Language Problems.....

[Cmdr_Floyd]

As we are all aware from reading the First Chronicles, the new Lords had difficulty translating the words(and meanings) of the First & Second Wards. Surely in a thousand years the language of the Land would not have altered *that* much as to be indescipherable by the current generation?

Any thoughts anyone??

Apologies if this thread has already been on forum.....

[Nerdanel]

I have a little theory on this. Perhaps in the time of the Old Lords there was a diverging of languages and the Lords found themselves speaking in a distinctly archaic dialect since they lived for so long, especially in the later times when they became increasingly proficient with Earthpower. (Kevin was the High Lord for a thousand years and there is no knowing how long he could have kept going without Lord Foul.) The Lords may have learned the language of the common people in order to speak with them, but still used among themselves the language of their youth. And when someone would enroll in the Loresraat, they would be taught to speak the archaic language for the existing Lords' benefit. Kevin wrote his Wards in (probably very technical) Lord-speak since that was what he was comfortable with. Thus the Wards could have been written in the equivalent of Old English (not Shakespearean, the really old kind) and with the clarity of an end user guide written by the engineer who designed the device. I think Kevin was simply too good in his lore and too bad in writing popular science to "dumb down" properly for his audience.

Or it might be that SRD seriously overestimated the speed of language change. It's especially slow in small populations like all would have been after the Desolation.

[Digital Thought]

Entire languages can be lost in shorter periods of time.

Even in your lifetime some words have taken on new meanings. The net is internet, etc.

Look at the history of your nation over a 1,000 years. What were people like then. Not all this technology, but just the people themselves. Were they so different from us that we would not even reckonize the motives of eachother's efforts?

[Variol Farseer]

SRD's handling of languages works best if you don't examine it too closely. The language of Kevin's Lore was foreign to the New Lords, but Kevin himself spoke the New Lords' language when Elena called him up. Millennia later, the people of the Land are still speaking the same language, and so is everyone Starfare's Gem encounters except for some of the Bhrathair. And in Runes there are plain enough indications that the language has not changed significantly since the Second Chronicles.

In essence, SRD treated the language issue with some show of seriousness in the First Chrons, undermined that background in the Second, and seems to be ignoring the matter entirely in the Last (except for the language of the Demondim-spawn).

Or it might be that SRD seriously overestimated the speed of language change. It's especially slow in small populations like all would have been after the Desolation.

I confess I don't know of any linguistic theories positing a direct correlation between the rate of language change and the population of speakers. In any case, the 1000 years between Kevin and TC's first summoning is quite enough for a language to change drastically if the society undergoes important changes (as the society of the Land certainly did). Current English is less than 1000 years removed from late Anglo-Saxon, and Latin spawned all the major Romance languages within 1000 years after Caesar and Cicero. If you want an example from a language with fewer speakers, I have read that modern Albanian contains only about 100 root words native to the language. All the rest of the vocabulary has been borrowed from Greek, Latin, Italian, Turkish, the South Slavic languages, and latterly French and English (among others). Even English is more conservative than Albanian.

Realistically, there ought to be at least two major languages in the Land, since the Stonedownors and Woodhelvennin were separated for several centuries (during which the stone-folk lost all knowledge of wood-lore and vice versa). That's more than long enough for the dialects of physically separated populations to diverge widely. The Ramen probably should have a third. And all these languages would have changed greatly over the 7000-year span from the First Chronicles to the Last. The evolution from Proto-Indo-European to all its scores of descendant languages took considerably less time than that.

But all this detail would get in the way of the story, and making up the linguistic relationships would be long work, tedious for anyone but a Tolkien. SRD rightly chose to eschew that labour. We should not read too much into the anomalies that can create.

[Nerdanel]

I think the question of language changing between the Chronicles is explained by the theory that the language in fact changed quite a bit, but each time Covenant and Linden were summoned their language skills were automatically updated to the current non-English in use. I think it's clear that the language of the Land is not English. You also see changes in the language, like for example "Gravelingas" of the First Chronicles is "Graveler" in the Second. These changes are exclusively in the terms that do not exist in English, even though the version that appears in the text may be derived from English somehow.

