world, like Esperanto or Interlingua, or to provide detail to a work of fiction, like Klingon from the Star Trek franchise. Rather, Brithenig started as a thought experiment to create a Romance language that might have evolved if Latin had displaced the native Celtic language as the spoken language of the people in Great Britain.
The result is an artificial sister language to French, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Occitan and Italian which differs from them by having sound-changes similar to those that affected Welsh, and words that are borrowed from the Brittonic languages and from English throughout its pseudo-history. One important distinction between Brithenig and Welsh is that Welsh is P-Celtic, but Latin was a Q-Italic language (as opposed to P-Italic, like Oscan), and the trait was passed onto Brithenig.
Similar efforts to extrapolate Romance languages are Breathanach (influenced by the other branch of Celtic), Judajca (influenced by Hebrew), Þrjótrunn (a non-Ill Bethisad language influenced by Icelandic), Venedic (influenced by Polish), and Xliponian (which experienced a Grimm's law-like sound shift). It has also inspired Wessisc, a hypothetical Germanic language influenced by contact with Old Celtic.
Brithenig was granted the code BZT as part of ISO 639-3.
Andrew Smith was one of the conlangers featured in the exhibit "Esperanto, Elvish, and Beyond: The World of Constructed Languages" displayed at the Cleveland Public Library from May through August 2008.[4] Smith's creation of Brithenig was cited as the reason for his inclusion in the exhibit (which also included the Babel Text[5] in Smith's language).
- ^ Higley, Sarah L. (March 2000). "Audience, Uglossia, and CONLANG: Inventing Languages on the Internet". M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture. 3 (1). para. 18. doi:10.5204/mcj.1827.
- ^ "Kemr, land of Brithenig speakers". Archived from the original on 2009-05-20. Retrieved 8 October 2021.
- ^ "Brithenig - IBWiki".
- ^ "Esperanto, Elvish, and Beyond". Flickr. 9 May 2008. Retrieved 2009-09-07.
- ^ "Babel Text Introduction". Langmarker. Archived from the original on 2011-05-14. Retrieved 2009-09-07.