Rosharan linguistics

[Call me a friend]

Okay, so I have been trying to tackle the translations of the words in text that are of Rosharan origin. Dawnchant, horneater, shin, etc. However majority of my current Cosmere works are in audiobook format. And so I find myself in need of help.

I come to ask the community that may be interested in such a task to help compile all examples of Rosharan language and the surrounding context. I plan to edit this post into a form of dictionary, and if possible TRANSLATE BA-ADO-MISHRAM! 

All jokes aside I was reading Dawnshard and Rocks daughter says something to the effect of "it is apa, not liki. You would say physical, not mind... Not of the mind." And then looking at Rocks horneater title "liki" is a sylable. And so now I'm down another ten dozen wiki pages.

I figure Brandon has given us all of the clues we need in short snippets like this. One translated bit at a time. 

I'll be back in a day or so with a much bigger compilation of what I have found so far, I'm just trying to organize it better. One big blob of notes isn't very readable.

Happy reading

[Honorless he/him]

I don't think we have enough extracts of the languages (the languages, not the scripts) to be able to do that yet. We mostly only have a few  names, and that only gives us the Rosharan language sounds.

Edited August 25, 2021 by Honorless

[Call me a friend]

I'm currently scribbling away looking at all of the horneater names. Since horneater language is very Polynesian in structure, it breaks down easier than most.

Mafah'liki for example has "liki" which cord told us is "of mind" essentially. It also contains "mafah" which is extremely similar to "malah" which is one of the words in the dawnchant sample from Dalinars visions. Based on surrounding context that would likely be a word meaning "human" or "want" based on sentence structures and the provided translation by Nevani. So "wanting mind" or "human of mind". Human mind seems like a simple way to say radiant spren. The ones who can think like humans. 

Fal'ala'liki'nor should break down to something simple like above. Liki is of mind, "nor" shows up at the end of Song's name so we can infer some bit of context there.

For the example above dawnchant, shin, and horneater all share a language family way back, so that's why I used the Dawnchant sample for it.

I'm still compiling samples, but for the most part I planned to start with horneater and work up since we have the most samples of it.

[LewsTherinTelescope]

6 hours ago, Call me a friend said:

I come to ask the community that may be interested in such a task to help compile all examples of Rosharan language and the surrounding context. I plan to edit this post into a form of dictionary, and if possible TRANSLATE BA-ADO-MISHRAM! 

There's actually been some effort towards this one. Breakdown that I've (with help from asmodeus on the Discord) come up with is in the vein of (a * means heavily a guess):

Name Part	Potential Word	Potential Meaning	Notes
Ba	bah	child of	Proposed meaning comes from "Rysn Ftori bah-Vstim", as it's mentioned in a previous book she is legally considered Vstim's child.
Ado	adoda	light	Meaning comes from when Dalinar names Adolin in an OB flashback, and mentions the word.
Mish	mishim	Cultivation*	Proposed meaning comes from the green moon, Mishim, which under listener naming conventions would presumably be "Cultivation's Moon". However, it is not confirmed that "Mishim" means that, this is merely a theory.
ram	maram	Honor*	The Alethi word for "honor" is "merem". However, as we see with the name Kalak changing to "Kelek", the Alethi language underwent a vowel shift which might have made "merem" from an older word "maram" (we see this hypothetical word in Amaram's name).

Additionally, someone here on the forums noticed that "mishram" is a form of a Sanskrit word that means "mixed" or "blended", and Brandon has said that words with noticeable Sanskrit (or Arabic, or Hebrew) origins are intended to indicate the word has roots in the Dawnchant.

When I asked Brandon about this breakdown, this was the response:

Quote

LewsTherinTelescope

Does "Ba-Ado-Mishram" mean "child of the light of Cultivation and Honor"?

Brandon Sanderson

RAFO, but you're doing a pretty good job picking apart the linguistics of that.

General Reddit 2020 (Dec. 22, 2020)

[Zoey she/her]

On 8/25/2021 at 9:13 AM, LewsTherinTelescope said:

There's actually been some effort towards this one. Breakdown that I've (with help from asmodeus on the Discord) come up with is in the vein of (a * means heavily a guess):

Name Part	Potential Word	Potential Meaning	Notes
Ba	bah	child of	Proposed meaning comes from "Rysn Ftori bah-Vstim", as it's mentioned in a previous book she is legally considered Vstim's child.
Ado	adoda	light	Meaning comes from when Dalinar names Adolin in an OB flashback, and mentions the word.
Mish	mishim	Cultivation*	Proposed meaning comes from the green moon, Mishim, which under listener naming conventions would presumably be "Cultivation's Moon". However, it is not confirmed that "Mishim" means that, this is merely a theory.
ram	maram	Honor*	The Alethi word for "honor" is "merem". However, as we see with the name Kalak changing to "Kelek", the Alethi language underwent a vowel shift which might have made "merem" from an older word "maram" (we see this hypothetical word in Amaram's name).

Additionally, someone here on the forums noticed that "mishram" is a form of a Sanskrit word that means "mixed" or "blended", and Brandon has said that words with noticeable Sanskrit (or Arabic, or Hebrew) origins are intended to indicate the word has roots in the Dawnchant.

When I asked Brandon about this breakdown, this was the response:

Ooooh, neat, I didn't notice most of that, but yeah, that is all quite obvious. I only noticed Mishim and Mishram being very close to eachother, but not the Ba-Bah, Ado-Adoda, or Maram-Merem.