Language on Safehold

SWM wrote:I think they don't translate 'jihad' as 'holy war'. After all, when a native Arab speaker thinks of the word 'jihad', they don't automatically translate it in their mind as 'holy war'. They translate it as 'jihad'. Jihad is a specific kind of thing, with a special name.

Does a Catholic mentally translate 'thurifer' into 'incense burner on a chain' every time they hear the word? Do they wonder why the word has no etymological roots in common with censer or incense? Does a native English speaker mentally translate 'rock' into 'mineral formation' when they hear the word? Do they wonder why the word has nothing in common with the word 'mineral'? To a native speaker, 'jihad' is a jihad; they don't have to mentally translate it. And 'jihad' is a native word for Safeholdians.

I get that we just receive words whole and that a great many words are fossilized metaphors that are opaque to us. And I'm not talking about the ordinary Safeholdian. I'm talking about the Safeholdians who are interested in language. Undoubtedly, there's got to be someone in the entire history of Safehold who has had an interest in their language, at least on the level that George Carlin did to wonder about things like "hot water heater" (why isn't it a cold water heater?) and so on.

You're right that "jihad" doesn't even mean Holy War in Arabic, but in English it has a slight feel of being imported. It feels like a borrowing because it is ever so slightly constructed on different morphological rules that native speakers perceive.

In addition, the Catholic in your example, presumably knows that a lot of the terms in her church's speech are from Greek and Latin so just takes them whole, meaning what they mean. But a Safeholdian has no such excuse. Certain words would be obvious why they meant what they meant, like mail carrier or dog-catcher and others like thurifer that just meant "incense carrier" for whatever reason. Has there not been in the entire history of Safehold someone who noticed that there were words like thurifer and crucifer that all had to do with "carrying" and all had the same suffix -fer? And wondered why it wasn't mailfer? And perhaps began to notice similar phenomena throughout the language?

So your point about a Catholic English speaker is a good one except for one thing: that Catholic does not believe about English what Safeholdians believe about their language. Remember, as far as they know, the Adams and Eves were created speaking it. Which means that it was divinely constructed. And ought it not be more consistent, or rational, bearing the Divine imprint?

Why has no one wondered why there are irregular verbs? Or why the spelling of the Writ itself is seemingly bizarre? "Father, why does God pronounce rough, cough, through, bough, and though differently?" We view it as a curiosity in English because we understand that languages are not logically consistent and are the results of centuries of development. But the Safeholdian has no reason to think that about his language. And while they might accept that the current spoken version had changed, even the "pristine" original language from Creation shows signs of imperfection.

It just strikes me that an intellectually curious individual, interested in human speech, would notice a number of clues that suggest that the speech they were created to speak has a different origin than divine creation?

It also strikes me that whereas in our world the fossil record is what undid any simplistic notions of a 6,000 year creation, Safehold also has a fossil record--in its language.

PeterZ wrote:
Take that logic one step further. The concept of etymological roots implies that words are constructed and that there are different ways to organize the way words are constructed. Wouldn't considering language in this way be viewed as blasphemy?

Different ways of constructing language implies different sources for the one language. How can that be if god created everything? Since nothing suggests different sources for words other than similarity, ascribing different sources to words that are clearly created by God is imposing one's view onto God's creation. Humbris and arrogance at the very least and blasphemy if reported to the wrong inquisitor.

I suppose this is my point in its inverse (or converse, I can never remember). The language that they speak was created by God. But bears such obvious evidence of imperfection that either the language has to be a divine mystery or that it can't possibly have been created by God.

It wouldn't necessarily be blasphemy to study the current development of language--why do they speak so differently in Chisholm versus Harchong--and explore the ways that has developed. One might even come to realize that language changes as a rule. You might accept that present day language changes because of human imperfection but that the language created by God were perfect.

