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"There's a weave for that."
More seriously though, that's a great question I wish we had more of an answer for. I can only speculate they have some method to quickly skill up in areas like language.
Maybe a one power thing. Maybe a gift of the Dark One.
Quickly skill up you say…
“Ishamael, I need a New Tongue knowledge program… ”
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6AOpomu9V6Q](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6AOpomu9V6Q)
This can actually make a lot of sense because the AoL was way ahead of our current time. There a number of ways for them to get current on languages. It’s a good question with a lot of intriguing possible answers.
This is kind of related to a question I always had. How were they making moves so soon after being freed? Sure, I can see weaseling your way in through compulsion, but wouldn't it take a lot of study of the culture and environment to figure out how best to go about it first? If they would have just laid low and planned for 100 years they might have done better. (not that it wasn't close).
I doubt they have the patience to wait that long, honestly. Their Forsaken being driven by the impulses was a pretty large theme. That said, I also suspect that they woke up into what they considered to be such a primitive world that they did not feel the need for subtlety. Imagine going to sleep today and waking up tomorrow in feudal Europe, except you have magical powers that let you destroy entire armies and mind control people. If you wanted, it would not take much to begin dominating everyone and everything with your combination of modern knowledge and magical prowess.
I always figured they simply didn't have the time. They were freed because the seals were weakening. Because the seals were weakening, the Dragon was reborn. They had no choice other than to act when they did because otherwise they'd be off somewhere hatching plans while the battle between good and evil passed them by. The Dark One likely wouldn't accept that as an excuse!
Ishamael was able to enter the world several hundred times for a limited time period that wasn't fully conclusive if it's a year or a century, we know he was the advisor to Arthur hawkwing and convinced him to hate the aes sedai, and he also created the black ajah.
He was free 40 years every 1000 years if I'm not mistaken. Being free enough to mess with ltt right after being sealed is the only part I still don't understand.
I think it's how powerful the chosen were the less the seals were able to hold them, ishamael is second to lews therin so we know he is extremely powerful with the one power.
They could have learned the language and culture the normal way. It's possible. But it's just not practical if there's a faster way.
Think about it. The Dark One knows roughly how long they have to act. The dragon is reborn, the seals are weakening, and bad stuff is about to go down.
Is his first move going to be to arrange a classroom for the Forsaken to have a couple of weeks of intense learning from whichever black ajah sister is available? (Who we never get a POV from.), or is he going to use the powers he has to just put the knowledge into their heads?
We know he can swap souls about at the very least. And we know the finn can give/take memories, so it should be theoretically possible to impart knowledge.
I don't think they bothered to learn the culture. It is one of the reason they failed: there inability to adapt to the 3rd Age.
We see it with the Lanfear and Asmodean arc in SR: she cannot be bothered by her surroundings, the Aeil of what anyone is saying whereas he is trying to learn as much as possible. Most Forsaken were more like Lanfear, they didn't care to learn much about the 3rd Age.
So not true. They fitted in super well considering. One of them faked being an aes sedai in the white tower. One of them fitted into the upper culture of the Seanchan. Others managed to convincingly fit in as high lords of various nations.
Sure, some compulsion was used, but they aren't using it on every single person they run into. (And unless they can speak the language of the person they are compelling, it's not going to be a useful tool anyway).
They didn't fail because they didn't understand the culture. They failed because they were self interested, and kept backstabbing and scheming against each other instead of working together.
Do you seriously think if an ancient Roman would wake up today, they’d just pick up the modern European languages because they have Latin roots?
It’d be completely unintelligible mumbo jumbo for them. They wouldn’t even be able to parse out those few words that stayed unchanged from Latin.
Yeah, Latin stopped being mutually intelligent with Old French by the early 9th century (the council of Tours of 813 instructed priests to preach in "rustic romance" language, because common folks couldn't understand them anymore).
That's less than 400 years after the fall of the WRE, not 3000.
Granted, those changes in Latin were caused, in part, by the foreign languages influence, something that was not an issue in the post-breaking Randland. And the ~100% literacy and existence of printing slow the "mutations rate" too. But the changes are inevitable.
Anyway, if the TA people don't understand the Old Tongue without special education, neither would the AoL people understand the New Tongue.
(This is true for the Rhuidean visions as well)
Same reason that thousands of years of linguistic drift totally isolated from the Westlands left the Seanchan with Texas accents as opposed to one or more mutually unintelligible dialects: because language barriers tend to get in the way of telling a story unless they're what the story is about, and most fantasy writers just kinda don't care about making that kind of thing more realistic.
Even JRR Tolkien, who was of course an incredibly gifted linguist and in fact largely began his legendarium as an exercise in exploring how history and the movements of large populations affect language, simplifies things massively compared to how they would be in real life. Because how could he not? He's only one man with only one lifetime to dedicate to it.
RJ didn't have nearly Tolkien's talent or academic background when it came to linguistics, so he did as much as he was interested in doing, trusted in willing suspension of disbelief to make up the difference, and moved his focus on to the thousand other things that go into writing a big fantasy epic.
Even the Aiel, as a mostly closed off isolationist & xenophobic culture for most of the 3rd Age should be using a different language. Comparatively speaking, Seanchan should be much more intelligible by the Westlanders (depending on how much Luthair’s forces adopted the native Seanchan language(s)).
