Ze Ancient Magical Language

[Zylaa]

One of my pet peeves in stories. People with spoken magic need a spellcasting language, yes, no question of that. But often, in epic books, this magical languages is the Old Tongue, Ancient Language, or something inane. A magical language that has power over all things that it names (and often, for an extra twist, it is impossible to lie in this language. Because it's just that special). Well, that concept has irritated me for a while, but today Bacon of the NTWF brought up an excellent point that I hadn't noticed.

Bacon said:

You know what I was just wondering? You know those books where all the main character has to do to use magic is say the elvish word for the spell? Like saying the elvish word for fire causes something to ignite.

I wonder how the elves in those places managed to not destroy their civilization in everyday conversation?

[Celesauron]

Maybe they always had fire extinguishers and the like handy? xD

[Zylaa]

XD Yes! Magical ancient fire extinguishers! Problem solved.

[Elycien]

Y'know, that gives me a great idea for deconstructing that - where the whole "elven language = truth" thing is actually the result of a curse and it's what destroyed the elven culture... thousands of years later it's venerated as the pure, magical, wonderful tongue. When really it's just cursed. Yeah.

[Taslin]

You guys are all right, of course. ZAML as a concept is quite silly. But now, because I feel like being crazy, I'm going to pontificate on a system where that might have happened and made more sense.

In this situation, magic works because of people meaning it too, not because of any virtue in the words they're saying. They could point at sticks and say "Water" and have them catch on fire if they wanted, as long as they really meant to catch the sticks on fire.

Then, someone got the bright idea to control the spread of magic by telling all the plebian rubes that magic only worked in this certain language (which, conveniently, they spoke and no one else did--kind of similar to why the Bible being written in Latin for so long). It was only after centuries of assigning this quality of truthiness to ZAML that they forgot they'd made it up in the first place and people believed it was true. And, therefore, it was. Because, in their self-delusion, they meant to do magic when using this language and not when they used any other one, and that's what really made it work.

And there you have it. Tas's take on how something like that could actually make sense. <.<d It was fun, anyway.

@ely: I like your idea, too.

[Celesauron]

I've always thought that magic is something that you believed in so hard that it came true. No words needed, just the focus of the mind. An ancient language could be something that isn't usually spoken, like Latin which allows you to focus your mind and go beyond earthly things to believe the impossible. It is a motivational device that lets you not see the impossible.

Or The Ancient Language is just there to look cool. =3 Don't underestimate the Rule of Cool people.

*goes for the latter*

[Zylaa]

=D Both spiffy ideas, Elcie and Tas! Those would be fun stories.

Yeah, I tend to go with just mental focus in the stuff I write too, Celestial.

XD And yeah, Rule of Cool, but YMMV. >_>