Thursday 17 March 2016

Planha And Eriau

Fantasy and science fiction feature characters speaking languages that are unknown to us:

Tolkien has Elvish, Orcish etc;

CS Lewis tells us a few words of Solar, e.g., hnau and eldil;

some Star Trek fans have invented Klingon;

the kzinti "Hero's Tongue" has unusual consonant combinations like "Kdapt," "kzin" and "sthondat";

Poul Anderson does not tell us any Temporal or Anglic but does impart a few words of Planha and Eriau;

Planha-speaking Ythrians live in choths whose Wyvans can call Oherran;

Olaf Magnusson knows Eriau and two other major Merseian languages;

Max Abrams, introduced to Brechdan Ironrede, responds in fluent, accented Eriau, "'The Hand of the Vach Ynvory is my shield...'" (Young Flandry, p. 94);

when Flandry and Tachwyr meet, Flandry inquires about Tachwyr's wives and children in polite Eriau and Tachwyr must ask whether Flandry is still a bachelor in Anglic because the Eriau equivalent would be an insult.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Actually, JRR Tolkien invented two forms of Elvish: High Elven Quenya and Sindarin. And "Orcish" would be a debased (if I can use that word!) form of the Black Speech used by Sauron and his slaves in Mordor. We see Gandalf using the "cultured" form of the Black Speech when quoting from the Ring inscription at the Council of Elrond.

And what Max Abrams said when first meeting Brechdan Ironrede was "The Hand of the Vach Ynvory is my shield." An upper case " Y " not " I " was used.

Sean