The
Languages of Abode
by Howard Yune ("Kir")
A final word, concerning the human
influence on the elfin language
On Earth, human languages have tended to become more and more distinct,
in the absence of unifying cultural forces – usually, a centralized
government or a mass medium such as the printing press. On the other hand,
linguistic evolution among elves has been greatly slowed by their long
lifespans and their telepathy (which would make meanings between elves
much clearer, reducing the possibility of linguistic drift over time and
space) - neither of which the Sunholt humans possess. Thus, the emergence
of the Hungtsho would have given rise to the most radical innovations
in the elfin language to that time; more subdialects would have arisen
due to slow communications between groups (as happened when Roman Gaul
evolved into medieval France – as centralized government and culture
dissolved with the crumbling of the western empire, different regions
evolved increasingly distinct speech-patterns to suit local needs and
customs), short human lifespans would have caused much greater turnover
in thinking patterns (there would be fewer shared experiences among humans
than elves), and the evolution of elfin-language vocabulary would have
struck out in new directions, to suit the needs of the agrarian and urban
lifestyles unfamiliar to the “spirits.”
The New Blood story presents four-fingers and five-fingers conversing easily enough; but I wonder if such communication would have been as simple as is portrayed. For beyond the “mechanical” differences between the two dialects, there is the difference in the two cultures, which accounts for the differences in their respective lexicons. This matter is not touched on deeply in the story itself, but remember that the New Blood spent over a year in Sunholt, often living among the humans daily (in Pei-Lar’s rebel village), all the while constantly seeing unfamiliar sights. Even if the elves retain all the new vocabulary for these experiences, how would they convey the novel ideas to the other point-eared ones? Yun, for instance, has certainly brought back a lifetime of campfire stories to the Wild Hunt, but how well will her tribemates grasp the context of her tales? Telepathy can help convey the meaning of new ideas, but only to a point; the most vivid “sending-pictures” yet will not convey such concepts as “revolution,” “courtly etiquette,” “animism” and the like. When she tells Pool and Sust about her adventures in the Forevergreen, how many of her stories will register with the young scamps, who have spent all of their brief lives in the uncharted prairies, largely removed from human civilization?
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