Singer Writing

[Miyabi She/Her]

So, I was looking at @Treamayne's signature and it got me thinking.  

I know Singers have an oral history that they pass using the rhythms, but imagine they decided to start writing stuff down.  This communication could either be the most accurate way of conveying what you mean, or the worst.  Without rhythmic context, it would be atrocious.  They rely SO much on rhythm for context that it would be a thing that didn't truly convey what was meant. 

However, if they added perhaps diacritical marks to indicate rhythm or changes in rhythm throughout their writing, could you imagine how insightful that would be?  To not have to guess if the person was being genuine, sarcastic, excited, or saddened... That would be an incredibly powerful written language.  

And if you look at it linguistically we have in a way done this with our use of emojis as forms of punctuation to indicate tone.

Edited September 21, 2024 by Miyabi
Add tag.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

Totally agree, Singer writing should either work unambiguously perfectly each time every time with absolutely zero capacity or capability for lying, deception, or misunderstanding...or else be almost perfectly incomprehensible and arbitrary in the extreme. The trouble is, Singers on page are showcased as being almost hiveminded in nature, making intent of spoken words very very very easy for them to intuit all possible intended meaning out of Totally on the fly in real-time. However...they are shown to have the capacity to degrade in intelligence or capacity and have some meager capability to engage in sarcasm, deliberate aloofness, or (minor) deception and manipulation. This means that they absolutely have free-will and could record a thought in a tone other than what they were feeling and believing (at least with practice; it's implied that their written language is highly intuition-based otherwise the level of math involved in every character would be beyond absurd for speech and intuiting something which one doesn't feel would be like hacking your own brain).

Dawnchant is definitely the apex of written language, and it is also still flawed in that it absolutely still allows for lying and poor interpretation, it simply requires radically more work and understanding to do.

[Miyabi She/Her]

Do we currently have evidence of them having a written language?  I don't believe we do.

I think the "hivemindedness" you speak of really boils down more to their ability to communicate with the rhythms. (I'm at work and can't really look up a direct reference atm.)  We see a weirdness when they try to interpret human speech or even speech from Parshendi using the "old rhythms." Which I guess poses another problem, if he natural rhythms of the planet change and the ones the Singers use change, then older writing slowly becomes less transparent. 

I don't mean to add tone to each syllable.  Something more like this:  (And each of the brackets could be replaced with something else indicating the rhythm rather than specifically the word.)

 

Quote

[Curiosity]Do we currently have evidence of them having a written language?  [Confidence]I don't believe we do.

[Consideration]I think the "hivemindedness" you speak of really boils down more to their ability to communicate with the rhythms. (I'm at work and can't really look up a direct reference atm.)  [Skepticism]We see a weirdness when they try to interpret human speech or even speech from Parshendi using the "Odium's Rhythms." Which I guess poses another problem, if he natural rhythms of the planet change and the ones the Singers use change, then older writing slowly becomes less transparent. 

[Reconciliation]I don't mean to add tone to each syllable.  Something more like this: (And each of the brackets could be replaced with something else indicating the rhythm rather than specifically the word.)

It makes it clear that my first question is curiosity and not sarcasm, but that I'm still confident of what I think.  The first part of the second paragraph I think your idea has merit, but I'm unsure of it.  The next part is me showing why I have doubt.  And the final paragraph indicates that I'm vying for clarification.

Come to think of it... we really should be writing like this with how much communication is text based.  (i.e. I receive 300+ emails a day at work and on occasion have to call to clarify, even though what they said makes perfect sense, it lacks the context of tone.)

Edited September 21, 2024 by Miyabi

[Treamayne]

56 minutes ago, Miyabi said:

I know Singers have an oral history that they pass using the rhythms, but imagine they decided to start writing stuff down.  This communication could either be the most accurate way of conveying what you mean, or the worst.  Without rhythmic context, it would be atrocious.  They rely SO much on rhythm for context that it would be a thing that didn't truly convey what was meant. 

It could be that something like this is part of the problem with the Ardent's translating the oldest Dawnsinger Chant. They've confirmed that many of the documents are from Humans during the Disapora and as regions used the only alphabet they knew to reproduce local languages. 

However, knowing how brandon likes connections and influences from real languages, I would note that there are IRL langage grammar's using a similar mechanism. For example: in Chinese there are markers for a sentance (Traditional Chinese also doe not use punctuation) so in the greeting Ni Hao Ma - Ni=You, Hao=Good and Ma is the question marker making the sentence "Are you good?" 

[Miyabi She/Her]

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

It could be that something like this is part of the problem with the Ardent's translating the oldest Dawnsinger Chant. They've confirmed that many of the documents are from Humans during the Disapora and as regions used the only alphabet they knew to reproduce local languages. 

However, knowing how brandon likes connections and influences from real languages, I would note that there are IRL langage grammar's using a similar mechanism. For example: in Chinese there are markers for a sentance (Traditional Chinese also doe not use punctuation) so in the greeting Ni Hao Ma - Ni=You, Hao=Good and Ma is the question marker making the sentence "Are you good?" 

Japanese is similar.  I don't know how I didn't think of this.  I remember when I came back from Japan I had a hard time with the fact that our language doesn't have the article "ne."  Ne is used at the end of a sentence often to express things like humility or doubt.  It's often used in a way that says, "those are my thoughts, but that doesn't mean those ae the only thoughts that apply."  i.e. "The weather is good, ne." or "That was weird, ne."  There are also other ka/no for questions yo for exclamation, etc.

[Treamayne]

11 minutes ago, Miyabi said:

Japanese is similar.  I don't know how I didn't think of this.  I remember when I came back from Japan I had a hard time with the fact that our language doesn't have the article "ne."  Ne is used at the end of a sentence often to express things like humility or doubt.  It's often used in a way that says, "those are my thoughts, but that doesn't mean those ae the only thoughts that apply."  i.e. "The weather is good, ne." or "That was weird, ne."  There are also other ka/no for questions yo for exclamation, etc.

Well, in Japanese and Korean it's also part of the conjugation. "Nihongo wakarimasuka" (Do you understand Japanese?) is conjugated as a question by the "masu ka" form of the verb and simply responding Wakarimasu changes it to a statement "I understand." Korean has similar grammar, where verb conjugation makes up a significant part of the meaning. Cosmere rul choahamnika "Do you enjoy the Cosmere?" becomes a statement with one syllable change in the conjugation - "Choahamnida" (I enjoy [that]).

[Miyabi She/Her]

1 hour ago, Treamayne said:

Well, in Japanese and Korean it's also part of the conjugation. "Nihongo wakarimasuka" (Do you understand Japanese?) is conjugated as a question by the "masu ka" form of the verb and simply responding Wakarimasu changes it to a statement "I understand." Korean has similar grammar, where verb conjugation makes up a significant part of the meaning. Cosmere rul choahamnika "Do you enjoy the Cosmere?" becomes a statement with one syllable change in the conjugation - "Choahamnida" (I enjoy [that]).

Sorry, but you're incorrect on the Japanese portion.  Ka is an article indicating an unknown, not a conjugation.  Nihongo ga wakarimasu ka?  In that sentence both ga and ka are articles.  Nihongo desu ka? (Is that Japanese[language]) also uses the ka article.  It can also be used to say "either," Supeinjin ka Porutogarujin desu ne.  (They're either Spanish[person]) or Portuguese[person], right?)  It can also be used next to pronouns to make them indefinite.  Nani (who) nani ka (someone) or doko (where) doko ka (somewhere).

