Language in the Seven Kingdoms

[Rippounet]

On 03/04/2017 at 6:57 AM, Nihlus said:

...I didn't even think of that. Essos speaking mostly one language west of Yi Ti is even more ridiculous.

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The wine has blurred my wits. He had learned to read High Valyrian at his maester's knee, though what they spoke in the Nine Free Cities … well, it was not so much a dialect as nine dialects on the way to becoming separate tongues. Tyrion had some Braavosi and a smattering of Myrish. In Tyrosh he should be able to curse the gods, call a man a cheat, and order up an ale, thanks to a sellsword he had once known at the Rock. At least in Dorne they speak the Common Tongue. Like Dornish food and Dornish law, Dornish speech was spiced with the flavors of the Rhoyne, but a man could comprehend it. Dorne, yes, Dorne for me. He crawled into his bunk, clutching that thought like a child with a doll.
Tyrion I, ADwD

 

[Joey Crows]

On 4/3/2017 at 11:06 AM, Damon_Tor said:

I think we have the Citadel to thank for this. Every castle of any importance employs a man taught at the Citadel, and that man is usually responsible for teaching the children of the Lord of that castle. That kind of monopoly is going to have a powerful effect on culture.

It's interesting that there is no difference in language between the religious leaders/intellectual leaders and the common people. I'm of course thinking of Latin in the Middle Ages and that was influenced by Rome, but using language (especially written language) as a way to oppress the population is pretty common throughout history. 

[rmanoj]

I do think this is a problem. Even revisionist maesters place the Andal invasion as having occurred at least 2000 years ago, if I recall correctly. That is more than enough time for a language to evolve into several mutually unintelligible languages. Educated people might have had a "Latin" equivalent, and sailors etc. would have had their own "Lingua Franca", but it should be nigh impossible for most people to have a conversation with smallfolk from a distant region.

Another issue is the relationship between the Old Tongue and the Common Tongue.  There are two possible scenarios that I can envision:

1) The "straightforward" account: The First Men spoke the Old Tongue, and the Andals brought over their own language. The Andal language evolved into the Common Tongue with an unknown degree of influence from the Old Tongue substratum. 

If this is the case, you would expect the Common Tongue to be learned in the North as a useful second language for lords, merchants, sailors etc. But it appears to be the native tongue of pretty much everyone, even though you would expect the smallfolk to continue speaking some descendant of the Old Tongue. Perhaps there has been a great deal of Andal migration to the North, despite all attempts at outright conquest apparently failing, and that is how their language became dominant there?

2) The "Norman French" account. The Andal language heavily influenced the Old Tongue spoken by the First Men in the South, resulting in the latter evolving into the ancestor of the Common Tongue. The Andals eventually stopped speaking their original language and adopted the Common Tongue for all purposes. The wildlings speak a much more conservative descendant of the Old Tongue with little Andal influence (which is why everyone still calls it the Old Tongue). The North would also have had a more conservative variety to begin with, but this may have converged over time due to the influence of the Southern Common Tongue. 

This account makes a bit more sense to me.

[Nittanian]

2 hours ago, rmanoj said:

This account makes a bit more sense to me.

That also makes sense to me as head-canon. In The Norman Conquest, Marc Morris writes

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Domesday, with its emphasis on those who held their land from the king directly, and to a lesser extent his subtenants, can give the impression that the English had been virtually eradicated by the Conquest, but other evidence reminds us that the natives survived in great numbers, albeit in depressed circumstances. The lists of Domesday jurors, for example, reveals scores of Englishmen who were clearly of some standing in their localities, but who do not feature in the book itself. In order to prosper in the midst of this massive English majority, the few thousand Norman settlers must necessarily have learned to speak English, if only as a second language. Indeed, some linguists would go so far as to regard the English that we speak today as a Creole created by the social circumstances of the Conquest.

 

[Ser Duncan of Flea Bottom]

I think the Andal influenced a lot concerning the language, so the Common Tongue is most likely the Andal language. The first men had the Old Tongue, but now the Old Tongue is only used North of the Wall (and maybe Skagos). The Dornishmen most likely don't know the Rhoynar Language, with the exception of the Orphans of the Greenblood, who probably know it, or partially know it.