Babylon

From: Ian Cooper <ian_hammond_cooper_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 13:11:39 +0100 (BST)


While we are discussing languages, do we have any extant 'babel' myths in Glorantha for the diversity of languages. Bearing in mind those Gloranthan events that seem language related: The monomyth, The closing, The illiteracy era, the EWF and our current interest in New Pelorian it could be intriguing.

My guess is that language diversity is a green age occurence - that is presumably the time of naming (it seems to be the period of establishment of personal identity) - but there might be an argument for a unified green age language surviving until the end of the Golden Age. Doubtless, as on earth, different cultures might tell different stories of the confounding of men's tounges.

Was Tradetalk a Godlearner attempts to reconstruct that universal language?

Anthropowanking follows
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One other potential attribute to consider for Pelorian langauges. Post-structualists call languages phallogocentric, because the are based on difference (phallus = sexual difference, the first recognized, logos = the word). Feminist theorists have suggested that 'female language' is an untterable expression of that state before the realisation of identity and difference when our experience is of oneness with the world.

With the Lunar heroquesters interest in the green age, and their incorporation of the 'female' into the otherwise phallic cultures of Dara Happa and Carmania one wonders if New Pelorian is a language that tries to signify without difference, and is thus a nonphallogocentric  language. Speaking such a language
would foster clear communication because we would have no diagreement over meaning - words would resonate in the same way with all who experienced them.

That makes New Pelorian 'We are all us'.

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Anthropowanking ends

Any thoughts?



Ian Cooper
0208-672-0717(H)07970-411892 (M)0207-337-6217 (W)

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