What is an "officer" in a Tarshite unit? Or for that matter, what is an "officer" in the armies of ancient Greece (or even Macedon)? IMG, the leader of military bands is usually assisted by his household staff - which includes clerks. Fazzur can read. But most of Fazzur's veteran soldiers are probably illiterate, including probably folk like Jorad Sideburn and Jomes the Wulf.
> >This is a different script, remember? The assorted scratching
types, yes,
> >that's sacred to LM, and you wouldn't want to annoy him. But
being able to
> >read what the Lunars are writing? Especially when some helpful
Lunar
> >decides to communicate with their "subjects" in writintg, because
that would
> >have worked at home? I don't see it being common, I don't see
Sartar ever
> >becoming a literate society, but more people able to read New
Pelorian than
> >their own language - yes. As Donald says, Lunar missionaries will
teach it,
> >too. So both the very pro-Lunar and the very anti-Lunar will be
learning it.
I still doubt it - the Sartarites have a caste of literate folk, the Lhankor Mhy sages. I suspect most Sartarites will go to them to have Lunar writings read, since they already go to them for everything else.
> I'm thinking that clan chiefs will want to know whether the
impressive
> parchment shown by this foreigner is actually an imperial decree
> demanding taxes or a report to some official in Glamour used by an
> unscruplous individual. So there's a big incentive for someone in
the
> clan to learn to read - an incentive which didn't exist before.
Again, most clan chiefs already have resource to Lhankor Mhy sages who do this sort of stuff without angering the Storm Tribe.
> But the individuals who've learnt it will still be there, and if
> the rebellion have been using it for convenience that may well
> continue. Just like Dark Age Europe - Latin was the written
> language because most literate people learnt it rather than their
> native tongue.
Yes, but Latin had been the written tongue of most of western Europe for a very very long time.
> Whether this happens in a single generation in
> Sartar is questionable but certainly possible - most Africans
> adopted a colonial language in the two or three generations between
> conquest at the end of the 19th Century and independance in the
> mid 20th. Another possibility is that New Pelorian script is
> used to write Sartarite. Of course there may be a religious
inspired
> backlash in Sartar against anything Lunar.
I think the better example is the Persian experience in Macedon. Macedon was a Persian satrap for about a generation. Not many impressive bits of written Persian in any of the Macedonian archeological finds that I'm aware of.
Jeff
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