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 Darkovan Languages
Darkovans use a number of languages, in spite of the political unity of
the Domains. The variations in languages are due primarily to the
difficulties in traveling across the planet imposed by its climate and
the minimal level of technology; both factors tend to isolate one region
from another. However, one can usually rely on the two principal
languages, Casta and Cahuenga.
Casta
Casta is the noble language, that of the Comyn and the learned. According to
official protocols, conversations with Terrans must be in casta (The Heritage of Hastur). Casta is apparently similar to Spanish (op. cit.), but it
appears to be very difficult to learn.
Why Casta is difficult to learn
The reason for this difficulty was mentioned in one of the Magda
Lorne novels (maybe The Shattered Chain):
Darkovan languages rely very heavily on intonation and
pronunciation, presumably in a manner similar to Chinese where
a small change in intonation can totally change the meaning of
a word. The example given in novel were the words for "female partner",
which sounded exactly the same to Terran ears, but the meaning
ranged anywhere from "mistress kept for sex" to "honored wife".
Considering how polite Darkovan society is, you can imagine the
consequences of a Terran getting the pronunciation wrong!
I believe the use of intonation is a consequence of laran, which
used to be far more widespread in the Darkovan population than it
is now. One can imagine that when you could make your intended
meaning of a word very clear by projecting the right feeling/impression,
the actual word used was of secondary importance. Since it is
very easy to differentiate intonation if you are brought up from
childhood to do so, the resulting language changes would be
perfectly adequate for "normal people" too and hence been
maintained after laran became marginalised in the population.
Naturally, since Casta is the language of people strong in laran,
the affect would be most noticeable in Casta.
Cahuenga
Cahuenga is the common language of Darkover. It is spoken nearly everywhere
and seems much simpler than casta. Due to the difficulties in traveling about
Darkover, cahuenga has a number of local variants. It appears that cahuenga
might be a derivative of English and Gaelic (The Heritage of Hastur).
Other Languages
In addition to casta, cahuenga and their variants, there are a number of other
dialects. For examples, there is the dialect of the Hellers, which is a form
of pure Gaelic (op. cit.). Then there are the dialects of the Dry Towns,
which also exhibit traces of English and Gaelic. In fact, it seems that all of
the languages of Darkover have their roots in Spanish, English and Gaelic.
source file (Last modification: Wed Apr 21 17:21:45 1999)
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