#amharic

I hope langblr existence isn't that dead.

Here it is, the third and final part of this series- which is really just me dumping my headcanons about the linguistics of the Circle members 😂 I feel that every other group of characters in TSC is pretty well established when it comes to the languages they speak, but it’s pretty vague when it comes to the Circle, or it’s just assumed that they all spoke English (except for Celine, who definitely spoke French as well.)

I, of course, can never be content accepting the simple explanation and leaving well enough alone, so I have used a mix of family trees (although I understand that they are said by Cassie to be inaccurate), snippets of text, inspiration from previous actors that have played some of the characters, and my own runaway imagination to come up with decently in depth headcanons for the languages I think each member of the Circle spoke (plus extra cameos by Eliza and Madeline). Enjoy or think I’m totally off my rocker- both are always welcome responses!

For this post, I have split the characters into three categories: those I believe grew up in a monolingual household, those who grew up in a bilingual household, and those who grew up in a multilingual household. (Because all of these characters save a few were born and bred Idris babies, by the rules of my own estimation of how Nephilim language works I do think most of them were also very fluent in Latin and may have used it to bridge some communication gaps between them. I also see it as the instructional language when they were attending the Academy, although I assume that they were also seeking out friends with whom they could comfortably converse with in their own native tongues- hence why I do think there is so much overlap with the languages they spoke, especially English and French.)

Monolingual Households

Madeline Bellefluer: I started with Madeline because I think she is the simplest. I think Madeline grew up speaking French, and may have actually grown up in France, not Idris. She just seems to give the vibe of someone who has seen a bit more of the world outside of the Idris bubble. It’s mostly her last name that makes me think she speaks French (and first name honestly) but like everything else about Madeline, there isn’t much else to go on.

Hodge Starkweather: We know that at least in the mid-1800’s, the Starkweathers were a Northern English-based Shadowhunter family that had apparently had keeping of the York Institute for generations. Given Aloysius Starkweather’s canonical distain for the Welsh language (an unusual stance for a Shadowhunter, as nationality and ethnicity-based discrimination seems like much less of a factor in their society as compared to their mundane counterparts) it might stand to reason that the Starkweathers may have been more concerned with marrying inside their own linguistic and cultural tradition than their Nephilim peers. (It also could be just because Aloysius himself was a massive asshole who seemed to harbor every prejudice he possibly could, but I digress.)

Basically, I think Hodge came from a long line of England-based Shadowhunters on both sides of his family, and although the Starkweathers no longer seemed to be in possession of the York Institute by his generation and Hodge himself was raised in Idris, I think the long settlement of his ancestors in York would have led to a Yorkshire accent being passed down through the generations.

While I think English was the only language spoken natively at home, Hodge is also canonically a genius that seems to harbor the Nephilim gift for linguistic learning, and is known to be accomplished in many different languages, especially Latin and Greek. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he learned French or Italian in his Academy days to be better able to communicate with his friend group, or if he learned several other languages for fun or to further aid him in his studies. I do have sort of a funny headcanon that while Hodge is very good with learning new languages in the sense that he can understand them, read in them, and write in them, he struggles a little bit when speaking because his pronunciation is famously awful. He may be technically saying all the right words in the right places, but people who aren’t familiar with him may struggle to understand him because he just can’t for the life of him mimic the correct sound placement or intonation. But it doesn’t mean he isn’t fluent- people have taken his lack of pronunciation skill for low proficiency before and had conversations in front of him mistakenly thinking he wouldn’t understand. Out of all of the Circle members, I think Hodge is technically the most polyglot out of all them and has attained fluency in at least six or seven languages, and proficiency in many others. I don’t have specific languages in mind beyond the ones we already know about in canon and probably French or Italian, but basically you could throw out almost any language and tell me Hodge Starkweather has at least a basic grasp of it and I would think: yeah, that makes sense (especially if it’s a language more associated with ancient texts and scripture, like Sanskrit or Hebrew.)

Stephen Herondale: The Herondales as far as I can tell were British through and through- English and Welsh primarily. By the time Stephen came along, I do think Welsh had faded out of the lingual tradition being passed on throughout generations, and that the Farsi picked up from Cordelia’s influence was also gone. We know Stephen was one of the few Circle members who grew up outside of Idris- he was a London boy, and I imagine him to have a posh southern accent, close to what we hear from English TV actors like Tom Holland or Emma Watson.

I do think that Stephen’s mother Imogen had an American accent. The Whitelaws had been running the New York Institute since at least the early 1900’s, or possibly even before. I’ve always imagined Imogen as Adam Whitelaw’s sister and assumed she grew up in the New York Institute before getting married to Marcus and moving to London. I think Stephen had the ability to slip into an American accent at will, especially when mimicking his mother, but that it wasn’t how he usually sounded.

