Hoid speaks in Tongues?

[TheShogun]

So something I just noticed is that no matter what planet Hoid is on, he always speaks the language. And he's never mentioned to have an accent or speak those languages any less than perfectly.

 

Does he have some sort of ability to speak in tongues? Or has he merely spent a ton of time learning all of the various languages? Is it easier because they're all descended from his native language or something?

[Moogle]

The Heralds of Roshar seem to have a similar ability. It's probably something to do with the Cognitive realm.

[Oudeis]

It might be Investiture... or, he's really, really old and we know all of the languages are related, so he could just have learned them. We've seen him speak, what, five languages total? (Scadrian, Arelish, whatever The Fool spoke in the Rose Empire, Alethi, the language of the Inner Sea). I've lost it through disuse, but a few years out of college I was conversant or fluent in English, American Sign, French, and Japanese, and I devoted all of nine years to the entire pursuit. Hoid could easily have had a decade before each "event" to perfect one language/accent at a time. If I had spent that time studying nothing but romance languages... I would have become fluent and run out of languages to learn.

 

It's entirely possible it's a magic system, but I try not to assume the fantastic when simple cleverness explains it.

[Chrono]

Hoid, if I remember correctly, is a LOT older than he looks. He easily could have just learned the language on each of the Shardworlds near the beginning and regularly checked up on them to keep up with language shift and dialect creation. Although, he's also timeskipped a lot, so perhaps he's just really good at remembering languages.

[Moogle]

Hoid, if I remember correctly, is a LOT older than he looks. He easily could have just learned the language on each of the Shardworlds near the beginning and regularly checked up on them to keep up with language shift and dialect creation. Although, he's also timeskipped a lot, so perhaps he's just really good at remembering languages.

 

That still wouldn't explain his complete lack of an accent. Even if you learn a language, erasing your accent (or picking up the accent of other people) is incredibly difficult. It's something that takes years, or so I understand.

[Oudeis]

That still wouldn't explain his complete lack of an accent. Even if you learn a language, erasing your accent (or picking up the accent of other people) is incredibly difficult. It's something that takes years, or so I understand.

 

It's a talent, but it does fit with Hoid's general skillset. Not to toot my own horn, but I've been told I have a better Japanese accent than the woman thought an American could ever have... over the phone, I was sometimes confused for native Japanese. For an in-universe example, look at Wayne. His example is extreme, but non-mystical. If Hoid simply has a talent for mimicry, it's not impossible that he'd be able to copy an accent like a native. Again, there's every reason to guess he's got all the time in the world to perfect it.

[Moogle]

I'll take your word for it Darnam, but it seems incredibly difficult and a huge timesink. Does Hoid really have that many years to spend learning languages and magic systems and acquiring rare items? Hoid has been on probably close to a dozen different planets, each with a variety of regional accents, and he's managed to have a completely unremarkable accent everywhere we see him.

 

I approve of your desire to attribute mundane reasons to things rather than supernatural ones (I myself think Kaladin's sadness during Weepings is seasonal affective disorder rather than the lack of Stormlight explanation many people propose), but I think at the point when you have to keep in mind 20 languages and their accents that a supernatural explanation becomes simpler. Particularly when we have a precedent in the form of Taln.

 

Though, looking it up, apparently some polyglots are capable of speaking over 40 languages. That's pretty crazy. I am quite undecided on the matter.

[Voidus]

Hoid also has feruchemy don't forget, copperminds would be useful, and I imagine he has a few tricks for using it more effectively too.
EDIT: Also there are hundreds of years between each of the books, I think we have WoB that he does do some timeskipping but even so there is plenty of time for him to waste.

Edited January 26, 2014 by Voidus

[Iarvos]

If he has the second heightening and the associated perfect pitch he may be able to learn accents much faster. I suspect that perfect pitch of the second heightening would grant the ability to perfectly distinguish between different tonalities as well as musical pitches.

[Oudeis]

I'll take your word for it Darnam, but it seems incredibly difficult and a huge timesink. Does Hoid really have that many years to spend learning languages and magic systems and acquiring rare items? Hoid has been on probably close to a dozen different planets, each with a variety of regional accents, and he's managed to have a completely unremarkable accent everywhere we see him.

 

I approve of your desire to attribute mundane reasons to things rather than supernatural ones (I myself think Kaladin's sadness during Weepings is seasonal affective disorder rather than the lack of Stormlight explanation many people propose), but I think at the point when you have to keep in mind 20 languages and their accents that a supernatural explanation becomes simpler. Particularly when we have a precedent in the form of Taln.

