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Date: Wed, 29 Sep 93 07:16:39 +0100
Message-Id: <9309290616.AA23647@glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM>
From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Wed, 29 Sep 1993, part 3
Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily)
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The RuneQuest Daily and RuneQuest Digest deal with the subjects of
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- ---------------------

From: cpearce@nemesis.acs.unt.edu (Chris Pearce)
Subject: More Language
Message-ID: <9309290252.AA07417@nemesis.acs.unt.edu>
Date: 28 Sep 93 16:52:04 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1860


TRADING GODS

Graeme Lindsell asks:

>  Speaking of which, are there any historical polytheistic cultures that
> had gods of trade? Trade has been looked down upon by many cultures for
> a variety of reasons, possibly because merchants compete against the
> monarchs and aristocrats.

My knowledge of mythology is rather narrow--Greek and Roman only--and
quite fuzzy now. I haven't used that knowledge for so long.

But in the Greek and Roman pantheon, Hermes/Mercury had a marketplace/
communication aspect. As messenger of the gods, it is pretty clear where
his communication aspect came from, but I can't think of any myths offhand
where he figures as a trade god.

You went on to mention that perhaps the Trickster would subsume some of
the aspects of a Trade god. Strangely enough, Hermes/Mercury also had
a trickster aspect. When he was a babe, he stole the golden cattle of
Apollo. He also helped cover up one of Zeus/Jupiter's indiscretions;
Zeus/Jupiter had turned into a white heifer in order to seduce a mortal
he had taken to his liking, but Hera/Juno caught him at it. Well, as long
as he was in heifer form, she couldn't prove he was being unfaithful, so
she set the titan Argos (who had 100 eyes) over watch on the heifer.
Hermes/Mercury told Argos such a boring story that all of Argos' eyes
went to sleep.

Now I may be mixing elements from two or more myths together here, as
something is nagging in the back of my brain, but I *did* use to know
this stuff!

TRADETALK

shillada@gatwick.sgp.slb.com writes:

Would it work out that tradetalk became more fragmented away from ports (and 
thus GL influence). Would primatives have got it, and if they have, would it 
have changed much ?  

I reply:

Language drift will occur any time groups are isolated for a sufficient
period of time. What is sufficient? Well, it just depends on how linguistically
conservative the respective communities are.

As Tradetalk doesn't seem to replace existing dialects, it is likely that
any community isolated from others who use the tongue (and interact with
their neighbors) will lose the tongue within a generation or so. If the
respective communities have a use for the language, it will stick around
(though it will change).

I just saw an utterly fascinating show (well, the end of the show, anyway)
on the Discovery channel. This show tied in closely with my questions
about what happened when two cultures come into conflict. The show's
topic displayed the primitive hunter culture of the Kayapo, who are
currently having to interact extensively with the Brasilians, who are
encroaching on their land. I'll discuss this show in a separate post,
but in this culture, there were a few members of the tribe who
spoke Portuguese and dealt with the outsiders.

You can be sure that these people did not learn Portuguese out of a love
for foreign languages. Being able to speak Portuguese was critical to the
survival of the community, thus at least some members could speak it. If
the Brasilians disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow and no
Portuguese speakers moved into the vaccuum, you can be sure that Portuguese
would disappear from the Kayapo community as a second language.

You can use common sense here. If the language is spoken by a minority,
then the new language will disappear in the absence of an incentive to use it.
However, if the language has replaced the native tongue or been integrated into
it, then the language will continue to grow and change.


CORRECTION and ORIENTAL LANGUAGES

Newton Hughes corrects me:

One footnote to Chris Pearce's language article:  kanji characters are
Chinese characters borrowed by the Japanese; they work the same way as
Chinese characters, generally, except that the Japanese intermix them
with hiragana and katakana in the same sentence. (Hiragana and katakana,
not kanji, are the syllabaries.)  

I answer:

Yes, I am embarrassed yet again, more so because I had a correspondence
with someone from Japan (Kazuhiko ???) and asked him lots of questions
about his language. The above information was part of what he told me,
but I forgot all about it. To restore some of my credibility, I can mention
the fourth form of Japanese characters, the romaji, which is the (almost)
standard representation of spoken Japanese in the Western alphabet.


Newton continues:

For instance, most verbs begin with
a kanji representing the stem of the verb, followed by the rest of it
in kana.  The syllabaries have only been invented relatively recently;

I reply:

I wonder whether written Japanese will ever abandon the kanji. I mention
this question, because Egyptian (which some linguists think originated the
alphabet) did the same thing with many of its words. So the Egyptians would
write a syllabic or alphabetic word and the append the pictographic signifier.

I will have to research early writing some more... Egyptian *does* have
an alphabet, but I don't know when it is supposed to have originated.
Coptic is an Egyptian dialect written in Greek characters, which makes
me wonder when and how the Egyptian alphabet originated. (Of course,
Egyptian is a dead language. Forgive the use of present tense.)

Newton:

Vormainian would have the same written form as Mandarin Kralorelan,
but would use Vormainian pronounciations which are related to what-
ever the Kralorelan pronounciation was at the time the particular
character was borrowed.  Since different characters are borrowed at
different times from different sources, this gets confusing fast.

Me:

Well, if Vormania corresponds to Japan and Kralorelan is China, then I will
point out that, though written Chinese is readable to any literate Chinese
person not matter what their native dialect, this cross-dialect literacy
does not extend to the Japanese kanji. Kanji are based on Chinese characters,
but the meanings differ completely. (I have noticed that the numbers are
the same, though.)

Chinese has some recent syllabaries and also some romanization schemes
also.

WESTERN LANGUAGE

Nick:

>The extrapolation from this to having written Western 'Brithini' script as 
>the language of books, wizards, scholars, etc. is too easy and attractive 
>to miss. It would technically be possible to write in the vernacular (using 
>the Western alphabet to write in a 'debased' dialect), but this would 
>probably count as a sign of terrible heresy and ignorance.

I like this interpretation very much... but is there a language of the
literate and a vernacular in the countries of note? If not, then just
create them, I say.

In the 16th century, the rhetorician Peter Ramus (University of Paris)
stirred fierce debate by publishing his learned works in the vernacular. He
was a strongly opinionated man (he really slams some classical rhetoricians such
as Aristotle and Quintilian*) who caused a revolution in academia as other 
scholars slowly began to write exclusively in the vernacular (some universities 
were founded explicitly to educate in the French tongue).

(*) ... For how many days, indeed how many years and ages do we suppose
    are wretchedly spent on false conjectures about these disciplines?
    [rhetoric]

    and later...

    [Summary of Quintilian's definition of an orator ]

    What then can be said against this definition of an orator?  I assert
    that such a definition of an orator seems to me to be useless and stupid!

Ramus was real opinionated and quite forthright in his opinions. That's
pretty good, since a lots of medieval rhetoric consists of plain worshiping
the classical rhetoricians. Certainly, Ramus was a refreshing change when
I was studying the subject.

BACK TO THE SUBJECT

Graeme sent me an email message asking about the development of pictographic
languages into syllabic or alphabetic languages. If this is indicated by
my examination of Egyptian, then Egyptian can be a model for the Western
language also. If I find out more, I'll post.
- -- 
Chris Pearce -- cpearce@nemesis.acs.unt.edu
How do you say delicious?                          How do you say delovely? 
How do you say delectable, define?             How do you say - deGORgeous? 
How do you say dewith-it?                            How do you say Delite?

------- End of Forwarded Message