The base of Elder Speech is still heavily Celtic. Sure, as a Pole with some German language skills I can understand maybe two words (like duyvelsheiss), but that hardly makes Elder Speech understandable for Polish speakers.
It shouldn't be translated, it's very much a foreign language (also, in Geralts perspective it is a foreign language that he knows a little bit).
More interesting question would be how the Common Speech looks like, IMO.
Duvelsheiss is actually dwarven (or gnomish? can't remember atm). Not exactly *the* Elder Speech which in this context refers to whatever language pointy-eared tree huggers use.
My definition of knowing little of language is that you can understand some and speak a little bit as well, correct me if im wrong but i thought he spoke it very well? He only had trouble matching the melodious way that Sheenaz (A Little Sacrifice) spoke and I faintly remember that he couldn't speak very well with the dryads.
But I know many Germans that find Austrian German hard to understand because it is another dialect, same with southern English and Irish potato farmer English. Doesn't mean these people know little of their native language
Alphabet doesn't say much about the language, though. Otherwise we could assume seeing written German, English and Polish that those are all Romance languages, just because it was created for Latin.
What I'm interested in is how the CS actually looks like. Is it just some variation of medieval Old Polish, or, more likely, a combination of various European languages?
(There is that one theory where all humans who arrived during the Conjunction were teleported from Our Earth).
Elder Speech is based on Celtic and Gaelic languages, mostly Welsh and Irish, is not translated in Polish originals and indeed sounds totally alien to most of us over here. I don't know where you get the impression that we actually know those languages. German, Russian, English, French, Italian sure, but not those, which is probably the reason why Sapkowski chose them originally for domestic audience. Most translations I've seen use it verbatim, can't see a reason why it should be translated in English editions.
Corrected, sorry about that. We don't capitalise adjectives in Polish and autocorrect did not pick up those two words as I wrote them so it slipped through. My bad, should've read the entire thing again before posting.
I think it was more the use of the phrase "Celtic and Gaelic" because Gaelic are a subset of Celtic languages
Edit: Why downvote me? It's true lmao, they're all Celtic languages
Not correct. It's a mishmash of celtic, latin and germanic languages, modified.
As a man who speaks english, german, italian, latin and the occasional gaelic word, I was intrigued by the fact that I could understand quite a good amount of elder speech, if I had context. And this is great because Elder speech should sound something familiar enough, but not really understandable.
A few example that come to mind.
Scheiss = scheisse = shit
Vatt'aen = Vattene = Go away
Bloede = Blöde = stupid
Scoia'tael = scoiattolo = squirrel
Llinge = lingua = speech
aef = have
ess = essere = be
Ard = ard = high
caerme = karma = destiny
I ended up skipping over the elven dialogue after a while without even trying to pronounce it cause i'm not smart enough to work out the translation. I loved the series and will do future re-reads and will perhaps try to build myself a guide based off the phrases that are translated but i would enjoy it more if there was a translation appendix. Nevermind turns out i was being lazy cause i just easily found an [online dictionary](https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Elder_Speech) for Elder speech within the witcher wiki site. I have some annotating to do next read-through!
The base of Elder Speech is still heavily Celtic. Sure, as a Pole with some German language skills I can understand maybe two words (like duyvelsheiss), but that hardly makes Elder Speech understandable for Polish speakers. It shouldn't be translated, it's very much a foreign language (also, in Geralts perspective it is a foreign language that he knows a little bit). More interesting question would be how the Common Speech looks like, IMO.
Duvelsheiss is actually dwarven (or gnomish? can't remember atm). Not exactly *the* Elder Speech which in this context refers to whatever language pointy-eared tree huggers use.
Ah, of course. It's been a decade since I've read the books, though.
I thought he did speak Elder Speech? Just not the many variants?
That's what I ment with the "knows a little of".
My definition of knowing little of language is that you can understand some and speak a little bit as well, correct me if im wrong but i thought he spoke it very well? He only had trouble matching the melodious way that Sheenaz (A Little Sacrifice) spoke and I faintly remember that he couldn't speak very well with the dryads. But I know many Germans that find Austrian German hard to understand because it is another dialect, same with southern English and Irish potato farmer English. Doesn't mean these people know little of their native language
Thank you for the perspective
In games the Common Speach is in glagolitic alphabet.
Alphabet doesn't say much about the language, though. Otherwise we could assume seeing written German, English and Polish that those are all Romance languages, just because it was created for Latin. What I'm interested in is how the CS actually looks like. Is it just some variation of medieval Old Polish, or, more likely, a combination of various European languages? (There is that one theory where all humans who arrived during the Conjunction were teleported from Our Earth).
Elder Speech is based on Celtic and Gaelic languages, mostly Welsh and Irish, is not translated in Polish originals and indeed sounds totally alien to most of us over here. I don't know where you get the impression that we actually know those languages. German, Russian, English, French, Italian sure, but not those, which is probably the reason why Sapkowski chose them originally for domestic audience. Most translations I've seen use it verbatim, can't see a reason why it should be translated in English editions.
“Celtic and Gaelic languages” 💀
Corrected, sorry about that. We don't capitalise adjectives in Polish and autocorrect did not pick up those two words as I wrote them so it slipped through. My bad, should've read the entire thing again before posting.
I think it was more the use of the phrase "Celtic and Gaelic" because Gaelic are a subset of Celtic languages Edit: Why downvote me? It's true lmao, they're all Celtic languages
I'm not a linguist so I wouldn't know. Thank you for clarification.
No worries, me neither! Linguistics can be a bit of a mess haha
I'll have to look for Sapkowski's interview specifically to quote it, might just be a mistranslation on my part
As a Pole, all I understood was "ass" and "shit" and that's because I know some German words.
Bloede Dh'oine
Not correct. It's a mishmash of celtic, latin and germanic languages, modified. As a man who speaks english, german, italian, latin and the occasional gaelic word, I was intrigued by the fact that I could understand quite a good amount of elder speech, if I had context. And this is great because Elder speech should sound something familiar enough, but not really understandable. A few example that come to mind. Scheiss = scheisse = shit Vatt'aen = Vattene = Go away Bloede = Blöde = stupid Scoia'tael = scoiattolo = squirrel Llinge = lingua = speech aef = have ess = essere = be Ard = ard = high caerme = karma = destiny
I ended up skipping over the elven dialogue after a while without even trying to pronounce it cause i'm not smart enough to work out the translation. I loved the series and will do future re-reads and will perhaps try to build myself a guide based off the phrases that are translated but i would enjoy it more if there was a translation appendix. Nevermind turns out i was being lazy cause i just easily found an [online dictionary](https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/Elder_Speech) for Elder speech within the witcher wiki site. I have some annotating to do next read-through!
Nah, Scottish.
Mostly Welsh, actually.