BY HERESIES DISTRESSED – snippet 32:
March, Year of God 893
.I.
Tellesberg Palace,
City of Tellesberg,
Kingdom of Charis
“I never imagined Admiral Rock Point was going to find this sort of evidence,” Sharleyan Ahrmahk said as she finished scanning the last page of the admiral’s report and laid it on the conference table in front of her.
“Neither did Clyntahn . . . or Graivyr, Your Majesty,” Baron Wave Thunder agreed. Cayleb’s old spymaster, who remained responsible for both espionage and security in the Kingdom of Charis — which was rapidly coming to be known as “Old Charis” in order to distinguish it from the new empire to which it had given its name — nodded at the sheet of paper the empress had just set aside. “Trust me, it never even occurred to them that this sort of documentary evidence might fall into anyone else’s hands, and especially not ours!”
There was considerably more satisfaction in Wave Thunder’s tone, and he smiled nastily.
“Not only that,” he continued, “but their reports about the Massacre are only the tip of the iceberg, Your Majesty. We got all of the Church’s files from Ferayd, and they were so confident that they didn’t take even the most rudimentary of precautions. We have complete copies of half a dozen of their most secure ciphers now. Obviously, they’re going to change them as quickly as they can, but it’s going to take time. And even after they change them, there’s no telling what older documents we might come into possession of. And that doesn’t even begin to consider all of the other documents and files the Admiral’s shipped home.”
He shook his head, his expression almost reverent.
“We’re going to need months just to sort through it all and catalogue it. I can already tell you, though, that there’s an incredible amount of . . . potentially embarrassing information in here.”
“I realize that, My Lord,” Sharleyan said. “At the moment, however, I’m afraid my own attention is rather more sharply focused on those reports about the Massacre. And on the consequences for the report writers.”
“Admiral Rock Point carried out his instructions from you and His Majesty to the letter, Your Majesty,” Rayjhis Yowance pointed out. The Earl of Gray Harbor was the first councilor of Old Charis, and was clearly on the way to becoming first councilor of the Empire of Charis, as well. Some people might have expected all of that to mean Cayleb had left him home in order to be certain Sharleyan didn’t get carried away by an overly inflated notion of just how much authority she truly possessed. No one seated in this council chamber was likely to make that mistake, however, and Gray Harbor’s voice was both respectful and perhaps just the tiniest bit apprehensive.
“Don’t worry, My Lord.” Sharleyan smiled at him, and that smile was cool. “I agree that the Admiral did precisely what he was instructed to do. And I approve his actions completely. I can see why Cayleb and the rest of Charis have so much faith in his judgment. I simply never anticipated that he would have such clear cut evidence upon which to proceed. Or, for that matter, that so many of Clyntahn’s inquisitors would stand self-convicted.”
“With all due respect, Your Majesty, I think that if anyone had anticipated that they would, those instructions might have been somewhat more limited,” another voice said, and she turned her head to look at the speaker.
Paityr Sellyrs, Baron White Church, sounded worried, almost querulous. In fact, Sharleyan thought sourly behind her calm expression, he sounded downright whiny. White Church was the Keeper of the Seal for Old Charis, and he had quite a few useful political allies here in Tellesberg, which she suspected helped to explain how he’d come to hold his present office. If she had anything to say about it, however (and she did), he would not be the Empire’s Keeper of the Seal.
“I disagree, My Lord,” she said now, calmly but with absolutely no hesitation. “If there had been a hundred guilty men — or a thousand — and not sixteen, the sentence would have been no less just, and its execution would have been no less appropriate. I’m surprised, My Lord. I am not dismayed.”
“Your Majesty,” White Church said, “I’m not suggesting you should be dismayed. Nor am I suggesting that these men, priests or not, didn’t amply merit the punishment visited upon them. I’m only saying that to effectively cast the heads of no less than sixteen consecrated priests at the Group of Four’s feet may not have been the most productive thing we could have done.”
Gray Harbor started to say something, then paused as the empress smiled affably at White Church. Given that smile, and what he’d seen so far of this young woman, he rather doubted that his intervention was either necessary or desirable.
