Uppity Elven Language, Err, what does this sound like? Options

[Demosthenes]

@Prosper:
Re: my .sig, that would indeed be a possible translation. A more apt one would be "There's no sore arse like your own sore arse".
I'm just being a smart-aleck and perverting the well known Irish saying, "Nil aon tintean mar do thintean fein" (There's no hearth like your own hearth), because they sound similar enough in Conamara Irish that one is clearly a play on words of the other...

It beats trying to be profound. :D

To make an attempt at being on-topic:
Regardless of who introduced Sperethiel, or what influences other languages and geography had upon it, a native speaker of Sperethiel would likely have a distinctive accent - at least, one recognisable to other speakers of Sperethiel.
All languages have a limited set of sound building-blocks (phonemes), and different languages tend to employ similar sounds in different ways (eg the "gn" sound when it appears in English and Italian {not a very fair comparison I know}).

As a result, your native language(s) greatly influence how you pronounce other languages, especially if you're trying to speak a language which has sounds which your native language does not employ, examples:

Italians have difficulties with the English "H" when it is aspirated ("hair")
Speakers of Japanese are infamous for their confusion of "r" and "l" sounds
Many English-language speakers have difficulty with alternative pronunciations of "CH" (how many of you can pronounce "Loch" without giving yourself a sore throat?).
[end of even more thread derailing]

Apologies for the long post. ;)

[Ancient History]

s'alright. And for the record, Sperethiel is "officially" descended from "Precursor Sperethiel" (catchy, ain't it?), mainly because we don't know what the more complicated precursor language calls itself.

[LaughingTiger]

[Prospero]

Fair enough. For some reason I thought there was some Finnish grammatical influence in there. I know he plundered a few languages for things he liked and kind of mashed it all together like only a linguistic genius could. :spin: BTW, as far as I'm aware Icelandic hasn't changed all that significantly in the past few hundred years. Apparently school kids in Iceland don't have much trouble reading the old sagas in the original, so it can't be all that different.

@Demosthenes: Right... I knew that sounded familiar for some reason... :)

Also, while I agree that your native language influences how you pronounce other languages, that's only because of the accent you develop when you learn it. If Sperethiel were "rediscovered" in a book and everybody but a few priveledged people learned it from a book, with little or no input on how it should be pronounced, there would be no Sperethiel accent. The general populace would know how to pronounce the phonemes correctly, so they'd fall back on their own native langauges for that knowledge. And they'd pass that down to whomever they taught, presumeably, until actual "correct" pronounciation was taught en masse at some point (if ever).

Which is how we get, for example, an Irish accent or an Indian (as in India)accent. Yeah, everybody's saying the same words with the same letters, but different sounds are coming out of their mouths. It would be like that, but worse, with Sperethiel.

[Demosthenes]

WARNING! Long rambling post ahead!!!

[Ancient History]

Actually, Precursor Sperethiel is not Earthdawn-era Sperethiel. Precursor Sperethiel is a more complex language of which Sperethiel is something like a degraded form.

This is a poor comparison, but compare Latin during the height of Rome to the doggerel Latin used in the Courts of Europe during the Middle Ages.

It would be more appropriate to consider Sperethiel as a (mostly) dead language undergoing a modern revival, considering it hasn't had more than a few dozen speakers for five millenia or so.

Other languages in ED were known to be descended from or incorporate Sperethiel words. I can't say about Sperethiel itself, but the loaning would likely have happened pre-Scourge. Elves are very picky about the "purity" of the language or some such drek.

[Prospero]

[Ancient History]

In the Earthdawn Era, the Elven Court was the standard by which Sperethiel was set. Theran was Sperethiel that absorbed a lot of foreign words and evolved away from Sperethiel proper for over a millenia. Still, someone familiar with Sperethiel could grasp the gist of someone speaking Theran.

In the Sixth World, it is not recorded which Tir began speaking Sperethiel first, or indeed when Sperethiel exactly came on the scene and how.

Tir Tairngire is probably the closest home to "true" Sperethiel, as they apparently don't have the regional-based dialects of Gaelic-Sperethiel and Eireann-Sperethiel in Tir na nOg.

[/edit]

Oh, Hell, I'm changing this anyways:

[kevyn668]

@ Prospero:
So what you're saying is I can roleplay an elf with magical abilities but he can't have an elvish accent?

