Is Slaver's Bay More Diverse Than Westeros?

[Corvo the Crow]

Apart from the few thousand Orphans in the Greenblood which would amount to nothing in the entirety of population, in Westeros there are only different accents, there aren't even different dialects, let alone different languages as it should logically have been, while in Slaver's Bay they speak different dialects. 

 

Dialects of Slaver's Bay (and of Ghiscari in general)

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"Yunkai will have war," Dany told Whitebeard inside the pavilion. Irri and Jhiqui had covered the floor with carpets while Missandei lit a stick of incense to sweeten the dusty air. Drogon and Rhaegal were asleep atop some cushions, curled about each other, but Viserion perched on the edge of her empty bath. "Missandei, what language will these Yunkai'i speak, Valyrian?"

"Yes, Your Grace," the child said. "A different dialect than Astapor's, yet close enough to understand. The slavers name themselves the Wise Masters."

 

Quote

"Your Worship, those sly rogues betrayed your trust. It was revealed that they were scheming to restore the Good Masters to power and the people to chains. Great Cleon exposed their plots and hacked their heads off with a cleaver, and the grateful folk of Astapor have crowned him for his valor."

"Noble Ghael," said Missandei, in the dialect of Astapor, "is this the same Cleon once owned by Grazdan mo Ullhor?"

 

Quote

Farther on, two legions from New Ghis were facing off shield wall to shield wall whilst serjeants in iron halfhelms with horsehair crests screamed commands in their own incomprehensible dialect. To the naked eye the Ghiscari looked more formidable than the Yunkish slave soldiers, but Tyrion nursed doubts. The legionaries might be armed and organized in the same manner as Unsullied … but the eunuchs knew no other life, whereas the Ghiscari were free citizens who served for three-year terms.

 

Accents of Westeros, or rather accent, since we only ever see one Westerosi accent mentioned, the Northern one. Since this is through the perspective of a Southron Knight, Brienne, a Northerner would, logically, also spot the accent of a Southron, but that's about it, no accents between the Southron groups exist as it would seem since there has never been any mention of it when there was plenty of chance.

Quote

Another of the outlaws stepped forward, a younger man in a greasy sheepskin jerkin. In his hand was Oathkeeper. "This says it is." His voice was frosted with the accents of the north. He slid the sword from its scabbard and placed it in front of Lady Stoneheart. In the light from the firepit the red and black ripples in the blade almost seem to move, but the woman in grey had eyes only for the pommel: a golden lion's head, with ruby eyes that shone like two red stars.

 

[James West]

Essos is a larger, more diverse continent.  Westeros was rather isolated until the first men set foot.  But yeah, it is something to think of.  You would think the first men, the Andals, Rhoynar would have different languages.  Maybe they did but they merged, bastardized, and developed into the Common Tongue.  High Valyrian worked its way eastwards and became the language spoken of by the modern day descendants of Ghis.  

[Aehole targaryen]

The mono-language is not that surprising considering first the Andals and then the Targaryen rule.

To get more into the details, think of Britain, or perhaps even more narrowly, of England. Celtic languages, latin, anglo-saxon, old norse, french are all languages that have been spoken by at least some "natives" in the last 2000 years. All of these have either died out or merged into modern English and its variant dialects, with a few exceptions from the celtic group.

I assume the same can be said of Westeros:
Celtic = First men

Andals = Anglo-saxon

Latin / french = Valyrian

 

The main language should be mostly andalic with some placenames / given names from the first men and words associated with the high born borrowed from Valyrian. Possibly.

Essos is a completely different beast. Just like the Middle East / Asia in our world. To me, all of this makes the world more believeable.

[Corvo the Crow]

11 hours ago, James West said:

Essos is a larger, more diverse continent.  Westeros was rather isolated until the first men set foot.  But yeah, it is something to think of.  You would think the first men, the Andals, Rhoynar would have different languages.  Maybe they did but they merged, bastardized, and developed into the Common Tongue.  High Valyrian worked its way eastwards and became the language spoken of by the modern day descendants of Ghis.  