Sharleyan considered White Church, her head cocked slightly to one side, for two or three heartbeats. It wasn’t so much what he’d said, as the way he’d said it. She’d heard that same patient tone of voice before, although not recently; the survivors among her councilors had learned better from the unfortunate fates of those who had adopted it. She watched him, recognizing the patronizing edge of his own smile, and wondered if he had the least idea she could see it. Probably not, she decided. He wasn’t actually stupid enough to deliberately provoke her, after all. That, unfortunately, wasn’t quite the same thing as saying he was smart, however.
He’s Cayleb’s Keeper of the Seal, Sharley, she reminded herself. You don’t know all the reasons Cayleb might have chosen him. And even if you did, you aren’t the one who appointed him to the Council. So do you really want to do this?
Yet even as she asked herself that question, she knew the answer. It was the same answer Mahrak Sahndyrs had taught a frightened girl-child so many years before. She could rule, or she could simply reign. She’d made that choice when she was barely twelve, and Cayleb Ahrmahk hadn’t married her because she was weak.
“Allow me to explain to you, My Lord,” she said, speaking coolly and precisely, “why your concern is groundless.”
White Church seemed to stiffen in his chair as her tone registered, but she continued as if she hadn’t noticed.
“As you may recall, we’ve already informed the Group of Four, and the Council of Vicars, for that matter, that we reject their authority. That we know them for who and what they are, and that we intend to hold them accountable for their crimes against not simply the people of Safehold, but against Mother Church, and even God himself. Are you suggesting that, having so informed them, the proper course of action when men of proven guilt — men whose written reports, whose own testimony, shows the pride and satisfaction they took in ordering the murder of children — fall into our hands, is that we shouldn’t execute justice upon them?”
“Your Majesty, I only –”
“Please answer my question, My Lord.” Sharleyan’s voice was noticeably frostier. “Is this a time to demonstrate weakness? To suggest not simply to the Group of Four, but to all of Safehold, that we do not truly have the strength of our own beliefs? The confidence of our own principles?”
White Church’s expression was acutely unhappy, and his eyes flitted around the council table, as if seeking someone to save him from the empress’ ire. What he saw were a great many eyes which obviously agreed with her, and his adams apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“No, Your Majesty. Of course not!” he said.
“I’m glad we find ourselves in agreement on such a fundamental principle, My Lord,” she told him, holding him impaled upon her hard, brown gaze. “I love the shedding of blood no more than the next man or woman,” she continued. “Moreover, the Emperor and I have made it as clear as humanly possible that the Empire of Charis will not simply murder people because they disagree with us, or because they are opposed to the Church of Charis and our conflict with the Group of Four. But the corollary of that must be equally clear.” She released him from her gaze at last in order to let her eyes sweep around the rest of the table. “We will punish the guilty when their guilt be proven, and the vestments they have perverted and betrayed will not protect them. Unlike them, we will not shed innocent blood, but we will hold them accountable for all of the blood they have shed. Is there some reason anyone seated around this table has failed to grasp that essential point of our policy?”
Rawr.
Always such interesting chapter beginnings on a Friday. Why must I wait 3 days for the next tortuous snippet? :)
From the book blurb:
“And so Empress Sharleyan faces the the great challenge of her life unaware of all that task truly entails…or of how the secrets the man who loves her cannot share may threaten all they have achieved between them…and her own life.”
So is this book about Cayleb’s conquests or Sharleyan’s problems on the home front? Was that short bit about her being a great shot slipped in to forewarn us that she will have to shoot her way out of trouble?
Another Weber heroine? And here I thought Nimue was it!
Ohh I love scenes like this!
One more mild rant:
I know the old saw about consistency being etc. But if the names of the people in this book have suffered linguistic drift over the 800 or so years since the landing, then why hasn’t the rest of the language? Wouldn’t it be fun to try to decipher a book written with all those y’s and h’s instead of i’s and r’s and what have you?
Yea Buddy, I am in love with this gal already. Wish I had one in real life!!! :-)
@5: I thought about that for quite a while. I think that it somewhere in OAR says that the written language has actually stayed quite constant, it is only the spoken version which has drifted, so that should not be the reason. Rather I think it is a small mistake in the unauthorised reprogramming of the colonists by Langhorne & company – they accidentally deleted the spelling of people’s names together with the metric system or whatever else they removed.
It is a bit like the alien hitchhiker Ford Prefect in Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy – a hint that somebody made a quite embarassing mistake when you get to think about it!
Actually the so-called language drift is deeply unconvincing.
When Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror were around their names were spelt (but for the Anglo-Saxon grammatical endings that were used on some documents) in almost the same way they are spelt now. It’s a tad strange that Safehold, with no foreign language influences, printing, a single language and no technological change, is less stable than England over a longer period. It’s also a tad strange that the whole planet has nasalised at the same rate and in the same direction. And it’s really irritating to read.
Dude! Dont forget Safeholdian English also the language of continents, why the British English is the language of a tiny island. Nay, a portion of that tiny island. You are complaining that a provincial language is more stable than an international one?
There’re plenty of reasons explained the nasal thing (angels’s voice, anyone?).
More than likely, the entirety of the language has drifted – but for the sake of both author and reader sanity, only the names are being changed to show said drift.
I moved and have no clue where my copy of OAR went off to, but can someone bring up the bit when Nimue woke up in the cave about her research into Safehold? I think I recall something about lingustical drift.
Remeber, this is seven hundred years with limited writing, literacy, across an entire planet. I’m surprised there hasn’t been enough linguistical drift to allow for more than just regional dialects.
I noted above the mention that the spelling of names in the time of Edward the conferssor and William the Counquor were almost the same. What? The name used by the people of England have been spelt multiple way over the year just one example Henry II wife Elenor was also spelled Alinor.
William name has obviously changed lol, He was the Duke of Normandy, not English at all. In fact all the way up to King John time most of the Nobles of England did not even speak English they were still claiming to be Normans and spoke French.
My ancester he who is credited with being the father of American “Fuquas” was Guillaume FOUQUET his eldest son who was name for him and his wife grandfather was William Humphreys FUQUA.There are ten geneneration between me and him and five of those were named William.
Guillaume being the French William lol, so I am sure William the Conquorer name has been changed over the years to fit the English spelling of his name.
The original Fouquet has more then fifty derivitave names in public use today in USA. And yes one of them is Fuckitt, lol.
I think the feedback on language drift and names was more interesting than the snippet, which was as suprising as cold in Frostbite Falls Mn.
That is two nice filetings in three chapters. At least she was satisfied with a couple ounces of skin, rather than a pund of flesh.
J
My issue with liguistic drift is subtler than what has been mentioned and a bit heart-wrenching. White Church spoke in clearly understood English when integrity demands a badly understood French rendition of English. Too bad when David set this world up he foreclosed that possibility.
Still to tease us poor readers with a name, place the holder in a position of the bafoon, yet be unable to deliver the coup de grace ligustically is a sad thing indeed.
Peter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
This happened over a period of time of 400 years, starting about 800 years ago. And it really screwed up the English language too. Try reading something written in English from even 600 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English, at the c. 1400 section), and you’ll see just how much this language has changed since then.
Point is, I agree with #10. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more linguistic drift on Safehold (though some of it is undoubtedly due to Weber wanting to make sure us 20th century humans can read what he’s writing).
David said, in one of his recent book tour appearances, that he regretted introducing the name mangling now, but that he was stuck with it.
@11 While Eleanor of Aquitaine was also known as Aliénor d’Aquitaine that was not her name in English. Ditto Guillaume le Conquérant. And while for the first half of the time period I’ve mentioned English was restricted to the British Isles for the second half it was an international language.
Come on folks, this is fluff not history with a capital H. I agree the drift, or lack there of, is not particularly convincing, but if you want to slog through obtuse language pick up a copy of Beowulf in old English. For me, I want my SF/Fantasy readable without a thesaurus…;-)
Ian
History doesn’t repeat itself but it sure does rhyme a lot…
On that note, History isn’t very creative…
Very few SF writers really get linguistics and linguistic shift right. Webber isn’t one of them. His strengths lie elsewhere. In 700 years, by all rights, the language should have split into daughter families each with their own set of mutually unintelligible daughter tongues with their own dialects. Take Latin, for instance. Between 500 A.D. and 1200 A.D. we already see Galo-Romance, Ibero- Romance and Eastern Romance clearly split off from one another and proficiency in the mother tongue (Latin) having to be acquired through years of study due to changes in vocabulary, syntax, morphology and grammar. by this time, if a person from Turin wanted to meet with another from Burgos and yet another from Marseille, they’d need to pick a common language to understand one another because they wouldn’t be able to converse in the language of their respective region, Castillian, a form of Italian, and Occitan. I think it takes someone who is at least bilingual if not multilingual to properly give linguistic shift its due in a book. I think Webber is a monolingual English speaker.