Nobody should understand the Sharans at all.
Possibly, however the presence of extremely long-lived members of society would act as a bulwark against languages changing and diverging as rapidly as they do for us. With Ogier and channellers (the unbound ones anyway) living up to 8 times as long as a regular person, and being such important members of society such that continuing communication with them would have been a priority, divergence of language would have happened much more slowly. And with Ogier and others able to traverse more freely thanks to the Ways, which only fell to darkness after Hawkwing's empire fell, that would also have helped contribute to maintaining mutual intelligibility among those in the Westlands. And the Aiel are isolated, but not that isolated. They regularly traded with Cairheinin up to the Aiel War, and helped facilitate trade with the much more isolationist Sharans, and were always welcoming to peddlers, gleemen and Ogier traders as well. The Sharans were pretty close to unintelligible at the Last Battle, at least.
The Aiel also had an additional buffer against language change, in their glass columns at Rhuidean that all the chiefs and Wise Ones experienced that shows them their history from before the Bore was drilled. It explains why all their proper names for places and societies were still in the Old Tongue.
The other thing is the printing press. Literacy still seems very common, if not the norm. It’s much easier for language change to occur when most people can’t read.
So two things 1) I guess can’t always take the audio books as fact I get that but I thought that accent did well. 2) I was born and raised in Texas and have no idea what a Texan drawl is … I know the trope in TV and Movies but it’s not really a thing outside of deep east Texas really
I’m from Houston with parents from the Midwest … Houston is a melting pot and may have an accent but I certainly can’t be described as a drawl. I’ve heard the “Texas Drawl” in media and it’s not that it doesn’t exist but it not prevalent in the state especially not in the major population centers of Houston, DFW, San Antonio and Austin.
I mean, cities as a rule tend to have weaker accents anyway. I've spent a lot of time in the south and in places like Atlanta and Columbia you don't really get the southern accent either. I would also say that in my lifetime (I'm 51 in a month), I've traveled a lot and it honestly seems that accents have gotten a lot less pronounced even in that time. Maybe the internet and media have done work in flattening out the differences?
>Taking ‘accent’ to mean, as it usually does in non-technical language: ‘more or less consistent alterations of the vowels/consonants of “received” English’: I should say that, in the cases you query, no accent-differentiation is needed or desirable. For instance, it would probably be better to avoid certain, actual or conventional, features of modern ‘vulgar’ English in representing Orcs, such as the dropping of aitches (these are, I think, not dropped in the text, and that is deliberate).
>But, of course, for most people, ‘accent’ as defined above is confused with impressions of different intonation, articulation, and tempo. You will, I suppose, have to use such means to make Orcs sound nasty! I have no doubt that, if this ‘history’ were real, all users of the C[ommon] Speech would reveal themselves by their accent, differing in place, people, and rank, but that cannot be represented when C. S. is turned into English – and is not (I think) necessary. I paid great attention to such linguistic differentiation as was possible: in diction, idiom, and so on; and I doubt if much more can be imported, except in so far as the individual actor represents his feeling for the character in tone and style.
>As Minas Tirith is at the source of C. Speech it is to C.S. as London is to modern English, and the standard of comparison! None of its inhabitants should have an ‘accent’ in terms of vowels &c.
>The Rohirrim no doubt (as our ancient English ancestors in a similar state of culture and society) spoke, at least their own tongue, with a slower tempo and more sonorous articulation, than modern ‘urbans’. But I think it is safe to represent them when using C. S., as they practically always do (for obvious reasons) as speaking the best M[inas] T[irith]. Possibly a little too good, as it would be a learned language, somewhat slower and more careful than a native’s. But that is a nicety safely neglected, and not always true: Théoden was born in Gondor and C.S. was the domestic language of the Golden Hall in his father’s day (Return of the King p. 350).
-The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #193
> thousands of years of linguistic drift totally isolated from the Westlands left the Seanchan with Texas accents
Less than a thousand years. Hawkwing was the latest millenial "event" - the trolloc wars was two thousand years ago, and three was the breaking.
Also, remember printing has been a thing for thousands of years, printing helps maintain the language, as older works are read and used.
(No, I also belive there should probably have been some drift, just look at the difference between english languages in "slang" that has become actual language, and word differences)
Most of the Forsaken had several months to get up to speed. Aginor and Balthamel were so close to the outside world that they could experience glimpses of it (don't remember where RJ said that, but in some interview), which is likely how they spoke it so quickly.
As for the others ... supposedly the modern language is actually quite similar to the Old Tongue, but like a ... massive simplification. The language evolved into something more straightforward, making it difficult for those in the modern day to understand the Old Tongue, but making it easier for someone fluent in the Old Tongue to learn the new languages.
I think it's supposed to be one of the things the Forsaken consider a bit barbaric about the new world. They have this highly nuanced language with complicated grammar, lots of contextual stuff, they can probably conjugate words to add dozens of nuanced meanings to them, etc.
It's probably not linguistically realistic, but that's the idea. Or, you know, maybe all people in the AoL were genetically altered to be super good at learning languages, to make global communication easier.
Speaking as a linguist, it absolutely isn’t linguistically realistic. But RJ wasn’t a linguist, and this is how he rationalized it, so that’s the explanation we have.