Giants have a confirmed ability to speak every language on Earth, and I think this would also extend to Elohim (who granted the ability to the Giants in the first place) and the Dead. Other entities like Lord Foul might also have this skill. I wonder if a croyel could grant it. (I've forgotten a lot of detail about the Brathair bit and my reread isn't that far yet.)

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Ramen may have had their own language all along, but they were simply bilingual and considerate enough to use their guests' language. (I might be rationalizing, though.) At least, their names sound like they come from a clearly different linquistic tradition, and I seem to recall something about an accent. I think Ranyhyn sounds like a Raman word.

But you know what bothers me? Consider the following words:

turiya
Herem
ur-vile
Vile
Waynhim
Elohim
croyel
Coercri
diamondraught
Earthpower
EarthBlood
health-sense

There seems to be precious little logic involved in the various capitalizations, italicizations, and hyphenations. The only consistent thing about that seems to be that the words that are foreing to the Land are italicized. But unfortunately, the whole thing is then translated into English and the italicizations are kept the same even though the word in question may be translated into English (or Hebrew, or Hindi) or not, which breaks the whole thing, as the italicizations are meant to denote words foreign to English. And even then, names like Coercri should not be italicized even if it has a meaning in its original language, or you would find yourself having to italicize numerous foreign names like Stockholm.

I think the rest should be pretty obvious. I can't understand why SRD didn't see the problem in consistency in the first place. I've been thinking about how the Chronicles should be translated, and I think that the whole typography thing should probably be standardized somehow in the translation.

Finally, on the subject of language drift in smaller populations. I am capable of reading and understanding the Kalevala despite some archaic vocabulary. The Finnish language has changed a lot less than English in the same time interval, because English has had more speakers, as did Latin before its fragmentation. I have read that modern Finnish only has 30 Fenno-Ugric word-stems, but the thing is, many of the others were loaned from something like proto-Slavic or proto-German at the onset of agriculture or something and now look perfectly at home. Still nowadays new words are needed for new concepts, but that's not really what language drift is about.

[Romeo]

And remember that the people of the Land went into exile for many generations while the Land healed from the Ritual of Desecration. Although there is no reference made in the books, chances are pretty good that they met other peoples - and the languages would have blended a bit over time. (although the "common" language seems to be pretty much the same in all the places he's taken us - with different dialects and accents, and the occassional native language thrown in now and then).

But I think the big reason was mentioned in one of the previous posts. The Lore was recorded in a language that became dead with the demise of the last of the Old Lords. There was noone left to teach it to others - or the ones who might have been able to do so didn't pass on as much as they could have. After all, they didn't know at the time that Kevin left them the seven wards - so why take the time to learn a language that isn't in use anymore.

[High Lord Tolkien]

Which just makes the Master's actions more terrible.
The people of the Land now had Ward translaters in the visiting Giants.
(Assuming the gift of Languages covers text as well)
Revelstone still has at least 3 Wards.

[Cmdr_Floyd]

Which just makes the Master's actions more terrible.
The people of the Land now had Ward translaters in the visiting Giants.
(Assuming the gift of Languages covers text as well)
Revelstone still has at least 3 Wards.

oops.....bit of a Runes give away there!!

Also if the language of the Wards is in an archaic form (like latin today) how come the Loresraat were able to translate?? Given that no one left alive knew how to speak it...did they have some form of Rosetta Stone??

[Nerdanel]

Well, they had the Giants. However I think that even if the Giants were able to read written text, they just weren't able to understand Kevin's learned dissertation on how to metaphorically set the clock on the metaphorical VCR, much less the discussion on the metaphorical theory of electricity.

