Julian Lord responded:
> As for
> Trolls, their language is hardly instinctive at all, at least no more
> than human languages are (in fact, human language does have some innate
> component, which could have been called instinctive, were this term not
> *exclusively* reserved for the description of animal behaviour.).
Actually, Sandy Petersen _has_ said (on the Digest, I believe) that Darktongue is largely instinctive. If I recall his example correctly, a troll that was raised by humans and never spoke to trolls would know some Darktongue instinctively, and would learn the rest extremely fast, far faster than a human can learn a language. Apparently, it's hardwired or something (or, as Daniel McCluskey suggests, Kyger Litor teach uz how to speak. Poor pinkie hoomans, got no mom. :)
Just another example of how trolls are Completely Perfect.
This suggests to me that a troll's syntax when they speak a hooman language is pretty bizzare. I always like to use the Mahen from C.J. Cherryh's Chanur novels as an good base.
Nils Weinander wrote:
>A greek I spoke said that the grammar is simila
>between classical and modern greek, and some words,
>but that they are otherwise rather different. He
>said learning classical greek was almost lik
>learning a foreign language.
If I recall correctly, modern Greek was only standardized about 150 years
ago, after independence from the Ottomans. Previous to that, there were
_lots_ of dialects, some of which were pretty far from others (plus the
Anatolian Greeks who spoke Turkish). I suspect Classical Greek was used as
a model for the literary language (the nasty Turkish and Slavic influences
being purged at the same time).
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