For some reason I got to wondering about beast speech this morning. It's described as a combination of images and human words, and we know the beasts have their own shared words (eg regardless of species) for things, like funaga and glarsh.
What I'm wondering is, how do you suppose this language developed? And passed on? Are newborns able to communicate in it - is it instinctive - or does it need to be taught? And if it needs teaching, how is it most beasts speak the "same" language? We can assume that the human words they use in their telepathy derived from domesticity or at least proximity to people, so they substituted an image for a word, for clarity, in their language. But the beast words? Where did they come from? How do all beasts know what funaga, as a thought word, means? Something to do with the shared heartfire or the mindstream? Or is it instinctively those words or thought symbols are there?
I see the beast speak as being kinda like English in our society. On account of colonisation and whatnot, it's spread and taken over. Most of the beasts we've met all come from the Land, after all. But the wolves in the Sending, for instance, have their own language and don't seem to know some of the other beasts beast speech, so I like to think beasts have(or had) a lot more languages too. We just haven't really come across them.
10 years ago
Sat Feb 14 2015, 10:26pmMin
I hadn't thought of those wolves...
But what about the dolphins? They wouldn't have encountered (necessarily) only animals and humans from the Land, and could converse with Elspeth like any other beast. Does beast speech account for variants in the language and include some sort of translation ability (or does being a human beastspeaker allow for translation - is Elspeth only able to communicate with them because the ability not only allows her to pick up the frequency but also translates it for her...like the bablefish in Hitchhiker's Guide)?
I wonder if the beasts in the Red Land will speak the same language as those in the Land?
Hmm interesting idea. I'd think it's just a general worldwide common language which just developed over time. Perhaps the wolves just have a dialect, which they keep separate. I like the idea of the heartfire/mindstream just propogating the beast words.
But then the idea about the different human languages intersecting with the beasts confounds things a little. Like if you spoke Gadfian could you beastspeak the same as if you spoke Landian (I have no idea what it is). So perhaps it just automatically translates.
On that note, have we had any encounter between a Farseeker/Coercer and someone who doesn't speak 'Landian'? How has that worked? Does that prevent understanding, or can you still understand?