However, if the Giants couldn't understand writing, perhaps the people of the Land had to take the hard way and reason like "I suppose our familiar 'glibur' is a later form of the original 'clibburihj', but then the sentence 123-5-A reads 'The piglets must be floated in cloudberry with the right numeralization of mops', which sounds a bit off even if you allow for obscure metaphor." That kind of thing can really delay things, particularly with mistranslations.

[Spiral Jacobs]

There's probably no proof for this, but I've always thought that the Wards were not just plain old language, but 'magic', in a way. After all, they are a source of knowledge and power. Maybe it's extremely cryptic, or maybe the words and sigils move around on the scroll when you're not looking. Kevin wouldn't just write 'Stand with your left hand in the air and hum the 13th and 14th bars of 'Hey Jude' to cast magicke missaile'.

My other idea is that the Seven Wards are a distraction move by Kevin. It keeps the lords busy with trying to gain power from an external source, while the real source is understanding. After all, Mhoram doesn't need the wards to finally understand, and therefore gaining the power of, Desecration.

[Loredoctor]

SRD's handling of languages works best if you don't examine it too closely. The language of Kevin's Lore was foreign to the New Lords, but Kevin himself spoke the New Lords' language when Elena called him up. Millennia later, the people of the Land are still speaking the same language, and so is everyone Starfare's Gem encounters except for some of the Bhrathair. And in Runes there are plain enough indications that the language has not changed significantly since the Second Chronicles.

In essence, SRD treated the language issue with some show of seriousness in the First Chrons, undermined that background in the Second, and seems to be ignoring the matter entirely in the Last (except for the language of the Demondim-spawn).

Or it might be that SRD seriously overestimated the speed of language change. It's especially slow in small populations like all would have been after the Desolation.

I confess I don't know of any linguistic theories positing a direct correlation between the rate of language change and the population of speakers. In any case, the 1000 years between Kevin and TC's first summoning is quite enough for a language to change drastically if the society undergoes important changes (as the society of the Land certainly did). Current English is less than 1000 years removed from late Anglo-Saxon, and Latin spawned all the major Romance languages within 1000 years after Caesar and Cicero. If you want an example from a language with fewer speakers, I have read that modern Albanian contains only about 100 root words native to the language. All the rest of the vocabulary has been borrowed from Greek, Latin, Italian, Turkish, the South Slavic languages, and latterly French and English (among others). Even English is more conservative than Albanian.

Realistically, there ought to be at least two major languages in the Land, since the Stonedownors and Woodhelvennin were separated for several centuries (during which the stone-folk lost all knowledge of wood-lore and vice versa). That's more than long enough for the dialects of physically separated populations to diverge widely. The Ramen probably should have a third. And all these languages would have changed greatly over the 7000-year span from the First Chronicles to the Last. The evolution from Proto-Indo-European to all its scores of descendant languages took considerably less time than that.

But all this detail would get in the way of the story, and making up the linguistic relationships would be long work, tedious for anyone but a Tolkien. SRD rightly chose to eschew that labour. We should not read too much into the anomalies that can create.

As usual, an excellent post, VF.

[Xar]

Well, remember also that Kevin left the First Ward with the Giants, which means that, either it was written in the then-common language of the inhabitants of the Land (at least, the language with which the Giant were acquainted and which could have enabled them to read the Wards and "translate" them to the new language of the returning refugees) or it was written in an obscure language used only for purpose of conserving lore, and Kevin counted on the Giants to help the people of the Land translating it.

I have no problem with the summoning to the Land enabling the summoned people to understand the current language of the Land and of its summoners: after all, how can you ask or order something if you and the summoned creature speak no common language? And I doubt the people of the Land speak English

As for the languages, it is quite possible that the Woodhelvenin and the Stonedownors evolved two different dialects (or even new languages); but considering their common roots, it is equally likely that when the New Lords came into prominence and the Land was restored into unity, trades between the two communities, and the intermingling at the Loresraat and Revelstone enabled the two languages to "merge" back into a common languages, although maybe with different dialects.

Or it could always be that the New Lords and the Loresraat deliberately constructed a new language incorporating elements from both, and decided that this would be the new language of the Land to symbolize its unity... and therefore, that the two old Stonedownor and Woodhelvenin languages were abandoned and largely forgotten before Covenant showed up.

