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The Old Tongue

What is the basis for the Old Tongue?

A mix of Gaelic, Russian, Spanish, Japanese. Lots of different sources not traditionally used to make up fake languages. RJ has only a few phrases and a few small guides on usage written down." -- (Dan Rouk at a book signing, 10/94)

Why doesn't the Old Tongue bear any relation to the New Tongue spoken by Rand and Co?

It probably does, but RJ has kindly "translated" the New Tongue into English so that we can read the books and he can make lots of money :). The Old Tongue is not "translated" in order to add "flavor" to the story. Think of Tolkien. (Who _did_ create entire languages.) Even he didn't write The Lord of the Rings in Middle-Earthish.

Why do all the Characters speak the same language?

To make it easy for the readers to read. But, here is a rationalization, courtesy of Chad Orzel:

1) Point the first: three thousand years ago, we have the AoL. At this point, it's pretty safe to assume that everybody speaks the same language.

2) Then, we have the Breaking. People scatter, keeping what little knowledge they can intact. Chaos reigns. Whatever is settled upon at the end of the Breaking will henceforth be called "The Old Tongue." Presumably, the Old Tongue is spoken primarily on the main continent. We have no idea what happens in other areas of the globe (Seanchan and Shara), but this doesn't really matter, as we've never seen a Sharan, and the Seanchan are the product of an invasion from RandLand proper.

3) Languages drift for a while, but it doesn't matter how much, as Artur Hawkwing pops up, and conquers everybody. A new lingua franca is established, which shall be called the New Tongue, or "English" as Jordan has translated the whole thing anyway. Presumably whatever they speak has clear roots tracing it to the Old Tongue. Hawkwing conquers the entire main continent, some of Shara, has dealings with the Aiel, and his descendents conquer (and become) Seanchan. Again, everybody speaks the same language, with a few quirks here and there.

4) Almost a thousand years pass, and languages drift. Now, just _how far_ can we reasonably expect them to drift? For convenience, let's look at modern Europe, or at least those parts of Europe which formed the core of the Roman Empire. This gives Spanish, French, and Italian, plus a handful of others which I'll ignore completely. It's been fifteen hundred years or so since Rome fell, how different are these three? And what are the sources of the differences between them and Latin? Not that much. If one knows Italian, one can puzzle out a lot of Spanish, if the Spanish-speaker talks slowly, and vice versa. All four languages have many similar words. Now, consider what we've had happening in Europe in those fifteen hundred years: Most of Europe was at one time or another overrun by those pesky Germanic types, and Spain got invaded by Moors. We've had Russian-type languages pushed in from the East, Scandinavian from the North, and I-don't-know-what from the South.

Now, look at RandLand. Who's going to invade? Hawkwing basically conquered the world, so there's no-one who can bring another language in from outside. And even were there such an incursion, the language being brought in would still be pretty close to the Old Tongue, as everybody spoke the same language back in the AoL. And what do we have? We have a good number of funny accents, the Seanchan slur everything, to the degree that Our Heroes have trouble understanding them, the Aiel have a number of odd words for things not found in the Wetlands, Bayle Domon do be using odd verb forms, and the Taraboners they put the words in the wrong order, yes? Is this really that unrealistic? Given the utter lack of invasion from outside, or even the possibility of same, I don't find it hard to swallow the relative uniformity of language in RandLand.