Sendings

The Languages of Abode
by Howard Yune ("Kir")

HEARTHSTONER
(the humans of Hearthstone, most famously Cam Triompe)
No distinct dialect groups are yet known.

New Blood 27-28 are the only issues featuring this mysterious tongue, heard only from Cam Triompe and his cabin boy Kamut. Very little about the culture and natives of the Abodean “Down Under” has come to light thus far, but it seems clear that the Hearthstoner language is unique and virtually unshared with other peoples – no other characters, of any race, are heard speaking it.
At the time of his first encounter with Dart’s band, Cam’s command of elfin was very rough-and-ready (to put it charitably), but he was intelligent enough to make himself understood to elves and Hungtsho alike, in spite of the solecisms littering his speech. By the time of the Fire-Eye series (about twenty or so years later), he had immensely improved his grasp of the elf-talk, enabling himself to carry on a conversation even with the political leaders Ahnn-Li and the Ahnessah, and with flawless grammar and understanding. Still, I sense that however well Cam spoke this adopted tongue, the language of his native Hearthstone remained the one most comfortable for him; it is more likely that the diaries that made him famous were written directly in Hearthstoner, then translated (possibly to elfin) later. So as influential as his journals became - firing the imaginations even of such Future Folk as Scorch Chirell - it’s doubtful that most later readers read his works, strictly speaking, in the original.

Though Hearthstoner doesn’t seem to be much used in the future era, the few samples of it show the language to be a solid linguistic tool; Cam’s diaries, in particular, were evidently written with considerable style, as this excerpt (from The Rebels 10) indicates:

Ice is the mariner’s enemy, but it can be the adventurer’s salvation.
I speak, now, not of physical ice, but of the psychic ice in the veins of the competent actor. Conjure ice at times of crisis – ice for the heart, ice for the mind – and borrow serenity therefrom. Take calm and strength from the ice, cool the blood, steady the hand. Then greet trouble as the Djun greets a lackey.
But let the mariner take heart, and the adventurer beware. Sooner or later, ice melts.

At least a few of these words have found their way to other languages - notably the alternate word for elf, “imp” (quoting Captain Criante in Jink 3/GN 14).

A final word concerning the human influence on the elfin language

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