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We are not discussing concrete facts, so objective error is impossible Joel Send a noteboard - 26/02/2017 01:21:46 AM

Hence I could not say you were truly "wrong" about anything, despite strongly disagreeing on multiple significant points.

View original postAbout this in particular:
View original postWhy does every nation speak the same language but in its own unique accent? Please; Tolkien lampshaded that more than adequately with his conceit of "translating" ME "records" from the ancient "Red Book of Westmarch," whose "Westron" was "actually" closer to Old English or Norse than his modern English version. If anything, that was LESS excusable because he also "transliterated" the language of Rohan AS Old English.

Tolkien wrote such that the humans and hobbits in Western Middle Earth spoke a single language (which made sense since they all lived in the remnants of one kingdom). He also, however, created a dwarven language, two elven languages, a few words of orcish, made it clear the Ents had a language of their own, and also stated that other races of men spoke other languages that were not the same as the single language of the West. Not only that, but as a linguist he made it clear there had been many languages. Even attempting to compare Tolkien to Jordan is just insulting to Tolkien.

All true; I never said Jordan was such an obsessive and disciplined linguaphile that he INVENTED whole languages as a CHILD for FUN. I merely noted that even the Professor himself provided an simple plausible explanation for expressing a lingua franca expressed in English DESPITE the fact NONE of that worlds MANY languages were ACTUALLY English. One at least as plausible for a world with only a SINGLE speaking species (or 1½ if we count the few isolated and insular Ogier) that is geographically and culturally contiguous. Maybe the Seanchan and/or Seanchan could be expected to speak a distinct language incomprehensible to Westlands natives, but even they ultimately derived from the same ancestral and cultural stock. Their distinct languages would more likely be analogous to the distinct Indo-European languages than say, English vs. Martian or Quenya. Let me put it this way:

How many OTHER fantasy series do the EXACT SAME THING? The Wiki for ASoIaF quotes Jordans friend Martin himself thus:

Tolkien was a philologist, and an Oxford don, and could spend decades laboriously inventing Elvish in all its detail. I, alas, am only a hardworking SF and fantasy novel, and I don't have his gift for languages. That is to say, I have not actually created a Valyrian language. The best I could do was try to sketch in each of the chief tongues of my imaginary world in broad strokes, and give them each their characteristic sounds and spellings.

If that sounds a lot like what Jordan did with the Old Tongue, that is only because IT IS. Frankly, I think your far more justified criticism is of the Old Tongues existing wholly separate from Randlands modern language—despite all speakers of the latter descending from speakers of the former, to the point they lament the very thing that makes such a development unlikely: Their inability to read what their distant ancestors wrote. To illustrate just HOW unlikely such a phenomenon is, I did a quick and dirty Wikipedia search: Of 7472(!) known REAL languages, nearly 80% belong to one of just 14-15 root families. That is counting all the languages that developed and persisted in virtually total geographic isolation until the modern era, languages that only nominally exist at all (e.g. the Wikipedia states 42 Utian languages are spoken by 35 people, so either many of those three dozen people speak many languages, or many Ute languages are extinct) and languages long believed distinct that have since been proven or suspected to be linked (the Penutian root language believed to include the Utes is one such example.)

You are disappointed a mere 19 fictional nations, culturally and ancestrally linked, speak a single language when 200 frequently disparate actual nations barely speak a dozen? That is nitpicking, no more objective than condemning channeling itself as implausible. This is a FICTIONAL work of FANTASY; within that context, possibility is sufficient for plausibility. People sharing a common genetic, cultural and LINGUISTIC origin speaking the same language certainly qualifies (though, again, the notion they would all inexplicably develop a wholly NEW language than that they all ALREADY spoke is admittedly more dubious.)


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View original postAs for character development, I cannot agree it is nonexistent. Many of the characters do fail to grow any more than superficially, but that lack of growth IS the fatal flaw, not in their characterization, but in their character itself: They are Greek tragic heroes, but that is no more an indictment of Jordan than of Aeschylus. Yet many major characters DO grow, a lot.

Again, comparing Jordan to Aeschylus is quite insulting. Aeschylus he was not. I wonder if you even understand the notion of Greek tragedy based on these asinine comments.

Wonder at will, but how commonly do otherwise laudable Greek heroes meet catastrophic ends because they fail to develop in some critical way?
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View original postRand begins as a petty farmboy whose largest concern is evading chores, but his reaction to a greater destiny warps him into a defiant and then cold tyrant, then a final epiphany forges a firm but compassionately benevolent leader. At first he has no ambition beyond marrying his favorite village girl, then his goal is bitterly sacrificing himself for an ungrateful world, and at last he is eager both to save the world AND survive doing so before vanishing to avert that worlds permanent dependence on him (one alternate realities Rand witnesses while battling the DO surely includes his existence as God Emperor of Dune. )

I suppose he ages a couple of years, too, but that's not character growth. These so-called heroes are just cardboard cutouts of people.

The changes I referenced were all psychological, emotional and/or intellectual, not merely physical nor chronological. You made a false equivalence.
View original postAs for the pacing and story line, it was milking the money angle that killed it all. Exhibit 1 for the prosecution: that hideous piece of shit put out as a reference work to the Wheel of Shit Time.

I agree there was probably some element of milking, though I personally believe it was more ego than greed. However, that is not the SOLE reason the production of a DYING MAN slowed in his final days, and suggesting it was is far more "insulting" than anything I have ever said about Professor Tolkien. Further, TWoT needed a reference source if only to remove the sprawling narratives unreliable narrators (which, regrettably, the work in question deliberately refused to do.) It has a number of significant background details that would be difficult to insert into the narrative itself without a hamfisted exposition dump. The AoL and contemporary events are one thing, but how would a detailed account of Hawkwings rise and series of conquests come up in casual conversation?
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This message last edited by Joel on 26/02/2017 at 01:22:17 AM
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