Delving into the Dahns

[Petegrant89]

Hello all,

New to this community (though not to the Cosmere) and can think of no better first post than one that is eclectic as hell; still, I am curious to hear thoughts on the matter.

As readers of the Stormlight Archive will be well aware, the nobility (or lack thereof) of one born in Alethkar is dictated by their eye color. Within the Lighteyed subculture, delineation of social rank is represented by (I believe) 10 dahns. 

Growing up around "Pennsylvania Dutch" areas, I became accustomed to hearing the word "down" pronounced as "dahn," so I found it humorous that the word "dahn" in the Stormlight Archive made sense to me: e.g. "4th down on the nobility scale." Upon thinking about it more, I turned to Google to see if "dahn" had a definition indicative of its etymology as it pertains to the Stormlight Archive. Apparently "dahn" actually does mean "down," in a way of speaking called "eye dialect." 

Eye dialect is the use of nonstandard spelling for speech to draw attention to an ironically standard pronunciation.

I would find it overly coincidental that the ranks of the social hierarchy from the top down are named using a word that only makes sense deffinitionally if viewed through the lens of a type of speech whose name describes the very system in question - but I am curious if anyone else has reached a similar conclusion, of if I had one too many and am reaching a bit too far.

[The One Who Connects he/him]

I never did grasp at word meanings, but this is really interesting. Have an upvote.
Small detail is that Dahn is only for the Lighteyes, Darkeyes use Nahn (which, as far as I can tell, doesn't have a definition)

[Darkness he/him]

unless it's nahn = non... As in non-people... "you're the first level of non-people."

or 'none'.... Has in having nothing

[Sand Master]

It's an interesting theory, but I have two issues with it.

First, as @The One Who Connects mentioned, the lighteyes use dahn, but the darkeyes use nahn, which doesn't fit this theory.

And second, this theory is based off of a way that people speak English. But they're not speaking English, they're speaking Alethi. It's just written in English because we obviously wouldn't understand it otherwise. So for an Alethi word to have an English origin, it wouldn't make much sense.

[Krandacth]

7 hours ago, Sand Master said:

And second, this theory is based off of a way that people speak English. But they're not speaking English, they're speaking Alethi. It's just written in English because we obviously wouldn't understand it otherwise. So for an Alethi word to have an English origin, it wouldn't make much sense.

I assumed the OP was suggesting that it is how Mr Sanderson derived the word, rather than an in-Cosmere reason.

However, there is plenty of word-play throughout the novels that relies on English idioms, which there would have to be, because otherwise we would be constantly as confused as the bridgemen are around Zahel.  I take this to reflect the meaning of the conversation and the nature of the jokes (or threats, or whatever) made, not necessarily the exact jokes.  Extrapolating, it is possible that the names as written could be derived from English in the same way that the "real" names are derived from, for example, Alethi.

That being said, why would the term for delineating the upper-class social hierarchy of Alethkar be based off a Bavlander* accent?  So my assumption remains that the OP thought it might be something that Brandon had noticed and thought, "Cool!".

*As far as I can see, this is the nearest linguistic equivalent in-setting, I am not drawing a cultural comparison.

Edited September 9, 2016 by Krandacth

[william.sexton3 he/him]

And it would make even more sense, because the men couldn't read! I also just kind of assume that Alethi = English, else Sanderson could never use puns. "What did the one-armed Hardasian do to the man that stuck him to the wall? Nothing, because he was 'armless.'" This pun would not make sense in any other language because the words for "harm" and "arm" only sound the same in English. I just assumed that the languages that we read are the same as the ones spoken.

However, with the men not being able to read it, they might assume that it was a very similar word.