the Latin language of Frostborn

Reader Brendan asks:

Just found your Frostborn series. Very well done, from what I’ve read so far.

I do have a question: is the “Latin” spoken in that universe actually something more like Brithenig? I’d think so, given how it had a thousand years to evolve, and it was spoken by British Celts/Romans.

The Latin spoken in Andomhaim would originally be the Latin of Late Antiquity mixed with numerous Celtic words, since the founders of Andomhaim came out of sub-Roman Britain. In the thousand years since, it has changed, mostly by addition of quite a lot of loanwords from orcish, dwarven, and dark elven. Especially orcish, since the humans of Andomhaim had the most contact with orcs so far. Like, a lot of the common curse words are actually orcish, since orcish is a more satisfying language in which to curse.

That said, when the founders of Andomhaim arrived from Earth, they had a complete library of Roman and Greek authors (including some now lost on Earth), so Andomhaim has preserved what they call “proper” Latin, or the Latin as written down in the Roman authors they brought from Earth. So an educated noble would be expected to converse in proper Latin without any orcish or dwarven loanwords turning up, and there would be a difference between the Latin of a noble and a commoner, since a commoner would simply use whatever word he had learned, whether Latin, orcish, or dwarven. That was why Morigna’s speech always sounded so archaic to everyone she met – she learned most of her Latin from Coriolus, who spoke “proper” Latin, and she learned orcish as a separate language, and she never mixed the two.

-JM