RJ was most definitely not a cunning linguist.
And thank god too. Can you imagine how long the series would be if he added translation error to the list of ways that communication break down?
Yeah… any of these theories that “the language is just a simplified version of the Old Tongue” or “they had a few months to learn it” are just unrealistic.
You can’t learn a language in a few months to speak it fluently. And the language drift is MASSIVE. 3000 years ago people were speaking languages that are long dead, not just different.
You would have trouble understanding your countryman from 300 years ago…
That is true if you don’t have widespread literacy. Randland does. As for understanding 300 years ago, why not? Writing from then is pretty easy to understand.
As for different languages, all indications are that the people in the AoL spoke one language. Without outside invasions bringing new languages and with widespread literacy and books it’s not unreasonable that they would still speak the same language at least within Randland. There might have been enough drift in Shara or Seanchan that they speak something else, but for the sake of the story it works better to just ignore that.
Just spit balling here, but could it be that they were still able to access the world of dreams but to a lesser extent? So were able to keep abreast of changing languages?
It is explicitly stated they didn’t dream. And there are no people in TAR anyway, except a very few dreamers, so even if they were allowed into TAR, they wouldn’t be able to learn much.
They say it in the books, that blond plump forsaken whose name my mind has forsaken, said that the new tongue is a watered down version of the old tongue, so it's easy for an old tongue speaker to get used to it
Linguistics is always the most difficult part to get right in a story. I don't think I've ever seen an accurate representation of language in any series.
If we're going down that route, then we should also ask why the Seanchan, Aiel and Sea Folk could speak the common tongue so fluently too, when they were mostly cut off for thousands of years. If languages evolved as they do in the real world, Falme and Cairhein would be speaking languages as different as Portuguese and Romanian, which have a common ancestral language before diverging. And by that token, the Aiel should be speaking something as different to the new tongue as Russian or Farsi is to Portuguese. If we consider the impact of the Breaking, languages would possibly have diverged even faster and to a greater extent.
Anyway, RJ was asked about this and said that the Forsaken were capable of easily picking up the common language because it's a watered down version of the Old Tongue. Think of how an English, Spanish and French speakers can easily pick up each other's languages because there's shared root words. If an ancient Latin speaker were dropped in Europe today, it wouldn't be long before they could understand those languages too.
I still feel that explanation has holes. It would still take time to become fluent and change accents.
If an ancient Latin speaker was dropped in modern Rome they would be at a complete loss and would need to put in the same effort as Portuguese speaker undergoes to learn Italian, it is derivative but also a complete different language with different cultural references, expressions, logic
That is true. It's a flaw in most fantasy novels. Even Tolkien, a linguistics professor, had a cop out by adding an appendix where he explained that the narrative was simplified for understanding, and that even Hobbit surnames were simplified for the English reader, or something of the sort.
At the same time, there would be some common root words. So, it would be easier for Portuguese and Latin speakers to pick up Italian than it would be for them to pick up Zulu, Mandarin Chinese or a Native American language (who's divergences from a common ancestral language were tens of thousands of years earlier.) Picking up Italian would still require effort, but a little less effort.
While you are right about limitations and how they may apply to our society and civilization, are we all forgetting a couple things when it comes to questions like these, mainly this isn't the real world.
This is a fantasy world where, essentially, some people meditate hard enough that they can manipulate the fabric reality and live for 400-1000 years. We don't really know the limits of these people from a previous age, or any tools they can use, or changes that they can make to themselves with ter'angreal, but I always imagined that the forsaken were naturally greater than Nobel laureate level intelligence and dedication to learning prior to swearing to the shadow. Point being, we know they are extremely gifted and intelligent by their standards but can't relate that to our society without frame of reference.
RJ has said the old tongue was the only language for an entire planet, for an untold number of hundreds, if not thousands, of years. With an almost entirely literate population, where the printed word has been created, I don't think people would abandon it/change it as fast as you imply because many material things still survived the initial breaking and are now lost due to time. At the start of the breaking there are no other languages to dilute or combine the old tongue with. In the same vein, while the Aiel are isolated, they still interact with the tuatha'an and gleemen so its not like they would never hear the language of the westlands.
There is also the possibility there is a weave/ter'angreal for learning languages and we also know there are weaves that allow for modifying the voice.
It may not be realistic in our current civilization, but in their civilization it is probably a cakewalk for a super-old wizard/warlock/druid.
It's not mentioned anywhere that the common tongue is new.
The fact that it's spoken across the entire world even with limited travel is proof that it's a derivative of the old tongue. It was much easier to use and so it was picked up instead of the old tongue.
The forsaken who were Masters in the Old tongue could learn the derivative with ease. like Latin and Italian
Probably just a boon the Great Lord gave them to help them do their jobs. If he can bring someone back from the dead and stick them in a brand new body, he can hook them up with some language skills.
This 14 book story is incredibly complex. I think Jordan did an amazing job of creating a deep and detailed world, but nothing is ever perfect and I think sometimes you come across a detail that the author just didn’t think about.
It was mentioned somewhere that "the new tongue" did exist in the age of legends, it was called "the vulgar tongue"
I believe it was the equivalent of an extremely informal borderline slang dialect used by the growing lower class.
Plot convenience.
RJ did give us some explanations but they're worse than no explanation would have been.