Way to rain on my parade, chummer. :P

[Demosthenes]

@Kevyn:

No, what he's saying is that he could have an Elven accent, just that it's not very likely.

Of course, neither is a perfectly rational person with excellent interpersonal skills deciding to commit horrid crimes for nuyen (unless you count being a lawyer...)

Natives of the Tirs (and by god, I hate the people who came up with that wonderful bastardisation...but what you gonna do...) would certainly have their own peculiar accents, which most people would interpret as "Elven"...and your character could always have had parents who were fanatics of racial purity/Sperethiel Nazis and absolutely insisted he spoke Sperethiel all the time at home, at school, everywhere else.
There's plenty of people like that in Ireland (if not quite as bad on the Nazi side of things...)

@Prosper:
That was more or less what I meant, yes. As I said, it's been some time since I looked up my linguistics stuff (several years, actually).

As far as pronunciation goes...I've never found it that hard to fake being a native German speaker. I can quite easily convince a lot of people that I'm from Salzburg. The only thing that gives me away is that I speak too correctly...

On the other hand, I studied German for more than ten years, had native German speakers as teachers, spent a year in Salzburg, and spent more than a month of that year doing nothing but mimicking the sound-changes in the local dialect. It was great fun.

I still can't pull it off in Italian though, even though I'm fairly fluent. Not enough practise, and not enough effort put in. :(

@AH:
Thanks. :)

@All:
I'd just like to thank the lot of ye...this little thread gave me the germ of an idea which I'm going to spring on my players the next time I need a little IE (take your pick of meaning) paranoia... :P

The government of Tir Tairngire (I wonder if anyone really wants to try and pronounce that according to the gaelic pronunciation...most Irish people would have a fit just looking at it...) hires the runners for a little job.
They need to stop a certain well-known academic from publishing his latest screed on the origins of Sperethiel... [Insert reasons according to the flavour of paranoia that suits you best] :spin:

[Prospero]

@ kevyn668: Ain't I a stinker? Demothenes hit it more on the head - you could have a real elven Sperethiel-speaker accent, but it just isn't all that likely.

But Demosthenes' post gave me a kind of interesting idea: you could easily have a "fake" elven accent. I mean, what is an "elven accent" anyway? Really, accent is (partially) a social construct. It identifies you with a particular group (often whether you want to be or not, hence diction and pronounciation classes). So Tir subjects, at least the ones who are proud of it, might try and purposefully distinguish their language from outsiders' - slipping in occasional Sperethiel words, maybe changing pronounciation here and there on a few words, changing the grammar a bit... And their friends and spouses (and, especially their kids) might pick up on it. The change couldn't be huge, but enough, after a few decades, to distinguish their speech from non-Tiran speech, like Canadian vs. American accent: it's not much, but it is there and it can be noticeable. Wouldn't that, then, be seen as an "Elvish accent"?

Of course, you can just throw all this out the window, screw linguistic realism and just make a character that has an elven accent. Whatever's fun. For me, debating linguistics and trying to figure out the impact and limitations of a reintroduced, long-almost-dead langauge is really fun.

@ Demosthenes:

[Nikoli]

Coulda swore Sperethiel srang up as a result of I. Elves teaching their foundling cousins, how else could it arise so quickly? so perhaps the proper accent, verbage, etc became ingrained in, perhaps not the first generation, but rather, the proceeding generations. As the same elf might have taught at the schools, posing as a humble linguist.

[shadd4d]

If I remember what a friend of mine related to me correctly, the Sperithial in Shadowrun got invented in something like 1990 or so and by some linguist, like that other invented language by the Polish guy. I want to say the details are in Tir Taingre about the invention of the elven language before elves actually came into being.

Don

[CircuitBoyBlue]

My Tir Tairngire sourcebook has a few pages missing, but I belive what they were talking about was intended more as a hint at Sperethiel being created by Immortal Elves, because it sprang up too quickly to have been done entirely after the awakening. Of course, I like your way better, because I'm not sure that Immortal Elves exist in my game.