@10
A quote from OAR:
“For the moment, they were concentrating on recording the local languages and dialects. Without the PICA data interface, Nimue was going to have to learn the hard way to speak the considerably altered version of Standard English spoken by present-day Safeholdians. It looked as if the written language and grammar had stayed effectively frozen, but without any form of audio recording capability, the spoken form’s pronunciation had shifted considerably … and not always in the same directions in all locations. Some of the dialects were so different now as to be almost separate tongues, despite the fact that virtually every word in them was spelled the same way.”
was this what you were talking about?
Weber does know one other language…sign language. His mother was deaf.
Evolution of languages
One of my hobbies is studying this, primarily with respect to English, but also considering a number of other languages, and a number of comments here are wrong. So I thought I’d throw my tuppence in here.
Historically the critical time in the evolution of the English language was the 9th and 10th centuries. Specifically, the Danish invasion/settlement. This resulted in a mixture of Danish speaking and Anglo-Saxon villages living, in practical terms, cheek by jowl. This put two related Germanic languages in close contact. The result was what linguists call a creole, which lost the strong inflections so characteristic of the other Germanic languages. (Almost all noun genders, verb endings, etc. were lost; and the formalisations of sentence structure were much weakened.) The creole also, surprisingly, resulted in a large increase in vocabulary, as similar words from the two languages diverged in meaning (e.g. Norse Deyia & Saxon storfa, both originally meaning die, evolved to death and starvation)
Then, before the creole developed it’s own complexities, the Norman invasion occurred. The new creole was hit by a new language, of a different language group, at just the right time to assimilate words. French royal described the English king, and the English cow was cooked, and served as the French boeuf (beef). The vocabulary increased again, but the language structure remained largely unchanged.
Spelling, however was not formalised at this time. An important tool in determining the change in languages comes from the spelling/misspelling in handwritten documents. Before printing, spelling followed pronunciation. Spelling was “frozen” with the introduction of printing. After printing, pronunciation changes did not affect “correct” spelling. The early German and English bibles were key influences in the creation of “correct” spellings.
Another key factor in the evolution of languages is how people pronounce words. For unknown reasons, populations change the way they pronounce their language. One classical occurrence of this was “the great vowel shift”, where the pronunciation of long vowels changed in English. (I know of similar shifts in German and Dutch, and have read further about other shifts) Pronunciation shifts have continued since spellings were frozen by printing, which is one of the reasons why spelling fails to be phonetic. More importantly, printing entered England during one of these pronunciation shifts. In practise, the spellings that were frozen by printing are a mixture of “pre” shift and “post shift”. (e.g. night and knight were pronounced “as spelt”. The spellings were frozen, while the pronunciations changed.)
The other important factor is how “quickly” languages have evolved. Despite their languages diverging over a thousand years ago, Poles and Russians can understand each other’s language to some degree. Few native English speakers can understand one of Chaucer’s tales (although they can probably get a sense of the meaning. English appears to evolve faster. One supposition is that this is because it still retains many of the features of a creole.
So how does this relate to Safehold?
Safehold appears to have started from a monolingual culture. I have not seen any reference to printing as a permitted/proscribed technology, but any initial distribution (by the angels) of bibles in the vernacular language (rather than a fossilised Latin used only by a priesthood) combined with the position of the church within society should largely act to freeze spelling across the world, even if scribes have to copy the originals by hand.
Pronunciations will change. With relatively slow communications, this would have allowed for language drift, and if the holy writ was not in the vernacular, could have diverged into separate languages.
I would suggest that an appropriate model might be the English speaking countries before the time of radio. A largely common written language, but with different accents and word choice. A world where it may be difficult for a serf in Harchong to understand the pronunciation a farmer in Charis, but the literate classes, in particular the priesthood, all use the same spellings, taken from the writings of the angels and the adams. (Just like I, as a Londoner, find it difficult to understand broad “Geordie”, but have no difficulty in reading the front page of the local paper.)
While linguistic drift may be an interesting subject, I find the capture of Church ciphers even more significant. It’s impossible to express how important it was for the United States and the United Kingdom during WWII that they had broken both the main elements of the Japanese Code and that they had also solved most of the riddles of the Enigma encryption devices.
