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But of course the NT word for Dragon isn't Dragon DomA Send a noteboard - 18/06/2010 05:45:34 PM
If we take "siswai'aman" as meaning "Spears of the Dragon", we have a conclusion that there is an Old Tongue word for "Dragon", which is peculiar because "Dragon" is a word without meaning for Third Age people, aside from the title of Lews Therin Telamon, who would have obviously borne that title in the Old Tongue. So really, shouldn't "Dragon" already be the Old Tongue word for Dragon? Whence comes this 'aman' then?

Funny too, because I seem to remember that in order to dodge the use of the word "Dragon", dragonflies are called lacewings in The Wheel of Time.


We might have a clue about this from a Fourth Age cycle of stories (that - so I presume, is one of our sole examples of the "new tongue" in the text rather than transliterated as English. There's little reason to believe a fourth Age text has an Old Tongue title, anyway...) It looks and sounds, of course, very much like the simplified version of the OT the new tongue is supposed to be:

The "Cycle of the Dragon" reads Charal Drianaan te Calamon.

It appears that over the course of millenia, the title of Dragon has evolved from the OT compound Calaman, that is: "red dragon". It's either that, or perhaps more likely, the OT name for Dragon was Calaman, and it's abbreviated into 'aman in a compounded expression like siswai'aman (languages using compounds almost always shorten the root words, otherwise you end up with impossibly long words...).

So, the OT title of LTT was "Aman" or "Calaman", and in the NT the word is "Calamon". The word "te" in the NT has seemingly replaced "an". Either way, Dragon in the NT is still very close to Dragon in the OT. The similarity between aman and calaman and Telamon makes me wonder if the origin of why he got called Dragon isn't in a pun between his honorific and the name of the (no doubt fictional/mythological, and seemingly related to the great serpent) creature dragon.

It becomes more obvious why the Forsaken aren't too mixed up and why the characters can't understand the OT at the same time. The OT used compound words with complex rules of word and sentence formation. The NT has set in stone the old compounds to form a fixed vocabulary, simplified the grammar a lot, and those new words have evolved over time so that many don't follow the compound rules anymore. The Forsaken know the rules of compounding, so it's much easier for them to puzzle out the meaning of the "bastard" words in the NT than for NT speakers to puzzle out how the OT compounds relate to their own vocabulary, especially that they have lost knowledge of many of the "root words", which forcibly (as in all compounded languages) often have a large palette of purely context-based meanings (an example of this is how the root word for "left" and "west" is the same one).

