The Speech: further development?

[The Defender]

Hey I was wondering... is the speech realy at all developed into a real language like Tolkiens with real gramatical structure or is it just a bunch of people saying Dai to one another if it does have rules and or a diction that would be awsome. Or atleast someone should make one.

For me writing comes from the soul, but for J. K. Rowling writing comes from Diane Duane.

[Wilf]

I don't think it is a formal language as such, but I haven't read all the books, so can't really comment. (Alone and Dilemma on their way from Amazon ).

It has always seemed to me that The Speach has passing resemblence to Welsh - it maybe just the combination of vowels/constonenat, or something else entirely.

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hadrin, in Isaac Asimov's Foundation

[PK]

In concept, the Speech is a fully realized language so closely connected to reality that it can rearrange reality. All beings and objects can understand and use it on some level, sometimes unconsciously; in fact, consciousness and expectation and rationalization are the reason that non-wizard humans miss or dismiss or (see Wizard's Holiday) think they're hearing it all in their own language. On the other hand, while it seems to come naturally to plants and rocks and so on, it seems that creatures having another language of their own have to learn it separately, at least in order to speak it. The grammar is evidently very complex, as is the vocabulary (including specialized vocabulary, some of which the cats at least say came in from their language, which is interesting...); evidently some constructions only work outside of time, the shape in which you write things out may matter, the symbols can take physical form, there are nonverbal (or not verbal in the way we usually think of as verbal; biochemical for instance) parts of it, and despite Nita's concerns in the first book about using it out loud, there are actually special constructions for when you want to change reality, which I suppose helps mitigate the danger of being mistaken when using it conversationally.

So if the question is whether the language has been invented with usable grammar and vocabulary in real life, no. Because of the intrinsic qualities like being universally understandable and capable of describing everything, DD has said she doesn't actually want to try inventing too much of it (particularly, I think, since part of the appeal might be speaking an invented language in an exclusive way, when the point in the books is that the Speech is universal); also, even if she did, the intrinsic complexity would make it astonishingly difficult.

[Poliester]

Wow. That's a good explination. I figure you have a lot of information stuffed into your brain to come up with something like that.

I totally agree. Of course, if wizards couldn't learn the speech, there wouldn't be wizards and that would be horable. I'm still a little confused...