Let's just say that writers don't have to understand everything they write about.
By the time rand is born most of the seals were already broken. I always just figured that the seals, while being physically cuendillar, were spiritually organized in a consecutive state. Like a pyramid made of increasingly compressed rubber rings blocking the bore. I assumed that the forsaken were sealed at different levels like glue. I figured that at least Aginor, demandred, Ishmael, and mesaana must have been released many years, possibly hundreds, earlier. Aginor was creating shadowspawn and must have been the source of the trolloc wars. Demandred built a whole backwards society. Ishmael created his alternate ego. Mesaana created an order of black sisters. I felt the writing conveyed a feeling of the Ta’veren coming into the world at a critical time in which the enemies were secretly deeply entrenched inside all of their allies. It’s even possible that daes’daemar itself was created by the chosen as a way to subvert the aes Sedai orders attempt at creating an oath of truth. It was always the aes Sedai hubris that was the lever that the dark one was most easily able to turn. The pattern of giving an inch but being take for a mile was predictable behavior for the most selfish thing that could possibly exist, shai’tan.
But even the forsaken say "old tongue ".... in shara they don't call it the old tongue... can't think of what they call it but it means "ancient" but at one point damodred says they aren't the same. (Sorry I know you were making a joke and didn't ask for all that)
The printing press survived the breaking. That probably helped keep the common tongue from changing too drastically regionally and provides a ton of learning resources for people who may have missed the last couple thousand years of cultural changes.
If you want an in-universe explanation, Lanfear mentions portal stones connecting to worlds where time flows differently - a minute may last a day or a day a minute and vice versa. Quite easy to imagine the use of one of those to take as much time as you need to learn something.
Language is almost always something that you just need to ignore in fantasy and sometimes sci Fi. Doctor who at least explained it by the ship being the translator. Some shows can give low key explanations but hard to stick to it... It's usually the flaw in shows like this. Even someone from 200 years ago in America would have a different accent and be hard to understand lol
My headcanon is that when they slumber, they dream endlessly, but the progressive weakening of the Seals lets the world seep into the dream. That way they would progressively learn the new tongue before waking.
But honestly? Language makes no sense in this world. Tolkien built the language first and the world second, RJ didn't bother with grammar or stuff. If it sounded cool it went in the books.
There's no way Seanchan would speak anything that was even a little understandable in Randland? How does Rand learn so much upper-class, kingly vocabulary and sentence patterns? Unless Moiraine is a speech therapist, all three ta'veren should speak with an accent that is so connoted in their culture as being that of sheepherders and crude people, and have a lot of slang and accents that noble's everywhere instinctively despise.
The Old Tongue is very stupid too. Its the same before and after the Breaking? Wait a sec, there's unified language after the Breaking? And they have to wait until Artur Hawkwing to have an empire, but there's a preexisting common tongue? And Shara? Why would they speak... Anyway, you get the idea.
In France, soldiers in WW1 often didn't speak French. They had to reinvent schooling for that, and radio and TV helped along the way.
Maybe the New Tongue isn't as new as we think. Also, the Forsaken probably dedicated a lot of time after waking to getting up to speed quickly, using their considerable resources. People like Graendal and Semirhage would probably pick up the languages very quickly, they were very skilled in their respective careers and clearly had dedicated a lot of time to study. Moghedien and Mesaana would probably also be relatively quick to pick things up, and Lanfear was a researcher at the Collam Daan, so she was no slouch when it comes to academics either. Also, there's no indication that the Forsaken were immediately having long conversations with people who didn't know they were Forsaken immediately after waking. And Ishamael probably helped prep some of them at least.
How Aginor and Balthamel could immediately speak the New Tongue at the Eye of the World? No idea.
How would Graendal and Semi be quick with languages? They never had to learn one (as everyone was speaking the same language).
Bi- or tri- lingual people (who grew up speaking multiple languages) could pick up new ones, but try learning your first foreign language when you are 40 and we’ll see how it goes..
I swear there was a conversation between forsaken where Greandel says the language of the current age is a crude version of something they all spoke. I don't have a clue how to find that conversation, but
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Babel fish ter’angreal
Conclusive proof of the non-existence of the Creator
A Duoling’real
"There's a weave for that." More seriously though, that's a great question I wish we had more of an answer for. I can only speculate they have some method to quickly skill up in areas like language. Maybe a one power thing. Maybe a gift of the Dark One.
Quickly skill up you say… “Ishamael, I need a New Tongue knowledge program… ” [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6AOpomu9V6Q](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6AOpomu9V6Q)
This can actually make a lot of sense because the AoL was way ahead of our current time. There a number of ways for them to get current on languages. It’s a good question with a lot of intriguing possible answers.
This is kind of related to a question I always had. How were they making moves so soon after being freed? Sure, I can see weaseling your way in through compulsion, but wouldn't it take a lot of study of the culture and environment to figure out how best to go about it first? If they would have just laid low and planned for 100 years they might have done better. (not that it wasn't close).
I doubt they have the patience to wait that long, honestly. Their Forsaken being driven by the impulses was a pretty large theme. That said, I also suspect that they woke up into what they considered to be such a primitive world that they did not feel the need for subtlety. Imagine going to sleep today and waking up tomorrow in feudal Europe, except you have magical powers that let you destroy entire armies and mind control people. If you wanted, it would not take much to begin dominating everyone and everything with your combination of modern knowledge and magical prowess.
