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PHILOLOGICAL NOTES
This is a section which will be of great interest to some, and of no interest at all to others. It seemed to me, however, that something should be done to point up some of the differences of the various peoples involved. A study of the languages would, as well, add a little background to the total story.
(A quick editor’s note: there are pages referenced in this appendix which are based on the original typewritten manuscript. Especially with the ebook format this becomes irrelevant and impossible to link back to at this time, I apologize for the inconvenience and I hope to remedy this in future versions of this story.)
The Elder Folk
The Elder Folk, commonly known as Çymrutha (Çym, ‘silver’ rutha, ‘tongue.’) will take the first place here, though they are mentioned only peripherally in the book, because they have had such a pervasive influence on the other languages, particularly Asbalnian.
The Çymrutha language has some resemblances to Greek or Latin, in that it has a system of cases, and a very much inflected verb. The noun—cases are Nominative, (subject) Genitive, (usually possessive) Accusative (direct object) Dative, (usually indirect object.) I will deal first with the larger phrases of the language, which give some idea of the grammar, then go on to speak of one or two names.
On page 239 we have:
Cvlch irenuoth, tenhielen, Illotu lynta, temhielen, Tel guaallanue helffta.
A word-for-word translation might be:
Ring of danger, break Work of doom, fail
By the High ones of Old.
Cylch means ‘ring,’ and occurs also in some places similarly to Latin ‘circum—,’for instance, cylchath, ‘go around (the edge).’
Iranuoth, from iranu, ‘danger,’ actually means ‘dangerous,’ so we might also translate ‘dangerous ring.’ In Çymrutha, though, the adjective usually follows the noun, and I decided to keep the word—order.
Tenhielen is basically a subjunctive, and in this case translates as ‘may you be broken.’ The root is nhel, ‘break,’ here in the passive stem, nhiel—,’ be broken.’ Te— is the second person singular prefix, ‘you.’ If English still used it normally, it would be translated as ‘thou’ suffix —en indicates the subjunctive.
Using the passive here might seem a little unusual, but the fact is that the active generally was transitive. Teruelen would more likely mean ‘may you break (something.)’
Illotu is from the root ill ‘make, create;’ the passive stem is illo—, and here a participial ending, -u is added. The -t is simply added for euphony. Illotu would translate, more literally, as ‘a thins having been made.’
Lynta is from the noun lyn, ‘doom, death,’and is in the genitive case, making it essentially an adjective.
Temhielen is another passive subjunctive, based on mhiel-, the passive stem from the root mhel—, ‘fail.’ Again, the use of passive seems strange, but it would appear that the passive, In this form, gives a sense of immediacy. ‘May you be broken, may you have already failed.’
Tel is a particle of instrumental force, meaning approximately, ‘by means of.’
Guallanue, from the roots guall- ‘high,’ and an, roughly ‘being,’ though it also is used in the sense ‘person;’ —ue is the suffix of the dative case, which in this instance indicates that the word is to be taken with tel.
Helffta, from the root helff—, ‘old,’ bears the genitive suffix already mentioned under lynta.
Next, we will look at the phrase on p. 243. Andrythn Athantirnhucathu, illnha tal! Andrythn, Bringer of the Hopestone, your aid!
Andrythn is a name composed of and- ‘wise,’ and -rythn, ‘heart.’
Athantirnhucathu Athan-, ‘hope,’ tir-, ‘stone,’ nhucath-, ‘bring’ with the —u participial ending. ‘The one who brings the Hopetone.’
illnha ‘help, aid.’
tal, second person singular possessive pronoun, ‘your’(thy.) The fuller meaning of this will be explained in Appendix II.
We will now look at some Çymrutha names.
Brhandon (p. 72) Brha ‘great’ andon ‘wisdom’ from and, ‘wise.’ This is a name of an Elder Wizard.
Thumill (p. 5) ‘right,’ ill ‘do’ ‘Doer of Right.’
Nane of an Elder Hero. The Asbalnian Tumell, (p. 8) is an Asbalnian colloquial pronunciation of this.
Lhorannon (p. 195) Llor ‘Bold,’ annon, form of andon, ‘wisdom.’ An Elder Wizard, though not of the era or of the stature of Brhandon.
Coerl (p. 1). This is an Asbalnian colloquial pronunciation of Dencoirl, ‘The Foreseen One.’ The root den, ‘one,’ gives rise to denc, ‘first, prior;’ the root or ‘see,’ produces the passive stem oir ‘be seen,’ and to this is added an old suffix of generally agentive meaning. This —l suffix is not often used, and when found, it is usually in names, which are passed on by tradition.
The name is one given to one of the Kings of Asbaln.
Asbalnian
The Asbalnian language bears a resemblance, in grammatical structure, to Latin and Greek. No actual phrases or sentences of the language come into the book, but some names might be of interest.
Asbaln. As, ‘west,’ baln, ‘land’
Ilcaniar (p. 3) Il ‘great,’ caniar, ‘river’
Randell. Ran is a dialectical pronunciation of the Çymrutha root ron ‘sword’ dell is derived from lell, ‘white, silver,’ the l becoming d under the influence of the preceding n.
Avantir. This is a mystery. Some would derive it from Asbalnian afen ‘defend,’ with Çymrutha tir, ‘stone.’ The difficulty here is that, to change afen to avan does not agree with the alternations in any dialect known.
Others try to make avan into the dative singular of av ‘this.’ The meanings advanced in support of this theory have more to do with imagination than with philological realities.
