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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mythusmage" data-source="post: 1011976" data-attributes="member: 571">Last night was the preshow special for folks who preregged. The line almost went around the convention center, but fell short. Maybe next year. Even so, it took but 10 minutes to get inside, and another couple of minutes to pick up my badge. After which it was chortle at the poor souls waiting to register on site and head for Huxter Hall.Paizo Press, Wizards, and Green Ronin were set up. Met Chris Pramas and Nicole Lindros at the GR booth, and picked up a copy of Testament Later today I'll be saying hi to Steve Jackson, John Kovalic, and Aaron Williams again.Tons going on today. Steve Jackson will be holding forth this evening, there's a gaming panel earlier in the afternoon, and all through the con Steve Jackson Games will be holding the peripetetic "Evil Stevie Must Die" LARP. Plus a bunch more stuff, check the <a href="http://www.comic-con.org" target="_blank">Comic-con</a>  site for details. BTW, Evil Stevie will be receiving an Ink Pot Award (Comic-con's own award for excellence in the popular arts) at his Thursday panel. Steve, in case you didn't know, will be the first gaming personality to receive an Ink PotAs to Testament...I like it over all. It does a good job of recreating the mythical feel of the period, and includes invaluable information on life back then. I'll certainly be using it in my Dragon Earth setting with a few changes.However, there are a few things that made me go, "Ah, fellas?" The first was 'languages' (p13, col 1)BackgroundThe old Semitic languages are now included in the Afro-Asiatic language family. Ancient Egyptian itself belonged to a separate sub-group than West and East Semitic. Languages such as Chaldean, Babylonian, and Akkadian (listed as a 'Sumerian' language) were East Semitic tongues, Canaanite, Phoenecian (descended from Canaanite), Hebrew, Urgaritic, proto Arabic, Edomite, Moabite, and Aramaic were West Semitic.Kus-h-i-t-e (all praise filters<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />) I'm not certain about. Latin, Hittite, and Urarian were Indo-European. Hurrian, on the other hand, was a pre-Indo-European tongue, unreleated to any Afro-Asiatic language, or Sumerian.Thought to be a member of an extinct language group once spoken in eastern Anatolia.Sumerian is now recognized as a 'language isolate'. Because of cultural and physical similarities between the two peoples, it is now thought that the Sumerians and Elamites spoke related languages, but since the 'kingdom' of Elam (more a tribal land) had no written languages this can't be confirmed.During the period covered by Testament three trade languages arose. Two of them -Akkadian and Aramaic- were later adopted as first languages by the locals. The third -Phoenecian- was not. In addition, Phoenecian and Hebrew were originally 'creoles'. What results when people with different languages are forced by circumstances to live together. The proto-Israelites by the chaos caused by the Invasion of the Sea Peoples, the proto-Phoenecians when the early Israelites descended from the eastern highlands into the Canaanite valleys and forced the Canaanites north into Lebanon.Making things even more confusing for linguists and philologists is the fact everybody borrowed words from everybody else.So there you have an update on the languages of Testament. More to come on other subjects as time goes by.</blockquote>

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