tvtropes.org

Classical Tongue - TV Tropes

  • ️Tue May 15 2012

A language that isn't typically known or used by the common man. It may be dead and mostly forgotten, or only spoken by educated elites such as nobility, scholars, clergy, or mages. A few words from it might be used to denote something special, or it is used for something or someone's name, or someone who knows it might drop a phrase here and there in an attempt to sound clever, but don't expect the common masses to use it (anymore). It's often an Expy of Latin, if it isn't Latin itself.

The language may also be some kind of holy language spoken by those in a religious order, which makes the comparison to Latin all the more obvious. In these instances, see Sacred Language. If forgotten, can become a Lost Language. In some cases, a classical language came either from or to a Noble Tongue.

A Language of Truth or Language of Magic often doubles as one.

Compare Smart People Know Latin. Contrast Common Tongue. See also Primordial Tongue, for a proto-language from which all the other tongues of the world descend.

See also: classical language on The Other Wiki.

Examples:

open/close all folders 

Anime & Manga 

Fan Works 

  • RWBY: Scars,:Faunus have a language separate from the Common Tongue everyone uses known as "Ishvi". They only use it amongst other Faunus because for years they've been persecuted by humans for speaking it.
  • Let Us Be Your Poison: Many Faunus don't speak the Common Tongue of New Kingspeak. They only speak their own tongue, Zhoviyak.
  • From Behind Bars: "Lion-latin" is this to lions. It's actually Swahili.
  • Flame's Shade — Revisited: Faunus have a basic primal "language" consisting of animal-like noises. This language is something they know from birth. Some noises are known species-wide but some are only understandable to their own kind of faunus (such as cat faunus growls or rabbit faunus clicking).
  • Vow of Nudity: The Genasi see primordial as the world's proto-language and a source of national pride. Haara can also speak it, due to growing up in their empire as a slave.

Film — Animated 

  • BIONICLE: Mask of Light: The writing on Great Kanohi is considered ancient enough that only Turaga can read it, compared to other signs that Takua can read just fine.