As an example, the Battle of Midway, which was the turning point in the Pacific war, would not have happened the way it did, had it not been for the code breakers stationed in Hawaii. Even then, luck played a significant role in the Allied victory.
The breaking of the Japanese Code was doubly effective, from what I’ve read, because the thinking members of Japanese intelligence did not hold sufficient rank to dare even suggest to their superiors that their beloved codes could be compromised over time.
Here, every Charis victory can be, attributed at least in part, to superior intelligence. Breaking the codes adds to Charis’ intelligence advantages. I just wonder if that advantage will be kept up over time, or whether someone with a good idea who’s on the Church’s side will actually be listened to by someone who matters.
For example, the one member of the “Axis” navy in this series, Thisk, who knows enough to want to build galleons instead of galleys, has no voice that can be heard, at present. Similarly, Church elders have been so accustomed to the inviolability of their communications that their thinking will be inflexible, and they will be resistant to changes, even in thought processes, perspectives and outlooks. As another example, The Church’s plans to make the hanged priests scapegoats may not work if Charis can produce documents showing Clyntahn’s direct participation in plans to turn the “seizure” into a massacre, but none of the church elders seem to have thought of that possibility.
How these issues will play out will, from a long term point of view, be overshadowed only by military victories and the success and failure of assassination and sabotage efforts.
All the best,
X
@[several of the above] Even in the less-than-certain event that English remains the international language and becomes the world language before the colonization of other planets, by the time of the colonization of Safehold it will probably have changed almost, if not entirely, beyond our recognition; we probably couldn’t converse with any Safeholder from any time in the 800 years. It is standard and appropriate to have the dialog of any novel in the language of the time and place of publication. We all know, or should know, that this makes the novel much more readable, and indeed, how many of us would care to wade thru, e.g., Eric Flint’s wonderful 1632 and its sequels if the words of Gustaf Adolf appeared in Swedish, those of Wilhelm Wettin and others in German, those of Richelieu in French, those of Fredrik Hendrik in Dutch, etc. Even Oliver Cromwell and others speaking Elizabethan English would be a problem.
And SURPRISE!! If & when BHD is published in Germany, the dialog will be in German, and in France, in French, etc.
So let’s give David Weber enough slack to make BHD as delightful as BSRA and the Honorverse and others.
21: That is interesting. I didn’t know that. I don’t know if that allows him to envision spoken shifts in the sound though. Does ASL have accents and regional quirks? Fascinating. 22: So good to encounter a fellow hobby linguist. I used the Romance languages as my example because they came from a well-established parent with a long literary tradition to anchor the language and still, we have the situation I described. English’s story is so unusual and its change so meteoric that I didn’t think it fit this situation even if it is the language that was introduced to Safehold because it would have arrived there with strong literary traditions and a long-established vocabulary from which to start it’s divergence. I’m surprised English didn’t take on the role of a liturgical language with vernaculars springing up here and there, most especially in island nations separated by vast distances from the mainland. I would imagine the vernacular of Zion’s upper classes to be the closest and least changed with the aforementioned serfs speaking amuch more varriant form if not something that has crossed the divide between dialect and language.
23: None is disparaging Webber and noone expects the situation you envision with multilingual dialogues. The odd word in another language here and there (explotives, endearments, proverbs, ETC.) spices up a novel though. Look at the Tolkien books or the Liaden books or the Merchant Princes series.
@22 wyrm: That was fascinating. Thanks you. I am always amazed at what happens to language, and I am fascinated by the “border’ languages like Catalan and the dialects like (sorry about this) Portugese. I have been amazed to listen to Italian an friend speaking Italian to a waiter in Barcelona and having the waiter reply in Spanish and they each understood the other. And I love listening to non-native English speakers speaking good English but being unable to pronounce, for example, the “th” sound. One gets “d” or “z” or even something else. I once listened to some people in Heathrow waiting for a ‘plane to Budapest speak to each other in what we thought was bad Russian combined with Spanish combined with English. It wasn’t bad Russian, it was Polish and they were Poles who had escaped the Soviets to settle in Cuba and later fled Cuba to settle in the USA.
So I think that it is correct that DW made a mistake, but for my money he can correct it any time he wants to. And I blame the editors at TOR for allowing it to happen.
Finally, I really think that Shalayen sounds a lot like Honor Harrington in this snippet.