Out of all the Circle members, I think Stephen’s Latin was the most rusty, but all the Herondales we’ve seen are gifted with language and I think it came to him quickly after starting at the Academy. Later on in life, I think Stephen learned Amharic for Amatis and then French for Celine- Stephen is a Herondale after all, he’d never be caught dead not learning the language of his wife, even if he was coerced into marrying her. (I also think he may have learned a significant amount of French before marrying Celine because of Valentine- I mean, that’s Stephen’s work-wife, of course he’s going to take that seriously, why wouldn’t he?)

Celine Monteclaire: I think it’s pretty clear that Celine grew up speaking French at home, but she seems good at languages and I think she studied English in order to be closer to Stephen as much as she studied his mundane interests. This may not have been as clear to him because English was one of the primary languages of the Circle, so he may have thought she was doing a similar thing that he was by learning French- just trying to fit in and communicate with everyone.

Beyond impressing Stephen, I could see Celine being enamored with English as a way to separate herself as much as possible from the home she grew up in. The way I structured my concept of how the Nephilim feel about language, the cessation of speaking one’s own mother tongue would be a statement akin to disownment, and I could definitely see Celine going there. That’s why I think that if she had gotten the opportunity to raise Jace, she would have primarily spoken English with him.

Bilingual Households

Jocelyn Fairchild: I think Jocelyn grew up speaking both English and French in the home. We know that Jocelyn comes from Charlotte and Henry’s line, but we don’t know which of their four children is her direct ancestor. I tend to lean towards Branwell personally (one of the twins who was born at the end of TLH for those who missed the blink-and-you-miss-it reference in BiB). Either way, because of that heritage I tend to imagine her speaking English with a more posh southern accent that was closer to the variety spoken in the early 1900’s than the most updated form of RP present in the ‘70’s.

We don’t know what family Jocelyn’s mother is from, but given that the name “Adele” is a popular French name, I think that she was from a French-speaking family. This would make French Jocelyn’s mother tongue and make it the most important language in the home- which I think makes some sense given her close friendship with Madeline Bellefluer later on. However, I think she would have obviously spoken both languages fluently and mostly spoken English when with Luke, as it was the language they shared. I don’t really see Jocelyn picking up any additional languages in her Circle days. The Fairchilds as a family don’t seem to be the most adept with languages, and I like to think this trait shows up in both her and Clary. While either can learn if they have to, I don’t think they take to it like a fish to water like some other Shadowhunters seem to.

I think she wouldn’t have spoken French much if at all when Clary was growing up- not out of a desire to disown her family, but they lived in New York and Jocelyn’s primary concern was fitting in. Anything not of use to her from her old Shadowhunter life was tossed out in the name of making Jocelyn Fray her primary identity. It was an approach Luke obviously didn’t really agree with, but as an audience we all know how committed she was to it. It makes sense that language would be part of that. (Basically, this is a fancy way of saying I don’t think Clary is at all fluent in French.)

Robert Lightwood: I see Robert as having a very similar situation to Jocelyn. The Lightwoods are obviously an old England-based Shadowhunter family, so I think he would speak English with an accent that is virtually identical to the one I imagine Jocelyn to have- southern, posh, and more heralding how Upper Class Londoners would have spoken at the turn of the century.

I know that out of all the family trees available the Lightwood’s is the most obviously messed up and may be wrong altogether- but I choose to believe that it’s correct except for the bit about Christopher and Grace, at least until we get more updated information. Instead, I think Alexander Lightwood was the line Robert came from (which makes even more sense considering the use of “Alexander” as a family name.) But assuming they did have a son named Isidore and he did indeed marry a woman named Catia Monteverde with whom he had a son Andrew, French as a language Robert would have spoken seems relatively likely (the Monteverde’s clearly being a French family.)

I think English was prioritized in Robert’s household in a mirror image of how French was prioritized in Jocelyn’s- I can’t picture someone named Phoebe Gladstone speaking anything other than English. As his mother tongue, Robert would have been the most comfortable in English, and French may have even been more of a distant second language to him given that it was through the influence of his paternal grandmother, but I do still think he spoke it. Later on, I think he put in the work to learn Dutch for Michael and was fairly good before they got on bad terms. The Lightwood family is consistently shown to be one of the Nephilim families with the least affinity for learning new languages, so I could see him losing a lot of his Dutch when he no longer practiced it often.