 

Though, looking it up, apparently some polyglots are capable of speaking over 40 languages. That's pretty crazy. I am quite undecided on the matter.

 

I think you have an inflated opinion of how hard it is. There only are ten major shardworlds, and he might not go to ones like Braize. (Is that spelled correctly? Odium's world.) A few languages per world, all traceable back to the same roots, and he only has to learn one at a time? And it's like Wayne said; once you get over the idea that accents are something that OTHER guy has and learn to recognize your own, it's not actually all that hard to mimic. In Japanese, I studied the grace u, the sound they make that's a mix of l and r, the general lack of intonation... accents can be broken down, codified, and once they are they're not actually all that hard to copy.

 

You have a point, Taln's speech has all the earmarks of something Invested, meaning it is possible to be magical. I just think that given what we've seen of Hoid's mundane skills, his story-telling and his cleverness, languages would come easily to him.

 

And that's another thing; as the King's Wit, he tells jokes. Humor in a foreign language is notoriously difficult; I considered it a milestone in any language the first time I was able to tell a joke that made a native speaker laugh. I'm not certain that a preternatural Gift of Gab would also carry with it the instinctive knowledge of riddles and puns; even if it did, would Hoid himself understand the jokes he was making? Also, there's so much about Rosharan culture tied into their language. Would Invested Speech convey that? The importance placed on palindromes? Hoid has expressed an interest in studying cultures, and a very good way to do that is to learn the language. Having the knowledge handed to him might not provide the same context that actually learning it would.

[QuantumHarmonix]

Isn't it possible that in Hoid's case he could just be using an illusion to make you think he is speaking your language with an accent that you would expect?

[Moogle]

You make a good case, Darnam.

 

In regards to Wayne, however, I consider his ability to pick up accents and speaking styles to be something of a unique gift, or something of an exaggeration by Sanderson. I don't think he counts as a regular human. I do know it's possible to pick up accents, just not as quickly as Wayne does it. Actors train with speech specialists and pick them up, after all. This doesn't include learning a new language, though.

 

I will concede that it could very well be possible that Hoid learns them mundanely. Particularly if all the languages share the same roots. The way that Shallan described it, though, is that Roshar has close to ten dialects and they're not all that similar. Add in different planets and thousands of years of time for things to diverge, and I'm not so sure 'sharing the same roots' would mean all that much.

 

I expect Invested speech would not confer any special joke-making ability, but then learning the language doesn't exactly confer it either.

 

An issue with Hoid arriving on a new planet and not knowing the language is that it would make him an attractive target for the 17th Shard. People would remember a man who spoke no known language and who had to learn one. He would stand out. I think that if Hoid had a choice, he'd cheat to learn the language. On that note - didn't all the worldhoppers in TWoK have an accent? Edit: yes, they did not speak without an accent. So apparently worldhoppers have to learn the language mundanely? I don't think this is evidence either way, but it's interesting.

 

Also, the God King suddenly 'learned' language after being healed by Lightsong. I know it's not really learning the language, but just having your tongue restored to you would not let you talk. You'd have to learn how to make the right sounds and move your lips and... I think there's very good reason to suspect that Lightsong's healing gave him a sort of knowledge of language. And it was due to a huge amount of Investiture, enough to cause immortality, too.

 

And, say, I have this theory about Investiture slowing aging, and Hoid is aging rather slowly...

 

Sorry for going offtopic! Ignore that last bit. Don't follow me down my epileptic trees!

Edited January 26, 2014 by Moogle

[Delightful]

Hoid, if I remember correctly, spent time training Sigzil as a Worldsinger i.e. he's travelled across Roshar and seen many different Rosharan cultures etc. If you're always the foreigner because you're a worldsinger, that would be a good excuse to learn the language/accent without standing out too much,

Also I'm assuming they've spent a decent amount of time travelling, which would give Hoid the ability to pick up on humour --and if you add that to him being a storyteller, I don't think it's unlikely he picked up Rosharan languages naturally.

 

Hoid also has feruchemy don't forget, copperminds would be useful, and I imagine he has a few tricks for using it more effectively too.

 

I think copperminds store book-knowledge and memories of the feruchemist, rather than something audible like a spoken language or accent. But I'm willing to be wrong about that.

 

That being said, I don't find it impossible either that there's a supernatural explanation. Spren don't seem to have an issue with languages and we know from his worldhopping abilites that Hoid has no trouble manipulating Shadesmar.

