Mraize and Thaidakar

[Chiberty]

Quote

Circled several times on one page at the end of the list was the word “Thaidakar” with the note, He leads them. But who is he? The name seems a title, much like Mraize. But neither are in a language I know.

When I heard this, my first thought was to see if they might be in a language that we know . . . and of course by that, I mean one that we are familiar with. I searched the coppermind for snippets of native language that are shown in the books, and I found one that actually fits the linguistic patterns of "Mraize" and "Thaidakar" pretty closely - the Taldain languages. The names of people, places and products on Taldain often bear a striking resemblance to those two names. Ais, Taishin, DaiKeen, Diem, zaidon, Lraezare, Sharezan, Skathan, Mraize, Thaidakar . . . What are the odd ones out in that list? Or do they all fit? 

The resemblance here might just be a coincidence, but the quote above sure sounded like hints towards more cosmere-wide linguistic origins in those names. Thoughts?

This coppermind category includes all of the Taldain words: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Category:White_Sand

Edited September 2, 2020 by Chiberty

[+Oltux72]

28 minutes ago, Chiberty said:

Ais, Taishin, DaiKeen, Diem, zaidon, Lraezare, Sharezan, Skathan, Mraize, Thaidakar . . . What are the odd ones out in that list? Or do they all fit?

Lraezare & Mraize - two sonorants in a row

Skathan & Thaidakar - th is cross linguistically rare (if that indeed is an interdental fricative and not literally t followed by h)

[Chiberty]

12 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Lraezare & Mraize - two sonorants in a row

Skathan & Thaidakar - th is cross linguistically rare (if that indeed is an interdental fricative and not literally t followed by h)

I had the same thought about Lraezare.

There is also Berbrath, so I doubt that it is literally a t followed by an h.

Something else I was noticing between this was how common vowel sounds like 'ai' and 'ae' are, along with how 'z' seems to be a very common sound in the dayside languages.

[ftl]

Autonomy continues to meddle everywhere! I love this linguistic connection. 

[+Oltux72]

15 hours ago, Chiberty said:

I had the same thought about Lraezare.

Well, Rlain would also fit the pattern. This is cherry picking the data.

15 hours ago, Chiberty said:

There is also Berbrath, so I doubt that it is literally a t followed by an h.

Or an aspirated t as opposed to a plain t. The possible sounds in human languages overwhelms the Latin alphabet.

15 hours ago, Chiberty said:

Something else I was noticing between this was how common vowel sounds like 'ai' and 'ae' are, along with how 'z' seems to be a very common sound in the dayside languages.

Zahel? (Azure - if that is literally her name, not a color translated into English). Aesudan. Ialai. Eshonai.
Again picking examples to the point of ignoring other examples.

[Chiberty]

3 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

Well, Rlain would also fit the pattern. This is cherry picking the data.

Or an aspirated t as opposed to a plain t. The possible sounds in human languages overwhelms the Latin alphabet.

Zahel? (Azure - if that is literally her name, not a color translated into English). Aesudan. Ialai. Eshonai.
Again picking examples to the point of ignoring other examples.

Not exactly cherry picking - my point was that a significant portion of their words are like that. I just only chose to list a few.

All of them are here:

https://coppermind.net/wiki/Category:White_Sand

Edited September 2, 2020 by Chiberty

[+Oltux72]

5 minutes ago, Chiberty said:

Not exactly cherry picking - around half of the words are like that.

Well, Mraize and Thaidakar are phonetically not compatible. In fact Thaidakar could very well be Alethi. It may end in the same suffix as Elho-kar. Or the basic word is ThaidakV, to which -ar is suffixed. And nobody comments that that is a strange name.
Then we have Mraize. It fits to Lraezare in that it allows to sonorants in direct contact and features a "z". But so do Thaylen names and the man is ethnically (though not genetically) Thaylen. I am afraid the geographically closer explanations for the names are simply more plausible.

[Chiberty]

26 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Well, Mraize and Thaidakar are phonetically not compatible. In fact Thaidakar could very well be Alethi. It may end in the same suffix as Elho-kar. Or the basic word is ThaidakV, to which -ar is suffixed. And nobody comments that that is a strange name.
Then we have Mraize. It fits to Lraezare in that it allows to sonorants in direct contact and features a "z". But so do Thaylen names and the man is ethnically (though not genetically) Thaylen. I am afraid the geographically closer explanations for the names are simply more plausible.

Ialai said that the names were strange, in languages she didn't recognize. I had originally thought "Mraize" was a Thaylen word as well, but I expect that Ialai would recognize that. 

Yes, Lraezare shares many similarities, as do specific words in other languages. Again, I wasn't trying to just talk about specific words - I just didn't want to type all of the words. I gave a link to that page now, though.

Edited September 2, 2020 by Chiberty

[+Oltux72]

1 hour ago, Chiberty said:

Ialai said that the names were strange, in languages she didn't recognize. I had originally thought "Mraize" was a Thaylen word as well, but I expect that Ialai would recognize that. 

Quote

The name seems a title, much like Mraize. But neither are in a language I know.

(Quoting Ialai)

Well, that merely means that it is not a Thaylen word in common circulation she can find in dictionaries. And you may notice that Ialai also considers these titles to come out of different languages.

[Chiberty]

1 minute ago, Oltux72 said:

Well, that merely means that it is not a Thaylen word in common circulation she can find in dictionaries.

I was just interpreting it as foreshadowing or hinting towards something interesting, as otherwise it seems like an irrelevant thing to include in this scene. There is the possibility it was just a throwaway line, though.