Godlearners and Ur-People

At 07:01 AM 10/9/2003 -0400, Julian Lord wrote: It's worth remembering that the GLs started out as a sect of people devoted
>to the study of the Abiding Book, and that it's the ruin of the GLs that
>led to
>the modern malkioni sects.
>
>So the GL system is at least tangentially linked to the Abiding Book and
>the Abiding Tongue.

         But the GLs were magic/religious engineers in a way. It seems that their error was not too much religion, but too little -- they divorced the techniques they got from the study of their deity (and the associated otherworld, and other gods/essences/spirits and their associated otherworlds) and the study/worship of that deity. If they had just whacked and converted the theists/animists/etc. they ran across, they probably wouldn't have come to such a bad end. It's like saying that modern Capitalism is based in Christianity; you can make that point, but that doesn't mean that the practice of Capitalism has that much to do with the practice (much less the doctrine) of Christianity....

me:
> > surely Sartari is descended
> > from Stormspeech, Pelorian from some ur-Solar tongue, Western from
> > Brithini, etc.
>
>I'm thinking about a Green Age ur-language, before the original destruction
>of the original mixed world.

         Is there a Green Age ur-language that is universal to all people? Aren't the Orlanthi, who are the children of the children of the children of Orlanth who's the son of Umath pretty much the product of a post-Green Age world (leaving out the notable contributions of the Earth Tribe, of course)?

>Anyway, it's very difficult to apply modern linguistics to this problem
>without assuming the existence of such an ur-language, because one
>of the very foundations of linguistics is that all speech evolved from
>a single root. Ob-Glorantha, from Grandfather Mortal.

         Well, what about that Grandfather Mortal? Is he perhaps demoted to a GL construct? I mean, the Solar people and the Storm people have mutually exclusive origins, and the people of the West more exclusive still... (always assuming that those stories are not convenient fictions told by the various cultures ("Yelm and co. didn't really create us, they just found us wandering around...")). I mean, whatever the Orlanthi Barbarians might say, the Solars don't need Grandfather Mortal -- Death came to the Bright People when the Rebel Gods killed the Emperor.

>Chuck out this premise, and any linguistic** analysis of Gloranthan
>languages will sudenly become inherently unfeasible.

         Well, we might ask why and how various historical events have changed languages once their basic characteristics are revealed/agreed on. I mean, I have no personal problem with the idea that Western is written using an ideographic system, but, as far as I can see, that isn't the case, so why try to sneak it in by appealing to GL runes?

Peter Larsen

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End of Glorantha Digest Received on Fri Oct 10 07:01:48 2003