Re: Glorantha Digest V4 #152 from David Weihe on 1997-02-04 (Glorantha Digest Vol 04)

From: David Weihe <weihe_at_gsidanet.danet.com>
Date: Mon, 3 Feb 97 19:22:53 EST

> From: James Frusetta <gerakkag_at_wam.umd.edu>
>
> The vocabulary and the grammar for the basic stuff seems quite resistant
> to change, and should be common enough that you can communicate in a
> regular fashion. It's when you get into the more specialized stuff about
The words are the same but the pronunciations will tend to drift badly. Thus you won't have just "throw" but "troe", "trow", "thruw" and "tassit" (toss it, just to be annoying). Its the big words that won't drift. Slang, of course, will vary from stead to stead, let alone tribe to tribe.

> regular fashion. It's when you get into the more specialized stuff about
> local crops, or geography, etc. that I think you need tradetalk.
> Stormspeechisms would probably be commonly used for weather, considering
> how widespread Orlanthio is in the region.

Tradetalk will be for communicating with the non-Orlanthi, such as the Grazer tribes, the trolls, the Telmori, the Prax nomads, and Old Pavisites.

After Sartar became a real country (1570's) with developed trade routes I expect that the Prince would hire University students as translaters, and assign them to caravans on the King's Roads like RW seaports do pilots. Before that time, they would be dealt with just in Tradetalk, like the neighboring foreigners.

I am here assuming that Tradetalk is the Gloranthan equivalent of RW Pidgin languages, rather than the Cultic Speech of the Issaries Sect, with an Ancient and Noble Body of Liturature ... (insert hyperbole to taste) Issaries created it by having people talk and naturally create it, not by doing the equiv of the inventors of Esperanto (and Issaries is here actually just the semi-uncoordinated actions of the Trader Princes, not the God Walking On Earth).