Literature 

  • Alex Benedict: The series takes place 9,600 years in the future, more than enough time for civilizations to rise and fall and give our future antiquities dealers something to pick through. Many languages have come and gone in that time. Notably, modern English vanished in the third millennium, and modern French only lasted a millenium more before both languages became only known by their written form — no one has recordings to know how they sounded.
  • A Canticle for Leibowitz: English and Latin have this status for the Church. One aspiring monk remarks on the strangeness of English grammar.
  • Chronicles of the Kencyrath: Kens is the Kencyr language. High Kens is a super formal and archaic form of the langugage. The scholarly Jaran's battle cry is in High Kens, in the vein of Smart People Know Latin.
  • The Dark Tower: "High Speech", which is the language of Gilead, the city of Gunslingers, and is considered a "civilized" language compared to the Low Speech of everyday communication. It's an "old" language in the sense that, by the time of the first novel (The Gunslinger (Stephen King)), Roland is the last of the Gunslingers and thus one of the few people left in the world who actually can speak it.
  • Discworld: Latatian, the language of the ancient Ankh-Morporkian Empire. It's used by wizards, lawyers, and doctors, all of whom reckon that their professions are greatly enhanced if ordinary folk don't understand a word they're saying. In the same way as modern Morporkian just happens to be identical to 20th century English, Latatian bears a remarkable resemblance to Canis Latinicus. There is also Classical Ephebian.
  • The Elenium: During the Archprelate's funeral, there's a reference to the prayers and chants being in an archaic form of the Elene language that hardly anyone present understands.
  • Gentleman Bastard has Throne Therin, the courtly language of the defunct Therin Empire. Amusingly, Word of God states that the Therin nobility invoked this, creating a "tarted-up" version of common Therin to set them apart from the common folk and flaunt their erudition.
  • Inheritance Cycle: The Ancient Language, an ancient tongue once used by the Grey Men, the first recorded civilization. As an added bonus, it's a Language of Magic and Language of Truth due to a ritual used by the Grey Men to bind the formerly wild and uncontrolled forces of magic to it, which probably explains why it's no longer in common use.
  • Lord Peter Wimsey: At the end of Gaudy Night, Wimsey makes his last marriage proposal to Harriet Vane in Latin and she accepts in the same language ("Placet," meaning "it pleases"). They're both highly educated graduates of Oxford University, where the novel is set. The event is special, in that Wimsey unsuccessfully proposed marriage to Harriet (in the vernacular) repeatedly over the course of several years and several novels.
  • Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: Old Peculiar. Some peculiar-specific vocabulary comes from Old Peculiar, like syndrigasti and ymbryne, and there's one song in it. But even Millard — who prides himself as a scholar of all things peculiar — only knows a little, and there's definitely no one having conversations in Old Peculiar.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire has High Valyrian, the language of the lost Valyrian Freehold. In Westeros it's taught to the highborn as a sign of noble education, particularly in the Valyria-descended Targaryen dynasty. In the East, it's been absorbed into local "bastard Valyrian" dialects in the Free Cities and blended with Old Ghiscari in the languages of Slaver's Bay. Some notable words or phrases include valar morghulis ("all men must die", an Essosi greeting that is traditionally replied by valar dohaeris, "all men must serve"), valonqar ("little brother", part of a prophecy that haunts Cersei Lannister since childhood), and dracarys ("dragonfire", used by Daenerys to command her dragons to breathe fire).
  • Tolkien's Legendarium: J. R. R. Tolkien, a linguist by trade, devised several for his works:
    • Westron, the Common Speech of western Middle-earth during the time of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, is derived from Adûnaic, the language of the Númenóreans who had already ruled much of Middle-earth even before they lost their island homeland to catastrophe and were forced to reestablish themselves on Middle-earth as the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor.
    • Quenya serves in the same capacity for the Elves, being the language spoken by the Elves who (at least momentarily) lived with the Valar in the Undying Lands. The Elves of the Third Age mostly use it for poetry and formal literature, and speak a distinct tongue among themselves.
    • Khuzdul (Dwarvish) is a static, ceremonial language, and Dwarves rarely speak their own tongue to outsiders outside of their Battle Cry (and presumably the hearers are expected to soon be dead). When talking to outsiders and sometimes even among themselves, they use Common Speech. If an outsider knows Khuzdul, that is a sure sign that they are considered to be a very honored friend and possibly that they have Gone Native.
  • Time Enough for Love: In the setting, which takes place in the 43rd century, more or less, English is a dead language, which Lazarus Long insists on speaking when dealing with the Howards.
  • Wax and Wayne: High Imperial is the language once spoken by Spook the Lord Mistborn, founder of the new civilization, and is now only used in old historical documents and occasional government ceremonies. To readers, it's Spook's bizarre street slang from the Original Trilogy.
  • The Wheel of Time: The Old Tongue, precursor to the Common Tongue used in the books. It was similarly the universal language in its own time, and is now used mainly by nobles to show off their status, much as Latin was in the real medieval age.

Live Action TV 

  • Doctor Who: Old High Gallifreyan is the ancient language of the Time Lords, since become so obscure that the Doctor writes a diary in the language to ensure it can't be read by others.
  • Farscape has Old Luxan, which D'Argo needs specialized Translator Microbes (as opposed to the regular ones everyone has) to understand, and which Jool disparages him for not knowing. There's also an ancient Hynerian language, which Rygel does know as he's their deposed emperor.
  • Ghoul: The ghoul starts mumbling a Madness Mantra in Aramaic at one point.

    Finish the Task, Reveal Their Guilt, Eat Their Flesh...

  • Grimm: Downplayed when Nick needs a text translated that is written in a medieval dialect of German. Monroe explains that the dialect has not been used in a long time but he can still translate it because it is close enough to modern German. Played straighter with the cloth covering the Templar treasure, which has writing in Aramaic and Latin. Rosalee can translate some of the Latin, but says it's archaic Latin, not Classical Latin (which, ironically given the trope name, would be easier to translate).
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Elendil befriends Galadriel in Numenor by talking in Quenya with her, assuring her that the Elves still have friends in Numenor, especially on the Western shores where the Faithful resides. Quenya is mostly used only by some parts of the Numenorian aristocracy, such as the Faithful, and most of kingdom's old documents at the Hall of Lore are written in Quenya.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation: It's mentioned in one episode that French has become a dead language.

