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edenfallingSusan and Edmund talk about linguistics, post-LWW. Meta thinly cloaked in dialogue. (ETA: Disney movie canon, because I picked up an idea from somebody else's fic and forgot to check it against the books. *grimace*)
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Babel
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For the first several months after their exile back through the wardrobe, Edmund developed a habit of cornering one or another of his siblings and pointing out various oddities about Narnia and their experience there, which he had only noticed since their return to England. Peter and Lucy listened patiently enough at first, but eventually they began to insist that he should simply accept that their two worlds were different, and that they had doubtless thought differently in Narnia as they adapted to that land. Finally, only Susan was left to bear Edmund's philosophical ambushes.
One windy afternoon, he crept up on her in the library and startled her into reaching for a nonexistent bow when he cleared his throat. "Make some noise when you walk!" she scolded him, before looking back down at the poem she'd been reading. She rather liked Yeats; he was romantic and just a touch wild, which suited her mood these days.
"Sorry," said Edmund, not sounding particularly contrite. "Su, have you considered the oddest contrast between our two worlds?"
"How you can single one incident from the surfeit of oddity surrounding us is beyond me," she said, closing the book and setting it beside her on the sofa. "But tell me your thoughts."
"That's just it," said Edmund. "Did you listen to yourself? When I asked you, I wasn't speaking English; I spoke Narnian. You answered the same way."
"I--" Susan began, and then frowned. "So I did, brother," she said, more slowly, the lilting syllables of Narnian falling smoothly from her lips. They sounded out of place somehow, or maybe it was the change in her voice, ringing suddenly clear and silver in the dusty air of the Professor's private library. "What of it?" she continued, switching back to English. "Surely it's less odd for different worlds to use different languages than it would be for Narnians to speak English. Our language is such a hodgepodge, after all -- it would be absurd for Narnia to have somehow copied all the steps in its development."
"You would know," Edmund said, glancing at the dictionary still laid on the low reading table. "But that's not quite my point. What strikes me as peculiar is that every other land in that world, so far as we ever knew -- and I, for one, knew quite a lot about our neighbors, no matter how distant -- all of them spoke the same language. Oh, some had a bit of local flavor here and there, mostly to do with titles or proper names, but the basic words and grammar were identical. It's as if everyone from Scotland to India spoke perfect English, even amongst themselves."
Susan's frown deepened. "You're right; that is odd. Still, what of it?"
Edmund shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged. "Nothing, really -- it struck me funny just now, that's all. And I wondered why I never noticed while we were still there. It's as if that was simply the way of the world, and having more than one language would be ridiculous as well as impossible. Now, of course, having only one language seems unlikely at best."
"No more unlikely than our going to Narnia in the first place," said Susan, tiring of the subject. Peter and Lucy had the right idea: while they were in England, it was best to focus on England. Within certain limits, of course -- there were some things too important to forget. And speaking of those... "Perhaps you should ask Aslan, if we ever see him again."
Edmund agreed that this was the best plan of action, but by the time they next saw the Lion, he had other things on his mind.
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Inspired by the 3/10/09![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
15_mnute_fic word #101: attack
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"Babel" uses a tiny bit of movie canon as window dressing -- Susan in the library with the dictionary -- but the lack of foreign languages is book canon so far as I can tell. All the islanders speak the same language as the Narnians; so do the Calormenes (my proof there is that Shasta would have had no reason whatsoever to learn a foreign language, nor would the Narnians have had any reason to speak a hypothetical Calormene language amongst themselves while they think Shasta is Corin); and so do the stars and the gnomes of Bism. So do the Telmarines, and given that they came from our world (and their ancestors were quite probably Spanish pirates rather than British pirates, given the sound of various Telmarine names) it seems to me that there must be something about the world of Narnia that sort of imposes a universal language on anyone living there.
The implications of that are fascinating. *grin*
ETA: This turns out to be wholly movie canon, because I realized after the fact that the books contradict one of the assumptions in the story. The Narnian world does have a universal language and a strange lack of linguistic drift... but that universal language, annoyingly, is English. My argument to that effect is here.
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In other news, work was a cesspit of madness today, but I survived. I also wrote another 150 words of "Secrets" ch. 14, and figured out why the scene with the twins wanted to exist. It turns out there's actually a perfectly good reason! And, in a potentially annoying twist, I think that while I can still collapse my original epilogue into ch. 14, I now have a plan for a different epilogue, set during the Weasleys' trip to Egypt. Which is all very well and good for letting me work Bill and Charlie into the story as physical presences instead of just in Ginny's thoughts, and for wrapping up a couple thematic threads, but now I need to do research on Cairo or Alexandria or the Valley of Kings or something like that.
Bother. Bother, bother, bother.
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Babel
---------------------------------------------
For the first several months after their exile back through the wardrobe, Edmund developed a habit of cornering one or another of his siblings and pointing out various oddities about Narnia and their experience there, which he had only noticed since their return to England. Peter and Lucy listened patiently enough at first, but eventually they began to insist that he should simply accept that their two worlds were different, and that they had doubtless thought differently in Narnia as they adapted to that land. Finally, only Susan was left to bear Edmund's philosophical ambushes.
One windy afternoon, he crept up on her in the library and startled her into reaching for a nonexistent bow when he cleared his throat. "Make some noise when you walk!" she scolded him, before looking back down at the poem she'd been reading. She rather liked Yeats; he was romantic and just a touch wild, which suited her mood these days.
"Sorry," said Edmund, not sounding particularly contrite. "Su, have you considered the oddest contrast between our two worlds?"
"How you can single one incident from the surfeit of oddity surrounding us is beyond me," she said, closing the book and setting it beside her on the sofa. "But tell me your thoughts."
"That's just it," said Edmund. "Did you listen to yourself? When I asked you, I wasn't speaking English; I spoke Narnian. You answered the same way."
"I--" Susan began, and then frowned. "So I did, brother," she said, more slowly, the lilting syllables of Narnian falling smoothly from her lips. They sounded out of place somehow, or maybe it was the change in her voice, ringing suddenly clear and silver in the dusty air of the Professor's private library. "What of it?" she continued, switching back to English. "Surely it's less odd for different worlds to use different languages than it would be for Narnians to speak English. Our language is such a hodgepodge, after all -- it would be absurd for Narnia to have somehow copied all the steps in its development."
"You would know," Edmund said, glancing at the dictionary still laid on the low reading table. "But that's not quite my point. What strikes me as peculiar is that every other land in that world, so far as we ever knew -- and I, for one, knew quite a lot about our neighbors, no matter how distant -- all of them spoke the same language. Oh, some had a bit of local flavor here and there, mostly to do with titles or proper names, but the basic words and grammar were identical. It's as if everyone from Scotland to India spoke perfect English, even amongst themselves."
Susan's frown deepened. "You're right; that is odd. Still, what of it?"
Edmund shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged. "Nothing, really -- it struck me funny just now, that's all. And I wondered why I never noticed while we were still there. It's as if that was simply the way of the world, and having more than one language would be ridiculous as well as impossible. Now, of course, having only one language seems unlikely at best."
"No more unlikely than our going to Narnia in the first place," said Susan, tiring of the subject. Peter and Lucy had the right idea: while they were in England, it was best to focus on England. Within certain limits, of course -- there were some things too important to forget. And speaking of those... "Perhaps you should ask Aslan, if we ever see him again."
Edmund agreed that this was the best plan of action, but by the time they next saw the Lion, he had other things on his mind.
---------------------------------------------
Inspired by the 3/10/09
15_mnute_fic word #101: attack---------------------------------------------
"Babel" uses a tiny bit of movie canon as window dressing -- Susan in the library with the dictionary -- but the lack of foreign languages is book canon so far as I can tell. All the islanders speak the same language as the Narnians; so do the Calormenes (my proof there is that Shasta would have had no reason whatsoever to learn a foreign language, nor would the Narnians have had any reason to speak a hypothetical Calormene language amongst themselves while they think Shasta is Corin); and so do the stars and the gnomes of Bism. So do the Telmarines, and given that they came from our world (and their ancestors were quite probably Spanish pirates rather than British pirates, given the sound of various Telmarine names) it seems to me that there must be something about the world of Narnia that sort of imposes a universal language on anyone living there.
The implications of that are fascinating. *grin*
ETA: This turns out to be wholly movie canon, because I realized after the fact that the books contradict one of the assumptions in the story. The Narnian world does have a universal language and a strange lack of linguistic drift... but that universal language, annoyingly, is English. My argument to that effect is here.
---------------------------------------------
In other news, work was a cesspit of madness today, but I survived. I also wrote another 150 words of "Secrets" ch. 14, and figured out why the scene with the twins wanted to exist. It turns out there's actually a perfectly good reason! And, in a potentially annoying twist, I think that while I can still collapse my original epilogue into ch. 14, I now have a plan for a different epilogue, set during the Weasleys' trip to Egypt. Which is all very well and good for letting me work Bill and Charlie into the story as physical presences instead of just in Ginny's thoughts, and for wrapping up a couple thematic threads, but now I need to do research on Cairo or Alexandria or the Valley of Kings or something like that.
Bother. Bother, bother, bother.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-14 12:58 pm (UTC)Re:Secrets: Ouch, yeah, it's annoying when that happens. but you're close to the end of the year now! Just... not quite as close, but still close! You can do eet~ *waves pompoms*
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-14 07:18 pm (UTC)(One does not have to be Christian to find this sort of thing fun to speculate about. *grin*)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-14 04:35 pm (UTC)Probably the same thing that made everyone on all the planets on the original Star Trek speak English. ::ducks and runs::
Seriously, it's an interesting idea — basically, in Narnia, God was never so far away that anyone had to try building a tower tall enough to reach Hir.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-14 07:27 pm (UTC)Seriously, it's an interesting idea — basically, in Narnia, God was never so far away that anyone had to try building a tower tall enough to reach Hir.
Yeah, and moreover, the people who are proud and rich enough to try something like that -- the Calormenes -- don't believe in Aslan in the first place, and so have no reason to bother. They seem perfectly happy to embody Tash in a great domed temple in Tashbaan, Zardeenah in her groves, and other deities presumably in similarly earthbound sacred places.
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