Whose script was the Dawnscript?

[+Oltux72 he/him]

We know that the Dawnchant as a language comes from the Singers. But what about the script? Is it a derivate of an Ashynite script or were the Singers literate at that time?

[Quantus he/him]

Sounds like it was Dawnsinger language first, both verbal and written, and the Humans adopted it later. Had there been a surviving Ashyn-based language I would have expected Shin to be where it was preserved, but theirs is a Dawnchant-based langauge as well.   

Quote

The Dawnchant was the language of the original inhabitants of Roshar, the Dawnsingers - ancient ancestors to the modern day singers. The language is in the root of the Dawnate language family, consisting of the Shin, Parshendi, and Horneater languages. While the vocabulary of these languages varies greatly, they share similar grammar.^[2]

Modern lore claims that the Dawnchant was the language spoken by the Heralds, but its actual Dawnsinger origin likely means that the humans adopted it, at least in its written form, after their exodus from Ashyn and arrival on Roshar. At some point in history the Dawnchant became a shared written language for all humankind on Roshar, even as separate peoples had their own languages. As the Desolations buffeted human civilization, the different human cultures adapted the original Dawnchant script to fit their own languages and developed their own scripts. This process began with simple phonetic substitution, in which humans used the Dawnsingers' script to transcribe their own languages, but it eventually led to the emergence of the proto-Thaylo-Vorin glyphic radicals, which the modern Vorin and Thaylen glyphs come from.^[3]

 

 

Alternatively, the way Connection impacts Language could provide a mechanism for the separate worlds in the Rosharan system having convergent similarities even before their actual First Contact.  It's always cool to have an in-world reason for the trope that the Aliens show up speaking English (or whatever local broadcast language).  

Edited December 7, 2021 by Ookla the Ingeniator