Language on Safehold

hanuman wrote:

SWM wrote:Everyone on Safehold is given some basic education. All of the teachers were either trained at the Temple, or trained by someone who trained at the Temple. And unlike medieval Europe, everyone is taught to read the holy text, and the holy text is written in the vernacular. That goes a long way toward maintaining a consistent language. But the text does note that accents do vary considerably across the planet.

The other factor enforcing a single language, of course, is the exigencies of a fictional story.

I'll respond shortly to Jeff Engel's post. Just wanted to reply to you first.

There is a general agreement among linguists that not only the various standardized national dialects of English (Queen's, American, Australian etc) but also the regional dialects within the various English-majority countries continue to diverge, despite the cultural influence of Hollywood, the near-universal access and constant exposure to the internet, TV and radio, and the relatively cheap modes of mass long-distance transport. Oh, and despite literacy levels in the 90 percentiles.

SWM wrote:I do not deny that. That is why I added the line hinting that the real reason is because it's a fictional planet.

On the other hand, the teachers in those various regions are not all taught in the same institution, as they are on Safehold. All teachers on Safehold are in a single division of the CoGA, and most of those teachers are either taught at the Temple or taught by people who learned at the Temple. There is simply no comparable situation on the Earth.

JeffEngel wrote:I'm not clear at all on how that is going to work. They've got Writ-English. It's the language of the priesthood, it's the lingua franca, it's the language of primary education. The whole planet started writing and speaking it - just about the whole planet, with the exceptions of people who managed to evade Church-provided basic education, will still be able to understand it, speak it, and largely write and read it.

They may also have had regional dialects (or languages - staying neutral on that question here, if I can) that originated in Writ-English but have wandered from it in relative isolation.

Now they're back in gradually more frequent and intensive contact with the people out of different early enclaves. They're presumably able to communicate in Writ-English - and almost certainly have to - despite being also competent in their regional dialects/languages.

My assumption is that at that point, language isn't going to be drifting apart - it's going to be drifting around, with mutual intelligibility coming, if anything, closer out of exposure and the desire to communicate, built on the central pillar of Writ-English. Oh, there may be some drifting around there that accidentally runs in opposite directions sometimes, but there's enough contact with one another and Writ-English to keep communication working. There may be some efforts to use dialects within a culture specifically for class or ethnic identification, and that kind of deliberate isolation may make people speakers of alternative dialects that aren't mutually comprehensible, but that's against a background of shared competence in the public language. There's no need for street argot if the hated upper-crust cannot understand what you're saying anyway.

But it sounds like you're saying that dialects that have drifted a bit will drift away from one another when there is more contact. I'm not familiar with a reason why that should be the case.

hanuman wrote:

SWM wrote:I do not deny that. That is why I added the line hinting that the real reason is because it's a fictional planet.

On the other hand, the teachers in those various regions are not all taught in the same institution, as they are on Safehold. All teachers on Safehold are in a single division of the CoGA, and most of those teachers are either taught at the Temple or taught by people who learned at the Temple. There is simply no comparable situation on the Earth.

I have a serious problem with the argument that all teachers are trained at the Temple, but that's besides the point wrt this discussion. Unless a child is immersed all day every day in the language of the Church, that child's first language will be the vernacular. I do not argue that they will not learn the Church language, but that they'll do so as a second language reserved for a specific function - worship. Much like Old Slavonic has been for the Eastern Orthodox Slavic peoples for centuries.

DrakBibliophile wrote:My thought on Language is that there was always the Grand Vicar's "English" on Safehold.

This would be the Language that the "Upper Classes" (and those in close contact with the Upper Classes) would speak.

The "commoners" would speak what ever the vulgar/street "English" was where they lived.

The Grand Vicar's "English" would have changed over time because it was a "living language" but would be known all over Safehold. While there would be some variations in it, to be "truly" Upper Class a person would work to speak it as the Grand Vicar spoke it.

Of course, any "commoner" who traveled was likely used to learning the "local" speech and may have known (or learned) something of the Grand Vicar's "English".

hanuman wrote:

DrakBibliophile wrote:My thought on Language is that there was always the Grand Vicar's "English" on Safehold.

This would be the Language that the "Upper Classes" (and those in close contact with the Upper Classes) would speak.

The "commoners" would speak what ever the vulgar/street "English" was where they lived.

The Grand Vicar's "English" would have changed over time because it was a "living language" but would be known all over Safehold. While there would be some variations in it, to be "truly" Upper Class a person would work to speak it as the Grand Vicar spoke it.

Of course, any "commoner" who traveled was likely used to learning the "local" speech and may have known (or learned) something of the Grand Vicar's "English".

That sounds realistic. It might even be that the people themselves do not even recognize that the Writ's English and the spoken language of the street are different languages, since I do not imagine that linguistics has as yet emerged as a field of study.

JeffEngel wrote:Right. I can easily see that sort of difference among "Day of Creation" English; current "Grand Vicar's English" ("Langhorne's" English, Writ-English - Received Pronunciation for Safehold, anyway); and the working-class dialects of every region.

But I do think that competence in GV's English and the regional dialect both is far and away the norm rather than the exception (though one may have to be generous enough to make your grade-school teacher cry in describing one's GV's English as "competent" if you're a (e.g.) an Ithyrian freight cart drover).

You may also have less development and use of regional dialects in places where there is too frequently too much need of communication with people from distant parts: there, GV's English is the necessary lingua franca anyway, everyone gets frequent practice with it, accents can't be kept so strong that foreigners can't understand you, and what accents there are are buffeted around so much by so many others they melt into variations it would take a careful linguistic study to prize out. This would happen around the busiest sites for international (at least inter-regional) trade, like Tellesberg or Silk Town, perhaps Gorath, and from the specific intensity of pilgrimage, personnel shuffling, and use of GV's English, Zion.

And yes, it does have the specific, ironic result that Maikel Staynair and Zhaspyr Clyntahn could sit down and have a chat with some of the minimal instance of the other person sounding funny for people from different ends of Safehold... if we don't count on the content of the conversation.