Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "tongue"

Any self-respecting fantasy setting has numerous different languages and means of communication, split between different cultures and nations, but more often than not there's also the "common tongue" to act as a bridge - and to make things reasonably simple for the poor author to manage. Much as I'd like to avoid this trope and bring a great many different languages to bear instead, make it a common issue for travellers... well, my stories tend to be rather too inscrutable as it is, I've been told.



I'm dropping racial languages, though. All elves everywhere in the setting don't speak their own common "elvish". That's dumb.

So where did this common tongue come from? Many linguists suggest that it was first brought forth by an ancient and now forgotten civilization, immensely advanced and powerful, likely through means of genetic engineering: it's often encountered even in worlds that have never had any kind of outside contact in any recorded history. It's written as English for the convenience of our present-day readers and authors, but in truth it would resemble something like Esperanto - very easy to learn even in the unlikely case you were not born with innate understanding.

Strangely, it tends to also bring along an instinctive dislike - even fear and disgust - of other languages: any other spoken tongue tends to sound guttural and harsh and hideous in the ears (or other appropriate organs) of the speaker of the Language of Law. Even those that learned the language later in life, tend to pick up this prejudice. It takes some conscious effort to overcome. Why is that? Some have theorized that this ancient civilization was once at war with something else, something that simply would not accept taking up the common tongue: perhaps they instilled the subconscious hostility as a defense mechanism, or some manner of automated tribalistic response? Who can say.

Other things to note: the common tongue is spoken virtually everywhere in the galaxy of Ormuzd, whereas the other galaxy - Ahriman - has many places where it's never been heard before, especially at the farther edge. This suggests that the civilization in question would have originated from the former. More curious still, it tends to be associated with and accompanied by the vast and immensely powerful mechanical beings, the Lords of Law: beautiful and serene, golden and divine, ever the companions and guides of all civilization, ever the staunch opposers of taint and corruption. Meanwhile, in the opposite case you get the forces of Chaos: the black and ever-shifting beings, like viruses of all reality, always and everywhere seeking change and destruction for its own sake.



In certain less-developed worlds these forces are worshipped as gods. Even the more advanced civilizations sometimes do. But at the core of Khimari Confederate, computer scientists have found many similarities between their programs and the forces of Law, as well as many others between malign computer viruses and the forces of Chaos. Observations of some feral-world "sorcerers" also draw connections between their art, and instinctive computer programming.

Investigation continues.