I wish to discuss only three other names here, Lagan(147) Lughan (147) and Lywan(216). The basic root is laga ‘tear, rend,’ and the first form appears to be the most original. The first a, being stressed, underwent changes, first to a short o (as in bought) then long o (as in ‘coat’). At the same time, the was becoming a velar fricative gh (similar to the French r), which later developed into w. This was probably responsible for the u changing to the German ü, which I represent in the book as y
In some dialects, of course, none of these chances took place, and in some only a few happened. The result was that it was possible to find: in the Asbalnian war—host, men bearing three variants of the same name.
While speaking of dialect differences, I have noted that the Northland dialect was quite distinctive. Among its other striking peculiarities was the habit of changing combinations of kw, gw, and so on into p, g, and so on. Examples of this would be kwishar, ‘horse,’ becoming ‘pishar,’ kwa ‘have,’ becoming pa and ghuene ‘hope, becoming vene.
In some places this tendency was so pronounced that go— or ko— underwent the change as well, Conel or Coerl becoming Ponel or Poerl.
Some Northlanders, attempting extreme correctness, brought smiles to many faces when they called their country Asgwaln.
Arkh-bazd Whazar and Hygerian.
I place these two together because of the relationship between them. They derive from the same stock as the Hotland group of dialects and are grammatically similar to the Semitic languages.
Both races, Arkh-bazd Whazar and Hygerian, appear to have migrated early on from the Hotlands towards the Southern Sea. Some history of the Arkh-bazd Whazar, the famed Bowmen in the Iron Coats, has been preserved, but all that is told of the Hygerians’ origins is that they emerged, as two eponymous heroes, from a great cataclysm.
Some see, in this, a reflection of the great destruction wrought at the end of the war between the Bowmen and the Mountain Allies. This is possible, but we must then hypothesize the Bowmen as representing a group of divergent dialects and must assume that only those which did not resemble the dialect preserved in their writings survived the war.
To explain, the Hotland word for make is wasar. This becomes washar in Hygerian but in Arkh-bazd Whazar it is wazar. Phonetic laws would permit s to become z or s to become sh, but not a progression of s to z to sh.
The Arkh-bazd Whazar quotations are all in the form of spells, and the grammar in them is, to say the least, unusual. The normal form of the language, as found in the surviving historical and other works, confirms that this is not merely the frustrated reaction of philologists to a slight difficulty in grammar.
I shall therefore simply give the roots involved in the spell on page 78.
Shalak, ‘call.’
Deflun, from de— ‘and,’ and falan, ‘come’. This root is also found in flonha.
Trilekh, from taral, ‘show.’ This root is also found in tirilekh.
Rodosekh from radas ‘command.’
It will be clear by now that the Arkh-bazd Whazar word is normally based on a root consisting of three consonants, and that some of the alterations in meaning or grammatical form are achieved by changes in the vowels which separate the letters. It is this feature which brings out the comparison with the Semitic languages. There is less of Hygerian in the book, but that which exists shows less problems grammatically than the Arkh—bazd Whazar.
On page 71 we have washariba ghelhagir, ‘We do it for the families!’
Washar means ‘make, do;’ — iba is the first person plural ending, ‘we.’
Ghel — means ‘for, on behalf of.’ Hagir is ‘family.’
It ought to be noted here that the Hygerian’s own name for themselves is Hagirak. In the Asbalnian pronunciation, the first a has been diphthongized into ai, and the—ak ending replaced by the Asbalnian—kon, ‘folk, people.’ A phonetic representation of this would be Haigirkon, but due to the need for constant representation of the name through the book, I have taken a sort of Anglicization of the Asbalnian form, as an indication that it is an adaptation into a language of a foreign name.
On page 86 we have Kadwashribazd, ‘by our deeds:’ Kad—is ‘by means of,’ washri is a participial form of washar, ‘make, do,’ and bazd is the first person plural suffix, ‘our.’
Icarian
Under this heading, I include the language of the Derrakos of the swamp, as both languages are basically the same, though the Icarian speech has heavy Asbalnian influence.
Icarian is what has been known as an amalgamating language, which means that various elements are added to the root to alter the meaning, and that often a single word may cover a complete sentence. The closest comparisons to the Icarian speech would be some of the North American Indian languages, the position and structure of the final person—markers resembling the Algonquian family (Cree, Ojibwa, Blackfoot) and the formation of the stem calling to mind the Yuman languages (Yuman, Mohave, Diegueño).
As a first example, let us consider the name of the Swamp,
Korochinda. Kor means ‘home,’—och— is a suffix, never occurring alone, indicating something out of sight, in means ‘danger,’ and the final element, —da, means ‘no, not.’ The total, ‘Home—hidden— danger—not,’ would probably best be translated as ‘Safe Haven.’
Kr Yrriech, ‘The earth alone endures,’ is composed of Kr, ‘earth,’ yr, ‘endure, last,’ —ri—, indefinite progressive particle, indicating action having gone on in the past and continuing to an unspecified time in future, —ech ‘alone, uniquely.’
Having mentioned the personal suffixes, I should note that the third person singular is marked by the lack of such a suffix.
I should also say that, given the normal structure of the form ought to have the adverbial particle —ech in second place, yrechri, but certain formal and ritual utterances show that there was a time when the position of adverbal particles was less fixed.
Khabarstymbion (p. 54) ‘may you come back in health.’ Kha—, ‘may it be that,’ bar, ‘come,’ stym, ‘well, healthy,’ —bi (actually —vi, the becoming b under the influence of the preceding m) is a conditional particle, giving a sort of subjunctive sense, ‘might.’
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