>Peter Metcalfe:
>> Grandfather Mortal's lifetime is what most gloranthans consider to
>> be the good old days. 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.
Grampa Mortal in Vingkotling-land, or Grampa Mortal in Entruliland, or where? IMO each tribe had its own Grampa. "The first being who died" anywhere.
I'll side with Peter for this, and that should tell everybody something...
>> 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,
You forget that myths usually blow up local events to world-shattering importance. You want a great mountain which blew up when the enemies invaded? Take the first volcano above Shadow Plateau, or Mt. Turos where Lake Oronin is now, for instance.
>including current linguistic theory, which
>also says that humanity, having originated in a single place, originally
>had only one language.
Did humanity originate in a single place? Is there any archaeological evidence to support this theory?
Also, the closest relatives of homo sapiens sapiens, i.e. homo sapiens praesapiens and homo sapiens neanderthalensis, probably had developed their own languages, probably also dialects, before homo sapiens sapiens var cromagnonensis appeared.
>Plus, Greg has sed, which is enough for me.
Greg has written far more than a dozen creation myths for humanity (not counting different Hsunchen myths of creation of men and beasts).
>> Seshnegi is as close to Brithini as French is to Latin.
>Seshnegi is as close to Brithini as Old French is to Medieval Latin,
>yes.
Langue d'oc or langue d'ouisse? Germanic Medieval Latin or Byzantine Medieval Latin?
I guess that my chances to understand Medieval Latin (having learned written Latin and Germanic pronounced classical Latin back in school) are a lot higher than those of a medieval French peasant speaking a dialect hardly understandable in the capital.
>> But I
>> would doubt your contention that Tradetalk is derived from Seshnegi.
>> I think it more like a teletubbled pidgen version of Stormspeech.
>Greg sed different.
No, he didn't. Greg said that Tradetalk is a development of the Issaries cult, probably under God Learner influence. IMO the basis for Tradetalk was the Theyalan lingua franca, which (upon contact with the West, and the Jrusteli) adopted Western idioms as well as a smattering of Dara Happan or Praxian terms (mostly for exotic items).
>> 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 ....
Cults of Prax also tells us (in the cult write-up of Issaries) that Garzeen Middleman wooed Fenela, only daughter of King Froalar of (Malkioni) Seshnela and his wife Xemela, and that Fenela (living in besieged Frowal, now in the Castle Coast) demanded that Genert (lying dead half a world away) would be recollected.
Old sources, especially OOP ones, may contain old concepts which have changed in the meantime. Compare the myth sections on the website with those from CoP to see where concepts - and especially details - have changed.
Charles Domino
>My 2 cents worth: I have some problems with
>Tradetalk being derived from Stormspeech.
Why? In the Issaries cult it is said that Harst (an inhabitant of Kerofinela) taught the people to speak. It is not said which language, so it might well be the language of their divine ancestor, Orlanth.
>Orlanth
>worship (and presumably Stormspeech) is not common
>in Pamaltela and western Genertela, and unknown in
>the Eastern Isles, Kralorela and some other
>areas.
Neither is Tradetalk common there. If you come to Kralorela expecting that you will get through with Tradetalk, you might as well visit France and try to get by with German or English exclusively. Or China...
>Yet someone fluent in Tradetalk could go
>to any of those places and suffer no worse than a
>-50 to their skill level.
Wasn't it said somewhere in da roolz that Tradetalk could be learned - by any means - to a maximum of 50?
>Unless ALL languages
>are closely related (here comes Mantongue
>again....) this is not possible.
Tradetalk works on Aldryami, Mostali, Uz, Grotarons, etc as well or badly as it does on different peoples. Old Mantongue is a mythical concept, derived from the first attempts of each group of humankind in Glorantha to pronounce words. And humankind in Glorantha has a much more diverse origin than in the real world. You get the Agimori race descended from the (converted) non-drinker Agimori ancestors (whose name I tend to forget), you get the Dara Happans made by their pantheon (with Lodril there being quite different from the one in the Agimori making), you get logicians who claim that they were formed by the interplay of runes alone, with a language similar to a programming language (Malkion did introduce some of his ancestors' languages, I suppose), you get the Eastern Races with their descent from Wild Man who is not the ancestor of the Logicians or the Dara Happans if you ask either of those, you get Veldang descended from Artmal, and you get various tribes of Orlanthi claiming descent from local earth goddesses (nymphs, e.g. Oreads like Kero Fin, or smaller) and Orlanth (or some other version of a storm god's name), and you get Hsunchen-like people (1st Age Telmori, Galanini, Pendali) descended from a beast-founder and the land.