Edited September 21, 2024 by Miyabi

[Treamayne]

15 minutes ago, Miyabi said:

Sorry, but you're incorrect on the Japanese portion.  Ka is an article indicating an unknownt, not a conjugation.  Nihongo ga wakarimasu ka?  In that sentence both ga and ka are articles.  Nihongo desu ka? (Is that Japanese[language]) also uses the ka article.  It can also be used to say "either," Supeinjin ka Porutogarujin desu ne.  (They're either Spanish[person]) or Portuguese[person], right?)  It can also be used next to pronouns to make them indefinite.  Nani (who) nani ka (someone) or doko (where) doko ka (somewhere).

I think our teachers just tought differently, because we are saying the same things with different terminology. Inquisitive conjugation of any verb is "desu ka" "masu ka" etc. - just as Korean conjugation for inquisitive verbs end in Ka. The fact that Ka, as an article, has other functions when used outside fo a conjugation is immaterial because it is like English to, too, and two - homonyms with different definitions (in this case the same spelling, since that is a single letter in Hiragana). In my dictionaries (at least) I cannot find teh inquisitive ending under Ka - only under "masu ka," "desu ka," and similar conjugations because it is all part of one function. That said, part of teh disparity can also be that I learned from a Korean in Korea and Japan, not from an American (or other non-related language primary). So, it could be that Korean forms influenced the teacher's perception of Japanese. 

[Miyabi She/Her]

4 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

I think our teachers just tought differently, because we are saying the same things with different terminology. Inquisitive conjugation of any verb is "desu ka" "masu ka" etc. - just as Korean conjugation for inquisitive verbs end in Ka. The fact that Ka, as an article, has other functions when used outside fo a conjugation is immaterial because it is like English to, too, and two - homonyms with different definitions (in this case the same spelling, since that is a single letter in Hiragana). In my dictionaries (at least) I cannot find teh inquisitive ending under Ka - only under "masu ka," "desu ka," and similar conjugations because it is all part of one function. That said, part of teh disparity can also be that I learned from a Korean in Korea and Japan, not from an American (or other non-related language primary). So, it could be that Korean forms influenced the teacher's perception of Japanese. 

[Appreciation] Different teachers can definitely make a difference.  I first learned Japanese in the states, but spent some time living in Japan and my host mom's job was teaching foreign businessmen Japanese, so I learned a lot from her.

[Consideration] I HAVE seen what you are speaking of though, I believe that is an older teaching? Or perhaps different depths of learning? (i.e. we're often taught at one point there are 3 states of matter as it's a common/easy way to explain something until we have a different level of understanding and learn there are really 6 with sub-states within classical definition, plus whole other ways to go about defining matter) [Irritation] And I was using the word article above rather than particle which is my mistake.  [Resolve] For this example, learning "masuka" "desuka" "nanika" etc, then learning the ka means something unknown about what proceeded it.

[Consolation] There's also the fact that Japanese is so different from English that direct comparisons become difficult.  And where we learned in totally different spaces there's likely room for either definition.  [Annoyance] Though I tend to "need to know exactly" to a fault, which can definitely be a bad thing in certain cases.  [Confidence]For me though, the understanding of ka's functions as a particle indicating something unknown has served me well.

 

[Amusement] HAHA.  I genuinely like the idea of "attuning the rhythms" in my post. XD 

[Treamayne]

1 hour ago, Miyabi said:

Different teachers can definitely make a difference

Yeah, I learned Korean in California to start (Native speakers though 97-99) - then went to study at Yonsei University in Seoul for a semester - and that's where I started learning Japanese (which is an experience - learning a second foreign language through a foreign language with none of your primary language involved at all). That was around 2000 - and I lived on Okinawa 2001-2005 (which may be technically Japanese, but is certainly not "TV" Japanese and very far from Tokyo Japanese  as the Tokyo native spouses of two coworkers always reminded us). 

 

 

[Miyabi She/Her]

8 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

Yeah, I learned Korean in California to start (Native speakers though 97-99) - then went to study at Yonsei University in Seoul for a semester - and that's where I started learning Japanese (which is an experience - learning a second foreign language through a foreign language with none of your primary language involved at all). That was around 2000 - and I lived on Okinawa 2001-2005 (which may be technically Japanese, but is certainly not "TV" Japanese and very far from Tokyo Japanese  as the Tokyo native spouses of two coworkers always reminded us). 