Slaver’s Bay is only a very small portion of Essos though, esprcially compared to the entirety of Westeros.

[Craving Peaches]

7 minutes ago, Aehole targaryen said:

I assume the same can be said of Westeros:
Celtic = First men

Andals = Anglo-saxon

Latin / french = Valyrian

But the Northmen don't even have a dialect. All they have is an accent. A lot of the reasons for the decline of the Gaelic language in Scotland aren't applicable to the North with the Old Tongue. There's no schooling system and Northerners aren't moving into places that speak the Common Tongue to find jobs, so there would be no pressure on the average Northerner to learn the Common Tongue. There also is no religious reason for the spread as the majority of the North still worships the Old Gods. The North was never conquered by the Andals. At no point has there been an attempt to suppress Northern culture that we are aware of. I think realistically people in the North, not just Wildlings, should still be speaking the Old Tongue, and the Nobles could speak the Common Tongue as well with most peasants only speaking the Old Tongue.

[Terrorthatflapsinthenight9]

3 minutes ago, Corvo the Crow said:

Slaver’s Bay is only a very small portion of Essos though, esprcially compared to the entirety of Westeros.

It is, and it's not very diverse in terms of geography and architecture, but most ethnicities come together here with slaves coming from all part of Essos or foreign lands.

[Aehole targaryen]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

I think realistically people in the North, not just Wildlings, should still be speaking the Old Tongue, and the Nobles could speak the Common Tongue as well with most peasants only speaking the Old Tongue.

I agree, but GRRM also, realistically, needed a common language for the books to work.

[Craving Peaches]

Just now, Aehole targaryen said:

I agree, but GRRM also, realistically, needed a common language for the books to work.

Yes that is true. The Wildlings though have ever less of an excuse to speak the Common Tongue. I think this issue would be much more easily overlooked if Westeros was just the size of Great Britain rather than South America.

[Aehole targaryen]

1 minute ago, Craving Peaches said:

Yes that is true. The Wildlings though have ever less of an excuse to speak the Common Tongue. I think this issue would be much more easily overlooked if Westeros was just the size of Great Britain rather than South America.

100%. The wildlings should be speaking First Mannish for sure. Translators (and possibly lessons as part of training) in the NW and among the Wildlings would have sorted out communication problems.

[Corvo the Crow]

32 minutes ago, Terrorthatflapsinthenight9 said:

It is, and it's not very diverse in terms of geography and architecture, but most ethnicities come together here with slaves coming from all part of Essos or foreign lands.

Slaves have little effect though, since there isn't a majority group of slaves coming from a specific location, but smaller groups of slaves coming from many places also worth to consider is that many of these slaves wouldn't even stay there for long, but would be trained, bred and sold. If anything, Dothraki should've had more influence on their language since they are in constant "gifting" with them.

[Corvo the Crow]

39 minutes ago, Aehole targaryen said:

I agree, but GRRM also, realistically, needed a common language for the books to work.

He didn't need to use it for every forgotten village in the North or even beyond the wall though. High valyrian is taught to noble children whose fathers can pay for a maester, so communication among the nobles could've been made that way or Northern nobles could even learn common tongue, but not the general population. NW could speak common tongue since their current members would now mostly be southron criminals and third sons etc but what is more possible is to NW having it's own pidgin or creole language that has started to develop when Andalized people have started to fill more and more of it's ranks.

[Aldarion]

Westeros is just Britain blown up to continental scale, so duh.

Realistically, each of Westerosi kingdoms should be speaking its own language and have its own names - and in fact, many should be speaking more than one. I mean, North is based on Scotland and Russia, Iron Islands on Scandinavia, Reach on France, Westerlands on England / Wales, Dorne on Spain, Riverlands on Germany, Stormlands on Wales (?), Vale on Switzerland, Crownlands on whatever... so you should have people speaking Scottish in North, Norwegian in Iron Islands, French (or specifically Old French and Provencal - so two langauges) in Reach, English (or English and Welsh) in Westerlands, Spanish in Dorne, German in Riverlands, Welsh in Stormlands, Valyrian in Crownlands, and in Vale they should be speaking Scottish, German and Valyrian.