But let's imagine a student of current speech who devises a number of rules to explain why some people are called Ahbraim and others Aybram, both of which have their origins with Adams named Abraham. And having devised those phonological rules can't help but notice that the language of the Writ seems to show evidence of those rules as well. Yes, it would feel blasphemous, but there it is. As I said in another post: it's a fossil record in the language itself hinting at much more ancient origins than anyone had ever realized.

It would be an interesting development in the story if simultaneous to Charis' war, there were a monastic community in, say, South Harchong or something that started asking these same questions.

Tryptan Felle wrote:
I suppose this is my point in its inverse (or converse, I can never remember). The language that they speak was created by God. But bears such obvious evidence of imperfection that either the language has to be a divine mystery or that it can't possibly have been created by God.

It wouldn't necessarily be blasphemy to study the current development of language--why do they speak so differently in Chisholm versus Harchong--and explore the ways that has developed. One might even come to realize that language changes as a rule. You might accept that present day language changes because of human imperfection but that the language created by God were perfect.

But let's imagine a student of current speech who devises a number of rules to explain why some people are called Ahbraim and others Aybram, both of which have their origins with Adams named Abraham. And having devised those phonological rules can't help but notice that the language of the Writ seems to show evidence of those rules as well. Yes, it would feel blasphemous, but there it is. As I said in another post: it's a fossil record in the language itself hinting at much more ancient origins than anyone had ever realized.

It would be an interesting development in the story if simultaneous to Charis' war, there were a monastic community in, say, South Harchong or something that started asking these same questions.

Yes, modern languages do shift as a result of human imperfection and geographic separation. All those shifts however, can be traced to the creation. At that point there was no precedant. Language came to be as a complete whole. Extending the causative agent of modern language shifts to that complete creation is logically unsupportable.

The proposition that God did not create language is not only false on its face (assuming a Safehold belief structure here). One might well assume God used different language sources to create His gift to man. That could work, but would imply Heaven is not an indivisible construct of God but is instead a fractuous place derived from different origins.

All of which point to the same thing; God's creations are not derrived from One Supreme Source. Since that is impossible, there must be another explanation. The simplest alternative is that each word and the myriad of various gramatical rules are a product of God's imesnse creative abilities. The words are as they are and the rules of grammar are as they are because God found them pleasing.

PeterZ wrote:s.

All of which point to the same thing; God's creations are not derrived from One Supreme Source. Since that is impossible, there must be another explanation. The simplest alternative is that each word and the myriad of various gramatical rules are a product of God's imesnse creative abilities. The words are as they are and the rules of grammar are as they are because God found them pleasing.

I agree that this is the likely logical conclusion that such a worldview would produce. Indeed, it has been produced in our world. And that was what I meant at the beginning about "Divine Mystery": "No one knows why the past tense of am is was, Jimmy; it's a holy mystery of God's creative power." But unless this opinion is enshrined somewhere as dogma or in the Writ itself, that conclusion might be reached, but it might not be the only conclusion.

And if there is no established dogma or doctrine about the origins of human language, then given the loss of credibility for the church under Clyntahn and the Group of Four, might not someone be willing to suspect that something was up?

Maybe it's because I think about this kind of thing all the time, but to me these are clues akin to the fossil record or to Galileo's pendulum. No matter what you might be inclined to believe, there seems to be a hint that something else is going on.

I really don't see that the word 'jihad' is that obviously constructed on different principles than other English words, especially if you are unaware that English derived from many root sources. English has so many borrowed words that 'jihad' doesn't stand out. You'd be better off with examples like 'fiance', which has a letter pronounced in a completely different way than usual.

But we are also hampered by the fact that we don't really know what Safeholdian language looks like. We know that it is basically English, but we don't know how Federation English has evolved in the centuries before. We could assume that all spellings are exactly as they are in modern English, but we don't really know that for certain.

As for the imperfection of the language, I don't think that it would strike a Safeholdian odd that the language is not perfect. There are so many obvious imperfections around them, the imperfections of the language are just another part of that same background. There is no particular reason that God should have made the language he gave to the people perfect. Little else they have seen is perfect except the Temple itself, which stands in stark contrast to the rest of their lives.