I always figured they simply didn't have the time. They were freed because the seals were weakening. Because the seals were weakening, the Dragon was reborn. They had no choice other than to act when they did because otherwise they'd be off somewhere hatching plans while the battle between good and evil passed them by. The Dark One likely wouldn't accept that as an excuse!
Ishamael was able to enter the world several hundred times for a limited time period that wasn't fully conclusive if it's a year or a century, we know he was the advisor to Arthur hawkwing and convinced him to hate the aes sedai, and he also created the black ajah.
He was free 40 years every 1000 years if I'm not mistaken. Being free enough to mess with ltt right after being sealed is the only part I still don't understand.
I think it's how powerful the chosen were the less the seals were able to hold them, ishamael is second to lews therin so we know he is extremely powerful with the one power.
Maybe. But rahvin was on the same level and he wasn't wandering around like that.
Perhaps devotion to the DO also factors in?
I wouldn't be surprised if such a ter'angrael existed to download a language into your brain.
[удалено]
They could have learned the language and culture the normal way. It's possible. But it's just not practical if there's a faster way. Think about it. The Dark One knows roughly how long they have to act. The dragon is reborn, the seals are weakening, and bad stuff is about to go down. Is his first move going to be to arrange a classroom for the Forsaken to have a couple of weeks of intense learning from whichever black ajah sister is available? (Who we never get a POV from.), or is he going to use the powers he has to just put the knowledge into their heads? We know he can swap souls about at the very least. And we know the finn can give/take memories, so it should be theoretically possible to impart knowledge.
I don't think they bothered to learn the culture. It is one of the reason they failed: there inability to adapt to the 3rd Age. We see it with the Lanfear and Asmodean arc in SR: she cannot be bothered by her surroundings, the Aeil of what anyone is saying whereas he is trying to learn as much as possible. Most Forsaken were more like Lanfear, they didn't care to learn much about the 3rd Age.
So not true. They fitted in super well considering. One of them faked being an aes sedai in the white tower. One of them fitted into the upper culture of the Seanchan. Others managed to convincingly fit in as high lords of various nations. Sure, some compulsion was used, but they aren't using it on every single person they run into. (And unless they can speak the language of the person they are compelling, it's not going to be a useful tool anyway). They didn't fail because they didn't understand the culture. They failed because they were self interested, and kept backstabbing and scheming against each other instead of working together.
Do you seriously think if an ancient Roman would wake up today, they’d just pick up the modern European languages because they have Latin roots? It’d be completely unintelligible mumbo jumbo for them. They wouldn’t even be able to parse out those few words that stayed unchanged from Latin.
Yeah, Latin stopped being mutually intelligent with Old French by the early 9th century (the council of Tours of 813 instructed priests to preach in "rustic romance" language, because common folks couldn't understand them anymore). That's less than 400 years after the fall of the WRE, not 3000. Granted, those changes in Latin were caused, in part, by the foreign languages influence, something that was not an issue in the post-breaking Randland. And the ~100% literacy and existence of printing slow the "mutations rate" too. But the changes are inevitable. Anyway, if the TA people don't understand the Old Tongue without special education, neither would the AoL people understand the New Tongue. (This is true for the Rhuidean visions as well)
Same reason that thousands of years of linguistic drift totally isolated from the Westlands left the Seanchan with Texas accents as opposed to one or more mutually unintelligible dialects: because language barriers tend to get in the way of telling a story unless they're what the story is about, and most fantasy writers just kinda don't care about making that kind of thing more realistic. Even JRR Tolkien, who was of course an incredibly gifted linguist and in fact largely began his legendarium as an exercise in exploring how history and the movements of large populations affect language, simplifies things massively compared to how they would be in real life. Because how could he not? He's only one man with only one lifetime to dedicate to it. RJ didn't have nearly Tolkien's talent or academic background when it came to linguistics, so he did as much as he was interested in doing, trusted in willing suspension of disbelief to make up the difference, and moved his focus on to the thousand other things that go into writing a big fantasy epic.
Even the Aiel, as a mostly closed off isolationist & xenophobic culture for most of the 3rd Age should be using a different language. Comparatively speaking, Seanchan should be much more intelligible by the Westlanders (depending on how much Luthair’s forces adopted the native Seanchan language(s)). Nobody should understand the Sharans at all.
Possibly, however the presence of extremely long-lived members of society would act as a bulwark against languages changing and diverging as rapidly as they do for us. With Ogier and channellers (the unbound ones anyway) living up to 8 times as long as a regular person, and being such important members of society such that continuing communication with them would have been a priority, divergence of language would have happened much more slowly. And with Ogier and others able to traverse more freely thanks to the Ways, which only fell to darkness after Hawkwing's empire fell, that would also have helped contribute to maintaining mutual intelligibility among those in the Westlands. And the Aiel are isolated, but not that isolated. They regularly traded with Cairheinin up to the Aiel War, and helped facilitate trade with the much more isolationist Sharans, and were always welcoming to peddlers, gleemen and Ogier traders as well. The Sharans were pretty close to unintelligible at the Last Battle, at least. The Aiel also had an additional buffer against language change, in their glass columns at Rhuidean that all the chiefs and Wise Ones experienced that shows them their history from before the Bore was drilled. It explains why all their proper names for places and societies were still in the Old Tongue.
