Taking Flight

Author’s Note: Linguistics

Some scholars may wonder how the people of the Small Kingdoms are able to learn foreign languages as quickly as they do.

It must be remembered that all of the two hundred languages spoken in the World in the fifty-third century of human speech diverged from a single mother tongue within the last five hundred years — and that that mother tongue, Ethsharitic, is still alive and flourishing.

For a Dwomorite to learn Quorulian is not equivalent to an American learning Japanese, but to an Italian learning Spanish. Many of the so-called “languages” are in fact merely different dialects. The difference between, say, Krithimionese and Ethsharitic is no greater than the difference between English as spoken in York and New York — perhaps less.

Trader’s Tongue is a simplified version of Ethsharitic with various borrowings, an altered accent, and a certain bantering tone suited to haggling added in.

The greatest linguistic disparity in all the World, between Semmat and the Island dialect of Tintallionese, is roughly the same as the difference between English and German.