[Craving Peaches]

14 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Stormlands on Wales (?)

I think they could be based off of Wales but I also can see some Prussia in them, being a smaller kingdom surrounded by enemies, that has strong martial traditions and are not as populous as their rivals... Though of course there are some differences as well.

[Corvo the Crow]

6 minutes ago, Craving Peaches said:

I think they could be based off of Wales but I also can see some Prussia in them, being a smaller kingdom surrounded by enemies, that has strong martial traditions and are not as populous as their rivals... Though of course there are some differences as well.

I see Balkans, with all it's forests and mountains and also the origin story of Durrandons.

[Aehole targaryen]

25 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Westeros is just Britain blown up to continental scale, so duh.

Realistically, each of Westerosi kingdoms should be speaking its own language and have its own names - and in fact, many should be speaking more than one. I mean, North is based on Scotland and Russia, Iron Islands on Scandinavia, Reach on France, Westerlands on England / Wales, Dorne on Spain, Riverlands on Germany, Stormlands on Wales (?), Vale on Switzerland, Crownlands on whatever... so you should have people speaking Scottish in North, Norwegian in Iron Islands, French (or specifically Old French and Provencal - so two langauges) in Reach, English (or English and Welsh) in Westerlands, Spanish in Dorne, German in Riverlands, Welsh in Stormlands, Valyrian in Crownlands, and in Vale they should be speaking Scottish, German and Valyrian.

I don't agree. The Andals spoke a single language, and so did the First Men as far as I know. It would make little sense to have more languages than these. With valyrian on top, like Latin in Europe.

It doesn't make much sense that Andalic would split into such distinct languages as you propose. At most, for the six southern kingdoms, we should se a dialect continuum, like we do in Scandinavia in modern times for example. Also, Scandinavia is more than Norway.

Either way, the only regions where it would make sense to have a differing language is somewhat in the North and mostly Beyond the Wall. Possibly that the Iron Islands would have split off from Frist Mannic into a related but separate language from what is spoken among the Free Folk. There is just too much communication and mobility between the southern kingdoms for anything else. Especially considering their common origin.

[Aldarion]

1 hour ago, Aehole targaryen said:

I don't agree. The Andals spoke a single language, and so did the First Men as far as I know. It would make little sense to have more languages than these. With valyrian on top, like Latin in Europe.

 

Actually, it makes little sense to not have more languages than those.

Yes, the First Men did speak a single language (which on its own is bad worldbuilding). So did Andals. But the First Men came to Westeros 12 000 years before the events of the story. Andal invasion was 4 000 years ago. Even if we just say, "oh they all spoke a single language back then", it makes no sense for that to still hold true today. Not after so much time, not in such a large area as Westeros.

Slavs also originally spoke a single language. Yet today you have three major linguistic groups with six subgroups and 22 individual languages:

• Western Slavic group
  • Czechoslovakian group
    • Czech
    • Moravian
    • Slovakian
  • Lužice-Serbian group
    • Upper Lužice-Serbian
    • Lower Lužice-Serbian
  • Lehitian group
    • Polapian
    • Kasupian
    • Polish
    • Silesian
• Eastern Slavic group
  • Eastern Slavic group
    • Belarussian
    • Rusinian
    • Russian
    • Ukrainian
• Southern Slavic group
  • Western group
    • Montenegrin
    • Croatian
    • Bosnian (an offshoot of Croatian, aut.not.)
    • Croatian
      • Chakavian dialect
      • Kaikavian dialect
      • Shtokavian dialect
      • Gradische dialect
      • Molishe dialect (old Croatian, aut.not.)
    • Slovenian
    • Serbian
  • Eastern Group
    • Bulgarian
    • Macedonian
    • Church Slavonic

And all of this is one ethnic supergroup, that is to say, real-world equivalent to Westerosi Andals or the First Men.

