The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
There You Are
Serack:
--- Quote from: Kindler on June 01, 2016, 08:54:34 PM ---Yeah, Merlin would've spoken Middle English, which sounds closer to Gaelic than English. He could've spoken Old English too, which is even further removed from modern English. Did Jim ever make it clear when Merlin actually lived? He might've even spoken Old Norman, depending on when he was around.
Either way, if there's a Word of Jim specifying that Merlin's speech wouldn't be intelligible to Harry, that means that he probably isn't Harry from The Future. Unless, you know, whatever upgrade enables him to create a stable time loop in which he founds the organization that pursues him centuries later in his personal past scrambled his brains a bit.
--- End quote ---
We've been discussing the works attributable to the Merlin in another topic, and some of our efforts pinning down the timing in history got thick around this post.
Conclusion I got? It's possible he started mucking around before the first century BCE, but there is more evidence that he was still around by the 4th century Common Era.
nedserD C B yrraH:
To my mind the full phrase almost certainly has significance especially since it is thematically so similar to the 7 words Uriel gets to give Harry. It is all about self knowledge and using that self knowledge. I feel like it is a all tied together with harry not giving in to despair. Neg Harry could be defeated by Pos Harry, but a spiritually broken and mentally mangled Harry, that is what Nemesis wants.
Kindler:
--- Quote from: Serack on June 03, 2016, 01:07:17 PM ---We've been discussing the works attributable to the Merlin in another topic, and some of our efforts pinning down the timing in history got thick around this post.
Conclusion I got? It's possible he started mucking around before the first century BCE, but there is more evidence that he was still around by the 4th century Common Era.
--- End quote ---
If your attempts to date Merlin's life are accurate (and admittedly my thesis was written on the Crusades, not Imperial Rome, so I have little to contribute and can't really argue with your conclusions), then he most likely spoke Greek and Vulgar Latin, which explains why Latin would be the official language of the White Council (though modern Latin is almost literally nothing like the Latin actually spoken by Rome, and don't even get me started on Church Latin). In other words, even if Merlin was the prisoner in Demonreach, he would probably have spoken to Dresden in Latin, as Dresden's pretty obviously a wizard, but Harry's rudimentary Latin wouldn't be able to decipher it. It would be like a college student who took French trying to translate La Chanson de Roland without a reference guide.
Anyway, the point is that Merlin lived before dictionaries, mass media, the printing press, and the electric light bulb, all of which contributed to the significantly to the evolution of language until we have the homogenized English that the prisoner spoke.
Which is actually more interesting to me, because that means that that prisoner either was placed there relatively recently (within the past, say, two hundred years), or is an entity that has somehow kept up with linguistic evolution despite being in stasis. Could also be like Toot-Toot, who apparently can just decide what language he wants to speak. Hmm. Well, based on the information I have, I don't think I can make a reasonable guess. But it's an interesting question, and fodder for speculation.
peregrine:
I can't imagine that we can read much into what the prisoner said, given that we've got other hideous critters also speaking to Harry and trying to bargain with him for release. I'm pretty sure there's some sort of telepathic translation going on. Barring the Chtulhu Fthagn that he got from one of them.
groinkick:
--- Quote from: nedserD C B yrraH on June 03, 2016, 02:45:39 PM ---To my mind the full phrase almost certainly has significance especially since it is thematically so similar to the 7 words Uriel gets to give Harry. It is all about self knowledge and using that self knowledge. I feel like it is a all tied together with harry not giving in to despair. Neg Harry could be defeated by Pos Harry, but a spiritually broken and mentally mangled Harry, that is what Nemesis wants.
--- End quote ---
Harry would have been better off if the 7 words he got were "You really should have sex with Molly"
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