#surda

Orrin got married!

Given that by the time the books take place, there is really only one human language, most of this post is going to be on the Headcanon side of "Lore and Headcanons". Still, my observations will be based in canon, drawing from place names as well as given names of characters. Where I run out of canon to draw from, I will be taking a lot of inspiration from the history of real-world languages, but not so much as to eliminate the uniqueness of the setting. Or at least I will try.

-Lights

Taxonomy

Human languages of Alagaësia can be roughly split into four distinct families: Broddring, Surdan, Petrovyan and Hadaraki. Of these, the former three show similarities in their grammatical structure (being overwhelmingly synthetic, but non-pro-drop languages) which may indicate that they split away from their ancestor language - a theorized "proto-mannish" - later than Hadaraki, which seems as far removed from them as it is from the Ancient Language. As this post is dedicated to languages of the Broddring Empire, Hadaraki, i.e. the languages of the Wandering Tribes (which never submitted to Broddring authority) will be given their separate post.

The Broddring Language Family

By this term, we understand any and all languages that evolved from the language spoken by the tribe of King Palancar at the time of their arrival in Alagaësia. The name "Broddring" comes from the singular form of the name of Palancar's tribe - Broddringas. Interestingly enough, it seems to be an exonym bestowed by a closely related tribe, translating roughly to "Brother's kin" (from brodor and the kinship suffix -ing).

Archaic Broddring This was the language spoken by Palancar upon his arrival in Alagaësia. While it had already developed the typical grammatical features of the later Broddring languages, its vocabulary was so far removed from theirs as to be completely incomprehensible to a speaker of present-day Broddring. This is due to the fact that after coming into contact with the Elves, Archaic Broddring started adopting (and modifying) words from the Ancient Language en-masse, which would eventually lead to the two languages sharing up to 40% of their vocabulary. The resulting amalgam would become known as...

Old Broddring Language of the early Broddring kings who resided in Ilirea. It had a rich inflection system, with four cases (nominative, genitive, dative and accusative) and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Despite being different enough from the Ancient Language as to lack its truthsaying and magical properties, it was similar to the point of mutual intelligibility:

OB:       Andumë ond Fíronmas on thaem      sorga              hyll,     lichama    sin      glaese     gelic.

AL:        Andumë un Fíronmas äthr dem        harmra            hyll,     leikrar       theirra  glaere     gelikr.

(similarities illustrated on the sentence "Andumë and Fíronmas at the hill of sorrows and their flesh like glass." spoken by Glaedr in Inheritance.) Given that not only vocabulary, but also parts of grammar seem to have been adopted by the Broddringas, discussions abound among scholars as to whether Old Broddring is Archaic Broddring in an Ancient Language cloak, or the Ancient Language in a Broddring cloak. It was this language that gave rise to the Toskan dialect, an artificial dialect created by Tosk for the purposes of the Religion of Helgrind.

Present-day Broddring Just as Old Broddring is the result of a metaphorical melting pot of Archaic Broddring and the Ancient Language, present-day Broddring is the result of Old Broddring interacting with the rest of the human languages of Alagaësia during the Broddrings' conquest. Again, it borrowed massively, mainly from Aberonian and Old Surdan (more on those below). This was not the case of the conquerors borrowing vocabulary from the conquered, but rather the conquered attempting to speak the conquerors' language and substituting the words they did not know with ones from their own languages. Moreover, as Broddring gradually became the lingua franca of a multi-national kingdom, the number of non-native speakers outgrew that of the native ones. This led to a significant simplification and streamlining of grammar. The number of lexically realized cases was reduced drastically until only two - the subject case and the object case - remained. As a result, the word order became much less flexible and Broddring as a whole became more analytical rather than synthetic. Numbers were reduced to only singular and plural.

The Lost Languages of Surda

By the time of the Fall of the Riders, only the Broddring lanuguage was spoken in Surda. Indeed, the ruling dynasty started by Marelda of Langfeld and continued by the Queen Frida and the Kings Larkin and Orrin was ethnically Broddring. Still, some of the languages of the tribes that first settled Surda and remained there even after Palancar and the Broddrings left for the north survive in toponyms, given names, folklore and old documents.

Aberonian Aberonian seems to be the language most closely related to the unattested proto-surdan language spoken by the first settlers. It survives only in its formal, literary form, preserved by the Arcaena sect (the name of which itself derives from the aberonian word for "secret"). Both its name and that of the current capital of Surda comes from the tribe called Aberati. We can only speculate as to the meaning, but it may be related to the verb aberro, "to wander away". Aberati could therefore be taken to mean "Wanderers", "Explorers" or potentially "Exiles". Many traditional surdan given names have aberonian origin, like that of King Orrin, which derives either from the word orans ("he who prays", i.e. pious) or orum ("gold, golden"). It carries an air of tradition and authority in the surdan public consciousness and prior to Surda becoming a province of the Broddring Empire, her monarchs would swear oaths of office in both Aberonian and the Ancient Language. This tradition would be later revived by Queen Frida, daughter of Lady Marelda and the first Langfeld monarch.

Old Surdan The contemporary of Old Broddring and the source of many of the borrowings that transformed Old Broddring into its present-day form. If little survives of Aberonian, then what we have left of Old Surdan may well be nothing. It originated as a spoken dialect of Aberonian and continued to evolve even as Aberonian fossilised in its literary standard. It would eventually overtake it as the official language of Surda, as it was more familiar to the common folk and was not as strictly policed by scholars and nobles. Today, it only survives in the form of folk songs, nursery rhymes and old government records. Those capable of reading and translating it are few but highly sought after by the Surdan government.

Petrovyan Very little is known of the Petrovyan language, as even the term is most likely not what the speakers themselves called it, only that it does not seem to be closely related to either Broddring or Surdan and Aberonian. It was spoken by a human tribe that landed in Surda but migrated north (possibly as far as Gil'ead), before being pushed back to the site of today's city of Petrovya by the Broddring expansion. By the time of the Rider War, only fragments remain in dialectal expressions, toponyms (like Petrovya itself) given and family names (like that of Marcus Tábor) and local swearwords.

Real World Inspirations

The Varden:

King Orrin of Surda

Sonhei surdamente o amor, estava surda pelo amor que não escutava mais a rua até que uma hora os carros buzinavam e eu morri atropelada.