Ur Language?

Friends,

>It's not stated that they pronounce it differently.
>
>>It's kind of hard to
>>imagine this with characters representing sounds
>or syllables,

It is´nt hard for me to imagine. I am studying Spanish and teaching English now, both of which use (mostly) the same characters. Yet Spanish has five vowel sounds, and English has something like 14 vowel sounds (or was it 26? And to make it more complex, English and American English have different vowel sounds even for the same words).

Even many of the consonants have different sounds.

>>There's also the possibility of coded
>language. When regular
>> believers hear the story of how St. XYZ healed
>the beggar, they hear an
>> uplifting moral tale. The liturgist decodes the
>story using secret
>> knowledge to cast the blessing "Bless Health." An
>adept of some sort might
>> further decode a spell -- "Cure Leprosy" or some
>such. Seshnegi and
>> Loskalmi believers might sound very different
>reading the story out loud,
>> but they can both tease the same benefits out of
>the text (should it be one
>> shared by their churches).
>
>Certainly, some people interpret the texts in that
>manner.

I am one. I can assure you that the sacred texts are nearly all this way.

Even many popular or vulgar stories can be so interpreted. I am not sure that "The Story of the Little Man in the Tree" is, but you can be sure that "The Little Man in the Boat" is.

>> I know of no reason to believe that the
>Godlearner rune system was
>> a common part of Western culture in the 2nd Age,
>
>OK, proto-GL system.

The GL rune system was actually constructed AFTER they had established considerable world-wide contacts. They had a home-grown system based on the Dawn Age remnants of the Kachasti ruen system before that, and a different vulgate script for normal writings. The original Abiding Book used both methods in its text, often mixed (as was the custom in those early Second Age cultures.) Thus sometimes a normal script would be used, and then use the sacred rune system to substitute for certain words or concepts.

>I'm thinking about a Green Age ur-language, before
>the original destruction
>of the original mixed world.

Interesting thought, but the idea of a single ur-language in the Green Age is held only by a small sect of believers in Glorantha. Most people know that human beings had multiple origins, hence their languages had multiple origins.

The idea that there was only one Grandfathr MOrtal, the Primal Rune as it were, is a GL concept. You can see that the separate mythologies have ancestral figures, but they call him and/or her by their local names.

Sincerely,
Greg Stafford

--__--__-- Received on Fri Oct 10 07:01:48 2003