The old tongue and languages in general

[Samt]

Robert Jordan does a fantastic job at world building, but one area I think he falls a little short is on the issue of language.  

There are, it seems, only two languages spoken anywhere in the world.  There is the old tongue, and there is whatever everyone is speaking (Common? English? Basic?).  There are lots of accents and dialects, but everyone in the world understands everyone else.  This includes not only the Aiel, who live pretty isolated from the rest of the world, but also the Sharans, and even the Seanchan.  Even if everyone spoke the same language during the age of legends, spoken language seems to evolve and diverge quickly enough that after a thousand years of isolation the Seanchan should have been completely unintelligible.  Middle English was spoken as recently as 500 years ago and is basically unintelligible to modern English speakers.  Even a standardized written language would likely be insufficient to keep spoken language standard since pronunciations can easily evolve even for the same written characters.  It seems that RJ didn't want to deal with the complexity that would have evolved from having to deal with translations and interpretations and people learning foreign languages.  So he just sort of decreed that everyone could understand everyone else.  

Also, during the age of legends, did people use the old tongue in everyday life?  Or was it the old tongue even in the age of legends?  If it was the language that everyone was using, how did everyone learn the new language after the breaking?  If the old tongue was archaic even in the age of legends, what was it's purpose then?  Did it harken back to an even more legendary age of legends?  It seems that while the forsaken are all fluent in the old tongue, they are also perfectly conversant in common and use it to communicate among themselves.  So the old tongue has always been the old tongue.  But what even is it?
 

[Lightfriendsocialmistress]

All good questions and very well articulated thesis. I sometimes wonder if RJ has spoiled us somewhat…his worldbuilding is so exquisitely crafted that maybe we forget that he could not possibly cover everything, languages included?

[Lightfriendsocialmistress]

On 2/14/2023 at 9:30 AM, Samt said:

Robert Jordan does a fantastic job at world building, but one area I think he falls a little short is on the issue of language.  

There are, it seems, only two languages spoken anywhere in the world.  There is the old tongue, and there is whatever everyone is speaking (Common? English? Basic?).  There are lots of accents and dialects, but everyone in the world understands everyone else.  This includes not only the Aiel, who live pretty isolated from the rest of the world, but also the Sharans, and even the Seanchan.  Even if everyone spoke the same language during the age of legends, spoken language seems to evolve and diverge quickly enough that after a thousand years of isolation the Seanchan should have been completely unintelligible.  Middle English was spoken as recently as 500 years ago and is basically unintelligible to modern English speakers.  Even a standardized written language would likely be insufficient to keep spoken language standard since pronunciations can easily evolve even for the same written characters.  It seems that RJ didn't want to deal with the complexity that would have evolved from having to deal with translations and interpretations and people learning foreign languages.  So he just sort of decreed that everyone could understand everyone else.  

Also, during the age of legends, did people use the old tongue in everyday life?  Or was it the old tongue even in the age of legends?  If it was the language that everyone was using, how did everyone learn the new language after the breaking?  If the old tongue was archaic even in the age of legends, what was it's purpose then?  Did it harken back to an even more legendary age of legends?  It seems that while the forsaken are all fluent in the old tongue, they are also perfectly conversant in common and use it to communicate among themselves.  So the old tongue has always been the old tongue.  But what even is it?
 

See above post, oops

[Kalessin]

RJ was no linguist of the calibre of JRR Tolkien. WOT's Old Tongue is a sort of Classical Latin, which, since RJ wasn't a linguist, wasn't put together with any great overarching plan the way Tolkien put Sindarin and Quenya and his other Elvish languages together. There is an elementary grammar one can construct from sentences such as

"Muad’drin tia dar allende caba’drin rhadiem!"

"Footmen prepare to pass cavalry forward."

where muad = foot, caba = horse and drin = man while we can deduce that "tia"=prepare and precedes an infinitive (so Randlanders will never enjoy the sublime delights of splitting infinitives)

and such as

“Mia ayende, Aes Sedai! Caballein mirain ye! Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai mirain ye! Mia ayende!”

‘Free me, Aes Sedai! I am a free man. I am no Aes Sedai meat. Free me!’

from which we deduce that the object of an imperative verb always precedes the verb, and copulative sentences take the form of "Free man am I" and negative copulative sentences add the negation to the head of the sentence.

 

These sentences from a thousand years after the Breaking, spoken fluently by one of the elite of that time, is consonant with the use of Latin as a spoken language (though pronounced according to the Romance languages that had already sprung up) up to a thousand years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

 

That said, it is indeed not in accordance with language habits for a common language to be universally spoken without some serious reasons. Usually it is either trade or major diplomatic (ie, everybody trying to avoid military confrontations) reasons; and more often trade than anything else. The only reason I could see for a uniformity of the common spoken language, would be the pre-eminence of Andor in trade and Tar Valon in finance and intelligence, tying together the north, south, east and west in a network of trade. Though one Artur Paendrag (Hawkwing) might have played no small part in crushing competitors with differing dialects.

[DojoToad]

The lack of diversity in language never bothered me and was barely noticed on multiple readings. RJ’s world is a magical place, why would the same rules apply there as here?

[bringbackthomsmoustache]

Equally there appears to be near universal literacy in this world (which may be reasonable, certainly in the event of an apocalyptic event in our world the advantages to the survivors of their descendants being able to read and write would be sufficient that almost all parents would teach their children).  The long term stabilising effect on language of widespread literacy is not something which has any historical precedent over such a timescale but the Roman Empire with most citizens being literate maintained a stable language for over 500 years. 

[Lightfriendsocialmistress]

Plus it’s fantasy, and 15 books including prequel. In a practical sense, how would including language differences improve the story? How could it have been incorporated in a meaningful way without being cumbersome and disruptive to the overall forward movement of the plot? I’m not saying it couldn’t be done, I’m genuinely curious as to how it could have been done? I’m aware we have examples like lotr and asoiaf where language differences are there, but doesn’t it require some other character being fluent in the other language in order to work?

[Kalessin]

RJ does display some dialectal differences, particularly the Illianers' language. He mentions rather than shows the Seanchan differences, talking about them speaking slowly and slurring speech, while giving us the POV of Tuon and Egeanin finding the hurried speech of the Randlanders hard to understand.

 

He could've put more effort into giving the Seanchan some dialectal differences; it could've been done on the American English versus the Scottish language model (taking Burns as the Scottish language sample) and I think most people would've accepted it. Or used a comparative dictionary of English versus American versus Australian versus South African slang (I came across one of gotchas in US versus New Zealand english in the 80s; at that time New Zealand (and Australian) slang used "randy" to mean what US slang meant by "horny" while in US English Randy was a perfectly acceptable nickname form of Randolph. While in ANZ slang at that time a student could ask for a rubber to erase pencil marks, and UK/US speakers would crack up laughing, because in UK/US slang, "rubber" meant "condom". RJ could've made some quite funny (and embarrassing) situations out of dialectal differences. Just think of Tuon's predicament when she asks for something and Mat gets all shocked, because nice girls don't ask for that in the Two Rivers.🤣 )

Edited July 1, 2023 by Kalessin
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