> I'd be more willing to believe that
> tradetalk is a pidgin dialect.
In Shanghai fr. ex. there existed a pidgin language which was a mix of mainly english and chinese. It also included words of indian origin which the english had picked up. There are many more RW examples, of course.
A friend of mine also pointed me to Tocharian, which was apparantly spoken along the silk road, and which can possibly be characterized as *the* original trade talk. If I understand it correctly, Tocharian vocabulary included words from along the entire silk road, meaning that a person in one end would use words that had originated in the other end.
> Unlike the non-evolvolving esperanto, its
> been mentioned in several places that
> Tradetalk changes the farther away one
> moves from where you learned it.
Personally i believe that Tradetalk, being of divine origin, varies to a lesser extent than other languages would do. Of course the Tradetalk spoken in Sog City is different from the one spoken in Karse, or in Lur Nop, but perhaps less so than what would be the case for any other pidgin language.
> In several places, its been noted that
> one has trouble expressing high-end
> concepts with Tradetalk (which is
> ignored for the purposes of role-play,
> of course!) which seems more like
> a pigdin tongue.
Someone on the Glor. Digest once suggested that Tradetalk could only express concepts related to trade. I.e. a person wanting to say "I love you" in Tradetalk would have to say something like "I'll sell my heart to you at a bargain price". It is a very entertaining idea, which presents lots of great roleplaying opportunities, if nothing else.
/Peter Nordstrand
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