Tabletop Games 

  • Ars Magica: Latin is the standard academic language in Mythic Europe. Characters need to have a formal education to learn it, and most Academic abilities are only taught in Latin. Because of this, it's also the common language of European Magical Society, used in tribunal meetings and in magical scholarship.
  • Dungeons & Dragons
    • In the default setting, Draconic is one of the most ancient languages still in use, partly thanks to its use in magical notation and partly because dragons are candidates for longest-lived non-immortal creatures.
    • Forgotten Realms:
      • Auld Wyrmish is the language of ancient dragon civilization with which different species talk with each other, while each kind itself uses derived dialects.
      • Much the same applies to Giant, which is not the same as dialects that giant subspecies, e.g.: stone giants or verbeeg, use among themselves.
      • Thorass or "Auld Common" is an ancient written trade language from which "Common" is derived, still used for official records in some lands.
      • High Drow is an ancient dialect known mostly to the drow clergy, different enough that they sometimes use it for secret communication over the heads of lay worshipers.
  • Exalted has Old Realm, as opposed to modern High Realm and Low Realm. It's still spoken by most spirits and by scholars, enough to be used as one of the setting's three Common Tongues.
  • In Godbound, there are Ancient Akeh, Old Din and Classical Ren. These are the languages of the three Former Empire-era ethnicities of Arcem. Since the Shattering, the various nations' languages have diverged into clusters of mutually-unintelligible languages. Classical Ren is still the court language of Dulimbai (though the peasants primarily speak Modern Ren), while Ancient Akeh and Old Din are purely scholarly and religious languages.
  • Ironclaw has Magniloquentia, a dead language that was spoken in Triskellion before they conquered Calabria. Even the majority of priests don't speak it and only read the Calabrese translations of their holy scripture, though there are some advanced holy spells that have to be learned in the original Magniloquentia.
  • Pathfinder: The language of the ancient Azlanti empire hasn't been used in millennia, but has been incorporated into the common tongues of Taldane and Varisian and can still be found in some ruins.
  • Traveller: Among Darrians, the Old Script Yaser Te-yulep is used for poetry and legal documents and the Roman Script Rome Te-yelup is used generally.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Human language is distinguished between High Gothic, the language of the Imperium's bureaucracy and upper classes, and Low Gothic, which encompasses the myriad dialects and languages of the Imperium's broader denizens. High Gothic is rendered as Dog Latin in the books as a Translation Convention.
  • Warhammer Fantasy had (at least in earlier editions) the Latin expy called Classical language. Not surprising given the setting's tendency for Fantasy Counterpart Culture. In Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, characters with academic and religious backgrounds tend to have Classical as a language/reading/writing skill, since they're familiar with ancient texts and manuscripts.

Video Games 

  • The Elder Scrolls: Aldmeris, the language of the Aldmer (Old or First Elves), Precursors to all of the modern races of Mer (Elves). It parallels Latin in that it didn't so much die out as evolve into several distinct but clearly related languages, some living and others, like Dwemeris and the Falmer language, extinct. Translating Dwemeris is a side-quest plot point in Morrowind while translating the Falmer language is a side-quest plot point in Skyrim. Rediscovering the language of the dragons (Dovahzul) is a main quest plot point in Skyrim.
  • Fire Emblem: The Ancient Language in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is used as a spellcasting language in most contemporary settings and is the primary language for the Heron tribe. Most of what Princess Leanne says is in this language. In fact, it's simply English in an invented script; translations can be found here and here.
  • Jade Empire: BioWare commissioned a 2,500 word Conlang called Tho Fan, also known in universe as "the Old Tongue". They ended up using it to save memory on dialogue as they could get away with using only a few sentences in what would sound like gibberish to most players, and the majority of NPCs speak "English" anyways.
  • Sword of the Stars: Negotiating with different species requires researching their languages. Most of them have three, a "Common Tongue" that allows Ceasefire agreements, a secondary language that allows the formation of alliances or non-aggresion pacts, and a third that enables tech sharing and demands for their surrender. Humanity's are English, Latin, and Hanzi.