I have a bit of a sad headcanon about Robert and Jace regarding this actually: when Jace first showed up, Robert was actually very excited to speak with him in Dutch and get the chance to practice again and have that bit of Michael back. However, when he tried, Jace just seemed confused. This was because Dutch was one of the few languages Valentine hadn’t taught him, but Robert assumed it was because his Dutch was so poor that Jace couldn’t understand it, and he never tried again out of embarrassment.

Michael Wayland: I want Michael to be Dutch so badly and I don’t even know why 😂 I feel like Dutch Shadowhunters in general probably had a lot of intermarriages with Shadowhunter families from Belgium and France, Upper Germany, and England, so I can imagine a pretty strong bilingual culture among almost all Shadowhunters from the Netherlands. As such, I think Michael came from a mixed English-Dutch heritage a couple generations back, and their family kept both languages. Michael was equally comfortable in English and Dutch, but always considered Dutch as his mother tongue. He wasn’t good at learning languages, not for lack of effort, but undiagnosed ADHD made traditional study difficult. If Michael was going to fully learn another language, he would need to be tossed into the deep end immersion-style. That said, he made a valiant attempt to learn French, first for Robert and then for Eliza, making him decently fluent before he died- but in both relationships they mostly just spoke to one another in English.

Eliza Rosewain: While the Rosewain family has definitely been mentioned before as an English speaking Shadowhunter family, I personally see Eliza as another French speaker through her mother’s side. She would have grown up speaking both languages fluently. The common language she shared with Michael would have been English (although as I previously mentioned I think he did learn French for her.) This means that had Eliza lived and been able to raise Jonathan as she wished, she definitely would have spoken French with him. This is part of the reason why the Lightwoods weren’t too suspicious when Jace came to them primarily speaking French and English (although he was good at a lot of languages.) Although a bit odd, they figured that Michael had put in the work to improve his French and prioritized it with his son over Dutch in order to give him a connection to his mother and honor her wishes. I mean, they already ignored a lot of weird things that didn’t add up when it came to Jace, so this might have just been another one of those things that they swept under the rug.

Multilingual Households

Maryse Trueblood: I think there were a few languages flying around Maryse’s home growing up (partially because I just like the thought of a multilingual Maryse.) I’ll admit I put a little too much stock in names for this one, but a lot of times Shadowhunters name their children family names or names that are common in their geographic location. Maryse’s father’s name was Adam Trueblood- a name that seems pretty English to me. Then her mother’s name was Marisa, which is a very Italian or Spanish spelling of that name. Maybe it was the fact that Alec is canonically unfamiliar with any sort of Spanish, maybe it was just that I have a desire for there to be more di Angelo’s in the Shadowhunter world- but I decided that I thought of Marisa as more Italian than Spanish.

But then there is Maryse’s name. Luke does say it is a traditional Shadowhunter name in City of Ashes, but it is also very French. And while Max is of Latin origin (like many Shadowhunter names) and widely popular in many countries, one of the places where it is most popular is France. And if Isabelle is a family name (which is demonstrably the case with all of the other Lightwood children in both their first and middle names), that is certainly French as well.

I think there was a situation where through her father’s side, English and French were both spoken in the home. Maybe Adam had an English father and French mother, and made an effort to keep both languages alive. Then through Marisa, Italian was also spoken. This would make Italian Maryse’s mother tongue, but I could very much see her character going through a rejection of this piece of herself, especially after she was exiled and her family didn’t seem to do much to stay in contact with her or help her and her children. I do think that after moving to America, her and Robert primarily communicated with each other and the children in English- hence why Alec, Isabelle, and Max are not multilingual despite their parents being so. I could see Maryse and Robert pulling out French when they wanted to argue and make sure the kids couldn’t understand them, but otherwise I think a lot of things broke down when they were exiled, and the proud desire to pass on their family languages was one of them.

Lucian and Amatis Graymark: My headcanon for the Graymark siblings involves a mix and match of a couple of different things, none of which are sourced from canon 😂 But despite my grievances and misgivings about both the movie and TV adaptations of TMI, I actually did really enjoy what both Aiden Turner and Isaiah Mustafa brought to the role of Luke in their respective mediums, and so that definitely influenced the way I envision Luke and Amatis.

I have pictured Caleb Graymark as an Irish Shadowhunter (Turner’s influence showing through here), which would be interesting in of itself because the Shadowhunter Codex gives a nod to Saint Patrick and claims that he was responsible for driving all the demons out of Ireland for a time… which would mean there wasn’t much necessity for Irish Shadowhunters for a while. Thus, even though the Graymarks are slated as an “old Shadowhunter family”, I’m choosing to interpret this as a few centuries old rather than “accepting-the-cup-from-Jonathan-Shadowhunter-himself” old. If the Graymarks were part of a wave of newly created Irish Shadowhunters in the mid-1500’s (around when the book claims the English brought demons back to Ireland with them) then they might have carried both Gaelic and English with them throughout the generations. This would mean that Amatis and Luke would both speak Gaelic as well as English with an Irish accent from around the Dublin area. However, after growing up and the soft disownment that appears to have happened with their father, I could see them both more or less dropping Gaelic.

