English of the New Sun

Dave Tallman · 22 Jul 2008, 16:24 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:24:29 -0600
Subject: (urth) English of the New Sun
Message-ID: <1bf4dd40807220924g37f94057t91c16cc2388aa7fc at mail.gmail.com>

I think Wolfe is being tricky about the supposed "translation" of the whole
solar series. The common language of the Whorl seems to dervived from
English. We can tell because there are many plays on words in the BotLS that
only work in English; for example, the chem soldiers call the wild animals
of the tunnels "gods" and say that they reversed the word "dog."

The vernacular of Urth in Typhon's time is enough like Severian's language
that he can time-travel there and communicate without noticing any problems.
People of the Whorl can also astral-project to Severian's time and have no
trouble in understanding the locals. Therefore it looks like everyone is
using some form of English. The real "translation" would be to map new words
for new creatures and items into archaic ones we can understand.
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