| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| MalariaMoon |
Posted - 02 Sep 2012 : 09:18:17
Can anyone offer me any suggestions? Would it have simply been an older version of one of the modern tongues (Chondathan, Old Illuskan)?
Cheers! |
| 5 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Markustay |
Posted - 04 Sep 2012 : 18:39:17
The Following is my own spin on things; YMMV:
Personally, I would say 'Talfir' means the same thing as 'Tethen', accept that the Talfir people had their own 'racial identity' as well. What I mean by that is that although their were probably lots of folk speaking the same tongue (with different dialects), there was one specific place/people who referred to themselves as 'Talfir'.
Now sages, looking back through history, would lump all these peoples of similar culture and language together under the heading 'Tethen', or even Talfir to describe the larger over-group (in the same way RW scholars refer to so many peoples as 'Celtic'). 'Tethen' is primarily used to describe the culture of this early human group, and 'Talfir' to describe their language, but they could be used interchangeably.
After the ToT, many scholars across Faerūn decided to make a name for themselves, re-evaluating previous beliefs and terminology based on new information, and the term 'Tethyrian' came into vogue. Its actually a bit of a misnomer, since it is supposed to describe a group of people who pre-existed Tethyr itself. However, 'modern' scholars found it simpler to use a term most folks are familiar with to describe a particular human racial group. One might go as far as to say they 'dumbed down' the terminology for the masses. When amongst each other, the older, more correct terminology would still be used.
Ergo, Tethyrian, Tethen, and Talfir all mean the same basic thing, with very subtle nuances toward the era you are referring to.
I did a lot of work making my own 'proto-history' work with tom Costa's excellent article on Torillian languages. A few things have become problematic, but overall, its an amazing resource.
For the same reasons Eric does not like to use 'Thethyrian', I don't like 'Chondathan' as a racial group; I have used 'Dathite' in my own musings. Dathite is a language - and people - derived from RW Latin, Imaskari (Devic), and Mulan (which itself is a pidgin tongue of several 'slave' languages). The modern Chondathan tongue is very different then the original (slave) language of Dathite.
As for the Kingdom of Man, I would agree with Eric, and even go so far as to say that may have been the birthplace of 'Common' (which started out as a trade pidgin of several major languages). About a thousand years ago there were dozens of small kingdoms popping up and then falling all over the Western Heartlands, and the peoples of those kingdoms migrated from one to the next, so that eventually 'Common' was born. This would have included Elvish and Dwarvish as well - common borrows from nearly all surface tongues, including several humanoid ones (orcish curses are a favorite).
As I said, just my take is all.  |
| MalariaMoon |
Posted - 04 Sep 2012 : 17:10:42
Thanks for your in-depth thoughts Eric (he says as he slots the lore neatly into his adventure).
@ Dalor and Icelander. I've experienced the differences in Moroccan and Jordanian Arabic first hand, and in Vietnam where I live we have two distinct dialects of Vietnamese. A friend of mine who spoke Chinese was also pointing out the parallels between the Vietnamese and Chinese languages (not that the Vietnamese would like to countenance any similarity with their hated neighbour), although I don't know if said friend meant Mandarin or Cantonese (she lives in Guang Zhou). |
| Icelander |
Posted - 04 Sep 2012 : 04:52:49
quote:
Originally posted by Dalor Darden
I think that Eric has a solid answer. The fact that Illuskan would be a heavily influencing language goes without question I think. Languages are a hard thing to rid an area of unless whole populations are removed completely.
A good example is China. My work with folks from there has led me to the enlightened state of knowing that while everyone learns a particular dialect of Chinese in school there (Mandarin), there are in fact dozens of regional chinese dialects (and even alphabets) that folks from other parts of china may have difficulty understanding!
An even more pertinent example to this dicussion involving China is that all modern Chinese languages/dialects descend from the language of a relatively small population from the north of the country. The languages originally spoken in the south of China are now lost, all except some tiny fragments that dispersed into neighbouring countries and over the sea.
This is not evidence that all the population of southern China was massacred, but rather that languages aren't, in fact, all that rarely lost. In fact, the evidence supports two waves of linguistic assimilation in Asia and in both of those cases, more than 99% of the 'original' language groups were lost, more or less without a trace. |
| Dalor Darden |
Posted - 02 Sep 2012 : 15:56:34
I think that Eric has a solid answer. The fact that Illuskan would be a heavily influencing language goes without question I think. Languages are a hard thing to rid an area of unless whole populations are removed completely.
A good example is China. My work with folks from there has led me to the enlightened state of knowing that while everyone learns a particular dialect of Chinese in school there (Mandarin), there are in fact dozens of regional chinese dialects (and even alphabets) that folks from other parts of china may have difficulty understanding!
The same is true of Arabic. Those speaking Arabic in Morroco are very hard to understand by those speaking Arabic in Jordan!
So I think once populations move into an area, you would find their language remains for a great deal of time. Just because someone speaks Chondathan in Chondath...doesn't mean they would understand everything said by someone speaking Chondathan in the Kingdom of Man...because Chondathan in the Kingdom of Man is going to have many outside influences and outright changed words from those influences. |
| ericlboyd |
Posted - 02 Sep 2012 : 12:14:10
So, I've been thinking a lot about this lately. ;-)
According the the FRCS (3e), Waterdeep,the Sword Coast, and the Western Heartlands all speak Chondathan. However, according to the Player's Guide to Faerun (3e), the automatic language for humans is Illuskan.
I think that the best way to reconcile this is to note that the "Sword Coast" region is divided into two halves on the map found in the FRCS and the PGtF and assume that the automatic human language for the northern half of the Sword Coast region is Illuskan, while the automatic human language for the souther half of the Sword Coast region is Chondathan.
So, that establishes that the "Daggerford region" of the 1372 DR timeframe speaks Chondathan.
But what of the Kingdom of Man?
We know that the area first settled by humans was Tavaray, a now-lost city-state that was founded by Ruathyn Illuskans in -50 DR. It then fell in 302 DR, after emigrants from the city settled much of the lower Delimbiyr river valley and lower Dessarin river valley. That would make a strong argument that Illuskan was spoken here. (I would probably reserve the title "Old Illuskan" for the language spoken in the city of Illusk before the emigration to the Trackless Isles.)
However, we also know that Tethyrians driven north from Shoon-dominated lands were also a big racial grouping. No one speaks "Tethyrian" though, so they must have spoken a mix of lost dialects (Talfirc?), Alzhedo, and Chondathan.
The real question is when did Chondathan traders unite much of western Faerun in a network of trade through which Chondathan became widely spoken? For this case, I would argue that they had probably arrived prior to the founding of Phalorm, and that Phalorm, as a major civilizing influence in the northwestern western Heartlands / southern Sword Coast region, was probably influential in spreading Chondathan as the "lingua franca" of the realm.
So, that would lead to the conclusion that Delimbiyran, the Kingdom of Man, also spoke Chondathan, although pockets of Illuskan were probably not unknown.
:-)
--Eric
PS Tom Costa had a much more complicated and richly woven set of languages described in a Dragon article, but the FRCS (3e) reduced its complexity. The FRCS also called the base western-heartlands racial group "Tethyrians" instead of "Tethens", which I would have preferred (as it allows us to discuss a racial group that preceded the founding of Tethyr and was rooted in Realmslore in FR3. |
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