Where did the Forsaken learn to speak English?

[Rosée]

If you think of the Old Tounge as Latin, then the new common tounge may be English or French; something derived from latin. Someone who knew latin intimatly would probably pick up on these simpleton languages super-quick, although the other way around is more difficult.

 

It may even be, that the Old Toungue was spoken by high society, while common was spoken by everyone; even back then.

Hmm, not really. If a Latin speaker tried to learn French, he wouldn't understand a single thing, even though they're both Romance languages, and he would have a hard time learning it because those languages don't work the same way at all. So it doesn't mean anything. The Old Tongue was spoken fluently how long ago? Centuries, a few thousands of years ago? Languages evolve too quickly to remain the same; aside from a few similarities, not much will remain after a thousand years. The Old Tongue and English are way too different as we could see in the books, therefore a Forsaken could not just "pick up" English like this just because he knows the Old Tongue.

 

No offense to you dear, I'm just too passionate when it comes to languages xDD

 

 

That being said, I don't really know how they learned to speak English; some people here have good theories though.

[Mulk]

someone said earlier, general literacy and printing capability tend to lock the language in place far more than would otherwise happen. A simple example is the King James Bible. Pretty much anyone with a high school education in America can pick that up and read it. There would be some difficulties, but you'd get the gist. That's 400 years in the past. By contrast, Chaucer, who was about 200 years earlier, is much more incomprehensible to today's English/American English speaker in the original than the King James is. I'd argue that at least part of the reason for the much greater apparent shift is the lack of overall literacy and the lack of printing that could widely distribute the works available at the time.

 

For the rest, the Old Tongue is more complex than the new Common, but the two are closely related, I would guess probably far more so than Latin and French are. That would at least partly explain why it's harder going backwards than forward. I think the more proper comparison is between Shakespearean era (or King James) English and modern day English, with fewer massive societal changes (think Industrial Revolution or computers, not wars - we needed a whole new lexicon to describe the world post revolution, or all of the scientific discoveries), but a longer period of time. Overall literacy in Randland appears to be greater than it is in our world, even today when you include the Third World, and books are certainly wide spread, even if not everyone owns them.

 

My wife is the linguistic expert, not myself, but that's my take on it. /shrug Your mileage may vary of course.

[Rosée]

someone said earlier, general literacy and printing capability tend to lock the language in place far more than would otherwise happen.

Yes, very true!

 

For the rest, the Old Tongue is more complex than the new Common, but the two are closely related, I would guess probably far more so than Latin and French are. That would at least partly explain why it's harder going backwards than forward.

Well, yeah, French was an example just like that. It depends on the language. If we take Spanish for instance, those two languages are still very similar (I studied Latin and Spanish, and I often mix them up accidentally), so if it were a similar case in WoT, then yes it would be easy for the Forsaken to learn the language. But the thing is, it is not =P I mean, well maybe it's just me and I suck, but I didn't really see similarities between the Old Tongue and English in the books, so that's why I don't see how they could just pick English up and learn it in no time.

Unless the characters speak a language that is not English, of course. It would make more sense this way, since I can't see how Tarmon Gai'don can phonetically evolve into The Last Battle, loool.

 

I think the more proper comparison is between Shakespearean era (or King James) English and modern day English, with fewer massive societal changes (think Industrial Revolution or computers, not wars - we needed a whole new lexicon to describe the world post revolution, or all of the scientific discoveries), but a longer period of time. Overall literacy in Randland appears to be greater than it is in our world, even today when you include the Third World, and books are certainly wide spread, even if not everyone owns them.

But Shakespeare and that King James dude belong to the early modern English, don't they? It's still very similar to today's English. I think it's not old enough. People can hardly understand Mat when he speaks the Old Tongue, it's got to be more different than that. Maybe Old English then? That one's funny =D

[Mrs. Cindy Gill]

i don't think the language was locked. i think it's just easier, and better, to skip the issue whenever possible. you can write a universal translator, or a mind invading TARDIS into the story, or make up a few elvish languages just for the heck of it, but i think translating or making up reasons for why they don't have to translate would have just been a lot of words to no general purpose. this story works better when everyone speaks the same language.

[Mulk]

it's possible. *shrug*

 

RJ didn't really write the book in the common tongue, whether he said he did or not - the two have no commonalities to speak of (as you said yourself), it's akin to claiming modern American English is descended from Mandarin Chinese or something similarly different. He wrote it in English. If had had developed and written the new common tongue, it would look much more like the Old Tongue, at least imo it would. If he'd written it in the actual common tongue as devolved/evolved from the Old Tongue as he wrote it, we wouldn't be able to read it unless we took the time to learn it. :D

 

There is also the possibility that the grammar rules are one of the biggest changes, and so it's hard to garner meanings out of similar sounds because it no longer follows the same ruleset. A comparison would be certain ancient languages to many of the modern languages; in some older languages the form of the word determined its place/importance in the sentence, regardless of actual word order, so that (to use a very crude example) man eats dog and dog eats man, while meaning completely different things in the modern lexicon, actually meant the same thing in the older language.

 

In seriousness, I've met a guy who can pick up a new language with a week or two of study and immersion. If memory serves, he knew Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi (I forget what dialect), English, German and I forget what all else. I grant that he's a quick study and has a gift for languages that not many have. But the fact that at least one person can do it means others can. At that point, you're arguing probabilities. Since we all grant that Mat's luck, while absolutely impossible in our world, is in fact possible and logical is his, that's sort of a moot point from this mathematician's perspective!

 

Again, your mileage may vary. :) For my part, I'm satisfied, just throwing some possibilities out there.

[rcfleming4]

Well, you also have to keep in mind that language is somewhat magical and in the blood of a person in WoT . . .

 

In real life if you get super excited about something, you don't start screaming in Latin if you haven't learned it :)

[Rosée]

Fair enough! You're making very valid points, but then again, we're only speculating on languages we don't know (because they don't technically exist), after all xD The theory I like the most is the one about Rand and the others not speaking Modern English, and as you said RJ could not have written the book in the common tongue, or else I don't think his series would have been very popular then xD Maybe the Forsaken had super-powers to learn the common tongue, or maybe the languages were still quite similar despite all those years, like Latin and Spanish. But since we can't really see for ourselves, we'll have to keep speculating