[Nerdanel]

I believe I have found an example of the elusive Raman language from the scene in which Lithe summons the Ranyhyn for Covenant in Lord Foul's Bane.

Kelenbhrabanal maryshyn! Ryshyn hynyn kelenkoor rillynarunal! Ranyhyn Kelenbhrabanal!

This has a distinctly different sound to the examples of the Old Language we have seen, Melenkurion abatha, etc. I think evidence is pointing towards the Ramen having their own language, naming themselves in it (I think names like Lithe, Grace, and Gay were most likely artifacts of Covenant's summoning process and would not have sounded that way to Mhoram), and using the common speech to deal with the outsiders. I think I noticed Lithe use some slightly weird constructions that might indicate she is not a native speaker.

As for the Stonedownors and Woodhelvennin, I think they have a common language as they live side by side. It is becoming apparent to me that the Center plains were populated quite a bit more densely than the environs of Mithil Stonedown and included both Stonedows and Woodhelvens. Even if intermarriage was rare, people of different villages would have found themselves interacting fairly often. The Land was a big place, but a large portion of it was inhabited very sparsely or not at all.

The cultural differences between Stonedownors and Woodhelvennin predate the Ritual of Desecration (as is said pretty much unambiguously in Lord Foul's Bane); they were not created during the period. The struggle for survival served only to "re-purify" the cultures that had started to mix when everyone had to hold to their core competency. Meanwhile, language would have evolved in the diminished populations far slower than before the Desecration.

[Aleksandr]

Re: Surely in a thousand years the language of the Land would not have altered *that* much as to be indescipherable by the current generation?

Ever tried to read Old English? You can’t do so without considerable training, and there are scholarly disputes about what certain passages in Anglo Saxon literature mean. Since in the case of the Wards they probably needed absolutely perfect understanding I can see where this might be a problem.
Still, what about the long-lived Giants and the immortal Haruchai? Both groups should be able to speak “Old Landese” with no difficulty.

One problem with the land’s language changing rapidly: the Land is pretty isolated. Languages usually change rapidly when they are in close contact with other languages. Old English, for example, in contact with Keltic, the Vikings’ tongue and Norman French. Languages that are fairly isolated tend not to change very much. Icelanders, for example, have a much easier time working through Old Norse than we do with Old English. Likewise the Russians can puzzle out Church Slavonic even though it’s over 1500 years removed from their own language. There’s nothing like a Norman invasion in the history of the Land and I would expect “Landese” to be a fairly conservative, slow-changing language.

[The Somberlain]

Perhaps their problem is with reading, not speaking, the language.
I doubt they did much writing during the Desecration, nor, really, that much after it. Most of their communication is spoken - so that's why dead Kevin is understandable to them. But they may only have a hazy grasp of the old alphabet (and perhaps the Bloodguard never bothered to learn to read, either).

[exnihilo]

I thought Mhoram made it clear in The Power That Preserves that the oath of peace was the barrier to understanding the wards, not the language itself.

[The Somberlain]

They do mention a problem with translation in either LFB or TIW at some point.

But I haven't got to TPTP on my reread, so you could well be right.

[Warmark]

I thought Mhoram made it clear in The Power That Preserves that the oath of peace was the barrier to understanding the wards, not the language itself.

Yup, i believe he says something to thte effect of the Lore was made for Violence which contradicts the Oath of Peace.

Dont they say in LFB or TIW that they can read the writings they just dont understand it?

[exnihilo]

Dont they say in LFB or TIW that they can read the writings they just dont understand it?

I believe that is correct

[Kaos Arcanna]

I thought Mhoram made it clear in The Power That Preserves that the oath of peace was the barrier to understanding the wards, not the language itself.

You know, that does beg the question ... if it was the Oath, then
if Hile Troy had been a librarian instead of a tactician could he
have wound up as a real Old Style Lord?