I smell an MK retcon comin' on.

And it smells like brimstone... and victory!

It always does.

But why Brimstone?

Glorious vengeance and destruction of the stupid.

Sounds like something that either Mannimarco or Dagoth Ur or maybe the Sloads would say.

Tamriel also has a competing monthly publication called The Foreign Tongue, but the content of that magazine is unspeakable. Not merely because it's, you know, in a foreign tongue. The actual text is scant, but tongues are explored in depth. Exploration and tongues are actually pretty common in the Foreign Tongue.

Not to forget the Nordic Tongue, which cannot be written, only spoken. The drawback of that Tongue is that its listeners frequently suffer from being smashed against walls, crushed and otherwise heavily blown away by the sheer force of being spoken to. That's why smart Nords quickly changed its use from communicating through it to conquering with it - or putting up shouting contests challenging the winds themselves.

Hahaha!

On a different note: Tamrielic seems to be, like Prow said, a creole of local languages after subjugation by the Empire...though, given the fact that all people in Tamriel could understand each other seemingly even BEFORE the Septims, I'd say that it was actually formed during the times of Reman. All hypothetical, of course. Further, even after the fall of that Empire, I think that Tamrielic still remained a lingua franca among the people of the Empire, facilitating conquest by Tiber Septim.

So I'd say, based purely on my speculation, that it's descended from Old Cyrodiilic and is a blend of the other languages and Cyrodiilic. Which would also be a non-BATW way of explaining why so many Imperial documents and memorandums have Latin-sounding titles, like Ordo Legionis.

In my opinion, you have two 'commont tongues' used on Tamriel :

First is tamrielic - offical language of the empire, probably evlaved and spread around from the first empire. The traders and soldier's tongue. Think of latin during the roman empire, where it was the de facto common language, as any serious dealing with the administration was made in latin.

Second would be altmeris - with so much science, magic art and culture in the empire pilfered from altmeri sources, their language is likely to be quite widespread among the cultured ?lites - or at least a sanitized declination, as according to the pocket guides, reading original aldmeris text can have detrimental effects on human minds (though wether it's inherent to the language, or a trick from altmer wizards to secure their knowledge from unwanted pilfering can't be known for certain.) An earthly anolog would be greek, which was widely used in the roman empire as the cultural and scientifc language.

Almderis sounds like a dead language, from what I've gathered in references from Hanging Gardens.

Muthsera Paw-Prints,

The work of JHUNAL once took me to the Abbey of St. Delyn the Wise in Vvardenfell where I spoke with my pilgrim friend, Artisa Arelas, who said of "Aldmeris" the following:

"Aldmeris is the original Elvish language, still spoken as a first language among isolated Elven communities, and spoken and written by all educated Elves, and the language of the Elven arts. The root '-mer' is anologous with the root '-man' or '-men' in human language; thus, the Elves are mer as Humans are men."

I hope this helps, for I remain...

Yours in the Scrolls,


___The Word Merchant of Julianos

Dead-ish, then.

Maybe like some sort of Euskadi, if Euskadi really did come from the flying saucer colonists and taught to the CeltIberians and the Incas.

So the Altmer speak Aldmeris?

Would've thunk it?

such big words, but such terrible spelling
what a quandary i am having


i believe the book was difficult to read because it had Dwemer writing in it with Aldmeris portions, by getting someone who spoke Aldmeris to translate these parts, the Dwemer portions could therefor be translated

Hmm. Let me throw a wrench into things.

There's an old Ashlander in Pelagiad, Yakummu Hairshashishi, that mentions a few things about language;



So aldmeris might be prevalent enough to be used in regular conversation? Or perhaps 'Old Elf' is another name for Tamrielic?

"Old Elf" could be phonetical for Aldmer, since "mer" (which is pronounced "mare"). Ends up the same, though, doesn't it?

It could also be a result of Aldmeris being the root language of "Tamriellic Common", Much like Latin is the root language of Italian, French, Spanish, and English.

This would result in several cognate words, much like happens with our world, but also with different grammar and syntax. The ashlander in question could well be speaking real Aldmeris, while the player is speaking Tamriellic Common. It would sound a bit jaded, with perhaps improper grammar, as it is a related language but not the same.

EG-- Italian and Spanish have some very similar words, and can sound almost the same to the untrained. EG-- 'Gratsi' and "Gracias" (Or german and English, "Danka" and "Thank-ya")

Or Swedish, "dunka".

It's already been stated, many times over, that Aldmeris is the root language of Tamrielic. I think that's pretty clear from the afore-mentioned sources.

What I don't understand is... well...

Latin?! A root language for English? That's news to me. I always thought it was Germanic in origin, since the phonics, grammar, and syntax are similar. They're absolutely nothing like a Latin-based language. English has many Latin words, but it has many words from many languages, all of which have been properly anglicanized. AFIK English (or New English) is a more evolved version of Old English which is, in turn, a bastardization of a, now-lost, Germanic dialect.

It has elements of both. English is an amalgam of (mainly) Latin and 'Germanic', which resulted in Anglo-Saxon, I believe. Which later developed into Old English and then Modern English. At least I think so... Adanorcil's probably the man to talk to about this.

Spanish, Italian, Armenian, and a couple of other languages also have Latin as their root... but they don't have any Germanic elements.

The spanish, italian, and french connections to latin are obvious. Italian is like neo-latin. The English thing, I don't see as much. Many words have their root in Latin, but those words are consistant for many European language. I understand rome influenced everything European for many years, and colored our culture what it is today, but seriously, English seems much closer to German that Latin.

Um no... the root of english is not latin...

|_Indo-European
|__Germanic
|___West Germanic
|____Anglo?"Frisian
|_____Anglic
|______English

The english language has a lot of loanwords from several different languages how ever the core of the language is quite intact-ish and that core is clearly germanic.




Where would you recon the Latin came from then? From the Angels of Denmark who spoke Norse or the Saxons who spoke.. Flat German.. Old English is very similar to Norse.. are you implying that the Vikings spoke Latin?

English may not 'come from' latin, but every other latin word is an english cognate or derivative.

I know this is the wrongish thread to ask this in, but;

Can someone care to extrapolate the origins of the word "dog" as in the woof kind.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=dog&searchmode=none

You mean like that? o.O

Ahh, that's it. That question has been bugging me all day. <_<

Still dosen't tell me where it's from. As in location and culture.