TalenLee

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I'm Talen! I make videos and articles and games and graphic designs and guides and messes and encouragement. Chances are you can find anything I do on my blog. I like it when you comment on my things, so please do!


the etymology of different heritages in Cobrin'Seil is one of those topics that fascinate scholars who don't really have a lot of people to comment on except to other scholars and the popular reading books of Vizente for people who'd like to act like they're at least one percent smarter than the people who are at the dinner party with them.

Particularly, in Cobrin'seil, heritage names are largely entirely self-chosen demonyms. Oh sure, there are names for Orcs that Orcs don't use, but those words are largely considered slurs, or are often inexact - Bugbears, Hobgoblins, Goblins and Orcs were all for a time treated as the same culture and named interchangeably. A proper cladistic chart can rejoice in how interesting it is that yes, Bugbears and Hobgoblins are extremely closely related, and yet Hobgoblins and Goblins are so distant as to be functionally alien to one another. Studying these relationships involved types of research that could be easily confused - divination magic can often fail when reaching back in history, and recorded forms of history are complicated by damage to the world and magic itself.

But one area you can track the differences, one thing that shows the hallmarks of time in ways that divination magic struggles with, is language.

Particularly, the Orc word Orc is technically, a pronoun; it's the Orcish word that was in common use between Orc clan groups. Technically it's a /first-person/ /plural/ /accusative/ /judicative/ /epicene/ /imperative/ /widely clusive/; that is to say:

  • It's a term used used to self-describe
  • It's a term describing a group
  • It indicates reciept of an object (think of it as 'doing' things)
  • It asserst a correct identification
  • It presents no gender
  • It expresses a command of agency
  • It asserts as many people who can be in the group as possible

See, that's interesting. Good luck selling a pamphlet about it. The irony of it is that every non-orc who refers to orc is, without meaning to, using a word that signifies belonging to the Orcs, which Orcs understand as a language quirk, but it continues the Orcish reaction to common language as being completely useless for its inelegant, inflexible pronouns.

Similarly, the word 'Goblin', a word from the Goblins, is notable because the way the word is used and structured, in language, it's a possessive. Whose land is this? Goblin. Where are we? Goblin. Who are you? Goblin. What are your people? Goblin. This incredibly flexible term, with its overwhelming ubiquity, also plays into the way goblins are perceived as not speaking a strange and confusing language. It's more that they have multi-purpose words are build their language on trust.

Eladrin, Elf, Shadar-Kai and Drow are all words from their own group; Elf is literally the Eladrin word for 'human' that elves adopted. The Shadar-Kai are named after the Eladrin word for the fortress that contained them, which seems dicey, but it fits well with the Shadar-Kai principle of never fucking forgetting their imprisonment. Drow on the other hand, refers to a leader by name, a political faction, and a philosophical position, which makes its use ambiguous and contextual; there are Drow words used by Drow Drow in Drow ways, and each of those uses of Drow have different implications.


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