Languages

[shwang]

I was just wondering how the Seanchan ended up speaking in the English language as well as Randland. If they spoke the Old Tounge in Artur Hawkwing's time and they sailed across the ocean then what are the chances that they'd end up getting the exact same language as the Randland people? Anyone know how that happend??

[Tenshin_Xo]

The vulgar toungue or new tounge was starting to be spoken during Hawkings campaign and before, although it was more for peasantry. I presume that many of the colonizing force brought it with them to Seandar, the time they've been separated is why Westlanders have such a hard time understanding them.

 

As a note this explains why so much Aiel culture still holds onto the Old Tounge names.

[icspots]

Also the Seanchan use much more of the Old Tongue in their vocabulary than those in Randland do.

[G the brave]

I think seanchan is more of a mix between the old tongue and the new language. I think it mentions in the white book that the 'vulgar tongue' in use before the army left to conquer seanchan. The mix is probably from combining what arturs army spoke with the old tongue that the native seanchans used before they were taken over.

[DragonSpawn]

What I wonder is how can Rand understand LTT then who speaks the old tongue (which was back then the normal tongue as I am aware)?

[Vemynal]

while when ur thinking in your head u may define thought as your own language people have been considering for a long time whether thought in its pure form is beyond such definitions.

 

But thats philosophy not science :P

[BrainFireBob]

Because the beginnings of the common tongue began during the Covenant, and was recognizable as a distinct dialect somewhere between there and the age of Hawkwing.

 

Realize that the Old Tongue is not a separate language per se, the relationship is more that between Italian and Latin. "That guy's speaking in a funny accent and putting his words in weird, not-quite sensible order".

 

Literacy- and consequently, printing- retards language drift, the tendency of languages to evolve and diverge. Randland- and presumably Seanchan- have had widespread literacy, never lost the printing press, and as little as a thousand years ago spoke the same language. Seanchan is sufficiently conservative and imperialistic that there is in all probability a formalized "correct" form of the language- but their linguistic divergence would be no more than that of a Taraboner or Illianer from the tongue as spoken under Hawkwing's empire.

 

Jordan thought this out.

[Telcar]

But I come from Iceland and a 1000 years ago Norwegians populated Iceland. We spoke the same languauge at first and there was hardly a difference between the way we spoke and the way Norwegians spoke until 1400 maybe. Since then despite travel between the countries we still have to take the time to learn Norwegian to understand them, I'll admit it's not very hard to learn but still, it's a different language.

[BrainFireBob]

Fails the widespread literacy test. If there was widespread literacy in both nations, you'd be able to understand each other in the main, although each would have odd words and phrasing, and perhaps a few extra pronunciations, the other did not.