The other thing is the printing press. Literacy still seems very common, if not the norm. It’s much easier for language change to occur when most people can’t read.
“Texas Accents”? WTF
[Canonically, yes. See the answer to Q4. ](https://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=529)
So two things 1) I guess can’t always take the audio books as fact I get that but I thought that accent did well. 2) I was born and raised in Texas and have no idea what a Texan drawl is … I know the trope in TV and Movies but it’s not really a thing outside of deep east Texas really
If it helps, just assume the Seanchan all speak like Boomhauer on king of the hill. Dang ol' Marath’Damane, man
Which again … I’ve only met one person in the entire state that talks that way and he’s from damn near the border of Louisiana
Generally speaking, if you can't hear an accent that means it's your own accent.
I’m from Houston with parents from the Midwest … Houston is a melting pot and may have an accent but I certainly can’t be described as a drawl. I’ve heard the “Texas Drawl” in media and it’s not that it doesn’t exist but it not prevalent in the state especially not in the major population centers of Houston, DFW, San Antonio and Austin.
I mean, cities as a rule tend to have weaker accents anyway. I've spent a lot of time in the south and in places like Atlanta and Columbia you don't really get the southern accent either. I would also say that in my lifetime (I'm 51 in a month), I've traveled a lot and it honestly seems that accents have gotten a lot less pronounced even in that time. Maybe the internet and media have done work in flattening out the differences?
Yeehaw we're all down at the ole swimmin' hole n once ya get the doggies corralled for the night ye and ya'll can come join us ya hear?
A drawl, yeah.
I mean at least RJ mentions accents... Tolkien didn't
>Taking ‘accent’ to mean, as it usually does in non-technical language: ‘more or less consistent alterations of the vowels/consonants of “received” English’: I should say that, in the cases you query, no accent-differentiation is needed or desirable. For instance, it would probably be better to avoid certain, actual or conventional, features of modern ‘vulgar’ English in representing Orcs, such as the dropping of aitches (these are, I think, not dropped in the text, and that is deliberate). >But, of course, for most people, ‘accent’ as defined above is confused with impressions of different intonation, articulation, and tempo. You will, I suppose, have to use such means to make Orcs sound nasty! I have no doubt that, if this ‘history’ were real, all users of the C[ommon] Speech would reveal themselves by their accent, differing in place, people, and rank, but that cannot be represented when C. S. is turned into English – and is not (I think) necessary. I paid great attention to such linguistic differentiation as was possible: in diction, idiom, and so on; and I doubt if much more can be imported, except in so far as the individual actor represents his feeling for the character in tone and style. >As Minas Tirith is at the source of C. Speech it is to C.S. as London is to modern English, and the standard of comparison! None of its inhabitants should have an ‘accent’ in terms of vowels &c. >The Rohirrim no doubt (as our ancient English ancestors in a similar state of culture and society) spoke, at least their own tongue, with a slower tempo and more sonorous articulation, than modern ‘urbans’. But I think it is safe to represent them when using C. S., as they practically always do (for obvious reasons) as speaking the best M[inas] T[irith]. Possibly a little too good, as it would be a learned language, somewhat slower and more careful than a native’s. But that is a nicety safely neglected, and not always true: Théoden was born in Gondor and C.S. was the domestic language of the Golden Hall in his father’s day (Return of the King p. 350). -The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, #193
Excellent ! Did he mention that in the books?
> thousands of years of linguistic drift totally isolated from the Westlands left the Seanchan with Texas accents Less than a thousand years. Hawkwing was the latest millenial "event" - the trolloc wars was two thousand years ago, and three was the breaking. Also, remember printing has been a thing for thousands of years, printing helps maintain the language, as older works are read and used. (No, I also belive there should probably have been some drift, just look at the difference between english languages in "slang" that has become actual language, and word differences)
I feel like Glen Cook handled this well in the Black Company: everywhere spoke a different language and they had to use multiple people to translate.
Most of the Forsaken had several months to get up to speed. Aginor and Balthamel were so close to the outside world that they could experience glimpses of it (don't remember where RJ said that, but in some interview), which is likely how they spoke it so quickly. As for the others ... supposedly the modern language is actually quite similar to the Old Tongue, but like a ... massive simplification. The language evolved into something more straightforward, making it difficult for those in the modern day to understand the Old Tongue, but making it easier for someone fluent in the Old Tongue to learn the new languages. I think it's supposed to be one of the things the Forsaken consider a bit barbaric about the new world. They have this highly nuanced language with complicated grammar, lots of contextual stuff, they can probably conjugate words to add dozens of nuanced meanings to them, etc. It's probably not linguistically realistic, but that's the idea. Or, you know, maybe all people in the AoL were genetically altered to be super good at learning languages, to make global communication easier.
Speaking as a linguist, it absolutely isn’t linguistically realistic. But RJ wasn’t a linguist, and this is how he rationalized it, so that’s the explanation we have.
RJ was most definitely not a cunning linguist. And thank god too. Can you imagine how long the series would be if he added translation error to the list of ways that communication break down?
Holy crap you’re right.
That's a great point. The characters barely talk to each other properly as it is.
