Twisted Tounges

Book; 4: The Shadow Rising

Chapter; 39: A Cup of Wine

Character Groups;

Aiel Waste      Tanchico       Two Rivers          

Rand               Nynaeve        Perrin

Mat                 Elayne           Faile

Egwene           Thom            Loial

Moiraine          Julin             Verin

Lan                                      Alanna

Aviendha                             divers Warders, 

                                            whitecloaks, trollocs and alarums.

A blip in the schedule could make it appear, to the untrained eye that I was a bit behind in my WoT marathon. It may seem that I should, at this point, be well into book 5 when I am in fact still in the depths of book 4. Do not be alarmed! The twin demons of redecoration and a fortnights holiday have been vanquished and normal service can now be resumed. 

To that end, I would like to discuss language. The good, bad and ancient. In a slight departure from my normal worship of all things WoT, I'm going to do some complaining.

As I have previously stated, in Randland there are as many dialects and accents as there are countries, probably more since people are sometimes described as using 'street' or 'noble' speech. However, there is only one actual language and everyone can understand everyone else. 

Now this might be fine if it was just the main continent. After all, we are lead to believe that all human beings currently alive are descended from the (relatively) small number of survivors of the cataclysm that ended the previous Age. However, the horizons of the world have expanded in the last few books. The Seanchan have appeared from beyond the ocean with their strange creatures and stranger ways but although a lot of their speech is in italics, they are understandable. It has since been revealed that they are the descendants of an invading army sent across the Aryth Ocean a thousand years ago and assumed lost. All right, so they started off speaking the same language but it has barely changed? In a millennium? I couldn't understand William the Conqueror. Mostly because he'd be speaking french, but still.

Now we have the Aiel. The Aiel are a warrior people that live in a vast desert. They are descended from a sort of honoured servant class from the Age of Legends, although very few of them know that. In the past 3000 years, they have had very little contact with the outside world and most of what they have had has been stabby-stabby in nature. And yet, AND YET, they are easier to understand than the Seanchan.


Here is the crux of my argument. Through a series of fascinating events, Mat can now fluently speak the Old Tongue. This was the language spoken in the Age of Legends (therefore, what the Aiel should have spoken) and seems to have been in use for about a thousand years afterwards. In present day, it is only known by scholars and certain nobles, to everyone else it is so much gobbledigook, like Latin. So where did the 'new tongue' come from and how did it develop simultaneously in separate cultures? 

English, as it is spoken today, would be unrecognisable to, say, a 1000 year-old Anglo-saxon, because of the influence of other languages, cultures and their swords. If everyone in the world spoke the same language, how would new languages form?

Yes, I know this is nit-picking as an extreme sport and yes, I know it is only a book but when the rest of this fantasy world is so carefully constructed, it strikes me as odd that something so central to the plot could be overlooked.


I'm not going to stop reading though!

ID please...

Book: 2; The Great Hunt


Chapter: 50; After. THE END!


Character Groups:
Mountains of Mist            Almoth Plain
Rand                                 Mat
Perrin                                Egwene
Loial                                 Nynaeve
Moiraine                           Elayne
Lan                                   Verin
Min                                   Hurin


Well, Mr. Jordan certainly crammed a lot into the last third of that book, like, a whole four months. But, as I have to keep reminding myself, I am not trying to summarise the plot here. 


While the ever expanding ensemble cast are taking a well deserved winter break, I would like to take a moment to go off on a bit of a tangent. You see, The Great Hunt took the scooby gang out into the wider world and one of the themes of the book was the apparent decline of humanity. As can be seen on the map of Randland (as the main continent has become lovingly known) huge swathes of land are unclaimed by any nation and most of the action in book 2 takes place in the spaces once occupied by the extinct nations of Hardon and Almoth. 

I should point out that this map was coloured in by my own fair hand after the analogue fashion because I don't own any picture type programmes more complex (or indeed other than) MS Paint. Anyway, it was quite fun, I should to more colouring in.


Sorry, back to the point. 


What I was struck by is that while the people of this continent (and, it is revealed, others) share a common language and religion (in the loosest sense of the word) each country has its own distinct appearance, mode of dress and cultural norms. Here are some that we have come across.


Cairhien (KEYE-ree-EHN): The nation of Moiraine's birth. Technically she is a noblewoman from the former royal house of Damodred but prefers to be known just as an Aes Sedai (House Damodred lost the throne in embarrassing and bloody circumstances). Cairhienin are described as short, fair skinned and dark haired. their soldiers shave and powder the front halves of their heads and the nobles wear dark clothes with slashes of bright colours across the front of their dresses or coats. the women wear huge skirts and tall powdered wigs. they speak in clipped tones with an almost musical accent. So Cairhienin look Chinese, dress like pre-revolutionary French nobility and sound Welsh.

Andor: Most of the Hobbits, sorry, Emond's Fielders were born in Andor as were Min and Elayne. I have always thought of Andor as Elizabethan England, especially since Queen Morgase is described as a beautiful and fierce woman with a mass of curling red-gold hair and a habit of sending people who upset her to the headsman.

Shienar: Shienar is the newest of the Borderlands, the chain of northern countries sworn to protect the world from the Dark One's Blight encroaching from the north. They are a warrior people who favour fighting from horseback and topknots. Shienar has only been a true borderland for about 50 years, since the still more northern kingdom of Malkier (which Lan happens to be technically king of) was swallowed by the Blight. 

Aside from that, we know that Taraboner women wear their hair in hundreds of braids with beads on the ends that clack whenever they move their heads, Domani women wear scandalous dresses and Aiel are tall, red-haired and deadly.

Of course all of this pales in comparison with the complexity of the Seanchan...