Ancient Tongue || I

[Alija]

66th Spring 517 Alija’s thirst for knowledge was only growing, and alchemy was its target. Ever since the magic had been introduced to her, the woman had been endlessly fascinated, and Arios’ small lessons and occasional information were nothing compared to what she wanted to do. There was so much out there to discover – and as much as she enjoyed the chances she got to get hands-on experience, there was far much more than she could ever discover through trial and error. It hadn’t taken her long to discover the library that Sahova housed, but it was only know when she had a purpose for it, and she strode in determined. There were a few people around, sitting on desks of their own and devouring the books they held in their hands or had open before them, and there was a chilling silence through the room as everyone focused on one thing. She drifted towards the shelves, beginning to push through the books for any that seemed vaguely relevant. However, with each book she took, the words inside were distorted and meant nothing to her. The further she went, the less she seemed to think she recognised, until the writing was almost scratches against parchment, and she realised she wasn’t going to have much luck unless she checked every book in the library. Turning towards the golems that wheeled backwards and forwards in the room, she approached the nearest, speaking loudly and clearly towards it in a hope to get its help. “Sorry, but can you help me find any books on alchemy, written in Common?” she asked, but, after a moment of silence, decided to change her tactic. “Find alchemy, Common only. Thank you.” Once again, no response, but the coughing from a nearby, slightly irritated Nuit. “You aren’t going to find anything,” came another voice, and Alija spun on her heel to face the woman. Slightly older than her, with thick black hair and life bursting in her eyes. She was hunched over a book of her own, but it was blank and she was scribbling in it instead of writing. “The books here, they’re all Nador Canoch. Ancient Tongue. Whatever you want to call it. Trust me, I’ve tried finding things in anything else too. Besides, the golems won’t listen to you. As per usual, they have been programmed to respond only to the Nuit.” Alija gave out a deep groan, irritated, and sunk into the seat opposite the woman who had spoken to her. Resting her head in her hands, she wondered whether she would ever get anything here, or if she would be left to do everything on her own forever. “I can help you, if you want. With your Ancient Tongue. I studied it at the University of Zeltiva for quite some time, although I’m by no means an expert.” She pushed her book aside, clearly more interested in Alija, teaching, or whatever it was that interested her. Meanwhile Alija gave a deep smile from meeting a fellow Zeltivan, “I’m from Zeltiva too, although I never got to study there. I’d love your help.” The woman smiled gratefully, extending a hand for a handshake, “I’m Jocelyn. Now, what do you know already?” Alija grinned awkwardly, realising she was going to have to work pretty hard to get anywhere. Flipping her notebook up, which she had been planning to fill with alchemy notes, she turned to an empty page. “Absolutely nothing,” she admitted hesitantly, hoping it wouldn’t change the woman’s mind. It didn’t, thankfully. “Right then, basics it is. That’s good – I’m not quite ready to teach the complicated stuff!”

[Alija]

“Now, where do I start?” The pair had moved to a quieter corner, where they would be less likely to disturb the other wizards. Alija, still with her notebook out, was at a desk, quill poised to make notes on whatever it was that made sense to make notes on. Jocelyn, meanwhile, was almost pacing around, trying to get into the feel of the whole teaching thing. “I know!” she gave a call of realisation, and pulled herself into a chair, speaking directly towards her sole student. “Nader Canoch is what it’s called. Nader, the word for our. Canoch is word. You getting this?” Alija nodded, jotting the two words down, before looking up nervously, “How do you spell them?” “Honestly? It doesn’t matter. Most books were written at a time at the start of Qalaya’s alphabet, so were written with no vowels – and over time, we’ve changed them to suit us. You’ll find spelling all over the place, because the words were never meant to be written. They were meant to be said – which means one word may mean many, and the tone and stress designed for the language will be gone. Trust me, deciphering books in the Ancient Tongue is hard. You’d be better of with any other language, although I know this is the one you needed.” That did sound hard. Almost impossible. And she hadn’t even started, which made the whole task sound even more daunting. As if she sensed Alija’s unease, Jocelyn found another smile. “But it’s okay! I’ll teach you all you need to know.” Alija smiled eagerly, ready again to write as she waited for Jocelyn to speak. “Let’s go through some vocabulary first, before we bother with grammar. That’s the hard part, and knowing it isn’t going to help if you don’t know what the words are first. So, I was saying, nader means our. But it isn’t limited to just that. It can mean we, us, that what we share. Similar ideas can be conveyed as well. At first, it seems simple, but trust me, once you get those big, long complicated sentences, you won’t know what’s what.” Great. Alija wrinkled her forehead, trying to figure out how this was ever a language. It seemed far too cryptic, far too complicated. “It’ll make sense eventually! I promise,” Jocelyn gave yet another smile. Hopefully.