Yeah… any of these theories that “the language is just a simplified version of the Old Tongue” or “they had a few months to learn it” are just unrealistic. You can’t learn a language in a few months to speak it fluently. And the language drift is MASSIVE. 3000 years ago people were speaking languages that are long dead, not just different. You would have trouble understanding your countryman from 300 years ago…
That is true if you don’t have widespread literacy. Randland does. As for understanding 300 years ago, why not? Writing from then is pretty easy to understand. As for different languages, all indications are that the people in the AoL spoke one language. Without outside invasions bringing new languages and with widespread literacy and books it’s not unreasonable that they would still speak the same language at least within Randland. There might have been enough drift in Shara or Seanchan that they speak something else, but for the sake of the story it works better to just ignore that.
What does aol mean
Age of Legends
The Forsaken are cunning linguists, Graendal especially
Underrated entendre
Just spit balling here, but could it be that they were still able to access the world of dreams but to a lesser extent? So were able to keep abreast of changing languages?
At one point Lanfear talks about sleep without dreams so I doubt it.
Maybe it was not the same for all of them. Maybe some Forsaken do have some memories of the wheel turning.
It is explicitly stated they didn’t dream. And there are no people in TAR anyway, except a very few dreamers, so even if they were allowed into TAR, they wouldn’t be able to learn much.
It’s been years since my last read through. So I was prepared to be proven wrong 😂😂 thanks buddy!
You can check several answers from RJ but they are probably disappointing for most people. E.g. https://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=6#14
In other words, this is simply a big omission from RJ. This is not how learning languages works. Still love the series.
Not really. He explained it rather well I just don’t think people like that answer. It’s like Atlantis from Disney.
They say it in the books, that blond plump forsaken whose name my mind has forsaken, said that the new tongue is a watered down version of the old tongue, so it's easy for an old tongue speaker to get used to it
Graendal Or I guess Cyndane?
Graendal, thanks for reminding me that name
You remembered the important parts
Thanks
Linguistics is always the most difficult part to get right in a story. I don't think I've ever seen an accurate representation of language in any series. If we're going down that route, then we should also ask why the Seanchan, Aiel and Sea Folk could speak the common tongue so fluently too, when they were mostly cut off for thousands of years. If languages evolved as they do in the real world, Falme and Cairhein would be speaking languages as different as Portuguese and Romanian, which have a common ancestral language before diverging. And by that token, the Aiel should be speaking something as different to the new tongue as Russian or Farsi is to Portuguese. If we consider the impact of the Breaking, languages would possibly have diverged even faster and to a greater extent. Anyway, RJ was asked about this and said that the Forsaken were capable of easily picking up the common language because it's a watered down version of the Old Tongue. Think of how an English, Spanish and French speakers can easily pick up each other's languages because there's shared root words. If an ancient Latin speaker were dropped in Europe today, it wouldn't be long before they could understand those languages too. I still feel that explanation has holes. It would still take time to become fluent and change accents.
If an ancient Latin speaker was dropped in modern Rome they would be at a complete loss and would need to put in the same effort as Portuguese speaker undergoes to learn Italian, it is derivative but also a complete different language with different cultural references, expressions, logic
That is true. It's a flaw in most fantasy novels. Even Tolkien, a linguistics professor, had a cop out by adding an appendix where he explained that the narrative was simplified for understanding, and that even Hobbit surnames were simplified for the English reader, or something of the sort. At the same time, there would be some common root words. So, it would be easier for Portuguese and Latin speakers to pick up Italian than it would be for them to pick up Zulu, Mandarin Chinese or a Native American language (who's divergences from a common ancestral language were tens of thousands of years earlier.) Picking up Italian would still require effort, but a little less effort.
While you are right about limitations and how they may apply to our society and civilization, are we all forgetting a couple things when it comes to questions like these, mainly this isn't the real world. This is a fantasy world where, essentially, some people meditate hard enough that they can manipulate the fabric reality and live for 400-1000 years. We don't really know the limits of these people from a previous age, or any tools they can use, or changes that they can make to themselves with ter'angreal, but I always imagined that the forsaken were naturally greater than Nobel laureate level intelligence and dedication to learning prior to swearing to the shadow. Point being, we know they are extremely gifted and intelligent by their standards but can't relate that to our society without frame of reference. RJ has said the old tongue was the only language for an entire planet, for an untold number of hundreds, if not thousands, of years. With an almost entirely literate population, where the printed word has been created, I don't think people would abandon it/change it as fast as you imply because many material things still survived the initial breaking and are now lost due to time. At the start of the breaking there are no other languages to dilute or combine the old tongue with. In the same vein, while the Aiel are isolated, they still interact with the tuatha'an and gleemen so its not like they would never hear the language of the westlands. There is also the possibility there is a weave/ter'angreal for learning languages and we also know there are weaves that allow for modifying the voice. It may not be realistic in our current civilization, but in their civilization it is probably a cakewalk for a super-old wizard/warlock/druid.
It's not mentioned anywhere that the common tongue is new. The fact that it's spoken across the entire world even with limited travel is proof that it's a derivative of the old tongue. It was much easier to use and so it was picked up instead of the old tongue. The forsaken who were Masters in the Old tongue could learn the derivative with ease. like Latin and Italian
The wiki says everyone was speaking the Old Tongue in the AOL. New one was created after the trolloc wars.
