2008-11-12

Almost half done!

Alright!

At day 11th, I've written 22,300 words (+44%) which I'd say it's pretty good.

Besides, I'm really enjoying writing the book, I'm loving the plot, the characters, and writing it in Galician!

As an interesting note, last week already sprouted an unexpected new character! Little buggers, hehe... :-)

An aditional benefit this year (besides the fun) is that I don't have to carry around a big, heavy bad of documentation books... :-P

Anyway, how's your NaNoWriMo going?

KALLISTI!

2 comments:

xibalba said...

So your writing in Galician. My former Landlord and Landlady are from Galicia, from just outside Vigo. My understanding is that its fairly close to Portuguese. (It certainly sounds a lot like Portuguese.) I wonder do you happen to know ant books about the History and culture of the Kingom of Leon? Its also my understanding that Celtic Christianity had a impact on Galicia. (I'll ignore the Suevi Kingdom for now).

Pierre

Excalibor said...

Pierre, yes, it was a kind of debt to myself and my culture and it feels really good, I must say... :-)

It was finally fantasy but it'd be historical fiction... Maybe the next one.

Yes, Galician and Portuguese are very close, specially because Portuguese is a kind of southern Galician dialect of yore grown into a full blown international language. Most linguists today see that until the XI Century it was basically the same language (occidental romance language of Gallaecia, while the astur-leonese would have been the eastern variant of romance in Gallaecia) and as the 'Reconquering' moved south, it intermixed with Lusitanian romance and mozarabic languages, and Portuguese was born. Later centuries allowed each language to evolve separately, specially since Porto Cale became a separate nation... Even nowadays there's an easily seen continuum in the spoken languages in both sides of the Minius river... Evidently, Lisbon has a greater impact, but the spoken language is never reflected in its entirety in the written rule.

I have nothing I can think of right now about the Kingdon of León that's not inside bigger Spain History books, but I'll have a look, just in case.

Yes, Celtic Christianity had a big impact on Galicia, there were not only several waves of Irish and Wales refugees on Galicia during and after the Fall of the Western Empire (around V and VI centuries), but there were a number of 'heresies' that were born there as well (priscillianism, for example). One very visible example is the 'cruceiros', stone crosses on places like crossroads or important sites, which are usually of a very irish-cross style and share a great deal with bretonian crosses (bretons were a huge regugee wave of waleans running from irish and norsemen alike). The impact with Celtorroman pagan beliefs as a substrate was subtile but very bulls-eye: even nowadays Galician christianity is really 'very pagan' and there are a number of popular beliefs that get lost in time (revived during the XIX and XX centuries as 'new' traditions, like the 'queimada').

I'm reading right now a very interesting book about the Suevi and the entrance of Gallaecia into Medieval Age, pretty interesting, indeed! If your place of interest in Gallaecia was the Braccariensis, you cannot understand its History without the Suevi! (Lucensis and Asturiciensis had a minor impact, although I think it was greater than suspected by traditional historiography that constantly neglects Suevi and centers on Goths).

I'll digg my sources about León... :-)

laters!