The Big Unnoticed Thing

[Val Mickey]

The biggest problem with the extrapolation from the OT, is that RJ never made an entire language (as opposed to JRRT), he (and I'll look for the quote if someone doesn't beat me to it) made it up as he went along based on several real world languages mixed and matched. Thus we cannot extrapolate roots or expect consistency apart from the specific words or wordparts that we have in the series or the guide mentioned specifically as related.

 

 

Pity, that.

 

Not true. Listen to the 4th Age podcast (on general principles) where the team interviews Maria and Alan where they reveal that RJ created the Old Tongue from many languages (including Russian!) and has created a list of words large enough for daily speech (in Lews Therin-land) which will be released with the encyclopedia.

[Sid]

Sid, when Taim talked about picking that blackberry bush he was takling about Tar Valon. It was an adjunct to harvesting the Two Rivers.

Taim's letter said that the Black Tower would soon rival the White Tower's numbers. In the next paragraph he mentioned the blackberry bush that he harvested himself, i.e. the Two Rivers men that could channel.

[FarShainMael]

The biggest problem with the extrapolation from the OT, is that RJ never made an entire language (as opposed to JRRT), he (and I'll look for the quote if someone doesn't beat me to it) made it up as he went along based on several real world languages mixed and matched. Thus we cannot extrapolate roots or expect consistency apart from the specific words or wordparts that we have in the series or the guide mentioned specifically as related.

 

 

Pity, that.

 

Not true. Listen to the 4th Age podcast (on general principles) where the team interviews Maria and Alan where they reveal that RJ created the Old Tongue from many languages (including Russian!) and has created a list of words large enough for daily speech (in Lews Therin-land) which will be released with the encyclopedia.

 

Thanks, I'll look out for that.

[Nooska]

The biggest problem with the extrapolation from the OT, is that RJ never made an entire language (as opposed to JRRT), he (and I'll look for the quote if someone doesn't beat me to it) made it up as he went along based on several real world languages mixed and matched. Thus we cannot extrapolate roots or expect consistency apart from the specific words or wordparts that we have in the series or the guide mentioned specifically as related.

 

 

Pity, that.

 

Not true. Listen to the 4th Age podcast (on general principles) where the team interviews Maria and Alan where they reveal that RJ created the Old Tongue from many languages (including Russian!) and has created a list of words large enough for daily speech (in Lews Therin-land) which will be released with the encyclopedia.

Interesting that (and slightly annoying, now I have to go dig up that quote so we can say he said, she said with the quotes ;))

 

But it is sad that it was never really more than an amalgam and not a true language - come to think of it, that might be the difference, it doesn't have the "rules" required to make it a language, but that doesn't preclude a defined vocabulary large enough to carry a conversation, it just means you have to define, rather than extrapolate, further meanings and words.

Its sad because I have always felt a closer kin of understanding the OT than any of Tolkien's languages - OT is sort of intuitively understandable while not easily translateable.