Talossan language

Infobox Language
name=Talossan
creator=R. Ben Madison
date=1985
caption=Flag of the Language


setting=Talossa
speakers=2 fluent, est. >30
posteriori=a posteriori language (Romance)
agency=L'Comità per l'Utzil dal Glhetg (Kingdom), L'Icastola (Republic)
notice=nonotice

The Talossan language ("El Glheþ Talossán/El Glheþ Talossan") is a constructed language created by R. Ben Madison for the micronation he founded, the Kingdom of Talossa. It's also the official language in the other Talossan micronation which split off in 2004, the Republic of Talossa.

Talossan is the best-known example of the micronational language genre of conlang. It's spoken in the Kingdom of Talossa ("El Regipäts Talossán"), a "kingdom" with its own parliament and a bicameral legislature, founded by Madison on December 26, 1979, and also in the Talossan Republic ("La Repúblicâ Talossán"), formed in 2004 by ex-citizens of the Kingdom.

In the Republic the language is kept alive by the "Talossan-Language project", which built an online dictionary English-Glheþ, Glheþ-English; and the formation of "l'Icastolâ", the School of Talossan Language in the Talossan Academy of Arts and Sciences that was established 9 August 2005 with the "The Talossan Academy of Arts and Sciences Act" approved by the Parlamînt.

Talossan is one of the best-known artistic languages on the Internet. It garners perennial interest and respect from online conlangers and conlang aficionados. Of particular interest to them is its large vocabulary -- with over 28,000 words in its official dictionary, it is one of the most detailed fictional languages ever invented.

The language, and its corresponding micronation, are mentioned in the book "" by Michael R. Solomon.

The language has currently gone through an arestada (reformation) in the Kingdom, but remains the same in the Republic. This arestada has taken away many of the diacritics and strange letter combinations.

Linguistic Properties

Classification

Talossan is a constructed Gallo-Romance language, inspired by French and Occitan, and very naturalistic (with quite a few irregularities). In an effort to create a kind of "national mythology" for his micronation, Madison discovered in 1985 that one of the Berber sub-tribes of Morocco was called the "Talesinnt", and decided that Talossans were "inexplicably and inextricably connected somehow to Berbers." This resulted in the Talossan language being inspired by Berber languages. More recently however, words are derived from Romance roots and given a French/Provençal feeling to them (some see a Romanian influence as well), but there is no one set of rules for derivation through which every word can be predicted. The word "Talossa" itself is not Romance, but Finno-Ugric in origin: it comes from the Finnish word for "inside the house" (Talossa began in Madison's bedroom.).

Writing System

The Talossan alphabet is Roman, but contains three letters not found in English -- the Germanic scharfes S (ß), thorn (þ), and eth (Ð, or, in lowercase, ð). These three, however, have become formal or archaic, having been replaced in modern Talossan by the equivalent digraphs ss, tg, and th, respectively. Without counting these three letters, and without the letters K, W, and Y, which are not found in Talossan, the pre-arestada language is expressed using 23 letters adorned with seven diacritical marks -- the acute accent (é), grave accent (è), circumflex (â), tilde (ñ), cedilla (ç), umlaut (ä), and bolle (å). The post-arestada language does only uses the circumflex as a stressed form of vowels with umlats, and does not use the tilde or bolle at all. The Talossan alphabet is as follows, but letters not used in the post-arestada form are marked with an asterisk (*) and the forms only used in the post-arestada forms are marked with a caret (^)

a, â*, ä, å*, e, ë*, i, î*, o, ö, u, ü, û*, b, bh, c, ç, c'h, çh, d, ð, dd, dh, f, fh, g, glh, gn^, gñh*, h, j, k, l, lh, ll, m, mh, n, ñ*, ng, nh*, p, ph, q, qu, r, rh, s, sch, s'ch, sc'h, schci^, schtsch^, sh*, ß, t, þ, tx, tz, v, vh, w, x, xh, y, z

Criticism

Criticism of Talossan includes:
* That words and grammar are just made up at random, thus having no regular derivation from Latin, as claimed by Talossans by calling it a Romance language.
* The use of too many unnecessary accents and letter combinations, although a series of recent revisions within the arestada (see above) attempted to remedy this problem.

Example of the language

The following are the first two tercines of the first stanzas of Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ode to the West Wind translated in El Glhetg Talossán (pre-arestada):

:"Ô vînt traversâ salvátx, tú ånd d'Otogñheu së eßençù",:"tú par qissen ûnvidat presençù els föglhâs morteschti":"sînt drivadâs, come spiritzen d'iens encantéir escapînden,"

:"vermél, és negreu, és brançéu, és gripesc roxh,":"pestidonça-cünsütadâs plenitüds: ô tú,":"qi apoartás à lor auscür þivereu vuode."

Post-arestada:

:"O vint traversa salvatx, tu and d'Otogneu se eßençù",:"tu par qissen unvidat presençù els föglhas morteschti":"sint drivadas, come spiritzen da 'n encanteir escapinden,"

:"vermel, es negreu, es brançéu, es gripesc roxh,":"pestidonça-cünsütadas plenitüds: o tu,":"qi apoartás à lor auscür þivereu vuode."

tate of the language

Currently the two Talossan communities are starting collaborations on the language in order to expand the corpus. They also are collaborating to make available downloadable and public domain courses for all conlangers who want to discover the language. The holder of the copyright on the previous grammar ("La Scúrzniâ Gramáticâ del Glheþ Talossán") has put it offline.

ee also

* Constructed language (conlang)
*Talossa

External links

* [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.03/kingdoms.html "It's Good to Be King"] by Alex Blumberg. Wired 8.03 (March 2000).
* [http://my.execpc.com/~talossa/glhetg.html R. Ben Madison's Talossan Language Page] Deadlink|url=http://my.execpc.com/~talossa/glhetg.html|date=April 2007|date=December 2007
* [http://www.kingdomoftalossa.net Kingdom of Talossa]
* [http://www.talossa.com Republic of Talossa]
* [http://www.kingdomoftalossa.net/index.cgi?lingo=&page=Glhetg The Kingdom's Talossan Language Reference Page]
* [http://www.talossa.net/lang.html The Republic's Talossan Language Reference Page]
* [http://www.talossan-language.com The Talossan-Language project (with dictionary)]
* [http://www.kingdomoftalossa.net/CUG/Arestada_12zec2007.pdf The 2007 Arestada]

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