This message last edited by DomA on 18/06/2010 at 06:06:26 PM
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Forsaken translations - 17/06/2010 09:16:36 AM 2757 Views
Yeah... - 17/06/2010 09:31:15 AM 1985 Views
Semirhage is named as "The Lady of Pain" in KoD, by Rand... - 17/06/2010 11:14:56 AM 2351 Views
You are right... - 17/06/2010 11:31:05 AM 1886 Views
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Nice ideas! - 17/06/2010 02:10:43 PM 1787 Views
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Gaidin = Brother to Battle ... which is what I think the OP meant to use - 17/06/2010 09:32:20 PM 1576 Views
Presumably he meant "Dai Shan", or "Battle Lord", as he said. - 17/06/2010 10:37:07 PM 1637 Views
or that *NM* - 17/06/2010 10:45:49 PM 937 Views
About Aginor - 17/06/2010 12:50:04 PM 2101 Views
Great! - 17/06/2010 02:11:47 PM 1781 Views
Some Old Tongue translations - 17/06/2010 01:34:18 PM 1681 Views
ah Thanks! *NM* - 17/06/2010 02:12:00 PM 929 Views
Good luck with that - 17/06/2010 02:36:36 PM 1758 Views
Re: Good luck with that - 17/06/2010 03:24:52 PM 1577 Views
Very interesting! - 17/06/2010 08:34:36 PM 1755 Views
As always, - 20/06/2010 02:25:07 PM 1559 Views
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it's the other way around... - 17/06/2010 02:58:33 PM 1625 Views
good point - 17/06/2010 03:13:17 PM 1632 Views
Re: good point - 17/06/2010 04:05:50 PM 1691 Views
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she earned it by being born... ha! gotcha *NM* - 17/06/2010 08:39:10 PM 843 Views
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Re: good point - 17/06/2010 04:47:01 PM 1729 Views
Again, a self-proclaimed ownership aimed at making her seem more impressive - 17/06/2010 05:55:12 PM 1672 Views
I disagree - 17/06/2010 06:20:08 PM 1688 Views
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Re: Personally I think that order was off the cuff - 17/06/2010 09:02:06 PM 1752 Views
Disagree - 17/06/2010 09:28:51 PM 1673 Views
Re: Disagree - 17/06/2010 09:41:23 PM 1654 Views
I'm not being very clear - 17/06/2010 10:14:10 PM 1628 Views
Re: I'm not being very clear - 18/06/2010 08:06:56 AM 4119 Views
Re: I'm not being very clear - 18/06/2010 03:33:12 PM 1635 Views
Re: I'm not being very clear - 18/06/2010 04:35:12 PM 1514 Views
The point isn't if Lanfear has the skill, it's that it was poorly shown. - 18/06/2010 05:31:11 PM 1671 Views
I think it's shown well - 18/06/2010 06:10:55 PM 1811 Views
your own examples show only OP prowess though! - 18/06/2010 06:54:38 PM 1749 Views
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I'm partial to Sammael myself. - 18/06/2010 02:24:49 AM 1508 Views
The statement makes clear that those 6 were all quite impressive - 17/06/2010 10:51:49 PM 1459 Views
I don't see that bearing out in the text at all - 17/06/2010 10:57:36 PM 1653 Views
Well, with this point I don't disagree.. *NM* - 17/06/2010 11:10:34 PM 1579 Views
- 17/06/2010 11:12:58 PM 1675 Views
Lanfear's motives were never Shadow-driven - 20/06/2010 06:47:22 PM 1717 Views
not ballsy, just psycho - 20/06/2010 07:25:46 PM 1681 Views
Like Etzel I don't agree - 17/06/2010 08:30:37 PM 1566 Views
I think she's a weak villain - 17/06/2010 08:58:01 PM 1565 Views
Re: I think she's a weak villain - 17/06/2010 09:03:47 PM 1625 Views
Semirhage has done more than anyone since Ishy destroyed the Ten Nations - 18/06/2010 02:06:30 AM 1631 Views
Regarding "Demandred" ... - 17/06/2010 04:51:43 PM 1641 Views
I always thought it was a coincidence - 17/06/2010 08:32:39 PM 1934 Views
Lan/Lanfear isn't a coincidence... - 18/06/2010 12:19:58 AM 1606 Views
Wow. I'm not quite sure where this came from... *NM* - 18/06/2010 05:24:25 PM 821 Views
Re: Lan/Lanfear isn't a coincidence... - 20/06/2010 07:01:55 PM 1703 Views
No, it was supposed to be a joke. - 20/06/2010 07:23:19 PM 1658 Views
Re: No, it was supposed to be a joke. - 21/06/2010 06:36:44 AM 1659 Views
Re: I always thought it was a coincidence - 18/06/2010 05:20:11 PM 1670 Views
Perhaps Lan-fear meaning Night-Daughter would make more sense - 17/06/2010 06:00:35 PM 1671 Views
Interesting *NM* - 17/06/2010 08:33:03 PM 927 Views
Re: Perhaps Lan-fear meaning Night-Daughter would make more sense - 18/06/2010 04:23:38 PM 1890 Views
Regarding "Far Dareis Mai" ... - 18/06/2010 05:28:41 PM 1559 Views
We also have din in Mera'din/Brotherless and far in Far Madding - 18/06/2010 08:16:14 PM 1653 Views
Re: Regarding "Far Dareis Mai" ... - 20/06/2010 03:56:38 AM 1876 Views
And Dragon translations... - 17/06/2010 10:53:02 PM 1773 Views
Re: And Dragon translations... - 17/06/2010 11:01:25 PM 1589 Views
But of course the NT word for Dragon isn't Dragon - 18/06/2010 05:45:34 PM 1838 Views
Ah yes, that sounds reasonable. *NM* - 18/06/2010 08:28:54 PM 888 Views
If "aman" is the Old Tongue name for Dragon, maybe "DEMANdred" contains a reference to Dragon too... - 20/06/2010 08:13:35 PM 1852 Views
"Dragon Wannabe" *NM* - 20/06/2010 09:23:09 PM 728 Views
Lizard? *NM* - 20/06/2010 10:04:21 PM 915 Views
"Scaled Worm"... though I doubt he'd take that name up in pride . *NM* - 22/06/2010 01:23:03 AM 808 Views
It's probably too much to attempt to guess at the meanings of words... - 17/06/2010 10:58:06 PM 1379 Views
A nice article about the Old Tongue and my ramblings - 18/06/2010 11:14:24 AM 7873 Views

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