Draco Foundation to fund ‘First Language’ Program

By MARVIN TWIDDY, AZT Business Writer Sat Feb 2, 1:18 AM ET

BERNE, Switzerland – The Draco Foundation has officially announced its funding the ‘First Language’ Program, paying in an undisclosed amount of money in order to find the ‘mother tongue’. Public commentary by the program’s current director, Dr. Wilhem Striek emphasize the primary goal of this program currently is to determine the ‘language of magic’. “Mythology is very clear, the first language is more than just a method of communication. It is a tool with which one can craft the very world around you. Reading through these stories, they level of detail they give about the nature of magic at the time is incredible, and all signs point to this first language being a major key piece of that power.� Draco representative, Ms. Helen Tourney commented, “while it is quite possible this has ramifications in thaumatological studies, our primary interest is in advancing knowledge of the human psyche and culture. We feel that this program has a lot to offer the fields of psychology, anthropology and humanity as a whole.�

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Drs. Margaret Striek and Lucien Page both described the process by which they hope to discover the First Language.
“At several points during the 20th century studies were undertaken to discover the relations between languages. By taking apparently related languages, they compared individual words across each studied language. Using statistics, they could then determine what the most likely root of the word was. This is the original word which each of the children word then descended from. So for instance, if we take the Niger word for ‘two’, ‘bala’, we notice the Amerindian word for ‘two’ is ‘p’al’, and can then determine they came from a common ancestor, likely ‘buala’. The early 21st century disrupted the studies, but we hope to take up the torch where they left off.�

The program is trying to recreate the vocabulary and grammar of the Proto-World Language (PWL) – the language that predated known history. Dr. Striek added, “this is a tremendous field of study. We believe the language is approximately 75,000 years old. We know almost nothing about human culture back then, so few artifacts survive. But language is an artifact, and in a way, it has survived.� The suspected time frame of the rise of the PWL corresponds with a major rise of magic according to some scientists.

While the idea of the Proto-World Language is not new, tying it into thaumatological studies is. The field of magic did not exist as a recognized part of science when the PWL was initially developed. Increased understanding of language, mythology and magic has suggested these links. However, not everyone is convinced. UMT representative Dr. Howard Linke commented, “there is nothing to indicate language has any impact on magic or magical operations. UMT theory clearly shows intent, not language is important. We have mute casters. How does their theory explain that?�

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Comments:
TheSly says – They act like this is revolutionary. McKinney made this exact theory back in 2038, but he didn’t get any funding. Dee did it back in the 16th century.

nezumi says – I don’t get it. Is “Al-akazam� any more powerful because cavemen said it?

Scribe says – As usual, the news media got it wrong, or at least missed the point. Words are power, they’ve always been power. As the bible says, “in the beginning there was the word�. It’s the same sort of thing where-ever you look. Language came from the gods, from the birds, from nature, anywhere but from people, and when it came, it brought power with it. Some people even go so far as to theorize it is this magic language, not language in particular, which led to the rise of man. And just as almost every culture has a story as to where language originally came from, almost as many have a story about how that magical language was lost. A tower of Babel, if you will. The Jews insist Hebrew is the Adamic language, but even Hebrew has changed over thousands of years. There’s a reason Hebrew scholars still have a job. According to the holy Koran, King Solomon knew this language and used it to command djinn to build the first temple. Everyone has heard about ‘true names’, yet even though fiction is replete with them, we seem unable to figure any out for ourselves. God spoke the language, and Adam may have as well, but they lost the ability, either when they ate of the tree or where forced out of the garden. Even ‘Al-akazam’ is evidence of this (although they word you are looking for is ‘Al-kazaam’), however the particular roots, original word and meaning has been lost, leaving that turn-of-phrase solely as a hinting euphemism. If these people are correct, the Proto-World Language may open up a completely new field of magic, the likes of which have never been seen before. I’d say keep an eye on this, but I am fairly sure Draco will keep it close to their collective chest.

Flyonthewall – This drek is already on the streets, chummer. I didn’t know nothing about this until I got paid for it, but I did some reading since. They already got a couple language families mostly down, Boroean and Nostratic are the big ones. That covers basically every language you care about. Now they’re working on something called the Dene-Caucasian languages. That covers the Basques in Spain, the Tibetan language, the Navajo and a bunch of other languages you only find in drekholes, plus ancient Sumerian. Word is, prices on smuggled goods for this stuff is through the roof. Written stuff and even better, native speakers. And they don’t mind giving gear to a few anti-government groups to get it. Always a buyer for something, right?

Thaden – anyone notice Dr. McKinney’s obituary come up in the paper six months ago? Funny coincidences in the shadows…

I like it, but then again I've always been a supporter of Pattern Magic in the Sixth World.

Easy- first language was one word "OUCH!" when the monkey in 2001 hit his thumb with the bone as soon as he was out of shot.

Mind if I borrow it?