So let's see e.g. Germanic languages (that would equate Andals in the story) and Celtic languages (that would equate First Men in the story). These languages all developed from the common proto-languages, but as with Slavic languages, this original speech was in fact used in a small area and diversified as it spread over a larger area. So you cannot claim Westerosi languages are merely "early in the development" - if they were, they wouldn't be so widespread.

Let's look at medieval Germanic languages:

• 10th Century Germanic Languages
  • Old West Norse
  • Old East Norse
  • Old Gutnish
  • Old English
  • Continental West Germanic Languages
    • Old Frisian
    • Old Saxon
    • Old Dutch
    • Old High German
  • Crimean Gothic

So a total of nine languages (that we know of), in the area smaller than the Seven Kingdoms. And modern linguistical map is far more diverse, but seeing how Westeros employs the "medieval stasis" trope, I won't nitpick that.

Now, for Celtic languages. You originally had these:

• Celtic
  • Continental*
    • Celtiberian*
    • Galatian*
    • Gaulish*
    • Lepontic*
    • Noric*
  • Insular
    • Goidelic
      • Irish
      • Manx
      • Scottish Gaelic
    • Brythonic
      • Common Britonic*
        • developed into:
        • Breton
        • Cornic
        • Cumbric*
        • Welsh
      • Ivernic*
      • Pictish*

Languages with the star are extinct.

So a total of two major groups, three subgroups, and originally 11 languages. Of these, two subgroups and four languages survived, of which one developed into three new languages - making it two language subgroups and six languages.

2 hours ago, Aehole targaryen said:

It doesn't make much sense that Andalic would split into such distinct languages as you propose. At most, for the six southern kingdoms, we should se a dialect continuum, like we do in Scandinavia in modern times for example. Also, Scandinavia is more than Norway.

 

It is true that massive differences like I have proposed would make no sense. But at the very least we should be seeing something akin to Romance language split - so maybe have Dorne speak Spanish, Crownlands Italian, and Reach French. North would be speaking old Scottish or Gaelic, and in between, I really don't know what would make for a good transition.

Iron Islanders are basically Viking raiders on steroids and stereotypes. And Vikings did come from all over Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden, specifically).

2 hours ago, Aehole targaryen said:

Either way, the only regions where it would make sense to have a differing language is somewhat in the North and mostly Beyond the Wall. Possibly that the Iron Islands would have split off from Frist Mannic into a related but separate language from what is spoken among the Free Folk. There is just too much communication and mobility between the southern kingdoms for anything else. Especially considering their common origin.

Wrong, because First Men having just one common language during their thousands of years of dominance makes no sense.

Look, geographically, Westeros is the size of Southern America. Linguistically, it is smaller than Great Britain. That is an issue. Not story-breaking, but if you are seeking realism...

[Aehole targaryen]

12 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Actually, it makes little sense to not have more languages than those.

Yes, the First Men did speak a single language (which on its own is bad worldbuilding). So did Andals. But the First Men came to Westeros 12 000 years before the events of the story. Andal invasion was 4 000 years ago. Even if we just say, "oh they all spoke a single language back then", it makes no sense for that to still hold true today. Not after so much time, not in such a large area as Westeros.

In our world, I'd be right by your side. And in general your points are correct from that perspective. In Westeros and beyond I'm not. You mention "medieval stasis" later and that can't be discounted. Technology, culture and language do not evolve very much. This is just a fact in this world, it may be due to magic or shoddy worldbuilding or whatever, but it is still the case. Given that fact, languages make a fair amount of sense in Westeros with the few examples I stated above imo.

As an aside regarding conservative languages in the real world I think Egyptian is a pretty cool example, at least written.

