A question about how he formed the Old Tongue.
The actual words are based on many words. I have used Turkish, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and for a hint of the familiar, I used a little Gaelic, too. Because fantasy languages always have Gaelic in them. That’s just the way it goes. But I made deliberately the grammar and structure complicated. [the Saxons and Danes story again] … English is supposed to be the most difficult language to learn in the world as a second language. I think that that is pride speaking, but just the same…yes, well, “my language is harder than your language.” I’ve been told it’s true though, but whether it is, I don’t know. … [he once tried learning Cantonese] … I’ll tell you, there are eight tones in Cantonese. Mandarin isn’t too bad, there are only four tones there, but you’ve got eight tones in Cantonese. And there are others that can get twelve or better in other dialects. You can as well just forget about it, unless you grew up yodeling from the cradle.
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