Hethor's Talk

Reply: Item #1807114 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02# Christopher, By writing that Hethor's most information rich (including links to our time rather than Severian's time) speech act was in Severian's dream rather than a witnessed event of "real life" I only meant to gently point to where it might be found--you seem to have been looking in the wrong place (volume I). As for Korean, I'm hardly arguing with you--I'm on record as saying that it is Chinese (1994). =mantis=

Forget that whole letter. I was writing late at night, where the words "Hethor" and "Jonas" begin to look the same. Nevermind me.

My reason that I reject Chinese is because Sev doesn't seem to mention tones, which are present in Chinese but absent in Korean. Both are, however, nasal monosyllabic tongues. Christopher R. Culver <crculver at aol.com> http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html

to which Christopher R. Culver replied:

But Severian, since he doesn't speak Chinese, might well not notice the tones--they're not that obvious to non-speakers even in Cantonese, which is the more heavily tonal of the two major dialects. The tones could be interpreted, especially by someone who doesn't speak a tonal language, as simply the natural rhythms and inflections of speech in that tongue. It's interesting to note that Mandarin, which would, given the lack of state resources available to most Cantonese-speakers, seem to be more likely as the language of a spacefaring culture, is more heavily nasal than Cantonese--so much so that even those who don't speak Chinese can sometimes tell them apart by the sound. Mark Millman