 

12 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

So let's see e.g. Germanic languages (that would equate Andals in the story) and Celtic languages (that would equate First Men in the story). These languages all developed from the common proto-languages, but as with Slavic languages, this original speech was in fact used in a small area and diversified as it spread over a larger area. So you cannot claim Westerosi languages are merely "early in the development" - if they were, they wouldn't be so widespread.

I have not claimed that.

 

12 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Let's look at medieval Germanic languages:

• 10th Century Germanic Languages
  • Old West Norse
  • Old East Norse
  • Old Gutnish
  • Old English
  • Continental West Germanic Languages
    • Old Frisian
    • Old Saxon
    • Old Dutch
    • Old High German
  • Crimean Gothic

So a total of nine languages (that we know of), in the area smaller than the Seven Kingdoms. And modern linguistical map is far more diverse, but seeing how Westeros employs the "medieval stasis" trope, I won't nitpick that.

Just a note here. All of those languages were fairly close to each other back then. It is not all unlikely that a fair amount of mutual intelligibility was still in effect. The diversification is in many ways a result of politics. Political splits cause language splits over time. We can not be sure that the Seven Kingdoms had such political pressure, the North and Iron Isles excluded, that was needed for a similar split from dialect to language that we see between say, Low German and Dutch or Swedish and Icelandic.

 

12 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

It is true that massive differences like I have proposed would make no sense. But at the very least we should be seeing something akin to Romance language split - so maybe have Dorne speak Spanish, Crownlands Italian, and Reach French. North would be speaking old Scottish or Gaelic, and in between, I really don't know what would make for a good transition.

Just to reiterate, I'd agree if we could be sure that the political climate/s would result in similar patterns as our world. I tend to see the Kingdoms as regions rather than more closed off political areas.

 

12 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Iron Islanders are basically Viking raiders on steroids and stereotypes. And Vikings did come from all over Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden, specifically).

Yes, that was my point.

 

12 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Wrong, because First Men having just one common language during their thousands of years of dominance makes no sense.

In our world, yes. It could also be argued that the First Men, being pushed north of the Neck, amalgamated into a cohesive linguistic unit, adopting the dominant version.

 

12 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Look, geographically, Westeros is the size of Southern America. Linguistically, it is smaller than Great Britain. That is an issue. Not story-breaking, but if you are seeking realism...

I don't see it as an issue tbh. My love of languages is satisfied by Tolkien, I don't need realism in this area in GRRM's world. It makes enough sense within the setting.

[Aldarion]

10 minutes ago, Aehole targaryen said:

Just a note here. All of those languages were fairly close to each other back then. It is not all unlikely that a fair amount of mutual intelligibility was still in effect. The diversification is in many ways a result of politics. Political splits cause language splits over time. We can not be sure that the Seven Kingdoms had such political pressure, the North and Iron Isles excluded, that was needed for a similar split from dialect to language that we see between say, Low German and Dutch or Swedish and Icelandic.

 

Actually, I'd say it is fairly certain they did - First Men fought wars against each other, after all.

14 minutes ago, Aehole targaryen said:

Just a note here. All of those languages were fairly close to each other back then. It is not all unlikely that a fair amount of mutual intelligibility was still in effect. The diversification is in many ways a result of politics. Political splits cause language splits over time. We can not be sure that the Seven Kingdoms had such political pressure, the North and Iron Isles excluded, that was needed for a similar split from dialect to language that we see between say, Low German and Dutch or Swedish and Icelandic.

 

Diversification is just as much a result of geographical split as it is of political differences, but two tend to follow each other anyway. Point is, people in premodern times a) didn't travel much and b) didn't have state-organized education, so regional and local differences were far more pronounced than they are today.

11 minutes ago, Aehole targaryen said:

Just to reiterate, I'd agree if we could be sure that the political climate/s would result in similar patterns as our world. I tend to see the Kingdoms as regions rather than more closed off political areas.

