We have discussed fictional languages in the works of JRR Tolkien and Poul Anderson and in Star Trek. Some of SM Stirling's Emberversers develop Tolkien's Elvish and his Shadowspawn focus their Power through Mhabrogast. A future project will be to list the few phrases of Mhabrogast that are divulged.
"'Amss-aui-ock!' she snapped, a purling, spitting sound. Mhabrogast, the lingua demonica, the language that mapped and compelled the hidden structures of the world. Potential-being-becoming, an arrogant command directed at the stuff of reality itself."
-SM Stirling, The Council Of Shadows (New York, 2012), CHAPTER THIRTEEN, p. 265.
We are told that it sounds evil.
After a breakfast of o.j., poached eggs on toast, home-made strawberry jam on toast and coffee, I will depart to Manchester for much of the day.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Your discussion of Mhabrogast reminded me of the Black Speech invented by Tolkien as the language used by the Dark Lord Sauron and his servants in Mordor. When Gandalf the Grey quoted part of the Ring Inscription in the Black Speech at the Council of Elrond, this how it was described: "The change in the wizard's voice was astounding. Suddenly it became menacing, powerful, harsh as stone. A shadow seemed to pass over the high sun, and the porch for a moment drew dark. All trembled, and the elves stopped their ears" (THE LORD OF THE RINGS, Book II, Chapter 2).
And the bits we see of the Black Speech in LOTR now reminds me of the samples we get of Mhabrogast, harsh, menacing, powerful. Makes me wonder if Stirling had Tolkien in mind when giving us these examples of the "lingua demonica."
Sean
Sean,
Indeed.
Paul.
Mhabroghast is also a 'constructed' language in-text; only a few words and phrases survived, much distorted, in the 19th century. The Shadowspawn adepts used the Power to reconstruct it, but that reconstruction would inevitably be influenced as well by the subconscious assumptions and biases of the scholars.
And the Order of the Black Dawn were diabolists; they thought of Mhabroghast as the native language of Hell.
Adrienne and Adrian are of a later generation; in a way, they're more 'secularized'.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
In other words the diabolists of the Order of the Black Dawn who recreated Mhagrogast had their biases and preferred beliefs affecting that recreation. Yes, beginning with Etienne Maurice Breze, the Shadowspawn came more and more to be "secularized," disbelieving in Satan as much as they did in God.
Sean
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