[Alija]

“Canoch is a little more complicated than nader. As a noun, it means speech, word, or that what is spoken. Unfortunately for us, however, those who made the language decided it could mean other things as well. To make it a verb, the last letter is replaced with a t. Or, for canoch, it is made into canocht. Or canochot. Or -hat. Depends on the speaker, which honestly just makes it confusing.” Alija lifted her quill and looked up at her teacher, who was now a little distracted with the books behind her head, “Please don’t. It doesn’t make it easier to learn when you complain about how hard it is.” “Sorry!” she gave a sweet smile, and continued, not really doing much to stop herself, “For the past tense, you add -t-l, which with some of the old writings, isn’t very clear. So I spoke, for example would be canochotl. And with a t-l-a-s on the end, -tlas, you get future. So, canocht, canochtl, canochtlas – I speak, I spoke, I will speak. Thankfully, that’s it with tenses – that’s as complicated as they go, not past participles, no subjunctives, no nonsense with pluperfects and imperfects. Got it so far?’ Alija looked down at her notes, trying to figure out what had been said. Canochtlas, caonchot, what were these weird sounds? But it wasn’t that complicated, especially if she gave it some thought, so she nodded along, interested in getting this done as quickly as possible. Even if she knew that language learning never went that quickly. She was willing to try. “So, we’ve got nouns and verbs. Do they use the same word for those describing words?” she asked, trying to help guide Jocelyn, who, despite her best efforts, wasn’t an expert teacher. “Yes, adjectives! That’s exactly how they work – you add an s on the end of a word, and it becomes one. So canochs, or canochos, would be the word for... You know, I’ve never thought about that one as an adjective. Speaky? Maybe? And yes, I know that isn’t a real word,” she gave a laugh, settling against the back of her chair, “It works better with other words.” There was a silence as Alija scribbled it down, then she blurted out suddenly, “Wordy. Or maybe talkative? For the adjectives, I mean.” “Yes, yes, that could definitely work. I haven’t seen it come up a lot though, so I wouldn’t worry about it. If it does, use whatever sounds best.” She shrugged lightly. “That’s what you have to do most the time. Anyway... what other words are there...” She stood up and began to pace around again, thinking, as Alija reread her notes so far. It seemed confusing, but there was a sense and logic to it that made it also simple. Then again, she had barely learnt anything.

[Alija]

