>> . Lastly learning Spiritspeech to add to 'character concept' is
>> a contradiction in terms without a clear idea of what the language is
>> actually used for ...
> I think that this was listed under Penliss, the Sun County Shaman in
>'Shadows on the Borderland' (that's an interesting concept itself). The
>author certainly felt that many spirits had a unique language.
Mike took that from older sources, possibly WF (sorry don't have sources handy), where it was described as the lingua franca of spirits and derived from Stormspeech.
>> - a module reference is hardly adequate for this purpose IMHO.
> In the sense that all modules are sanctioned by Chaosium and the RQ
>staff, I fully disagree. Many modules have even had new rules and
>clarifications printed in them changing previously printed material.
> They are also educational to demonstrate things that are considered
>possible that are not covered within the normal rules.
Mike liked to sneak things into NPC descriptions as a way of subtly moving Glorantha toward his vision of it. If any reader of this is a believer in the one true way (and you have my sincere sympathy if you are) then you should have some skepticism of a statement like the above.
That said, here are my free-and-possibly-worth-it opinions as someone who playtested and critiqued SiP, SotB, and another scenario pack set in Pavis which Mike Dawson never completed:
Old Pavic is the mother tongue of the really conservative Old Pavic natives. It is derived from EWF draconic tongues.
Pavic (a/k/a New Pavic) is a Sartarite dialect, widely (but not universally) spoken in Pavis.
American and Australian are separate languages from English. Why? Because they have their own armies and navies. Actually there's more linguistic variation within England than between RP English and Standard American.
I very much like the idea of Tradetalk as a spell, or at least a magical language. Otherwise there would be more than one trade language, just as there have been multiple pidgins on Earth. Linguistically, it's a stripped down Seshnegi.
The local Western spoken languages are descendents of Western with local influences from the Hsunchen and Orlanthi tongues previously spoken in the areas, just as Sanskrit became various Indian languages and Latin became the Romance languages.
I had something written on languages, I'll look for it when I'm home tonight.
Back to work.
Powered by hypermail