 

 

[Amusement] And I was all the way up north just outside of Sapporo.  

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

7 hours ago, Miyabi said:

Do we currently have evidence of them having a written language?  I don't believe we do.

I think the "hivemindedness" you speak of really boils down more to their ability to communicate with the rhythms. (I'm at work and can't really look up a direct reference atm.)  We see a weirdness when they try to interpret human speech or even speech from Parshendi using the "old rhythms." Which I guess poses another problem, if he natural rhythms of the planet change and the ones the Singers use change, then older writing slowly becomes less transparent. 

I don't mean to add tone to each syllable.  Something more like this:  (And each of the brackets could be replaced with something else indicating the rhythm rather than specifically the word.)

 

It makes it clear that my first question is curiosity and not sarcasm, but that I'm still confident of what I think.  The first part of the second paragraph I think your idea has merit, but I'm unsure of it.  The next part is me showing why I have doubt.  And the final paragraph indicates that I'm vying for clarification.

Come to think of it... we really should be writing like this with how much communication is text based.  (i.e. I receive 300+ emails a day at work and on occasion have to call to clarify, even though what they said makes perfect sense, it lacks the context of tone.)

Ahem. This degree of articulation and linguistic understanding definitely did not leave me salivating for more. Definitely. The singers language is the language of the gods, but it is not without flaw, sadly. 

[Miyabi She/Her]

2 hours ago, hwiles said:

Ahem. This degree of articulation and linguistic understanding definitely did not leave me salivating for more. Definitely. The singers language is the language of the gods, but it is not without flaw, sadly. 

[Anxiety] Friend, where are your Rhythms?

[Appreciation]  *hums*

 

Edited September 22, 2024 by Miyabi

[Ookla she/her]

This thread is hilarious. Just in case y'all didn't realize that.

[Appreciation] Also, I love the idea of adding tone to text this way! No idea if I actually have the patience to use it all the time, but I do quite like reading it!

[alder24]

19 hours ago, Miyabi said:

Do we currently have evidence of them having a written language?  I don't believe we do.

Yes, yes we do. They have a written language of some sort and it was shown to us in the very first interlude of WoR - however it was invented by Venli:

Quote

“He will not face you again,” Venli said. “You nearly killed him last time.” She said it to the Rhythm of Amusement as she rose, picking up a piece of paper—they made it from dried rockbud pulp following a harvest— which she handed to her once-mate. Looking it over, he nodded and began making notes on his own sheet.
That paper required precious time and resources to make, but Venli insisted the reward would be worth the effort. She’d better be right.
[...]
Venli had invented the script herself. They’d learned that concept from the humans—memorizing songs was good, but not perfect, even when you had the rhythms to guide you. Information stored on pages was more practical, especially for research.

She started to develop this form of writing around 8.5 years before RoW, RoW ch 52:

Quote

She looked up from her place by the wall, where she was using some paper—a gift from the humans—to play with letters and beats. Representations of sounds in a possible written language, like the humans used.

And of course, ancient Singers and Dawnsingers had their own language - Dawnchant - which became a shared written language for all on Roshar in the ancient past and later evolved into modern writing systems and languages.

[Treamayne]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

And of course, ancient Singers and Dawnsingers had their own language - Dawnchant - which became a shared written language for all on Roshar in the ancient past and later evolved into modern writing systems and languages.

Thinking on it, it could be why Woman's Script looks vaguely like a Audio Equalizer - especially if the original Dawnchant used something similar with the letter spacing indicating the beat (Rhythm). 

Edited September 22, 2024 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Miyabi She/Her]

[Excitement] OH! Good catches! I forgot about Venli's work in a written language. 

 

[Consideration] The point about women's script is very interesting.   If say, the height of a letter indicated tone and width length for the Dawnchant, you could literally glance at it and know the "tone" of the writer.