Atla

Atla (Old Albic for 'world') is the framework in which most of Jörg Rhiemeier's conlangs exist. Atla is not so much a standalone conworld but rather a version of the real world with some extra languages and cultures added. It emerged in 2020 from The Elvenpath. Atla became a stand-alone project after the League of Lost Languages, which the languages were part of, went defunct.

Project history

The Atla project crystallized around the Elves, a fictional ethnic group in the British Isles, and their languages.

Nur-ellen

Early in the year 2000, Jörg chanced upon a Tolkien fan-fiction story on the Net which featured Elves living in the modern world. He began wondering about their lagnguage, and went forth to build a descendant of Sindarin which he named Nur-ellen ('Low Elvish'). Soon, he decided that the speakers of Nur-ellen were not Tolkienian Elves but humans with an "Elvish" culture (but rather being built on the author's personal ideals). This was briefly considered for inclusion into Ill Bethisad, but disagreements between Jörg on one side and some Ill Bethisad members on the other resulted in a decision against that.

Albic and the League of Lost Languages

Jörg continued to work on Nur-ellen on his own. After a while, he decided that since his Elves had no longer any connection to Tolkien's, and because the Quendian languages were difficult to work with and he had some ideas about the structure of his Elven languages that differed from the Quendian model, he decided to sever the link to Tolkien's languages, and began building his own language family, Albic, which was meant to be a highly archaic relative of Indo-European.

In 2004, Jörg founded a collaborative framework called the League of Lost Languages to which he contributed the Albic languages as well as a Romance language of his making, Roman Germanech, which was unconnected to the Elves. Other members contributed further languages. Later, Jörg coined the name "The Elvenpath" for the legendarium of the Elves within the League. However, the League of Lost Languages lost more and more momentum, even though Jörg tried to breathe some group spirit into it by means of the Second Caucasus Project. The League was finally declared dead in 2019.

The foundation of Atla

After the end of the League of Lost Languages, Jörg continued to work on his Elves and related peoples and languages on his own, and named the project Atla, after the Old Albic word for 'world'. This move also was an occasion to get rid of Roman Germanech, a language which he now felt to be obsolete.

Languages of Atla

The languages of Atla are diachronic fictional languages set "in the real world". Most of them are connected with the Elves in some way. These are the Hesperic, Razaric and Krelian language families; more on these below. There are furthermore some "guest languages", languages (mostly Indo-European) that explore some ideas of the author and are placed in the same fictional framework although only marginally connected to the Elves.

Hesperic languages

Main article: Hesperic

The Hesperic languages are a language family which forms either an early divergent branch or a sister group of Indo-European (a matter of definition) which preserves some archaic traits. The Albic languages of the Elves are a branch of Hesperic; there are five other branches. As for April 2020, Proto-Hesperic, Proto-Albic and Old Albic are under construction.

Razaric languages

Main article: Razaric

The Razaric languages are a language family which appears to be distantly related to Basque. These are the languages of the Dwarves, descendants of the people of Neolithic Britain. The Albic languages contain a small number of Razaric loanwords, while the Razaric languages have extensively borrowed from Albic. As for April 2020, Proto-Razaric is under construction.

Krelian languages

Main article: Krelian

The Krelian languages are a language family which appears to be distantly related to Kartvelian. These are the languages of the descendants of the Pre-Indo-European people of Neolithic Central Europe, and influeced Proto-Hesperic. As for April 2020, only a few notes on Proto-Krelian exist.

"Guest languages"

These are some fictional languages which serve to explore ideas of the author which are not connected to the main conceit of Atla, but are compatible enough to be placed in the same framework. Currently, one "guest language", Camonic, is under construction; it is a Continental Celtic language.