► Tir has a project along these lines, from what I gather. Six months back, we did a run against a corp called Stormbringer. Standard datasteal way out in the middle of drekall; heavy on the magic security (like every thing else down there), but these boys were summoning and binding some pretty powerful ancestor spirits; then having 'em translate books and recite stories in ancient tongues. I might be able to guess who the Johnson was working for after this article...
► Wi Ask

► Wonder if this is related to Celedyr's language obsession over at Transys Neuronet. He spent all that time digging up code stones from all over Eurasia... And here, I always thought the old codger was just going for a universal language translator...
► Trixless Wino

Word! (haha couldnt resist)
you touch a very intresting subject here, and true that many cultures have myths of word of power, what is more intresting however is that how there is a reference to a great reign of man long before known history in many of them to, The inuites talk about 'when words could move mountains and great flying mountain homes reigned the sky' the Kalavala (national poem of Finland, essententially a collection of oral tradition put into a more compact form, similar the Odyssey) other refers to this world as 'Our own godforgat age, at the end of time' and have very vivid descriptions of the power of words (especially sung words) really recommended read. You can find similar believes of a lost high civilisation in essentially every culture you look hard enough (Atlantis anyone? the Aztec tales of Que... whats his name? the space traveler god.. and so on)

Go for it, of course! Made for sharing


I've been doing some studies into real life philosophies in magic, and I am surprised how many refer to an ancient, 'divine' language. On the other side of the coin, during my anthropology studies, I noticed there's a major theory that there is a real common ancestor for most languages out there. I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do with it myself yet, although I feel it has a lot of potential (and there are a lot of creative GMs and players here who might just beat me to the punch!) But after sitting on it for a while, I just felt like I had to get something out...

Lionhearted and Ravor both touched on what I'm pondering right now... Earthdawn had Pattern magic, and there seems to be a common thread there, and real life religions include, well, what Lionhearted already summed up nicely. I don't think either would be really available in the 2050-2070 time frame, but then again... Maybe they would be...

Careful on this chummers.
Now anyone knowing even a little about magic knows there is power in some languages but this is more of a focus. The fact that you have to think in an uncommon language helps you focus your concentration. Hense latin greek and hebrew are popular in NA. But it's the way they help focus your thoughts, the langauges themselves are NOT inherently magical.

I'm not sure what the DF is doing here, I use to think they were ok guys. I've met Striek, two years ago at a conference in Oxford. He seemed pretty loopy then and from what I've seen since, the wheels have really come off the trolley.

He's talking about earlier ages of humanity and things before man from even older ages. Things that "came from the stars and fled from man." I'll admitt that there was a goodly number of empty glasses on the bar of the Eagle and Child by the time he got to that point and some of the exact words might have been blurred by time, but one thing that was very clear, he was scared spitless by the idea.

So why is he digging into something that terrifies him?

Researchers perceive two trends of change in languages worldwide.

The first, alluded to by nezumi is an evolutionary fissioning of languages from an ancient root. A prominent example is the large number of languages in Europe and Asia that are traced back to a proto-Indo-European root language. Another example is the Mayan group of languages. Techniques of linking language groups (and therefore peoples) and of determining how long ago similar languages went their own way from a common ancestor (with 'average rate of change' measures that some believe and others deride) have been developed to study this phenomenon. As far as I know, there is no argument among anthropologists that there was one worldwide language in the beginning. Theologists might disagree.

The second, and increasingly prevalent trend is one of extinction. There are far fewer languages in use today than a thousand years ago, and the rate of extinction is increasing. Extrapolating backwards from this view would suggest that every small nomadic group wandering the icefields and savannas 15,000 years ago had their own language. This would contradict the idea that there was a proto-language that all humans new at one time.

However, given the prevalent view that we all descend from a radiation of peoples out of Africa some 60,000 to 100,000 years ago (replacing one way or another the descendants of an earlier radiation out of Africa), and that we all genetically descend from one woman (or a closely related small group of women) in Africa, one could argue that those of us alive today all descend from one small group of people in Africa. I guess it would be possible that that group had one language, and we could call it the Mother Tongue.

Maybe you should look at languages that do not have a common base. For example in Europe most languegs come from Latin, Celtic, Germanic or Slavic. Then right in the middle you have Hungarian that does not tie to anything.

Uralian language group omae, including Finlandish, Estlandic (Baltic?) and hungarian, to mention a few

Bo Peep - Being a programmer I get kinda obsessed with langauages. I was chatting about this to a couple of mage friends one of them is more into dance and body language, so she's not after conversation if you know what I mean. The other one is a Kabbalist (thats how I damn well spell it). So she's kinda into language, she says that the Draco are looking at it the wrong way, they're doing it based on spoken language. She reckons it's writing that has power hence the whole Grimoire/Grammer thing. That and they're called SPELLS guys. But the point she said was that if you look at how writing developed, it seems to have developed from pictoral representations, look at hieroglyphics. So she says that the langauage they're looking for is an archetypal set of images that explains everything. Nowadays it's the basis of the Tarot deck. Though then she's that there is an entire suit missing, and some extra major arcana wotsits. Though it should be noted that we were all very drunk and Delilah was trying to get into my knickers and I'm a sucker for weird shit. So the converstation was long and rambly and fun. Oh and I'm not telling you if she was successful

Well if you find the idea interesting, try reading Snowcrash for ideas. Don't know how truly accurate it is on the subject, but is a great read for shadowrun ideas.