On a side note, I understand the only successfully sustained conquest of England by William I from Normandy was counterpoised by several ironies involved in his death… namely his rupturing of his own organs attacking the French later and a subsequent fire at his funeral along with his body being to bloated too fit in his coffin (in some tales it explodes). Seems that invading England would be a curse for victors as well as losers, but then again there’s only the one case to go by…
I wonder how Charis’ secular establishment of the due process of law will affect Church standings… Weber didn’t say anything that I can recall about how the judiciary systems of Safehold work.
William the Conquereror wasn’t the only one to invade England or, more precisely, Great Britain. From 793 to 1066, the Danes were doing it in what were first small forays and then in larger waves. They even put a king on the throne. Before that, it was the Angles, Frissians, Jutes and Saxons in the mid 5th century on up to the early 7th. Before that, it was the Romans. Before that, it was the Celts. As for the curse, seems the invaders did rather well. Caesar went on to do great things in Rome as did the ones who came back and finished the job. Hengist and HOrsa did quite well for themselves too.
And then there was that other William; you know, the Orange one. He had a very successful invasion too, although that’s more due to James II’s screwing the pooch in every way imaginable than his own martial prowess.
@20
I must disagree. There is a dominant unifying factor in the form of a single written language, coupled with sufficient trade to keep the pot stirred. The Church is also a considerable factor, serving as the template of proper speech. To get complete language breakdown, you need more issolation. I would concede that there would be a fortune in local idiom, to the point of street language being nearly unintelligble from place to place. But there is one trade langauage and one scholarly language. They will serve the function that Martin Luther’s works did for the German language group.
J
The relevant point here is that it was a big mistake to replace all the vowels in the names with “y”s. It makes it much more difficult for readers.
I also wish that Weber would get over his love of titles. It’s hard to remember that John Doe is also Baron White Rock, especially if the same person is also called by a functional title as well. It’s obvious the man loves the institution of the titled aristocracy, but why does he have to introduce it in all his books?
My wife’s family come from southern England and when following up her family tree we had endless trouble because of different spelling of her ancestors’ surnames in official documents from the mid 19th to early 20th century. Jefferys, Jeffery, Jefferies, Geoffery, Geofferys, then on to single Js, I instead of E, and so forth. This in a supposedly literate society that had used printing for centuries.
In this universe, the Houseman name has finally been redeemed from its disgrace in the Honorverse, but Peter Sellers? Ouch.
re #25 I wish MWW was a bit more exact. In Europe at this time many “ciphers” were “nomenclators”: essentially codes in which numbers stood for some unit larger than a single letter. ’99’ might mean, “Charis” or “bring one division” or “Clyntahn’s latest decision” or anything at all that diplomats might want to say to each other. True ciphers were often embedded into the books as well to allow anything to be said but compression was considered to be important and did serve a much-needed security function over the ciphers available at the time. The Great Cipher of Louis 14 nomenclated primarily at the syllable level. This confused people greatly for a long time especially as there were other embedded security features.
Nomenclators could get quite sophisticated but Merlin could easily teach the necessary cryptanalytic methods to bright students any time he had a few spare weeks. (!) They’d be slow at first, but they’d get their bearings soon enough. And I cannot believe that OWL doesn’t have a cryptanalytic .dll hanging around the memory store somewhere that would help Merlin give them initial “breakthroughs” they could then go on to exploit.
Such true ciphers as there were then tended to be simple Caesar or simple polyalphabetic systems. Merlin could teach any bright student the necessary methods to break these in a day or less. Even without Arabic numerals!
On the language, there’s another thing to consider. Most of the people we have been seeing are educated men and women. They’d know what I’d call ‘Church English’. While there will be different favors of Church English, it would be more likely to be understandable in the ‘halls of power’ every where on Safehold.
While some of the Guardsmen may not learned Church English at an early age, they would have to learn it when dealing with their higher ups.
Plus a version of Church English will be the language of trade. I suspect that more people than average on Charis will know the trade Church English. Of course, people in port cities on Safehold would also have a higher than average number of speakers of trade Church English.
IMO seperate languages descended from Federation English will be mostly among the lower classes far from outside contact. The higher classes they know would speak Church English and the ‘lower class’ language.
