Persistence of Language?

I've also wondered about how/why people's names are spelled the way they are. In OAR it is stated that the written language has stayed the same (but pronunciations differ which makes sense). So that means that these strangely spelled names were given by the Archangels. Why would they have done that do you suppose, rather than keep Mary as Mary? I'm no psychologist but I'm wondering if they were afraid of suppressed memories coming to the fore. But I guess that doesn't really make sense, because the spoken word could do that as well. I'm sure there is a reason, but I can't think of what it would be. Any thoughts?

Kizarvexis wrote:

evilauthor wrote:
(re: the different roots of the English language)

The root words all come from God and the Archangels. Don't question it.

Or rather, there's no point in questioning it. You might as well question why things fall when you drop them and why the sun shines.

I'm sure that works for 99.99% of people, but there are always those curious ones...

And after the Inquisition has a chat with them, that .01% has no more questions at all.

noblehunter wrote:I'm not sure linguistics as a discipline could even develop with only one language. It seems that to say interesting things about a language, you need other languages to compare it with.

saber964 wrote:Well considering how many words creep into english, I am not surprised. In every day conversations, I use words that are German French Italian Spanish and Russian in origin.

Russian? Which words did we steal from Russian?

Knout was originally Russian (from the pronunciation, it was borrowed before the Great Vowel shift).

TBird50 wrote:I've also wondered about how/why people's names are spelled the way they are. In OAR it is stated that the written language has stayed the same (but pronunciations differ which makes sense). So that means that these strangely spelled names were given by the Archangels. Why would they have done that do you suppose, rather than keep Mary as Mary? I'm no psychologist but I'm wondering if they were afraid of suppressed memories coming to the fore. But I guess that doesn't really make sense, because the spoken word could do that as well. I'm sure there is a reason, but I can't think of what it would be. Any thoughts?

I doubt the scriptures contain every name for every Adam and Eve, and when some of them wrote down their experiences they wouldn't necessary know how to spell their names correctly.

Also, due to dialectal drifts over time and not all people may be able to read and write properly you will get names that are mangled and pronounced strangely.

So I don't find it strange at all that we have strangely spelled names. Just consider your example of Mary, the root of the name is Miryam which some think is derived from old Egyptian Mry. How many variations of Mary do we have today? A multitude with local variations in different countries.

Also consider that sometimes nicknames become "real names". For example, Wendy was almost a non-existent name before Peter Pan was published and the story goes that Barrie (the author of Peter Pan) was called fwendy (friend) by a youngster which he then used in the story.

Even though you have the written word to stabilize a language, over time local variants and pronunciations will occur and the prime example is British English and American English.

Joat42 wrote:I doubt the scriptures contain every name for every Adam and Eve, and when some of them wrote down their experiences they wouldn't necessary know how to spell their names correctly.

Also, due to dialectal drifts over time and not all people may be able to read and write properly you will get names that are mangled and pronounced strangely.

Don't forget poor education also contributing to the mangled spelling of names. It's been mentioned a few times that Safehold literacy was on the rise even before Merlin showed up.

A person with little education learning to spell their name wrong early on is unlikely to change the way they spell their name even if their literacy improves later on. To them, THAT spelling is how their name is spelled, and no other spelling will ever feel right, even if the alternate spellings are pronounced exactly the same way.

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:Knout was originally Russian (from the pronunciation, it was borrowed before the Great Vowel shift).

Dare I ask why that's an every day word for you?

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:Knout was originally Russian (from the pronunciation, it was borrowed before the Great Vowel shift).

While "The Great Vowel Shift" is dated from the mid 1300s-end of 1600s, I would think pronunciation was more influenced by English's semi-recent Danish vocabulary import (700s-1100s) with acquired similar words like knot, knee, knife etc. According to the MW Dictionary, 'Knout' came in from Russian->French->English in the mid 1600s. The fun thing is that its derivation was from Old Norse which was ancestral to Danish and thus in the 'circle' of English derivation.

PS: If you don't like English now, just wait a few days!

Joat42 wrote:

TBird50 wrote:I've also wondered about how/why people's names are spelled the way they are. In OAR it is stated that the written language has stayed the same (but pronunciations differ which makes sense). So that means that these strangely spelled names were given by the Archangels. Why would they have done that do you suppose, rather than keep Mary as Mary? I'm no psychologist but I'm wondering if they were afraid of suppressed memories coming to the fore. But I guess that doesn't really make sense, because the spoken word could do that as well. I'm sure there is a reason, but I can't think of what it would be. Any thoughts?

I doubt the scriptures contain every name for every Adam and Eve, and when some of them wrote down their experiences they wouldn't necessary know how to spell their names correctly.

Also, due to dialectal drifts over time and not all people may be able to read and write properly you will get names that are mangled and pronounced strangely.

So I don't find it strange at all that we have strangely spelled names. Just consider your example of Mary, the root of the name is Miryam which some think is derived from old Egyptian Mry. How many variations of Mary do we have today? A multitude with local variations in different countries.

Also consider that sometimes nicknames become "real names". For example, Wendy was almost a non-existent name before Peter Pan was published and the story goes that Barrie (the author of Peter Pan) was called fwendy (friend) by a youngster which he then used in the story.

Even though you have the written word to stabilize a language, over time local variants and pronunciations will occur and the prime example is British English and American English.

Try the name Samantha, prior to the 1960's it was on the bottom of the list of popular girls names but after the TV show Bewitched aired it climbed into the top 100 and has stayed there. Or after Star Wars came out names like Luke Han Ben and Leia became really popular.

The real miracle is that after 1000 years that the languages are still mutually intelligable and not different languages with a common scrip where it is agreed that a particular glyph means cat despite being said quite differently a-la mandarin/cantonese.

The fact is that after this much time the languages of charis/chisholm/Harchong should be as different as Spanish, Italian and Roumanian (all latin derived)and well documented as different within a lot less than 1000 years of roman occupation. One thing that would really challenge the church is the writ being transcribed into these local dialects rather than Angelic (English) similar to the chalenge to the catholic church when the various reformers started translating the bible from latin into the various native languages such as english, flemish, german or french.

Silverwall wrote:The real miracle is that after 1000 years that the languages are still mutually intelligable and not different languages with a common scrip where it is agreed that a particular glyph means cat despite being said quite differently a-la mandarin/cantonese.

I think the mutual intelligibility can be pinned on two factors:

1) The CoGA's long standing policy of crossposting priests to nations they weren't born in. This more or less lets everyone on Safehold hear what the language is SUPPOSED to sound like.

2) The Writ's emphasis on making sure every Child of God is properly educated. Those same priests from other lands are also responsible for teaching their congregations "proper" speech.

Taken together, these two factors slow the evolution of accents into separate languages. Even then, there's been mention of regional accents - typically from people with poor, back-end-of-nowhere backgrounds, ie, the people least likely to see crossposted priests or get formal educations - are nearly unintelligible to more mainstream speakers.