Hereby, we present the first grammar of the Ancient Language from the Inheritance Cycle by
Christopher Paolini. His books take place in the mystical land of Alagaësia, where elves, dragons,
dwarves, humans and every other kind of magical creatures can be found. Nowadays, only the
elves, dragons and some humans master and use the Ancient Language. Once this language was
the language of all creatures in Alagaësia. Unfortunately, it started to die out.
The Grey Folk, however, somehow managed to tie the language to their magic, as a tool for
regulating their powers. Significantly, it is impossible to lie in the Ancient Language; everything
said in this tongue is irrevocably true. As a result, most of the original material from the books
are spells and phrases commonly used in official, formal ceremonies. The bigger one’s
knowledge of the Ancient Language, the more spells one possesses and the more power they
have.
During the creation of the language Christopher Paolini found the word ‘brisingr’ for fire in an
Old Norse dictionary. He loved the word so much (and so do we), he decided to pull many more
(if not most) of the lexicon of the Ancient Language from Old Norse. In addition, he pulled the
rest of the lexicon from his imagination. For the grammar on the other hand, he chose English as
his muse, which is not surprising, since English is Paolini’s mother tongue. The combination of
Old Norse and English proves to be an interesting one as will discover when attempting to learn
this fantasy language.
We, as editors and expanders, were up for the challenge when this assignment was handed to
us in our Interlinguistics class at the University of Amsterdam taught by prof. Dr. Frederico
Gobbo. We hope that this first version of the grammar of the Ancient Language will satisfy,
clarify, and most of all help one get into closer touch with this fantastical, mystical world.
3.1.1 Gender
Nouns do not have morphologically visible genders. Any information concerning the gender
of an entity, for example a kona “woman”, can be deri ed from the semantics or from the context,
like in the case of skulblaka “dragon”, which is a gender-neutral word from the semantic point of
view although dragons definitely have genders.
Consequently, the way you perceive the entity determines the pronoun. Kona is referred to
with a feminine pronoun, madr “man” with a masculine pronoun, skulblaka1 with both
(depending on context) and inanimate or “less” animate entities with a neutral pronoun.
Interestingly, there are many instances of words that are equally used for males and females,
like skulblaka or elbrithil “master” or Shur’tugal “Dragon Rider”, or of two completely different
words for the same profession to emphasise gender equality, like dröttning “queen” and könungr
“king”2. This is a huge advantage, for no feministic fan has to something to complain about!
3.1.2 Plurals
Plurals are formed in two different ways, depending on the ending of the noun. Nouns ending
on a consonant are pluralised with the suffix –ar. For example, sverd “sword” becomes sverdar
“swords” and Shur’tugal “Rider” becomes Shur’tugalar “Riders”.
However, this becomes a bit of a problem when one attempts to do this with nouns ending on
–r. After all, stenrar as plural of stenr “stone” does not really sound that great. Therefore, when
these nouns are pluralised, an –a- is put between de rest of the word and the final –r. So stenr
becomes stenar instead of stenrar and skölir “shield” becomes sköliar “shields”.
Finally, nouns ending on vowels are pluralised by substituting this vowel by the suffix –ya.
For example, fricai “friend” becomes fricaya “friends” and oro “arrow” becomes orya “arrows”.
Of course, there are some exceptions3:
Fell “mountain” becomes fells “mountains”;
Niernen “orchid” has niernar as plural form, simply because niernenar is practically
unpronounceable because of the ridiculous amount of “n”-sounds. Besides, in natural
languages forms like these are therefore usually shortened anyway after a while;
Words like solus “sun” and deloi “earth” do not have plural forms, for reasons related
to the world of Alagaësia and the common worldview there;
Varden “guardian(s)” may be as well singular or plural – the semantic meaning
therefore depends on the context and/or the speaker;
The same goes for grind, that can be translated as “gate” or “gates”, perhaps because a
gate usually consists of two doors.
Silbena “mists” is also a strange exception one simply has to learn.
There are two types of articles: definite and indefinite articles. The indefinite article is aí “a”,
and is only used for indefinite singular nouns. The definite article du “the” is used for as well
singular nouns as plural ones. Indefinite plural nouns do not have articles.
The articles are placed before the noun they belong to, for example: du sverdar “the swords” .
Leaving the articles out means usually also that it should not be translated. However, when it
does not lead to strange, ambiguous sentences, both definite and indefinite articles may be left
out – a rule that is perhaps interesting for more advanced speakers, or for fans who want to
write poetry in the Ancient Language.
Compounds are formed by simply putting two words together. The basic rule for compounds
is that the descriptive part comes first. Examples are Argetlam “Sil erhand”, blödhren “bloodoath” and Weldenvarden “Forest Guardian(s)"
There is a simple rule for making diminutive forms of nouns, namely by adding –u to it. For most
consonant-ending noun, this will not cause problems. However, for nouns ending on a vowel or –
r it may, and therefore will the ending vowel or the ending –r be substituted by –u. In the
process of pluralising, this –u will not be deleted but maintained to avoid confusion.
Example: dröttning means queen, so dröttningu is queen-DIM or "princess" as a close translation.
skulblaka means dragon, so skulblaku would be dragon-DIM and would mean "baby dragon" or "little dragon".
gram means wolf so gramu would be wolf-DIM meaning "wolf cub" or "little wolf".
Nouns are “negotiated” with né, that is placed before the noun it modifies. Example: né haina
NEG harm
“no harm”
Pronouns are as follows:
Singular First Person (such as "I" or "me"): eka
edtha
ie (seldom used)
Singular Second Person (you): ono
Singular third person (he/him): älfr
Singular third person (she/her):älfrinn
Plural First Person (we/us):nosu
vae
Plural Second Person (you [plural]): ono
Plural Third Person (they/them): theirr
the translation for "it" is "älf"
For Possessive pronouns:
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