Veil Posted April 22, 2014 Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 So I was thinking about Feather's WoR Splintercast the other day. Specifically about her musings on chapter 45 and this observation from Hoid: "Axehound," a voice said from behind her. [...] "I have wondered," the messenger said, "if any of you find the term odd. You know what an axe is. But what is a hound?" As Feather pointed out, it's strange to think that there's a word/morpheme in Veden and/or Alethi that Hoid knows the meaning of but the people of Roshar don't. What I'm wondering is if the Rosharan hound is a loanword from another Cosmere language. Plenty of other people have pointed out that shash is both a letter on Nalthis and a glyph on Roshar. We have a WoB that says there are "interesting connections" between languages/cultures, at least in part because all the Shards have a common origin. But what if it's more than that? What if an early worldhopper (Nalthian or otherwise) saw axehounds, then known by another name, and was the first one to call them hounds (in his/her native tongue.) The name stuck on Roshar, so now they have a word whose original definition they don't actually know. Thoughts? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Argent Posted April 22, 2014 Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 I always thought it's an artifact from a time (and maybe a place) when the people of Roshar had hounds and other Earth-like animals. Shinnovar has at least a few different species of birds, horses are well-known (if not common) shell-less animals, and Words of Radiance has a scene where Adolin looks at a painting of what sounds like a lion. So either Roshar wasn't always as hostile to Earth-like flora and fauna (and then something changed, and the highstorms appeared / intensified, and life had to evolve differently) and its denizens kept some of the words and / or ideas across the threshold of time, or when Honor and Cultivation created humans*, they created them very similar to the humans on Yolen, which presumably had horses, and birds, and hounds - and so the language the Shards gave / created for them had words of those things as well. * Is it canon that they did? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shardbearer Posted April 22, 2014 Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 Argent, I'm pretty sure humans migrated to Roshar from elsewhere. I don't think it's cannon yet, but it's as close as you can get to it, I think. Anyway, I thought that the name Axehound came from the humans who first arrived on Roshar. They knew what a hound was, and what an axe was, so when they saw this beast they thought it looked kind of houndish with an axe like head. Axehound. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PorridgeBrick Posted April 22, 2014 Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 And likely Hoid visited their original world at some point and learned their words for axe and hound, so he recognizes them in the term axehound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Veil Posted April 22, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 Argent, I'm pretty sure humans migrated to Roshar from elsewhere. I don't think it's cannon yet, but it's as close as you can get to it, I think. Anyway, I thought that the name Axehound came from the humans who first arrived on Roshar. They knew what a hound was, and what an axe was, so when they saw this beast they thought it looked kind of houndish with an axe like head. Axehound. This is possible, I suppose, but I'm not 100% convinced. I mean, the Dawnchant is a dead language. Not Latin-dead because no one speaks it natively anymore. Dead because no one remembers what any of the words mean. It isn't until Dalinar starts speaking it and can provide translations that they make any progress. (And the Dawnchant probably wasn't even the language of the original Rosharan humans, if it was spoken when the Radiants had already been founded.) So why would axehound have remained intact through thousands of years, multiple Desolations, and the fall of countless nations for Hoid to comment on when everything else was lost? A derivative, maybe, the way some English words have Latin roots, but hound is apparently just "hound." It doesn't come from a word that means "dog." It is a word that means "dog." A word that means "dog" in a language that has no use for a word like that. It would be like someone from Herdaz wearing Bermuda shorts. Also, I'd be curious to know more of the history of axehounds. I've always imagined (due to their similarity, culturally, to dogs) that they were more or less bred by humans from a different, wild species. Like how you can have wolves without humans, but not dogs--you can have, I don't know, "axeshells" without humans, but not "axehounds." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Observer Posted April 22, 2014 Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 Unless of course Hoid noticed that "Axe" was in the name, and then some other sound at the end that probably sounds a little bit like one of the countless languages Hoid speaks's version of "hound", and he just randomly started talking about it for no discernible reason. It's either that or we decide he has a pinch of magic helping him with languages, which I can't rule out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Veil Posted April 22, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 Unless of course Hoid noticed that "Axe" was in the name, and then some other sound at the end that probably sounds a little bit like one of the countless languages Hoid speaks's version of "hound", and he just randomly started talking about it for no discernible reason. It's either that or we decide he has a pinch of magic helping him with languages, which I can't rule out. So Hoid's basically like us, grasping at tenuous connections and blowing them out of proportion? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happyman Posted April 22, 2014 Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 So Hoid's basically like us, grasping at tenuous connections and blowing them out of proportion? No wonder he's always at odds with the 17th Shard. They got into a massive flamewar a couple of millenia ago about how Hemalurgy worked and haven't had a civil conversation since. Back on topic, I'd say that some words in languages, at least, have extremely long roots. I wouldn't be surprised if the root for axe and the root for hound had both come from extremely old languages dating back to human occupation on another planet. After all, Adolin recognized the pictures of lions as mythological beats. Hoid probably just spotted that and it amused him because he knew why it had happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaggai Posted April 22, 2014 Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 Unless of course Hoid noticed that "Axe" was in the name, and then some other sound at the end that probably sounds a little bit like one of the countless languages Hoid speaks's version of "hound", and he just randomly started talking about it for no discernible reason. It's either that or we decide he has a pinch of magic helping him with languages, which I can't rule out.Exactly. It would work just as well if it was "throg" or "kk'kke'kkakk". It just wouldn't have the same meaning to an English-speaker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Veil Posted April 22, 2014 Author Report Share Posted April 22, 2014 No wonder he's always at odds with the 17th Shard. They got into a massive flamewar a couple of millenia ago about how Hemalurgy worked and haven't had a civil conversation since. Back on topic, I'd say that some words in languages, at least, have extremely long roots. I wouldn't be surprised if the root for axe and the root for hound had both come from extremely old languages dating back to human occupation on another planet. After all, Adolin recognized the pictures of lions as mythological beats. Hoid probably just spotted that and it amused him because he knew why it had happened. First of all, yes. That's exactly how the feud started. Second of all, that's obviously possible. And considering all the Cosmere languages are by default translations already, there's no real way to be sure whether what's happening here is a word surviving or a root persisting. If axehounds are "tacos" or "tachos," so to speak. I'm inclined to believe that if Brandon wanted us to see a persisting root instead of an intact word he would have called them "axecani" or something. Exactly. It would work just as well if it was "throg" or "kk'kke'kkakk". It just wouldn't have the same meaning to an English-speaker. And that's kind of why. It's not an axecani where Hoid says "I get axe, but cani? Like canine?" The scene still would've worked without the word "hound" being a recognizable morpheme in the Alethi language. Or without Hoid pointing out that Rosharans have no right to be using that word. But I also have a habit of reading too much into things (I will freely admit that Mistborn ruined me that way.) I wonder what axehounds are called in other Rosharan languages? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harakeke Posted April 24, 2014 Report Share Posted April 24, 2014 (edited) Why "hound"? It's odd, isn't it? Strange choice of words. Archaic. Edited April 24, 2014 by Harakeke 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Argent Posted April 28, 2014 Report Share Posted April 28, 2014 Well, axedog sounds either too weird or too awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Two McMillion Posted April 28, 2014 Report Share Posted April 28, 2014 And yet the Rosharians are undoubtedly speaking English- there's too much wordplay and puns in the dialogue for them not to be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kobold King Posted April 28, 2014 Report Share Posted April 28, 2014 And yet the Rosharians are undoubtedly speaking English- there's too much wordplay and puns in the dialogue for them not to be. The Listener Songs also seem to be, as the lines rhyme too well. Unless we're not meant to pay attention to these particular details. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aether Posted April 28, 2014 Report Share Posted April 28, 2014 And yet the Rosharians are undoubtedly speaking English- there's too much wordplay and puns in the dialogue for them not to be. No, they are for the most part speaking either Alethi or Veden - translated for our convenience. As for the puns, I am afraid I will have to invoke the rule of Suspension of Disbelief. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happyman Posted April 28, 2014 Report Share Posted April 28, 2014 I'd call those aspects (puns and listener songs) a very liberal interpretation of the translation convention. For example, in order for the songs to be properly translated, they have to have at least a hint of being lyrical by our lights. Otherwise beautiful music could come of as amazingly pedantic or dull. It's a hard choice for translators to make in the real world dealing with real-world documents. With fictional worlds you can get away with a lot more and chalk it up to the translation convention because it doesn't really matter! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaggai Posted April 29, 2014 Report Share Posted April 29, 2014 No, they are for the most part speaking either Alethi or Veden - translated for our convenience. As for the puns, I am afraid I will have to invoke the rule of Suspension of Disbelief.It's been confirmed that they're not literally translating the puns, but just getting the point across. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts