ii. audio. after dark. both courts.

[vrykolakas]

[If anything, the Brucolac's voice sounds worse than ever, painfully scratchy and distinctly weary. The reception isn't perfect; he's sitting in the garden of the fortress at Redgate, where the lockets work, but the blood granite is still causing some interference.]

What languages do you speak? And what language would you say I'm speaking right now?

Comments

[deadpoet]

Plenty. A bit rusty with some. Sounds like you're speaking English, though. Am I wrong?

[vrykolakas]

There, see, is the rub. I'm speaking Salt. And to my ears, so are you.

So what's English?

[Video]

[scramasax]

Ah -- Latin as well as Franconian.

To-to me it's as if you're speaking Franconian. [He won't ask a similar question to the above; it's a question that comes to mind with an evidently clear answer.]

audio.

[vrykolakas]

But I'm not, and I've never heard of it. [He sounds like he's had a theory confirmed; actually rather pleased.]

Tell me then, have you come across any language, here in the Drabwurld, that you don't understand? Has anyone spoken to you and been unintelligible?

Video

[notavirtue]

Many, though most of them have not been spoken in fifty thousand years. I have learned several more since arriving here.

You speak English, as I do. [It was the language he associated most with humans, so he'd made that his default. If anyone here spoke prothean, he was certain he'd know it.]

audio.

[vrykolakas]

English seems to be popular.

Try me. Or rather, try whatever thaumaturgy is behind this translation hex or whatever it is. Linguistic magic is a viper's pit of over-theoretical complications, as I understand it. However they've swung this, it's incredible.

One of your fifty-thousand-year-old tongues. In the interests of experimentation, I'd like to hear some.

action;

[thebreakingwave]

It's a few days after what might be one of the longest days of his life that Harry makes his way down into the garden. He'd done his bit to get the village secure, seen one of the local medics for the grim news, and then promptly slept for as long as he could manage. He knew that once he'd gone down to rest, nothing short of another damned dragon would wake him, but that does mean he's now up in the middle of the night.

He needs to make some calls on his locket, but isn't quite ready to do so when he wanders down to the garden and spots the Brucolac.

"I'd say English, but it's not, is it?"

action forever and ever.

[vrykolakas]

"No," says the Brucolac, lowering his locket and closing it over, not surprised by Harry's arrival. He looks pretty well for someone who had to be dragged out of a collapsing mine not three full days ago: his hands (emerging from his sleeves as he reaches for a mug on the table) are the worst-off, ridged and bubbled with burns which nonetheless seem to be healing remarkably quickly. He squints a little as he takes in Harry's appearance and wastes no time asking, very bluntly, "What the hell happened?"

[Voice]

[vanyel_ashkevron]

Valdemarian. [Which doesn't make sense considering this is another world altogether. Vanyel has wondered about this very question for some time.]

[vrykolakas]

What is that.

[baseborne]

It sounds to me like the Common Tongue of Westeros, but I've heard men here name it "English" most often.

I speak that, and High Valyrian. I have a few words of the Old Tongue too, I suppose, though not near enough to claim it.

[vrykolakas]

No one has yet told me what the hell English is. Where it's spoken, who and what use it. Do you know?

[pontificus]

Catalan, Fiorentine, Latin, Spanish, Greek, French, a bit of Arabic, but a woman in my position, I am always learning more. Though none here seem to speak any of the Italian languages, Catalan comes easiest to me. It is what I am speaking now.

[vrykolakas]

I can't decide whether this automatic translation is a marvel or a cruel blow to the pleasures of variety.

[video, breakably private]

[ziggyzoggy]

[He's sitting in the dark, backlight somewhat from torches in what passes for a garden in Caer Scima.] Orcish an' Zandalari. An' Common, but I be shit at it.

But you, though? Somethin' ya should not be. [It's said with a grin, at least.]

[audio, breakably private]

[vrykolakas]

Yes?

[Faint, wry interest.]

What's that, then?

[noirant]

Marathine, some Troian, more Kekropian than anyone ought to.

[ Felix rolls his eyes theatrically; it's not precisely a lie. He'd rather no one bother to speak it at all -- perhaps then his horrifically bad grasp of the language wouldn't be so far out of place. ]

A smattering of others, as needed. [ That being precisely long enough to go bother a better translator or hunt down a dictionary. ] I suppose by now we've well established that you aren't speaking Marathine, and I confess not a lick of knowledge to the others you've named. How are you getting around that little trick?

[ There's no reason not to pretend that he hasn't been listening. ]

[vrykolakas]

You pick up enough languages, you find a few which are mulish enough to actively resist translation.

[No, mate, sorry, the fact that one person couldn't understand Quiesy doesn't mean that'll stick.]

Rushing ahead, aren't you. Whoever said I was trying to get around it? I'm just kicking at its parameters.

audio;

[goldsickness]

Westron and Khuzdul. It sounds to me as if you speak Westron, though I know that is not the case.

audio;

[vrykolakas]

Khuzdul. [At this point, the Brucolac—somewhat battered and bruised, very tired—has sort of given up on what he was originally very vaguely attempting to achieve.] Beautiful word.

audio

[silvergift]

[Oh, an interesting question. And definitely perking Celebrían's interest. Something that she definitely needs lately. Between news of her husband's possible demise from Tsurugi, as well as that of Celebrimbor and others who have departed, she needs something interesting to distract her.]

I speak Westron, Sindarin and Quenya. It sounds to me now as if you speak Quenya, the language of my mothers people.

audio

[vrykolakas]

[Pause. Interesting.]

Another says that I speak Westron. And another, who speaks the same tongues you do, agrees, though Westron isn't his mother tongue.

I can't find rhyme or reason in this.

private voice

[bythewaves]

[ Pinged by language ]

My mother tongue we called Quenya - I suppose Men would consider it High Elven - but when we came to Middle-earth we learnt the languages of our sundered kin. Most of us use Sindarin - Grey Elven - for routine conversation these days. [ also because of complicated things with Quenya being banned THANK YOU THINGOL ]

I learnt the languages of Men, when they first crossed the mountains, but the language of the dwarves they do not teach beyond very simple things, and then only to those they hold in very high regard. My brother Maedhros would know more than I of their tongue, for he was close in friendship to the Dwarf Lord Azhagal. But if you ask this question you have undoubtedly learnt already that there is a form of translation at work here - I understand you as clearly as if you were speaking Quenya or Sindarin, but you are very obviously not. I myself, am using Sindarin at present, but to you it doubtless sounds as clear as if I spoke your mother tongue.

private voice

[vrykolakas]

I have no mother tongue. None save the one my mother literally spoke, which I've never heard anywhere else but on her lap, and which no one I've ever met understands or recognises. She was mad, probably.

No, to me, you sound as if you speak Salt, but not quite the Kettai Salt I learned first and not quite Armadan Salt, which I spoke most of the time at home. It's a sailor's language, dialectical, changeable. It's altered a lot in the time I've spoken it.

If you switch to Quenya, does it then sound as if I respond in Quenya? If I understand it at all.

voice. private. (hover for translation!)

[orcsurfing]

My mother tongue is Sindarin, simply known as elvish by many, though I have learned Westron in my youth to speak with the mortal people of Middle Earth, and in the recent years I have also learned Quenya out of necessity. Another language of the elves.

[ A terrible mashup of the various dialects of Quenya no less, but he's not entirely aware of it himself. ]

Now to answer your second question, I speak in the only way I believe you would understand me, and most in this world, that is Westron, and I hear you speak the same. Should I speak my mother tongue, nin ú-cheniog, ú-iston.

voice. private.

[vrykolakas]

You're right, I don—

[Wait. What? He presses his teeth together. Delicately:]

Forgive me. I think something's fucking with me now. That was incomprehensible, but I knew what it meant.