Pronunciation Guide

[Fizz]

Completely agree you and Doyle. What you just said actually supports my supposition that the languages of Cerilia have not been static, and have evolved over time.

I don't think anyone disagreed that languages are always evolving as the nations / demographics do. I was only responding your question in post #40, where you asked why some things were translated and others were not. You seemed to be suggesting that all naming conventions in a region should be consistent. But all's good.

Take, for example, the proper name: Liliene Swordwraith. It seems to have both a "traditional" Anuirean name with a "non-traditional" Anuirean name. For whatever reason. Whether you believe "Liliene" is the former, or the latter, is only relevant when pondering the matter for its own sake.

The mostly likely "real-world" answer, of course, is that the creators didn't have the time to completely make up names, so they just made stuff up on the fly and put in what they thought sounded cool.

"Swordwraith" sounds cool, so that might have been one where they decided that putting into english really helped evoke the flavour of this character in a way that a translation of "sword" and "wraith" could not have to us english speakers.

But i agree, timing undoubtably played a role in these decisions too. Writers have deadlines.

I'm telling you, Goblin... the elves taught them "civilization"... wouldn't language be one of the core elements of that?

What "civilization" entails is entirely vague. It certainly may have had an influence. But the goblins could have had their own language before they were taught civilization. Then, as they rebelled against the elves over the centuries, the goblins may have deliberately scoured many of the elven influences out of pure defiance. So now goblinoid is its own unique language. We're dealing with thousands of years of history, so anything is plausible.

The few canon goblin words we have (such as "Kartathok") seem radically different from the Welsh/Gaelic-based language we know elvish to be (at least to my ear).

Makes you go "hmmm..." Like I said, I love BR...

Certainly no disagreement here.

My thoughts on dwarven civilization have been affected as well... (like, where did the dwarves first learn metallurgy...? The elves perhaps...? Just saying...).

Per the Chronicle of Cerilia (Dragon #241), the dwarves first emerged from the ground about 15,000 years ago, but then retreated. There is no mention of the dwarves needing to be taught anything. It is also stated that for most of their history the elves and dwarves just left each other alone. So given that the dwarves have always been an underground species, i think they would have developed metallurgy on their own. It'd have been required to be living underground in the first place. Just my thought...

I think i lean towards more diversity in the languages due to the vast time spans involved- lots of time for multiple languages to evolve and diverge from one another.


-Fizz