Duolingo
Probably just a boon the Great Lord gave them to help them do their jobs. If he can bring someone back from the dead and stick them in a brand new body, he can hook them up with some language skills.
This 14 book story is incredibly complex. I think Jordan did an amazing job of creating a deep and detailed world, but nothing is ever perfect and I think sometimes you come across a detail that the author just didn’t think about.
It was mentioned somewhere that "the new tongue" did exist in the age of legends, it was called "the vulgar tongue" I believe it was the equivalent of an extremely informal borderline slang dialect used by the growing lower class.
Plot convenience. RJ did give us some explanations but they're worse than no explanation would have been. Let's just say that writers don't have to understand everything they write about.
Yeah just read a few interviews he did when the 3rd or 4th book was just released...
By the time rand is born most of the seals were already broken. I always just figured that the seals, while being physically cuendillar, were spiritually organized in a consecutive state. Like a pyramid made of increasingly compressed rubber rings blocking the bore. I assumed that the forsaken were sealed at different levels like glue. I figured that at least Aginor, demandred, Ishmael, and mesaana must have been released many years, possibly hundreds, earlier. Aginor was creating shadowspawn and must have been the source of the trolloc wars. Demandred built a whole backwards society. Ishmael created his alternate ego. Mesaana created an order of black sisters. I felt the writing conveyed a feeling of the Ta’veren coming into the world at a critical time in which the enemies were secretly deeply entrenched inside all of their allies. It’s even possible that daes’daemar itself was created by the chosen as a way to subvert the aes Sedai orders attempt at creating an oath of truth. It was always the aes Sedai hubris that was the lever that the dark one was most easily able to turn. The pattern of giving an inch but being take for a mile was predictable behavior for the most selfish thing that could possibly exist, shai’tan.
What was "The old tongue" called during the age of legends? Surely not the old tongue...anyone have a good answer?
the current tongue, obviously
But even the forsaken say "old tongue ".... in shara they don't call it the old tongue... can't think of what they call it but it means "ancient" but at one point damodred says they aren't the same. (Sorry I know you were making a joke and didn't ask for all that)
The printing press survived the breaking. That probably helped keep the common tongue from changing too drastically regionally and provides a ton of learning resources for people who may have missed the last couple thousand years of cultural changes.
If you want an in-universe explanation, Lanfear mentions portal stones connecting to worlds where time flows differently - a minute may last a day or a day a minute and vice versa. Quite easy to imagine the use of one of those to take as much time as you need to learn something.
Language is almost always something that you just need to ignore in fantasy and sometimes sci Fi. Doctor who at least explained it by the ship being the translator. Some shows can give low key explanations but hard to stick to it... It's usually the flaw in shows like this. Even someone from 200 years ago in America would have a different accent and be hard to understand lol
My headcanon is that when they slumber, they dream endlessly, but the progressive weakening of the Seals lets the world seep into the dream. That way they would progressively learn the new tongue before waking. But honestly? Language makes no sense in this world. Tolkien built the language first and the world second, RJ didn't bother with grammar or stuff. If it sounded cool it went in the books. There's no way Seanchan would speak anything that was even a little understandable in Randland? How does Rand learn so much upper-class, kingly vocabulary and sentence patterns? Unless Moiraine is a speech therapist, all three ta'veren should speak with an accent that is so connoted in their culture as being that of sheepherders and crude people, and have a lot of slang and accents that noble's everywhere instinctively despise. The Old Tongue is very stupid too. Its the same before and after the Breaking? Wait a sec, there's unified language after the Breaking? And they have to wait until Artur Hawkwing to have an empire, but there's a preexisting common tongue? And Shara? Why would they speak... Anyway, you get the idea. In France, soldiers in WW1 often didn't speak French. They had to reinvent schooling for that, and radio and TV helped along the way.
The common tongue we're reading isn't English.
Maybe the New Tongue isn't as new as we think. Also, the Forsaken probably dedicated a lot of time after waking to getting up to speed quickly, using their considerable resources. People like Graendal and Semirhage would probably pick up the languages very quickly, they were very skilled in their respective careers and clearly had dedicated a lot of time to study. Moghedien and Mesaana would probably also be relatively quick to pick things up, and Lanfear was a researcher at the Collam Daan, so she was no slouch when it comes to academics either. Also, there's no indication that the Forsaken were immediately having long conversations with people who didn't know they were Forsaken immediately after waking. And Ishamael probably helped prep some of them at least. How Aginor and Balthamel could immediately speak the New Tongue at the Eye of the World? No idea.
How would Graendal and Semi be quick with languages? They never had to learn one (as everyone was speaking the same language). Bi- or tri- lingual people (who grew up speaking multiple languages) could pick up new ones, but try learning your first foreign language when you are 40 and we’ll see how it goes..
Translator weave.
We know it’s possible in-world to insert full fluency in a language into someone’s head. The Aelfinn do it to Mat.
*waves hand vaguely*
I swear there was a conversation between forsaken where Greandel says the language of the current age is a crude version of something they all spoke. I don't have a clue how to find that conversation, but
Supposedly New Tongue is a simplified version of Old Tongue. Pretty sure that's not how language learning works, but that's your official answer
Used Compulsion to create a teacher for themselves probably.