Talk:Mootish Earthlore

The word 'land' seems too broad to always refer to 'country'. We often say, "they conquered land", "they have a lot of land", "fish can't live on land", etc. so 'land' shouldn't be used in political terms for country, but it can be used to mean country in a colloquial sense. In a political/official and more formal sense, we should use ethel, especially considering it has no other conflicting meaning. Also, going off the word ethel, we can coin other words like ethelish  (national),  ethelman (citizen), ethelmanship (citizenship), etc. whereas the same can't work with "land".

For 'district', we should use riding. The shire of York is subdivided into ridings for example (see East Riding).

For 'province', we should use shire. That is the word that was always used to refer to a country's main subdivisions.

For 'state', we should use either landship or landshape. The term 'boundland' seems to be a uniquely German thing. In Swedish, the word landskape (landshape) is used to refer to their country's subdivisions, although Sweden is made up of provinces (limited autonomy) and not states (greater autonomy). I propose using landshape to mean 'region' or 'administrative division' and landship to mean 'state'.

Folkdom or kithdom can be used to mean 'nation' in the traditional sense.

For 'empire', we should use rich when it's by itself (e.g. Romish Rich, Third Rich) and -ric/-rick when it's a suffix. It lives on as a suffix in the words bishopric and kingric. In Old English, it was pronounced "rich" so we should keep it as rich when it's a standalone word. The word rike is from Old Norse and should be discarded since we have Old English-derived equivalents.

The word 'borough' or 'burgh' referenced fortified towns in the past and nowadays is often used to refer to a city's subdivisions such as in London or NYC. It also referenced towns or cities in general before, but so did the word stead. So I'd like to use stead to mean "city". It would line up English perfectly with continental West Germanic languages that way.

The word 'reeve' means "official" (noun) so 'reevetown' means "official town". I'd rather not use this because no other Germanic language uses it like this. Also, it is a stead (city) not a town. There is a difference between the two and I'd rather not merge them both into one word when we could have separate words for them like most/many languages do. I'd prefer if we used headstead.

We could use barrow to mean both "mountain" and as a suffix for certain cities. I'd also like to use berry, but I would only use berry as a suffix to avoid confusion with the fruit.

Ahurian (talk) 01:11, November 5, 2017 (UTC)Ahurian