While we don’t have an official name for Luke and Amatis’ mother, I have taken to calling her Liya in my head and think of her as an Ethiopian Shadowhunter, specifically because of this one bit of information that I read in the Shadowhunter Codex:

I just think this concept is ridiculously intriguing- a group of Nephilim who was completely separated from the main group for 550 years? They would have developed their own culture, rules, and interpretations of the Law in that time, and even after rejoining the Clave, I’m sure there would be friction when their world views didn’t align and a fight to keep their distinct identity alive even though they were part of the main body of Shadowhunters now. (There also must have been a LOT of Ethiopian Shadowhunters for this not to devolve into a ridiculous amount of incest- either that or they didn’t care as much about marrying mundanes, which is also interesting to think about.) Anyhow, ever since reading about that I’ve always wanted to have a character that was from this independent Ethiopian branch, and I kind of took the opportunity to project that onto Luke’s mom.

In this version of things, their mother would speak Amharic and that would be Amatis and Luke’s mother tongue. However, after she left them I imagine use in the home would drop off significantly, and the language would become a painful reminder of her. Regardless, I do think Stephen still made the effort to learn it for Amatis and she saw this as a very romantic gesture that also helped her heal her heart in some ways and reclaim the language for herself (only to have that ripped to shreds again when Stephen then abandoned her, but you know.)

For Luke, I don’t think he ever really meaningfully engages with the language again for himself, but he can understand it if he hears it in passing (something that started happening a lot more after he moved to New York) and it makes him nostalgic.

I do think that Luke learned French at least wholly or in part when he was a child for Jocelyn- not that he needed to, as they could clearly converse in English, but I just think he was that obsessed with sharing her world as much as he could (and I could also see Luke as someone who was really good at learning languages, so it probably wasn’t a hardship for him either.) However, I think his French skills really came into play when he met Valentine, and may have been the primary way they communicated. The idea sort of took root from this part in WtWL-

It’s such a small thing, but it’s enough to let us know that 1) Luke canonically speaks French and 2) he was refusing to engage with the language with a stubbornness that seemed counterproductive to the situation. To me, it makes the most sense if French was just a triggering language for him at that point- something he associated so heavily with Valentine that he couldn’t bear to really converse in it unless absolutely necessary.

This is clearly the explanation that takes the steepest canon-departure, but I figure it doesn’t hurt anybody or truly impact the story in any way. Of course, a version where Luke and Amatis both only speak English is plausible as well, and likely closer to what Cassie intended.

Valentine Morgenstern: Finally we have the man, the myth, the monster himself - Valentine. This man clearly was amazing at languages and spoke many. Why so many languages Valentine? Was it simply an interest of his? How many of them were spoken in his home and how many did he simply study later? It’s hard to say for sure.

I’m basing a lot of my ideas on the list of languages that both Sebastian and Jace learned under Valentines parentage- the list we are given, of course, is: Latin, English, French, Italian, Romanian, and Russian (although only Sebastian claims this one, and I’m choosing to go with the idea that he just learned it on his own for fun.) That list is notably lacking German, which I think is interesting given that the Morgensterns were known to be a German-speaking Swiss-based Nephilim family, although I do think it’s also interesting that Cassie has specifically noted that the family spoke German fluently in 1878- which sort of insinuates to me that later Morgensterns somehow lost this bit of their linguistic heritage. Considering that they lived in Switzerland, a country that already has French and Italian as official languages alongside German, it perhaps isn’t too surprising to see both of those languages on the list replacing German.

My theory is that Morgensterns (at least the branch Valentine came from) spoke Italian and French, and that one of Valentine’s grandmothers (perhaps his paternal grandmother) was Romanian. I think Seraphina spoke French and potentially English… and since Oskar seems like the kind of man who wouldn’t let anything go and wanted Valentine to carry all relevant pieces of his history with him, suddenly Valentine is speaking five languages at home, plus Latin. And when he is raising children, he does the exact same thing that was done to him- just stuffs their heads full of all the languages he had to learn as a boy, plus some.

Despite this, I still think Valentine was the most comfortable in French and English, and so are Jace and Sebastian in the end. It isn’t lost on me that Sebastian’s disguise is as a French Shadowhunter, and while I’m sure he could have convincingly pulled off any nationality, I think there’s something to be said for how naturally he wore that skin. I don’t know, the more I think about Valentine primarily speaking French, the more right it feels to me.