Posted by John R. Grout on January 19, 1998 at 18:56:07:
In Reply to: Re: Say " Ecce ", Please posted by Robert Ruork on January 15, 1998 at 04:28:27:
: ::
: If Vance invented the word for the continent on Cadwal, your guess is as good as any.
AS specifically states that the three continents of Cadwal
were named after the first three numbers in Ancient Etrurian...
the language of the mysterious Etruscans. They ruled northern
Italy from the 7th to 5th Century BCE (the first few centuries
AUC, i.e., after the founding of Rome), but the Roman Republic
eventually destroyed them so completely that few examples of
their language remain, and those are largely untranslated
in our day.
Unfortunately, I don't know whether "one", "two" and "three" in
Ancient Etrurian (aka Etruscan) have been puzzled out by today's
linguists, or whether Vance was postulating that they _had_ done
so in the future, and made them up anyway! He's erudite enough
to have done the former, and puckish enough to have done the
latter :-)