We talked about the Forsaken and how they know how to speak the current language.
He said that if you can speak the Old Tongue, learning to understand and speak the new “Vulgar” tongue is not that difficult. When the Forsaken are together having their meetings, they speak in the Old Tongue. (RJ: “But I translate it for you guys.”)
Another very interesting note: Modern-day Sharans speak a form of the Old Tongue in their everyday speech. The exact analogy he used was a Roman landing in modern day Italy and having to figure out Italian from Latin. For someone extremely bright and well-educated like the Forsaken it wouldn’t be that hard. This is also consistent with information in the books. The Old Tongue is more complex, so learning the Vulgar from Old Tongue is much easier than vice versa. It also gibes with Graendal’s thought while she is writing a letter that the modern script was so easy to learn and duplicate.
He also went on at length about his thoughts on language drift and the impact of the printing press on continuity.
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