Tryptan Felle wrote:I agree that this is the likely logical conclusion that such a worldview would produce. Indeed, it has been produced in our world. And that was what I meant at the beginning about "Divine Mystery": "No one knows why the past tense of am is was, Jimmy; it's a holy mystery of God's creative power." But unless this opinion is enshrined somewhere as dogma or in the Writ itself, that conclusion might be reached, but it might not be the only conclusion.

And if there is no established dogma or doctrine about the origins of human language, then given the loss of credibility for the church under Clyntahn and the Group of Four, might not someone be willing to suspect that something was up?

Maybe it's because I think about this kind of thing all the time, but to me these are clues akin to the fossil record or to Galileo's pendulum. No matter what you might be inclined to believe, there seems to be a hint that something else is going on.

I actually agree with you here. Someone would have begun questioning such things. Someone would have followed apparant goups of similarities and compared them with the written language of the Writ. They would have pursued the changes since creation and noted all the changes. Then this hypothetical person would have tried to infer rules of organizing the various groups of words in English as it was first documented after creation.

Someone would have done all these things and more. To what avail? This activity would at best be perceived as something akin to ballroom dancing in Japan. An act that isn't evil so much as slightly perverted and something to be ashamed of. Had such a person kept records, would those records have survived this person's death? I doubt it.

SWM wrote:As for the imperfection of the language, I don't think that it would strike a Safeholdian odd that the language is not perfect. There are so many obvious imperfections around them, the imperfections of the language are just another part of that same background.

Other than internal inconsistencies the average Safholdian isn't going to encounter any "imperfections" like differing accents or local slang. That would take meeting distant safeholdians face-to-face; written safeholdian is fixed by the Writ and the printing press.

Corresponding with distant people wouldn't reveal any evolution of language to start someone thinking. Sailors and Traders would encounter strange dialects, but they provide a much smaller pool of possible skeptics.

=2014/05/16=
Hi Guys

This is a definition of the word "jihad" I recently read.

(Quote)
As this suggests, jihad is "holy war." Or, more precisely: It means the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims.
(EndQuote)

This definition seems to me to accurately reflect many of the current activities in our world.

??Comments??

R
.

kbus888 wrote:=2014/05/16=
Hi Guys

This is a definition of the word "jihad" I recently read.

(Quote)
As this suggests, jihad is "holy war." Or, more precisely: It means the legal, compulsory, communal effort to expand the territories ruled by Muslims at the expense of territories ruled by non-Muslims.
(EndQuote)

This definition seems to me to accurately reflect many of the current activities in our world.

??Comments??

R
.

Well, actually the word jihad comes from the Arabic root ج ه د j-h-d, which has the base meaning of "struggle, strife, or labor" and refers primarily to inner, spiritual struggle (which in the hadith is referred to as the "Greater Jihad"). It does also refer to military struggle (known in the hadith as the "Lesser Jihad"). So, the word primarily means "struggle" and is used in the Islamic world in much the same way that "crusade" is used in the Christian world ("crusade against poverty", "Campus Crusade for Christ", "the caped crusader", etc.). Someone above pointed out that an Arabic speaker wouldn't necessarily interpret jihad as 'holy war' and that's right.

My point was that on Safehold, that is its main usage and that as such, it might occur to someone that it is odd that it neither had holy- or sanct- as part of its derivation.

And even though we might not think so at first glance, the word jihad doesn't follow the ordinary rules of English word formation. Can you think of another word with an intervocalic h not on a morphological boundary (as in re-hearse)? The only ones I can think of off the top of my head (Mohawk, Rahab) are foreign borrowings, like jihad.

Quite some time ago, I just gave up and tried to remember what a name or word looked like and remember it. (It seems to help to keep reading the entire series over and over, too)