I said:
>>The backvalley rural Sartarites will likely speak "Incomprehensible"
>>rather than urban Sartarite, I agree, but with the introduction of cities
>>Sartar has suffered a similar fate as other countries with the
>>introduction of radio or TV.
>Um, why? Urbanization -- which sure isn't going gangbusters in Sartar --
>didn't do this in the real world.
Why? because city life forced members of different tribes (and clans) to live with and interact on a daily basis with each other. So if in Jonstown there are Malani, Culbrea and Cinsina, you can expect Malani to aquire Cinsina inflections and vice versa. At least I tend to find myself adapting linguistically to my environs.
>Granted, the
>most important thing for Sartar is going to be ease of travel, to allow
>language contact between areas, but I've never thought there was _that_
>much travel. Not enough to create language standardization among
>non-educated non-elites, IMO.
That's why the cities are so important. They are just within reasonable travel distance, and they provide services unavailable at home, so everybody may get a chance to get there. The closer a clan lives to the city, the more urban phrases the people will adopt.
>>>It's when you get into the more specialized stuff about
>>>local crops, or geography, etc. that I think you need tradetalk.
>>I very much doubt that. Unlike tourist/internet English, tradetalk has
>>never been a complete language with specialized vocabulary outside of
>>trade items
>When I'm from tribe X, I call the weird geological feature a "gooble
>frex". This is common.
No. You call it "_the_ Broo's Bottom", and claim it's unique.
>When the trader from tribe Y comes over, he doesn't
>know what gooble frex means. So I say, "waterfall" in Tradetalk (see
>below) and he might get a clue. I'm assuming tradetalk has standardized
>names and terms for things like geographic features, trade items, etc.
"You tell to I where high road go to next valley" sounds more Tradetalk to me. If it has as much grammar...
>To be fair, I tend to flush out Tradetalk a little -- its more of a creole
>to me, in some ways -- merging in elements of other languages into the
>pigin.
I always had the impression that Tradetalk was meant to remain simple, but that terms of it might sneak into the local languages. Discussing anything but trade in Tradetalk would be like programming Windows applications in Fortran...
>So it'd change quite a bit from place to place, with only the core
>"Issaries" cultspeak maintaining stasis from point to point (because the
>cult has good internal communication, and can dominate the core language).
Wouldn't this rather amount to a language like German where lots of Tradetalk terms like "cool" or "shit" are injected?
>In Dragon Pass, I suppose you'd have a mixture of Sartar, Tarsh, Holy
>Country, Praxian, Troll and Lunar influence.
Dragon Pass has three major human languages - Grazer, Pelorian Theyalan, Manirian Theyalan - with lots of local variations. Grazer is totally different from the Theyalan languages, and only the (Theyalan-speaking) Vendref will have borrowed much of that language. Lunar Newspeak (New Pelorian) is an administrative language in Lunar Tarsh and a damned nuisance in Sartar, but I suppose it will have the same influence on Sartarite as the French of the Napoleonic occupation had on low German. That is, a few terms, likely misunderstood ("visite ma tente" became "Fiesimatenten", describing Eurmal-like activities. Oh well, one of these was imlied in the original...)
>Wheee! So there _would_ be a
>Tradetalk word for "Waterfall," (assuming the Sartarites don't have one),
>borrowed from another language, _if_ you need it.
Actually, given the climate, religion and geography of Sartar, I believe they could export terms for waterfall almost as much as Eskimos could export terms for ice.
Argrath adopting Lunar terminology for regimental magic:
>No, not the magic, the _organization._ They never _had_ this, right? So
>when Argrath is saying, "Now you, you will be man-who-tells-other-shamans-
>when-to-cast-spell," IMO he's more likely to use the Lunar term. There's
>just nothing similar in Sartarite, because if they never organized in such
>a way, they never needed the term.
First off: What makes you think that Argrath had even a remote knowledge of how Lunar magicians call their maneuvers? The guy is a sword-wielding hero type, not a philosopher king. The land of Sartar had a try at this with Temertain...
I really doubt that Argrath was versed in any way with the Lunar methods of regimental magic. What he did was to copy the principle, many mages working together rather than one at a time, by imitating things familiar to the Sartarites but so far unused in warfare, like the communal magic of a worship ceremony to a clan wyter.
>Or the introduction of the term "lieutenant" stems from its origin in
>mercenary warfare (as I recall), which is why you see it repeated for each
>of the major early modern ranks: lt./captain, lt.col./colonel,
>lt.gen/general.
Since my Speak French 12% tells me that lieu-tenant means deputy (place-holder), its use as a diminutive in staff ranks makes sense.
>(Don't know if it's the same in German, since the Germans developed the
>system -- do they repeat Oberleutenant at the different rankings, or are
>there different terms?)
To my knowledge, most of the German terms for the ranks have been stolen from all the languages around, and so we ended up with different terms for most of the upper ranks. Non-coms get to do with all kinds of prefixes, though...
>IMO, Argrath would do the same thing. You'd sartarize the words a bit, get
>rid of those stupid Lunar conjucations and what have you, but why not?
Well, first of all someone has to know the Lunar terms. Ok, Argrath had several years of experience in Lunar-occupied Pavis, but how do you think will Lunar magicians talk to a Wind Lord/Storm Voice?
>There just aren't Sartarite terms for what you're trying to do,
There are. Concepts like a volley of arrows easily translate to a volley of spells.
>and (with
>all likelihood) most of your magic troopers have a little Lunar picked up
>during the occupation/exile, and are going to understand what you're on
>about.
I don't really see how "Sorry, mister Centurio, ma'am" will help you build up a magical terminology.
>And how necessary the words are to such organization (I always figured it
>was pretty complicated, along the lines of a musket regiment -- screw one
>thing up, you fall out of place, you might snafu what the regiment's
>trying to do), but it doesn't have to be that way. Just my interpretation.
I see it as doing the same thing as in a worship ceremony or a Sacred Time quest, only on a battlefield - all chant together, spend magic energy together, and the leaders of the ceremony direct the stuff to do whatever it is supposed to do.
But then, I have bored an earlier incarnation of this digest to bits with my musings on regimental magic...
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #168
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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