Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 zombiegleemax Apr 10, 2005 19:03:02	In the 1st ed. Greyhawk Gazetteer it says that Common is a combination of Ancient Baklunish and the dialect of Old Oeridian spoken in the Great Kingdom. It's easy to explain the Old Oeridian, but why Ancient Baklunish? Does anyone know of any official explanation for how this came about, or barring that has anyone bothered to come up with an explanation for it in their GH campaign? In my old campaign I just had ditched the Baklunish element of Common and based it purely on the Great Kingdom dialect of Old Oeridian (Aerdian) as kind of a liturgical language spread by the priesthood of the Kingdom as it expanded, kind of like Latin spread by the Catholic Church. In my new campaign I'm thinking of explaining the Ancient Baklunish element by saying that trade during the Great Kingdom's height was dominated by an ethnic Baklunish trading class who also spoke Aerdian and mixed it with their common language (Ancient Baklunish) to make a sort of "trade language." Anyone else?
#2 OleOneEye Apr 11, 2005 0:02:37	The height of the Great Kingdom, circa 1st and 2nd Century CY, had the main power groups of the Great Kingdom, Keoland, and the fractured Baklunish states. The Great Kingdom would have spoken Oeridian; Keoland probably had developed Keoish by then, but I imagine that basic meanings can be gleaned between one that speaks Oeridian and Keoish; and the Baklune states spoke Baklunish. While merchants that stayed within their home lands would have no need of using any but their home land's language, those looking to trade between the three power blocks would need to be able to communicate. There would certainly be common elements between Oeridian and Keoish, so communication between these lands would not necessarily be difficult. Baklunish and Oeridian are quite a different picture. A common pidgeon language would first develop combining ecomonic terms from the two languages. Over the years, this pidgeon language would become more and more fleshed out. As Oeridians are more populous than Baklunes, I would suspect that Common has more Oeridian roots than Baklune roots. Merchant cartels traversing the Tuflik valley would certainly have become wildly rich. It is not hard to imagine them using their wealth to eventually gain control over local merchant routes in addition to their route through the Tuflik valley. These cartels had come to use the Common language pretty much exclusively. Before too long, anyone looking to join in trade had to deal with these cartels, and so, had to learn the common tongue. The fracturing of the Great Kingdom and Keoland into various states, each with their protectionist tariffs and duties, spelled the death knell to these great cartels. Their legacy of the Common tongue remains. As a corollary to the economic impact in spreading the common tongue, bards, scribes, and sages certainly did their part as well. A language with two base roots has the potential for many more words and nuances than either of the base languages alone. Whether writing a sonata or detailing the 42 variations of stirge probocis, those of the learned arts flocked to the near endless variation the Common tongue came to offer. In doing so, they expanded the Common tongue far beyond its root languages. Among the aristocracy it became a matter of pride to speak in Common and show one's culture. To speak Keoish or Neolander in public would bespeak a boorish lord. Before too long, even the lowliest of peasant came to speak in Common emulating those of greater station. And so, the Common tongue became dominant throughout the Flaneass. Only the most backwater and provincial folk kept using their original languages.
#3 zombiegleemax Apr 12, 2005 8:54:18	My take is somewhat different. I suggest that the roots of the Common tongue arose before the Migrations - in the time when the Oerid tribes still dwelt in the West. Given the position of their homelands, they would have traded with and served as mercenaries for the Baklunish Padishahs. They'd have used an Oeridian/Baklinish pidgin mix to communicate - hence the odd mix of Old Oeridian and Ancient Baklunish in "modern" Common. It's possible that if the different Oeridian tribes were well seperated from each other, that "proto-Common" could have served as a ligua franca between their different tribal dialects (which we know existed and were carried into the Flanaess - as Ferral is the remnant of one of them; cf Nyrondese and Ferrondi). This trade tongue was carried east with the Oerids during the Migrations - which explains its widespread distribution - both in the Keoish and Aerdi cultural spheres. Obviously modern Common would be much different to the proto-Common of the Oerid tribes - as distant as modern English is from Anglo Saxon. IMO. P.
