DD>> I don't know that there was a Mantongue
>There WAS, (ie when Grandfather Mortal was made, and begat his family) but
>there isn't any more (phonetic devolution, caused by some chaos entity, or
>Ratslaf, or something similar).
Just because OOP sources talk about something called Mantongue does not mean that it ever existed. Given that more recent sources (in particular the languages section of book I of G:CotHW) do _not_ make any mention of Mantongue, Spiritspeech or Beastspeech, it is wise to treat each of the statements in the source you quote for your theories as spurious unless buttressed by other facts.
>Tradetalk, however, isn't a pidgin. It is an artificial language,
constructed >by the GodLearners, based on Seshnegi, Brithini, and abstract
scholarly >knowledge of Old Mantongue.
I doubt this very much. Tradetalk is the hallmark of the Issaries cult which belonged to the Orlanthi culture. It was taken up and spread by the God Learners but that does not mean the God Learners invented it.
>Also, the God Learner Secret is one sentence of Tradetalk.
Could we have the source for this, please? Or perhaps you could start putting IMO in your speculative statements?
Me>> But even in those days, people spoke different incomprehensible
>>languages.
>Well, family reunions must have been quite something in good old Pappy
>Mortal's homestead.
Well given that the book 1 of G:CotHW does state that Grandfather Mortal was the invention of the God Learners, I see little reason to believe in the existance of a _historical_ grandfather mortal speaking mantongue.
>> There was no pre-Babel Tower period where all spoke Mantongue IMO.
>Your contention goes against the entire corpus of world mythology
>regarding the first language, including current linguistic theory, which
>also says that humanity, having originated in a single place, originally
>had only one language.
Cite? When was this postulated proto-world spoken? Note that current palaeoanthropolgy believes that we spread out of africa nearly 200,000+ years ago and eventually displaced _other_hominds_ (such as Neanderthal Man) in diverse places such as Java and Peking. So even if we did speak one tongue, there were plenty of other humans speaking different tongues.
Additionally the locus of this region is big enough for modern day hunter-gatherers to speak incomprehensible languages AFAIK. So we cannot assume that there was only one language when Eve walked the earth.
>> I strongly doubt that spiritspeech exists and think that most spirits
>> would speak the language they spoke when alive if they can speak at
>> all.
>Oh, come on Peter! Spiritspeech is mentioned by several *quite*
>authoritative sources, including some OOP ones ....
These authoritative sources, hmm. One is WF#6 which makes other claims which are now known to be wrong (such as everyone spoke Old Mantongue), another is RQ2 which makes similar claims, and finally Plunder! which mentions EWF translating quills, one of which translates spirittongue. There are no modern sources which speak of spiritspeech or mantongue.
Since that time, it has been learned that Firespeech is not spoken by 'salamanders and birds' universally but is your everyday Dara Happan tongue - which implies that salamanders in Teshnos or Faladje do not speak firespeech (assuming that they could speak at all). Likewise Earthtongue has been revealed to be the Esrolian Language and Stormspeech is not spoken by mammals as claimed by RQ2. The trend is clearly towards _realism_*.
So it may be that Mantongue does exist. If it did, then it is most likely to be Brithini in which case the Kralori, the Pelorians and the Pamalteleans have never spoken Mantongue. If someone wants to know the primal language spoken by Gloranthans, then my opinion is that it has no relevance in glorantha today so why bother?
Similarly Spiritspeech, if it exists, should exhibit a similar linguistic realism. It is not meaningful to say that it is spoken by all spirits because we know otherwise. Hence if you want to claim that spiritspeech exists, you should propose a realistic theory to explain why spirits speak it.
*But realism only goes so far. If someone proposes to introduce chomskyian linguistics or argue about whether Dara Happan has split ergativity, simple ergativity or none at all, then I will run away screaming.
Charles Domino:
>My 2 cents worth: I have some problems with Tradetalk being derived from
>Stormspeech. Orlanth worship (and presumably Stormspeech) is not common
>in Pamaltela and western Genertela, and unknown in the Eastern Isles,
>Kralorela and some other areas. Yet someone fluent in Tradetalk could go
>to any of those places and suffer no worse than a - -50 to their skill
>level. Unless ALL languages are closely related (here comes Mantongue
>again....) this is not possible.
The answer to your objection is that Tradetalk was _spread_ by the God Learners when they set up their empire. Since this included places diverse as Ralios, Kralorela, Teleos and Jolar, you are likely to find speakers of tradetalk in those regions.
This means that Tradetalk is less likely to be spoken in places like Peloria, Kothar or amongst the Eastern Isles because the God Learners never went there in large numbers to be influential.
>Additionally, I note again that many of the languages have runic
associations >(hence the disagreement over Mantongue).
I view the runic association and the language as being causally connected. To wit: Firespeech is so called because it is worshipped by the Sun worshipping Dara Happans. It does not have any 'fiery' or runic nature other than that. Futhermore the runic association of languages fails at a larger level than presented so far because the Kralori, the Doraddi and the Pelorians have somewhat different runes than the standard.
>If it were so, how did Orlanth ever challenge Yelm? At least on the
>Godplane, there must be a common language from the very beginning of
>the Celestial Court! This would be, IMO, Spiritspeech.
You assuming the Gods of the Celestial Court are human or assumed human form. This is a very big assumption to take and many gloranthans (like the Kralori) believe that do so is a Big Mistake.
Keith Nellist:
>Also of note is that the written form of Western is the same throughout the
>West. This implies to me that all spoken versions of Western derive from
>Brithini which according to the Godlearners is the "Oldest unchanged human
>tongue".
The Brithini, of course deny this, and I believe this to be related to the Silence. Simply put, the Brithini lost the power of speech during the Great Darkness and did not regain it for some time. The Brithini Tongue as She is Spoke would then be invented by Zzabur when he was teaching his kindred how to speak. But then again some RW languages are pretty static (such as Icelandic and Greek).
>(Since Brithini has words for emotions, objects and creature that no
>longer exist presumably it is Pre Storm Age )
Pre-Great Darkness IMO.
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