[Demosthenes]

[Tenebris]

Miscellaneous Tolkein source debate for elvish script:
Tengwar
Some odd debate

Not that unrealistic to consider children growing up fluent in two or more widely different languages, even ones acquired by the parents relatively late in their lives. I did. I even have "th" problems and speak two of the fluent languages with a distinct German accent even though I am only marginally able with German, because the primary parent did. I can usually say it if I concentrate, but if I am tired or distracted, "d" creeps right back in. Absolutely fluent from as early as anyone learns a spoken language, yet I have phoneme issues that would suggest second language acquisition much later in life.

Regardless of parental fluency or accent, when placed into a common environment where the bastardised language is the only one available for discourse, the children will create a real language of it, with real grammar: créolisation. It won't be what the parents spoke, though.

Babies in their babbling phase have been demonstrated to voice every existing phoneme, not only those available within their native tongue. As they learn the relevant language, they unlearn the phonemes not applicable to it. Usually they can pick up the unfamiliar phonemes again before the linguistic barrier around puberty. Before puberty they can learn to speak as is common in the environment, "without accent". After puberty, this is rare indeed, and my congratulations to those who succeed (Demosthenes).

Finally, all accents float. No matter what your birth accent, different linguistic environments and interactions will shift it. At this point, saying what is a true elvish accent is less than pointless.

Probably won't stop the IEs from trying, though. Like you said, Prospero, l'Académie spérethielaise ;)

Romani ite domum!

[Prospero]

@ Tenebris: Bi- or mulit-lingualism is certainly common. Hell, in much of the world it's the default. People in many parts of Africa, for example, or India grow up speaking a few langauges, commonly. It's really only in Europe and America (and maybe, in Asia, though I'm less familiar with it) that bi- or multi-lingualisim is considered strange or exceptional - in America, sadly, probably moreso than in Europe, even. Though I bet in SR, that's changing as more Native American langauges are slowly resurrecting themselves and other languages, like Sperethiel, are creeping in. I don't have a problem with Tiran kids having more than one native langauge, per se, but I just think only a small minority of them would be exposed to significant amounts of Sperethiel. And I don't think any kid would make a creole out of English/Sperethiel - they might be fluent in both, but they definitely wouldn't have to creolize anything.

@ Demosthenes: So, if Sperethiel is Etruscan, shouldn't their be an elven kingdom somewhere on the Italian peninsula? :spin:

[CircuitBoyBlue]

Not necessarily. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure nobody's exactly sure where the Etruscans came from (partly because their language is so different than anything else). I've heard a lot of theories about how they probably left wherever they came from under duress, but nobody I've heard really seems confident in any theories about exactly where that was. If you're willing to go with goofball theories (which SR has the luxury of doing; it's one of its strengths), their point of origin can be just about anywhere.

[Tzeentch]

-- I would be lying if I said that the Sperenthiel terminology and usage from the books wasn't effectively pulled out of thin air, but there was a method to the madness when choosing terms and spelling and even sentence structure.
-- I wouldn't take it too seriously, it wasn't designed by linguists or anything. IMO anyone expecting to be able to translate Hamlet into Sperenthiel (or even construct a reasonably complex conversion) based on the information presented is not being realistic.

[HeySparky]

On the sound of Gaelic vs. the sounds of English

In a crowded public place I find I can quite easily distinguish between American English speakers and British English speakers when the tone, timbre and cadence are all that can be heard. Note - not any actual words.

By contrast, I find it VERY difficult to distinguish the tone, timbre and cadence of American English speakers and Gaelic speakers.

[Fortune]

(Nothing to back up the following)

The way I see it, Ehran and his merry band of Keebs'R'Us re-introduced Sperethiel as a way of making elves even more elite. The would probably have been done more or lees right from the onset in each of the Tirs' formation. This really is right up Ehran's alley.

It is only natural that the version of Sperethiel that resulted differed not only from the original old tongue, but also from that which would arise in the other Tir. This would be due to the influence of the prevailing language and culture of the population learning the new language.

I'm not an expert, but this seems to me only logical, given the lack of other evidence to the contrary.

[Kagetenshi]

Names have power. The words of Sperethiel still have some part of their old authority over the world.

~J

[Fortune]

I have no doubt that would also factor into Ehran's (or whoever's) decision to re-introduce the language. A good case could be made both for and against making these 'power names' more accessible to the rable...even if it is Elven rable.

[Ed Simons]

[Kagetenshi]

I award you a point of karma.

~J