My apologies if someone has already pointed this out, but...
The Sun County people don't speak a dialect of Sartarite as
their native language, contrary to all published sources.
Consider: Sun County was founded in the year 877 and Sartar
wasn't founded until about 1315. Sun County's pioneers were from
Dragon Pass, probably around present-day Tarsh, or even further
north. Old Sartar (where Sartarite is the native language) was
populated by people from Heortland. Heortlander/Sartarite is in
the Manirian sub-family of the Theyalan language family. The Sun
County pioneers were culturally Theyalan, but came from Peloria,
where we find a different sub-family of the Theyalan language
family.
The Sun County people came to the River of Cradles speaking a Pelorian Theyalan language. They were isolated there, with only Pavis as an ally. Pavisites spoke Old Pavic, a language related to Auld Wyrmish--not at all Theyalan. They were surrounded and periodically conquered by Praxians, who speak the Praxian tongue of the Praxian language family (also not Theyalan in the least). It'd be a hell of a coincidence if this combination of influences led to a language anything like Sartarite. It'd be as if American were mutually intelligible with the Swiss dialect of German. Two languages in isolation don't grow more like each other, unless there is a third language influencing both. Both Basque and Cymric have Latin loan words, but they're still not mutually intelligible.
The Sun County dialect is in the Pelorian sub-family, which makes the Speak SCD skill 1/3 of one's Speak Tarshite, for example, or 1/10 of one's Speak Sartarite. And a native speaker of SCD (Scud?) speaks Tarshite at 1/3 his Speak SCD and speaks Sartarite at 1/10 his Speak SCD. (There has to be a better name than Sun County dialect or Scud: Sunny? S'Countite? Scite? Bart Simpson?)
A people adopt a language either because they are conquered or because they have conquered a "superior" culture. Just because you conquer an area doesn't mean you change its language, however. Spaniards don't speak Arabic, and Tibetans don't speak Chinese (not at home, anyway). That's why I don't think Scite has much in common with Praxian, though there are probably a few loan words, as from Arabic to Spanish.
Thinking about the American/English analogue makes me think that there ought to be more dialects of the various languages. The rules only mention the dialects of Janubian, but really every little area should have a distinctive way of speech. In modern America, we tend to forget about this, as there's relatively little variation.
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Another thing about language is temporality. We all believe in
the existence of time partly because English is temporal, and
it's hard to express atemporality in it. Aldryami and Mostali,
and to an extent Darktongue, have a cyclical basis. These
languages have changed little since the advent of Time, and the
Mostali even deny the reality of time. Thoughts, comments,
flames?
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Have you noticed that the Godtime is a lot like an Itchy &
Scratchy cartoon?
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How to tell someone to jump in a lake, in a Gloranthan idiom:
"Why don't you go out into the woods and look for horny dryads?"
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #73
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