If we take "siswai'aman" as meaning "Spears of the Dragon", we have a conclusion that there is an Old Tongue word for "Dragon", which is peculiar because "Dragon" is a word without meaning for Third Age people, aside from the title of Lews Therin Telamon, who would have obviously borne that title in the Old Tongue. So really, shouldn't "Dragon" already be the Old Tongue word for Dragon? Whence comes this 'aman' then?
Funny too, because I seem to remember that in order to dodge the use of the word "Dragon", dragonflies are called lacewings in The Wheel of Time.
Funny too, because I seem to remember that in order to dodge the use of the word "Dragon", dragonflies are called lacewings in The Wheel of Time.
We might have a clue about this from a Fourth Age cycle of stories (that - so I presume, is one of our sole examples of the "new tongue" in the text rather than transliterated as English. There's little reason to believe a fourth Age text has an Old Tongue title, anyway...) It looks and sounds, of course, very much like the simplified version of the OT the new tongue is supposed to be:
The "Cycle of the Dragon" reads Charal Drianaan te Calamon.
It appears that over the course of millenia, the title of Dragon has evolved from the OT compound Calaman, that is: "red dragon". It's either that, or perhaps more likely, the OT name for Dragon was Calaman, and it's abbreviated into 'aman in a compounded expression like siswai'aman (languages using compounds almost always shorten the root words, otherwise you end up with impossibly long words...).
So, the OT title of LTT was "Aman" or "Calaman", and in the NT the word is "Calamon". The word "te" in the NT has seemingly replaced "an". Either way, Dragon in the NT is still very close to Dragon in the OT. The similarity between aman and calaman and Telamon makes me wonder if the origin of why he got called Dragon isn't in a pun between his honorific and the name of the (no doubt fictional/mythological, and seemingly related to the great serpent) creature dragon.
It becomes more obvious why the Forsaken aren't too mixed up and why the characters can't understand the OT at the same time. The OT used compound words with complex rules of word and sentence formation. The NT has set in stone the old compounds to form a fixed vocabulary, simplified the grammar a lot, and those new words have evolved over time so that many don't follow the compound rules anymore. The Forsaken know the rules of compounding, so it's much easier for them to puzzle out the meaning of the "bastard" words in the NT than for NT speakers to puzzle out how the OT compounds relate to their own vocabulary, especially that they have lost knowledge of many of the "root words", which forcibly (as in all compounded languages) often have a large palette of purely context-based meanings (an example of this is how the root word for "left" and "west" is the same one).
This message last edited by DomA on 18/06/2010 at 06:06:26 PM
Forsaken translations
17/06/2010 09:16:36 AM
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Yeah...
17/06/2010 09:31:15 AM
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Semirhage is named as "The Lady of Pain" in KoD, by Rand...
17/06/2010 11:14:56 AM
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Do Semirhage & Bel'al actually mean those things or are they other nicknames?
17/06/2010 11:38:18 AM
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Nice ideas!
17/06/2010 02:10:43 PM
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The beauty of a re-read is that there are so many little gems I'd forgotten
17/06/2010 02:48:19 PM
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Re: The beauty of a re-read is that there are so many little gems I'd forgotten
17/06/2010 04:43:48 PM
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Gai'shain = those sworn to peace in battle
17/06/2010 09:22:02 PM
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Gaidin = Brother to Battle ... which is what I think the OP meant to use
17/06/2010 09:32:20 PM
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I always thought Lanfear probably translated to something closer to a Moon translation
17/06/2010 02:43:04 PM
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it's the other way around...
17/06/2010 02:58:33 PM
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good point
17/06/2010 03:13:17 PM
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Re: good point
17/06/2010 04:05:50 PM
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Not to mention she STILL hasn't earned a 3rd (or in 4th) name
17/06/2010 04:16:57 PM
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What about Cyndane
17/06/2010 04:48:03 PM
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It must be her favorite one, since it's the only one she actually earned
*NM*
17/06/2010 05:43:41 PM
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Well she earned Mierin
*NM*
17/06/2010 08:27:05 PM
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how so? I figured mom and dad gave that one too her
*NM*
17/06/2010 08:36:24 PM
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she earned it by being born... ha! gotcha
*NM*
17/06/2010 08:39:10 PM
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HA! But technically I think her mother earned that
*NM*
17/06/2010 08:58:30 PM
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Re: good point
17/06/2010 04:47:01 PM
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Again, a self-proclaimed ownership aimed at making her seem more impressive
17/06/2010 05:55:12 PM
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I disagree
17/06/2010 06:20:08 PM
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Personally I think that order was off the cuff
17/06/2010 08:55:28 PM
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Re: Personally I think that order was off the cuff
17/06/2010 09:02:06 PM
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Disagree
17/06/2010 09:28:51 PM
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Re: Disagree
17/06/2010 09:41:23 PM
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I'm not being very clear
17/06/2010 10:14:10 PM
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Re: I'm not being very clear
18/06/2010 08:06:56 AM
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Re: I'm not being very clear
18/06/2010 03:33:12 PM
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Re: I'm not being very clear
18/06/2010 04:35:12 PM
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The point isn't if Lanfear has the skill, it's that it was poorly shown.
18/06/2010 05:31:11 PM
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The statement makes clear that those 6 were all quite impressive
17/06/2010 10:51:49 PM
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I don't see that bearing out in the text at all
17/06/2010 10:57:36 PM
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Like Etzel I don't agree
17/06/2010 08:30:37 PM
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I think she's a weak villain
17/06/2010 08:58:01 PM
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Re: I think she's a weak villain
17/06/2010 09:03:47 PM
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and slaughter the Seanchan empress on her own throne thowing the empire into chaos
17/06/2010 09:30:27 PM
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Semirhage has done more than anyone since Ishy destroyed the Ten Nations
18/06/2010 02:06:30 AM
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Regarding "Demandred" ...
17/06/2010 04:51:43 PM
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I always thought it was a coincidence
17/06/2010 08:32:39 PM
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Lan/Lanfear isn't a coincidence...
18/06/2010 12:19:58 AM
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Re: Lan/Lanfear isn't a coincidence...
20/06/2010 07:01:55 PM
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Perhaps Lan-fear meaning Night-Daughter would make more sense
17/06/2010 06:00:35 PM
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Re: Perhaps Lan-fear meaning Night-Daughter would make more sense
18/06/2010 04:23:38 PM
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And Dragon translations...
17/06/2010 10:53:02 PM
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Re: And Dragon translations...
17/06/2010 11:01:25 PM
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Why would they call themselves "Spears of the fictional creature"?
18/06/2010 12:29:49 AM
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It was meant as a joke, but really it could be some generic term rather than meaning
18/06/2010 06:00:36 AM
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Except that they don't know what a 'Dragon' is, except as it relates to Lews Therin/Rand
18/06/2010 05:11:30 PM
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like I said, I was just making a joke of it ... you are quite right with "Rand's Spears"
18/06/2010 05:32:42 PM
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But of course the NT word for Dragon isn't Dragon
18/06/2010 05:45:34 PM
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If "aman" is the Old Tongue name for Dragon, maybe "DEMANdred" contains a reference to Dragon too...
20/06/2010 08:13:35 PM
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"Dragon Wannabe"
*NM*
20/06/2010 09:23:09 PM
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Lizard? *NM*
20/06/2010 10:04:21 PM
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"Scaled Worm"... though I doubt he'd take that name up in pride
. *NM*
22/06/2010 01:23:03 AM
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It's probably too much to attempt to guess at the meanings of words...
17/06/2010 10:58:06 PM
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