The Praxian Beast Riders are descended from Founders and Protectresses, with the Protectresses descended from Eiritha and Good Shepherd (son of Tada and Ernalda) and the Founders sons of Storm Bull and unspecified mothers, according to the CoP Eiritha genealogy (p.31, which accompanies the Daka Fal write-up contradicting it already there and then by omitting both the Man Rune thingy and the Celestial Court). You might claim that Tada is a descendant from Grampa Mortal, but with all these deities in between, wouldn't the Praxian ancestors have been nearly pure deities themselves?
>I view Tradetalk as a polygot, a pidgin speech
>composed of words and grammatical structures from
>many languages.
Yes. It has dialects based on local languages which may be understood a couple of countries further on, if badly, but not across the Homeward Ocean. In Pamaltela, there should be at least two distinct dialects of Tradetalk (introduced by the God Learners) after the separation which the Cult of Silence caused in Fonrit (effectively erasing Tradetalk there).
>Additionally, I note again that many of the
>languages have runic associations (hence the
>disagreement over Mantongue). Any of the
>Elemental runes (except Moon) and many form runes
>have languages attached.
You could argue that Veldang languages are tied to the Moon rune, for whatever good such a statement would be.
>involves another rune *mixed* with the Man rune.
>I would submit that there is no Mantounge because
>Grandfather Mortal/Flesh Man, or whomever made
>either (I'm a little vague on that point, I
>confess) decided not to make one, or the idea
>wasn't invented until later. Humans, being the
>basic form, were presumably first.
According to the God Learners, the Man Rune was around in the Green Age when the Aldryami ruled. It is dubious whether mankind was around that early in the Monomyth.
>Are we SURE that Waerans, Vadeli, Pamaltelans, and
>Kraloreli are all the same species?
They usually can interbreed without causing sterile offspring, so their biology seems to be generally the same. They can't interbreed with other man rune/element combination races (aldryami, mostali, uz) without strong fertility magic involved (as is the case when breeding with nymphs, see Wyrm's Footprints).
>This also keeps us from falling into a trap of
>assuming Babel based on runes was the original
>state of affairs. If it were so, how did Orlanth
>ever challenge Yelm?
Did he? The Heortlings say that Orlanth challenged the Evil Emperor. The Dara Happans say nothing about three contests between Rebellus Terminus and Yelm.
>At least on the Godplane,
>there must be a common language from the very
>beginning of the Celestial Court!
Why a common language? Wouldn't there rather be a common understanding through the harmony of the Celestial Court whichever way a pronouncement was made?
>Presumably, shamen, priests, mystics, and heroes
>learn how to communicate with spirit
>manifestations (via a form of telepathy?) in
>Spiritspeech.
Yes. Storm Spirits (e.g. Wind Fists or Sylphs) use a Storm speech related version of spirit speech and would be hard put to communicate with Shades or Dehori verbally.
>Sorcerors, who seem to view spirits
>as a natural manifestation of the cosmos, would
>not bother.
Greg wrote otherwise when he described Zzabur's dealings with the gods and spirits, or when he described the actions of Dawn Age Seshnegi wizards (who still were close enough to the Brithini tradition back then).
>I would think that the spirits of the dead retain
>an ability to communicate in their living language
>for at least a short while if not permanently.
>This is necessary to explain hauntings, sendings,
>and maybe some visions. Either that, or everyone
>around the lozenge is 100% in Spiritspeech.
Spirits - especially haunts and dream sendings - communicate through imagery. A dream sending rarely has just a voice, more often the dream's recipient will live through a series of images and scenes of clear meaning without necessarily putting anything into words.
I loved Steve Rennell's suggestion for the true meanings behind Tradetalk phrases!
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #9
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