Urth Net
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↰ answers Gerry Quinn
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Gerry Quinn wrote:
Hmm, I have never been inclined to take Cyriaca's story as other than a myth with perhaps a grain of truth to it. ?(Though Cordwainer Smith's future history contains a similar event.)
I'm sure Cyriaca's story has been embellished, but I think it likely that something like that happened, since it explains something which is otherwise mysterious; how there are a lot of cultural memories of our time in a world which is, in physical terms, immeasurably distant from ours. (Also, Malrubius confirms the bit about machines producing ghostly companions.)
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Your idea about the Whorl cultures is interesting. “They do seem rather more unique and 'ethnic' than one would expect from colonists coming from a world which was surely at least as much a global village as our own. ?On the other hand, the 'Indian' type culture in Gaon seems to speak the same language as that spoken in Viron (or does it”). ?The Trivigauntis have their own 'high language' but their normal language seems to be the same as in Viron. ?The Sleepers do not seem to have any specially imposed cultural norms. ?It is hard to put any definitive pattern to it.
It seems that most people on the Whorl use the common speech, which I take to be the same as the speech used in the Commonwealth, and by the human sailors on Tzadkiel's ship; I suppose it was once a lingua franca on Urth, though in Severian's time it's not spoken everywhere.
It seems upper class Trivigauntis don't normally use the common speech
- at one point a soldier fakes unfamiliarity with it so as to seem upper class. Silk is puzzled by the idea of different classes in the same society using different languages; he asks Hossaan about it, but as far as I can remember doesn't get an answer.
Some communities on the Whorl - presumably incuding Urbs - are said to use Latin. I don't know if it's actual Latin, or a language archaic in Typhon's time being represented by Latin, but in any case I take it it's not anyone's natural language on Urth, but part of a deliberate experiment.
Although Viron doesn't use any language other than the common speech, there seem to be memories of a different language in the Spanish terms used for some official things - Ayuntamiento, etc.
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- Gerry Quinn