#4 samwise Apr 12, 2005 10:33:01	I agree with Woesinger. While I dislike the concept of "Common", and don't use it in my home games, for "general" GH development I believe it developed pre-migration. It would make little sense for it to develop post-migration except in Bissel, and there it would have also incorporated Suel elements. But overall, most merchants wouldn't bother trading across the entire Flanaess, from the Great Kingdom to Gradsul to Zeif, so there would be no need for a trade tongue to develop the way "Common" is supposed to have developed. Rather you would just have bi-lingual or tri-lingual merchants speaking Aerdian, Keoish, and Baklunish, and sticking to the interface trade in the Fals Gap or across the Azure Sea.
#5 zombiegleemax Apr 13, 2005 9:16:56	It's a fair cop. If you actually start applying real world linguistics to GH, there wouldn't be a Common tongue, but a web of local languages that radiated out from the root tongues: Flannae, Ancient Sueloise, Old Oeridian, Baklunish and the racial tongues. You'd have: Derivatives of Ancient Sueloise: Keoish (largely based on Ancient Suelosie, with a mix of Oeridian and Flannish and eprhaps some olve and dwur vocca words): spoke in the old Keoish sphere. Urnsian (Modified Ancient Sueloise with some Oeridian mixed in): Spoken in Urnst, duh. The Cold Tongue (Ancient Suelosie with lots of neologisms relating to climate and/or lots of borrowed words from the local Colten Flannae dialects): Rhizzia and Fireland. This would probably be a collection of dialects - Frutz, Schnai, Crusk and Firelander. Lendorian: (Probably a resonably pure dialect decended from AS, perhaps with some imported olven/Oeridian words): The Lendor Isles; perhaps also a related dialect on the Duxchans. Shar Sueloise: (An almost pure form of Ancient Sueloise): Scarlet Brotherhood. Rasol: (pidgin Suel/Olman hybrid; two branches: Amedio and Hepmonaland - these would have probably evolved in isolation independently from common root tongues, so would actually be practically two different tongues). Derivatives of High Oeridian (if there is such a thing as the different Oerid tribes likely had divergant dialects before they arrived in the East): Old Oeridian: (largely uniform, despite local coloquialisms and borrowed words esp. on the peripheries eg Ratik (Cold Tongue imports) and Irongate (dwur imports)/Sunndi (olven imports)) Spoken in most of Old Aerdy including the Iron League as the native language. Spoken across the Old Great Kingdom as the real "Common" tongue. Nyrondese: (tribal offshoot of the High Oeridian spoken by the Nehron): Found in Nyrond and the Pale (though the Palish dialect would have a lot of Tenha Flannish idioms and imported words). Ferrondi: (another ancient tribal offshoot of High Oeridian, with local variations): spoken in Furyondy, Veluna (by the nobility), the Shield and Bandit Lands, Highfolk (heavily influenced by Olven), Perrenland (heavily influenced by Old Oeridian, Flannish and even Ordai). Yorodhi: (mix of archaic High Oeridian with strong Baklunish infleunces): The Yorodhi of Ull. Derivatives of Baklunish: Baklunish: (evolved from Ancient Baklunish, and diverging into local dialects - Ekbiri, Zeifan; Tusman): The Bakluni states and the Ketite nobility. Ketish: (a rag bag mix of Paynim Baklunish, Oeridian and Keoish and would likely be used as a common trade tongue for merchants along the Great Western Road). Ket (smallfolk and merchants); Merchants in the Bakluni lands -perhaps also known as Moqoll's Tongue or the Baklinish equivalent thereof. Paynim Bakunish: (many local dialects - esp in the Paynims and Ull, where there was a significant influx from the West): Paymim tribes. Ordai: (mix of Paynim Baklunish, Oeridian and Flan): Wolf and Tiger nomads. Derivatives of Flannae (it's probably fair to say that when the Oerids and Sueloise arrived in the Flanaess, the Flan had dispersed so much that there was no one Flannae tongue - but many, many dialects and daughter tongues). You can probabaly group them geographically: Colten/Tenha: the root