[Voidus]

I think copperminds store book-knowledge and memories of the feruchemist, rather than something audible like a spoken language or accent. But I'm willing to be wrong about that.

 

Memories of the feruchemist, but those memories can be audible, Sazed stores notes that he speaks aloud in WoA I believe. It would mostly be useful for retaining vocabulary, less so things like accents.

[QuantumHarmonix]

 

I will concede that it could very well be possible that Hoid learns them mundanely. Particularly if all the languages share the same roots. The way that Shallan described it, though, is that Roshar has close to ten dialects and they're not all that similar. Add in different planets and thousands of years of time for things to diverge, and I'm not so sure 'sharing the same roots' would mean all that much.

For a real world example you could look at the Proto-Indo-European Language. From what I understand linguists have reconstructed a possible root language to Sanskrit, Latin, and German. And while they were able to find enough similarities between all of those languages to connect their evolution, I'm not sure how much knowing German would be in learning Hindi.

[Swimmingly]

It's possible that Hoid's been hopping around and visiting planets as their languages developed every few decades, staying a year, picking up the new slang, and moving on. Right now, they may be vastly different, but if Hoid's been studying languages in real time as they diverged from Yolenese, he only has to pick up on a couple years of shifting dialect every time he stops for a live-in on a planet.

[Chris k]

I like this theory. The last scene of WoR would make more sense if Hoid actually could understand what that bird was saying, and vice versa.

[Swimmingly]

I think that's just Hoid being ridiculous.

[Cstryon]

He may have some accent... Faint enough to be difficult to notice. I listen to the audio books so the accents I hear are what ever Michael Kramer comes up with. One thing I noticed though, the accent he uses when he reads the letter in tWoK, is the same as the accent he uses for Sazed. This could be just Michael.... But if my suspicions that he is in on some of the mysterious stuff in the Cosmere is correct, it could be that the Terris people have the Dane accent as the Yolish.

[FirstSelector]

I agree with Moogle.  Even if we assume that Hoid has a knack for languages (learning, speaking, accents, humor, and so on), by his own admission to Dalinar he is sometimes called to a location without knowing why and on short notice.  It's one thing to know "I will be on Roshar in a few years, now is the time to pick up Alethi," but quite another to "I need to be on Roshar, now, and I need to speak the language when I arrive."

 

Since language gives structure to ideas, and ideas are the denizens of the Cognitive realm, I find it highly likely there is some way to quickly learn a language through Cognitive trickery.

[Swimmingly]

I still think all he'd really need is a couple weeks living on each planet every few months, just to keep the knowledge fresh.

That, or he spikes people's memories of language out, spikes it into himself, stores that memory in a coppermind, pulls out the now empty spike, and dumps the coppermind back into standard memory again, where the knowledge is exercised and assimilated by a period of wandering around on the street talking to random people. You would lose exact details, in some cases, both to hemalurgic and natural decay, but you'd essentially get a basic working knowledge you could build on.

The method Hoid uses probably isn't anywhere near that messy, but I personally like this one.

[Left]

Could it be a side effect of Yolish lightweaving?

[king of nowhere]

WEll, in my experience some people are more gifted at specific areas than others, and language is one of those. it took me fifteen years before I could really sustain a conversation in english, while my father studied english, french and german for less than two years each and can speak fluently the first two and sustain conversation in the third.

As for accents, some people pick them up, some don't. Living in finland I met a teacher of italian, she could speak italian very well, but she had a strong accent, no one would have ever taken her for an italian. then i spoke with a woman in a pizza house and I decided to eat there because i could hear her accent and I could swear she was roman. turned out she was finnish, but her husband was roman and she only lived in italy for one year. And yet, every time i speak to her I could swear she's from rome.

Notice that italian is a indoeuropean language, while finnish is not, so learning one language while being motherlanguage in the other is extra difficult.

 

So, I'm just going to assume that hoid is one of those few gifted individuals. either that, or he worked hard to overcome his limitation and do what gifted people can do easily. anyway, it can be done with mundane means, and hoid certainly has the time.

[Left]

Or maybe he's like a Jedi. Jedi can learn languages really easily because of the force so maybe all that investiture that he presumably lugs around helps with that. Or it could be messing with cognitive stuff....... I dunno

[Quiver]

Could it be a side effect of Yolish lightweaving?

This should be the default explanation for anything Hoid does.

World hopping? A side-effect of Yolish light weaving.

Knowing where to go? A side-effect of Yolish light weaving.

Being able to find and talk to important people in each book? A side-effect of Yolish light weaving.

Edited July 14, 2014 by Quiver