Researching the speech.

[dagonra]

Hi, I am in the process of going through the books to try to come up with all known references and facts about the speech. The intended goal is to bring all this information together. As far as I can I want to extrapolate out the knowledge that we do have, and the implications it suggests. I was wondering if anyone out there has done any work in this area?
In any case I am creating this thread for a couple of reasons.

1. To see if anyone out there has done something like this already.
2. To post any findings I have, and the conclusions I have come to
3. To get help and input

-------------------------------

[daddysgirl98]

Hi, I am in the process of going through the books to try to come up with all known references and facts about the speech. The intended goal is to bring all this information together. As far as I can I want to extrapolate out the knowledge that we do have, and the implications it suggests. I was wondering if anyone out there has done any work in this area?
In any case I am creating this thread for a couple of reasons.

1. To see if anyone out there has done something like this already.
2. To post any findings I have, and the conclusions I have come to
3. To get help and input

-------------------------------

I would like to learn the speech!

[dagonra]

Unfortunately DD has said that she does not want to have the language 'made' . But even so I want to understand , if it was made, what would be required of it to be consistent with the books knowledge so far. As well as trying to find out extra facts that are implied and their implications.

[alla]

There's quite a bit of discussion on this topic in this area of the Playroom. There's discussions on how to pronounce 'dai stihó' to how names might be affected by shorthand versions.

There's only actually a handful of words that we get throughout the YW books, as well as some in the Feline Wizards books, although, now that I think about it, I think it is hard to tell when its Ailurin or when its the Speech (that being said, I haven't read the FW books in a while). These are all the ones that I can think of at the moment:

Dai stihó and dai stiheh: greetings and farewells (singular/plural)
hrasht: cousin
sevarfrith: an adjective (i think) for describing a world where wizardry must be practiced in secret (antonym is astahfrith, which is an acronym, apparently)
Afallöne: Atlantis/A sunken island (DW)

If you use the Errantry Concordance, it is possible to find more words such as Aresh-hav, Asdekh, (that's all that I can find, can anyone else spot any others?)

There are also quite a few names of stars in the Speech. Go and have a read through the index, so I don't link to all of them.

Anyway, have a poke around this section of the forums. Some good threads to start at are:

hrasht? A discussion on the nature of the word; is it plural? If not what would its plural be etc. Also a mention of dai stihó and dai stiheh

How do you speak the language? Goes through how one might speak or understand the language, some words and a discussion on the pronounciation of dai stihó

Theories on the Speech is a thread that I haven't read prior to now, but its really interesting. Its a disucssion on how the Speech might work in a similar manner to a computer langauage.

There are others too, those are just a few.

I just had a thought while I was reading the Specific Symbols thread... if the Speech is something that everything is meant to understand, and this may affect how it is heard by others, what about how it is read? We see most things from the point of view of Earth-born wizards, as in descriptions and so on. Would someone who could not use the Speech be able to read it, and if so, would they just see it as a language that they knew?