@26 Alejo: Of course “noone [sic] expects the situation you envision with multilingual dialogues.” That scenario was intended as the reductio ad absurdum of Robert’s (@5) complaint that “. . . if the names of the people in this book have suffered linguistic drift over the 800 or so years since the landing, then why hasn’t the rest of the language?” Not that Robert was wrong; certainly linguistic drift would have occurred thruout the language, but the sample Weber displays is quite sufficient to indicate it without driving it down our throats, which would have turned a delightful story into an utter bore. I just don’t think it is worth carping about.
@37 I agree. Maybe the Church should have added another Book to the Writ containing a dictionary if Weber didn’t want at least a little language shift.
@34 Peter Sellers? The late English actor/comedian or the living artist/director/designer?
Is it a hilarious pink panther movie or an off-the-wall production of Wagner’s Ring that DW has on his mind?
Oh comon… Lynyl Mandryke would have made a better homage to Peter Sellers and sounded archaic enough to fit with the medieval motif… :)
“Pronounced LY’-nyrd Skyn-nyrd”
Nice!
Byll Clyntahn. Mynyka Lywynsky. Yd Yshnyr. Kyn Ley. Clynt Ystwyd. Chyr. Alfryd Fynzyrylly. Jyon Myrwyd Clyys. Jyon Smyth (for anonymity). Sir Roderick Ponce von Fontlebottom the Magnificent Bastard.
Wonder if we’ll see “Gyry Lee Wynryb” (Singer for Rush) make an appearance in name.
IMO the language shift is believable due to the following reasons:
British English and American English are considered by linguists to be two separate languages as the languages have many completely different words for the same things, enough to cause occasional confusion. ie. Truck vs. lorry, hood vs. bonnet, trunk vs boot. Then there are the words that are the same but have different meanings such as rubber (condom vs. eraser) and we all know about chips. And if a brit visits the US he had better remember not say that he ‘knocked someone up’. I think that Aussie English is also becoming a separate language over time, they certainly have developed a distinct accent. Even here in the States, how we use our language has changed, it’s tempo and the words that we choose to use. Reading the speeches of Lincoln, Douglas and others just a century and a half ago and you know instantly that it was never written by a modern person.
So, for me the language drift is entirely possible. Here’s a question that I don’t thing has been addressed, while there was a standard language used by everyone in the Federation, had all other languages, dialects and accents been eliminated? If not, and people of similar backgrounds had been grouped togther during colonization then these accents could easily been kept and contributed to language drift.
I got this information from a very interesting PBS / BBC show called “The Story of the English Language” There was a followup to it done a couple of years ago. One additional detail that stuck with me. English has almost double the vocabulary of any other language.
#32 “..It’s hard to remember that John Doe is also Baron White Rock, especially if the same person is also called by a functional title as well. ”
I agree completely. I’m good with keeping track of charcters, but there have been times when I’ve had to read a section a couple of times when Weber starts with the persons name, then changes it to his title or rank. Let me clarify, it’s not the titles so much, it’s changing from just title to name to rank. It’s like keeping track of 3 people but remembering that all three refer to just one person.
One thing that I liked about this scene is how she detects and smacks down that patronizing councelman. It shows the dynamic of how a man can subtly treat a woman as less capable. It can be easy to miss. Subtle prejudice is much harder to detect and change than overt.
Maybe around the time Charis hits an industrial Enlightenment Era titles will become less important or switch from places to roles (i.e. Secretary of Treasury is a more important title than Baron of Sysqytch)
At some point, it may occur to her to wonder how the Admiral found so much material so quickly and easily. Of course, she may need something else to make her suspicious. Learning that her shift and corset are bulletproof might have that effect.
The three name issue is no different than the three name issue in traditional Russian novels, in which every character, more or less, has three names, a formal name, a given name and patronymic, and a nickname.
I’m sure that Admiral Rockpoint knowing to search for the documents and where would be a point of contention, but what he found can be attributed, and was, to the overconfidence of the Inquisition. Now, the pace at which their cyphers can be cracked and whether or not such a thing occurs consistently swiftly in the future might raise her curiosity, but as a head of state she might not think of the little details that Merlin hands out to her staff without her knowledge. Cayleb isn’t an expert on cannon or SNARCs, but he knows what they can be used for. Sharleyan at some point will have to be brought into the truth, so really what she does without the truth is more about her character than any indirect influence from Merlin’s aid. As for having her shot at… who knows.