 

Even with kingdoms being basically regions, in medieval France you had two major and six minor-to-mediocre languages in effect. Most of them were not mutually intelligible:

https://guernseydonkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/langues_france.jpg

15 minutes ago, Aehole targaryen said:

In our world, yes. It could also be argued that the First Men, being pushed north of the Neck, amalgamated into a cohesive linguistic unit, adopting the dominant version.

 

Possibly, but I don't really see how that could have happened, physically.

16 minutes ago, Aehole targaryen said:

I don't see it as an issue tbh. My love of languages is satisfied by Tolkien, I don't need realism in this area in GRRM's world. It makes enough sense within the setting.

Thing is, if you want a realistic setting, languages are a very good place to start because language is related to pretty much everything else about the society.

[Aehole targaryen]

31 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Actually, I'd say it is fairly certain they did - First Men fought wars against each other, after all.

So did the petty kingdoms of Sweden in pre-christian times f.ex.

31 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Diversification is just as much a result of geographical split as it is of political differences, but two tend to follow each other anyway. Point is, people in premodern times a) didn't travel much and b) didn't have state-organized education, so regional and local differences were far more pronounced than they are today.

Geography is of course related, but to a lesser extent afaik. Thing is, in Westeros it is fairly easy to travel almost everywhere, similar to the german sprachbund. This, as well as a political climate that encourages mutual intelligibility at least top-down, can very well result in as large an area as Westeros having one dominant language. Not in our world but that world. That Martin does not even describe dialects while spending endless paragraphs on food is a clue enough that he does not find languages interesting but enjoys his snacks...

 

31 minutes ago, Aldarion said:

Thing is, if you want a realistic setting, languages are a very good place to start because language is related to pretty much everything else about the society.

I don't even think we really disagree that much tbh. I'd like to see a more realistic treatment of languages in ASOIAF, but all things considered I can suspend my disbelief enough to just enjoy the story. Mostly.

Have a nice day!

[Morte]

2 hours ago, Aldarion said:

[...] So a total of two major groups, three subgroups, and originally 11 languages. Of these, two subgroups and four languages survived, of which one developed into three new languages - making it two language subgroups and six languages. [...]

You could add the Romanian languages as well, just to show how far one language (Latin) does change in a lot less than 2.000 years. And while they all are quite close to each other (as are the Slavic languages), their speakers can communicate only on a basic level with each other, and will stumble over a lot of false friends (lexical). Reading however is indeed easier (if the languages use the same alphabet).

1 hour ago, Aehole targaryen said:

Just a note here. All of those languages were fairly close to each other back then. It is not all unlikely that a fair amount of mutual intelligibility was still in effect. The diversification is in many ways a result of politics. Political splits cause language splits over time.

On Germanic languages: No, it wasn't primary the result of politics, it's - as @Aldarion said - mostly Geography and peoples immobility. And those who did travel, used a lingua franca. Politics just cemented what was a natural developement.

In fact, the dialects in the German language were so strong, that, even after the victory of High German, people had problems understanding villages only 50km away. It got better with Printing and the spread of books (bibles, but not only) written in German. But the impact on everyday life was minimal, as long as most people stayed analphabets, so it really improved only with Enlightenment and obligatory elementary schools.¹

But: Even today I have to work hard to understand someone speaking in - for example - an Allgäu-dialect, or even older people speaking the dialect of the region of Germany I live in since twenty years. And yes, I could be called a native speaker. And yes, we are only talking about dialects here, not sister-languages. So, realistically, Arya shouldn't be able to understand Hot Pie or Gentry that easily, even if they all spoke the same language, as I very much doubt that the Northern highborn girl was taught the Common tongue dialect of Flea Bottom, while Gentry might even know some phrases in Bastard Valyrian, given his master is from Essos.

^{1 And even in the 19th and early 20the century dialect in spoken German was very strong. For example, Freud writes a wonderful casual and elegant German with a strong hit of Austrian vocabulary (of course), but he was famous for speaking such a strong Vienna dialect, (if he wanted) that it was really hard, if not impossible, to follow.}