How was Old Tongue created? Was it based on another language, or was it just off the top of his head?
It was based on a lot of different languages. He had shelves and shelves of language books—every language, practically, known to man—but it was a lot of creativity on his part to put it all together.
Another fun story here. At one point, when I was visiting Charleston, I was talking about the mythological significance of certain things, and I’m like, “I can’t figure out the mythological significance of the ashandarei .” I knew pieces of Mat’s mythological significance—not based on language, but the mythology—and Harriet said, “Oh, I know where it came from.” She ran out to his library, selected a specific volume, came back with it and gave it to me and said, “It’s this chapter right here.” And showed me a chapter in that book that I could read that talked about the mythological significance of that specific piece of the Wheel of Time world. And so, there are all sorts of things like that that he used.
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