>A more useful
>parallel might be Ancient Egyptian, as a Golden Age ideogrammatic
script. It would
>strike me as being particularly useful for communicating magical
concepts. On the
>offside, I wouldn't see it as being particularly useful for conveying
the Mystery
>of the Invisible God (what sort of ideogram would one use to represent
>Invisibility?
But as you say yourself, this is irrelevent to the Brithini who do not accept the invisible god. Arguing that written Brithini must be able to represent a concept used by foreigners many millenia after the development of the script seems bizzare. From a Brithini point of view, surely that's their problem?
Although I find the idea that Brithini be ideogramatic appealing, I am strongly drawn towards Hebrew as a real world analog. I am sure the Brithini associate each letter in thier alphabet with a number and have performed fabulously complex numerological interpretations of the Laws of malkion, which of course are prefect and so in some mystical way describes the perfect world as it was during the Kingdom of Logic. If only they could reverse engineer the magical matrix embedded in the text, they could create a ceremony that would reassert the rule of law on the world, driving out all imperfection.
On the Great Mantongue and Spirit Speech debate :
I'm sure many cultures in Glorantha have myths of the creation of mankind, when of course everyone spoke the same language. None of these cultures have the same myths of the creation of mankind, and none of them agree what this orriginal language was called. In fact many such as the Kralori, Dara Happans and Brithini certainly claim that in fact their language is the orriginal human tongue, or at least a very close descendent of it. In fact I'm sure they each have heroquests which prove they are correct. Of course none of these languages are even remotely similar to each other.
Spirit Speech and mantongue, if they ever existed in Glorantha, were probably God Learner theories. I wouldn't put it past them to hypothesise the esxistence of such languages, then invent analogs of them through a process of cross-cultural synthesis and then try and assert that their versions are correct. They would become a God Learner Trade Talk for the Spirit Plane and the Hero Plane respectively.
The question of the objective existence of such languages is a matter of pure speculation and conjecture. I don't believe it's possible to create a theory that fits every culture's myths. If these languages ever existed they certainly don't now. Any spectulation on the subject without refference to a specific culture's mythology is therefore spurious, IMHO.
Simon Hibbs
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