tongue of the Coltens, Tenhas and Araphahi - though each would have subsequently diverged. Tenha would have taken on a lot of Suel and especially Old Oeridian influences. Araphahi would have some Ordai/Bakluni imported words, while Colten would have some Cold Tongue/Suel influences. Ehlissan: Spoken now only by the Headlanders of Onnwal, and Flan tribesmen in the Hestmarks perhaps, but once widespread in the realm of Ehlissa. Sulmi: Once the tongue of Sulm - probably made extinct by the Scorpion Crown. The persent day dervishes of the Bright might speak derivatives or may have migrated from elsewhere, bringing their local dialects with them. Gyric/Geoffish/Western Flan: Last remaining vestage of the Sheldomar branch of Flannish. Now likely to be heavily influenced by Keoish and Olven. This isn't exhaustive, but just what comes to mind P.
#6 samwise Apr 13, 2005 9:42:48	Ooohhhh, nice list! I use most of those already, but there are a few new ones like Urnsian. It would probably make a great Canonfire! article for us anti-Common heretics. :P
#7 zombiegleemax Apr 13, 2005 10:15:19	Cheers, but there's actually lists like this online already: http://www.dracheninsel.de/insel/add/greyhawk/language.htm and http://homepages.ius.edu/rvest/Greyhawk/GHLanguages.html I think both of these incorporate some elements from LG as well. At the end of the day, all you really need to do to construct a reasonably realistic language tree is look at the cultural influences and see how they'd have changed the root tongue of the people that lived in any given region. That and remember that isolation leads to diversification and that in somewhere like GH, where your average splod has probably never travelled farther than the nearest market town - it's very easy for regional dialects to diverge in a very small geographical space (just look at Europe!). On the other hand you have social factors like trade and spheres of common governance/culture (such as the old Keoish and Aerdi empires) will tend to mix and homogenise languages P.
#8 zombiegleemax Apr 21, 2005 11:41:03	I disagree that there wouldn't be a Common tongue, although I do agree that it wouldn't be as widely used as seems to be the case in canon Greyhawk. The idea that all the Oeridian tribes would have so easily abandoned their own dialects IS pretty implausible. My theory is that immediately after the Twin Cataclysms the Baklunish successor states now making up Ekbir, Tusmit, and Zief were the only states stable enough to engage in any widespread trade. While Oeridian-dominated kingdoms were forming out of tribal structures in the east, Baklunish merchants, speaking a common form of Ancient Baklunish were spreading out through the Flanaess, conducting trade in partnership with local rulers, and establishing themselves as communities in those kingdoms. A real world example of this would be the network of Armenian traders in Persia, Afghanistan, and India from the 12th - 17th centuries. While these traders would eventually come to see themselves almost as a seperate ethnic group - neither Baklunish nor Oeridian - they would maintain contact with each other, and use their Baklunish language to do so. With the rise of the Great Kingdom, the Aerdi masters of that state would have needed capable administrators and bureaucrats to run their empire. Who better than a literate class seperated by ethnicity from the majority of the conquered population? Along with this the proto-Common spoken by this class would make a natural language of administration, an attractive alternative to imposing the Aerdian dialect on everyone. Eventually this proto-Common (or maybe Middle Common by this time) would have picked up Aerdian influences, evolving into modern Common, and come to be spoken by the upper classes of the native populations who collaborated with their Aerdian masters. These people would maintain Common as a diplomatic language once they had thrown off the yoke of the Great Kingdom. Coupled with that, its history and use as a trade language would keep it alive to the present time.