Re: The Common Tongue! & Realism

>In our last episode, James Perry said:
>> Eugene Shumu1insky said:
>[Snip]
>>>	Then I guess if you're an average grunt fighter from Krynn,
>>>everything's OK... (:  Just for the record, I'd rather have a "universal
>>>language" in my world and leave it at that.  I simply can't accept it
>>>without some explanation.  My theory about elven takes a stab at explaining
>>>things without relying on myth and magic, but YMMV.
>>
>>But, if you do have a universal common originally created by the elves,
>>would not the reasoning be that the elves intorduced it to all the worlds?
>>If so, this would make them extremely old...older than dragons, perhaps...
>
>	...older than time itself...  (:
>
>	I didn't explain myself very well up top.  What I meant was that
>I wish I could just accept a universal common, but I can't.
>
>	Actually, my version of the language is more of a "trade common"
>which had elven as a base.  It changes from location to location, but
>not enough to be misunderstood.  Take for instance a *heavy* Southern
>(from southern US, for all those abroad) accent vs. a *heavy* British
>accent.  They both have the same roots, but would still have a hard
>time communicating.  But if both individuals talk slowly and clearly,
>they won't have too many problems getting basic ideas across, like "what's
>the price of this bolt of silk?" or "please land over in that lake."

Actually, these are both dialects, or sub-languages (subs of English) they
can be traced back to Germanic origins, making them Germanic languages,
German is also a German language, and, without classes on the language, I
can't understand a word of it.

>	On a (barely) related point, I don't consider "the spelljamming
>universe" to be that old.  Well, not older than dragons at least... :)
>"Modern" spelljamming techniques have only been around since a bit before
>the First Unhuman War (~1100 standard years ago).  People have been
>travelling in space for quite a while before that, but *spelljamming*
>(modern helms and all that) is a fairly new developement.  In fact, some
>sages theorize that it was spelljamming technology that *caused* the
>the Unhuman war.  The tech that existed beforehand (which I could comment
>on if anybody's interested) wasn't very usefull in warfare, though people
>tried... (:

What of the Thri-Kreen?  I believe it is stated in several places (novels
and game suppliments) that they were the first into space...wouldn't they be
closer to the root of the language? (oh, yeah...what was before Sjing?)



     ___________
    | -----     |
    |    /      |
    |   /       |
    |  /        |
    | -----IGGY |
    |___________|
         \o/
          #
         /'\