Re: City Orlanthi

From: Jeff Richard <richaje_at_1sPniXDqUt8vYAQVf1xkUUXvxQOW7sXPMWYCwCXOMovz_qZKPo82Z3pMV1T2G0U7BR4m>
Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2009 20:48:10 -0000

> That's a big area for a single dialect. By comparison England has
> ten which imediately come to mind and the number has reduced in
> the last couple of centuries. I would expect each tribe to have
> it's own dialect. As an example the Torkani will have taken words
> from the Uz language.

I'm sure there is some regional variation within Heortlander, but the total area is hardly much larger than that covered by the Austro-Bavarian dialect of Upper German (English, given its history, is a poor comparison for Heortlander).

> Given that an accent can be enough to make communication difficult
> to impossible I would doubt the 'easily'. Once you start getting
> dialect words in a conversation it needs a fair amount of effort
> to communicate without misunderstandings. The biggest problem is
> that many people don't realise that they are using dialect words
> because they were brought up with them. A listener from another
> area will either mishear the dialect word as another word or hear
> a meaningless noise.

Esrolian and Heortlander are different dialects of the same language.  For example, when Harmast went to Nochet, he had no trouble understanding the local speech. However, when he went amongst the Esvularings, he had the greatest difficulty following the speech.

Jeff