science

Ill Bethisad

Ill Bethisad is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ill Bethisad rather than just read about it. In short: Ill Bethisad is a collaborative alternate history project which had 58 active participants as of March 2021. Originally created by Andrew Smith from New Zealand, it was initiated in 1997 as the Brithenig Project.

Key takeaways

Ill Bethisad belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ill Bethisad to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ill Bethisad from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ill Bethisad is a collaborative alternate history project which had 58 active participants as of March 2021. Originally created by Andrew Smith from New Zealand, it was initiated in 1997 as the Brithenig Project. It can be characterized as an instance of the subgenre of steampunk. Ill Bethisad has a largely encyclopedic character, consisting of constructed languages, written histories, timelines, news items, maps, flags and other images, short movies, descriptions of cultures, religions and technologies, as well as short stories.

Constructed languages Constructed languages play an important role in Ill Bethisad, and it can be said that Ill Bethisad is the central meeting point, if not the cradle, of an entire subgenre of conlangs, namely alternative languages. To date there are over thirty languages at varying levels of construction that play part. Among the languages spoken in Ill Bethisad are Brithenig (a Romance language with strong Celtic substrate influences, based on Welsh), Wenedyk (Polish as a Romance language), Slvanjek (Slovak as a Romance language), Bohemian (Pémišna: Germanized Czech), Dalmatian (a Romance language similar to Romanian, based on the actual extinct language of the same name), Xliponian (another Romance language with a superficial resemblance to Albanian, spoken in our world's Epirus) and several Finnish-like "North Slavic" languages, including Nassian (spoken in our world's Karelia). The name Ill Bethisad itself is Brithenig for the universe, a calque from Welsh bydysawd or Latin baptizatum. In addition, many other languages from our world have been changed in some way, although some, like German, Italian, or Russian, appear to be exactly the same. In many cases, as with Spanish, English, or Japanese, the changes are relatively slight and mainly affect orthography or Romanizations. One example is the language of Galicia, which is called Ruthenian (rather than Ukrainian) and is written with Polish orthography (rather than Cyrillic; see Ukrainian Latin Alphabet for real-world examples). Others are more drastic; Ill Bethisad Croatian, for example, is an invented Slavic language that in many respects is closer to Czech than our world's Croatian, and the Dalmatian of Ill Bethisad seems to be influenced by Slavic languages more than its real world counterpart.

Points of divergence The central point of divergence of Ill Bethisad is a stronger Roman Empire. Nevertheless, history runs mostly parallel to the history of the real world, so that many countries and regions have their own separate points of divergence:

Latin developed into a Romance language in the British Isles (Wales and western England) and Central Europe (Poland and Slovakia) as it did in France and continental Europe. The Partitions of Veneda (historical alternative to Poland) were stopped by Napoleon, and the Venedo-Lithuanian Commonwealth exists to date as the Republic of the Two Crowns. Its present territory is roughly the same as the combined territories of Poland, Lithuania, and East Prussia during the period between the First and Second World War. It also has a colony in Africa, Gambia (part of which, in real-world history, belonged to a prince who was a vassal of seventeenth-century Poland). Another difference is that while the Veneds are Catholics like the Poles, most Lithuanians still confess to paganism, which today has developed into a form similar to that of the Romuva religion of our world. A Czech-like Germanic language developed in Bohemia and Silesia under pressure from the Habsburg nobility, who wanted a unified language for the territory. The Bolsheviks in Russia were defeated by the White Army, producing a nationalistic government. The Kingdom of Castille and the Aragonese Crown never joined in Spain. Napoleon neither attacked Russia nor was defeated at Waterloo. The American Revolution did not happen and therefore the United States as we know it does not exist. Instead, there is a North American League, each state of which is still subject to a European crown. In general, there are more independent countries than there are in the real world, and constitutional monarchies, federations, colonies, and condominia are far more numerous. The history of Ill Bethisad, on the whole, often sees extinct or minority languages such as Catalan, Low Saxon, Crimean Gothic as well as others remaining more widely spoken in their respective regions than they have become in real-world history. Also, technologies that have either fallen out of favor or failed to develop in our world are explored and broadly used. For example, zeppelins and ekranoplans or ground-effect vehicles are still in use for both military and civil purposes. Computers are not highly developed, and there is no 'Silicon Valley' of North America, but information technology centres are instead found in Ireland.

References

External links Ill Bethisad Wiki

Illustrations

Version of the logo created in 2006 for use by members of the project. This or variants of it has been used on various websites over the years

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ill Bethisad

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ill Bethisad claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ill Bethisad before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ill Bethisad ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ill Bethisad

In research: Ill Bethisad appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ill Bethisad in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ill Bethisad is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1997 introductions, Alternate history websites, Constructed languages resources, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ill Bethisad outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Ill Bethisad” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Ill Bethisad in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ill Bethisad means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ill Bethisad out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ill Bethisad in simple terms?

Why does Ill Bethisad matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ill Bethisad?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ill Bethisad.