“I know!” the woman burst out again, and it took Alija everything to stop herself from rolling her eyes at how excited this woman was over teaching. “Djed, we’ll start from djed, that is one of the most important words you’ll come across.” Alija nodded, very familiar with it. It was magic, in essence, the energy that made up everything in the universe. It didn’t surprise her that djed was a word from Nader-canoch, and in fact, she had been expecting it. Was it a memory, or just her logic? Did it matter? “It means magic, right? Or energy, something like that?” “No, not quite,” the woman said, and Alija frowned, wondering what it did mean. “Djed, in the more modern texts especially, is used to describe, well, djed. But from an ancient tongue perspective, it means backbone or spine. Or, that which stands upright. There’s another one too, wait a moment for me to remember it.” As she thought, Alija wrote down the real meanings of djed, understanding how it fit. Djed was the backbone of the universe, so of course it made sense to mean that. “Straight line!” came a call, and Alija looked up confused, not having drawn any lines at all. “No, that’s not it.” Then, realising Alija’s confusion, Jocelyn decided to explain, “The other meaning for djed. Vertical line. That’s the one. A bit of an odd one, but it’s there.” Alija nodded, writing the last word down before flicking back a page and reading quickly, “So djedet means stand upright? And djedetlas means will stand?” “Not quite! Replace the last letter with the -t, or -tlas. So it would be djet, or djetlas. Otherwise, good going. From what I’ve read, there are no exceptions to that. That is, unless you’re reading old books where the language was developed differently, but I’m sure you can figure them out at some point!” That was helpful. There weren’t exceptions – except for when things were naturally hard. Why did Jocelyn have to make everything sound so difficult? “What about the adjective, whatever that would be? Spiney, maybe? What would you expect to see for that?” she asked Alija, waiting for an answer as she tried to get Alija to think about it. The blacksmith already had, the words flickering through her mind as she thought about it. “I want to say djeds? Although maybe it’s djes, now that you say the other thing?” she asked, a little uncertain now. “Djeds is right. I haven’t seen that word floating around much either... I’ll think of a real adjective, wait one tick.” Three and a half ticks later, she spoke again, “Abase, the nader-canoch word for life, becomes abases, or living. And roza is the word for death, so rozas would be dead. Abases, rozas.” As she spoke, she gestured between Alija and herself, then pointed towards everyone else. The nearest Nuit looked up, a little annoyed, before returning to his work. “Abases, rozas,” she repeated, knowing those words described everything perfectly. Pulser, Nuit. What more did she need to know?

[Alija]

Of course, she wasn’t going to be happy with just one meaning, especially as Jocelyn had explained that several were necessary to understand everything written. “So what else do they mean? Abase and roza, I mean?” With a smile, she began listening definitions, pausing between each one with a hope to remember them all. “Abase means life, that which moves... spring and beginnings. And roza means death, end, and interruption. Something else too, although I think it’s fairly similar to those ideas. And, as with the other words, you get verbs from them. So abast means to live, normally, but can also mean begin or move. Or something else that you can get from those words, depending on your interpretation. Rozt is also quite easy – die, or end or interrupt. Something similar to that, at least.” Alija nodded, scribbling as quickly as she could to get all the words down. The different meanings for one word all sort of went together, but at the same time, made things pretty confusing. Then again, it might mean less words for her to learn. “How many words are there in nader-canoch?” “Loads, unfortunately. I need to figure out a better way of teaching you rather than going through it one by one.” She thought for a moment. “I might have something from when I was still learning. A reference book, of sorts, with the words I learned and their meanings. I’ll look for it, if you want a copy? I’d have to ask you to copy it out yourself – I use it occasionally, so I still need it – but it’ll be useful, I know that from experience.” Alija nodded, grateful. A dictionary of sorts would be really useful, even if she had to copy all the words out herself. And now that she knew the basics, or, at least, thought she did, she could get somewhere, with the knowledge she knew. “That would be great, thanks,” she smiled back, putting her own quill down, “I think I should probably get going, Arios will need me. How about we come back here, same time as today?” Not that she knew what time that was, but it was something. “That’s great! It’ll give me a chance to find those notes I was talking about, and come up with something good to teach you. There’s still more to learn, and not just vocabulary!” Alija grinned, closing her notebook quickly and clearing up her things in a single swoop. “Thanks for your help, I’ll be back!” Soon, very soon, she’d manage to get reading those books, and they would actually make sense. For now, however, she would busy herself with learning the ancient tongue, which didn’t seem like it would be too hard to do. Then again, with all of Jocelyn’s comments... maybe not.

[Languish]

Grade First language learning thread for Nader-Canoch (Ancient Tongue) from Unknown to Poor completed. One more is required for the season to raise the language to Poor. SS has been updated to reflect progress. NotesReminder: Language learning threads do not earn outside experience. Template credit to Mirage.