Visual Novels 

  • In the Shinza Bansho Series, whenever a character speaks and it is distorted, that means that the character in question is currently speaking in a language not of this current world but from a previous onenote . As this is something not meant to exist in the current reality it creates a Black Speech like effect and tends to be exclusive to the Gods or those with close ties to them that populate the series.

Webcomics 

  • Ears for Elves: Some children argue about the proper pronunciation of "Taurë", the word for "wood elves" in the Forgotten Tongue. It's the first part of the name of the Taurëcuiva Festival.
  • Unsounded: The dead Old Tainish language has been replaced by Tainish and Continental in common speech, but is still studied extensively as the Language of Magic. Since it's the only language the Background Magic Field of the Khert understands, spell composers put a lot of work into rediscovering long-lost bits of vocabulary.

Western Animation 

Real Life 

  • Latin, of course, the classical tongue of the Western world. Thanks to The Roman Empire, educated people in the West learned to speak Latin long after it had ceased to be the daily language of anywhere. This wasn’t just limited to places where its vernacular form had evolved enough to be considered a distinct language (as e.g. in Italy or France or Spain); places where Latin had been replaced wholesale by a completely different language (e.g. what are today Englandnote  and Croatianote ) or where the Romans never reached (most of Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary) all had extensive education in Latin for the elite into the modern era. To this day, speaking Latin is considered a mark of sophistication (if a useless and pretentious one) across the Western world.
  • Ancient Greek is also a real life example (in fact as a rule of thumb, Latin is favoured by lawyers and Greek is favoured by scientists).
  • Sanskrit also fits the bill, and it's even used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the forms of hymns and mantras.
  • Hebrew is classified as a classical language, but its revival as a spoken tongue was part of a calculated effort by the Zionists. This revival is not popular among many Ashkenazi Orthodox Jews, who view Hebrew as a holy language and Yiddish as the everyday language of Jews. This stance tends to frustrate Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Ethiopian Jews, both Orthodox and non-Orthodox.
    • The Orthodox Sephardi also traditionally viewed Hebrew as holy, with Ladino as their vernacular. In contrast to Yiddish, which emerged among isolated Eastern European Jews, Ladino developed in Muslim-ruled Spain and Portugal, where Jews were more integrated. As a result, Ladino closely resembles Spanish, with very little Hebrew influence, and the official authority for Ladino in Israel is part of the Spanish language council. For this reason, many Sephardic Jews prefer Hebrew today.
  • Arabic is an interesting case. Classical Arabic, the ornate and sacred language of The Qur'an, is no longer spoken, but it can be understood by those familiar with Modern Standard Arabic, which is simpler and more contemporary. Still, Modern Standard Arabic isn't spoken as a first language either.note  People typically speak one of these regional dialects, none of which were historically written down, but high-end colloquial Arabic transitions smoothly into Modern Standard Arabic. While Classical Arabic remains a classical and sacred language, the Arabic language itself is very much alive and vibrant.note 
  • Classical Chinese differs from modern vernacular Chinese mainly in terms of vocabulary and style, with a prominent characteristic being the absence of multi-character words. It is still predominantly used in literature, formal contexts, and academic exams. In the past, educated elites could easily read and write in Classical Chinese, while the common people, both in the past and in modern times, did not have the same proficiency. Classical Chinese also acted as a written lingua franca in East Asia (China, Japan, Korea) and Vietnam, as pronunciation could vary, but the written characters were still understandable. This is because Chinese characters focus on meaning, not sound, and thus people could understand each other's writing regardless of how the words were pronounced. Furthermore, East Asian languages incorporated many loanwords from Classical Chinese, so there is a degree of mutual comprehension when it comes to recognizing familiar words.
  • Scholars now suspect that the written standard form of Old English (the language of Beowulf) had become this, or at least started to, by the Norman Conquest. Numerous misspellings and scribal errors suggest that the late Anglo-Saxons' spoken language had already come to greatly resemble what we now call Middle English even without the much-vaunted impact of Norman French. This is largely attributed to contact with the Old Norse spoken by the vikings and viking descendants of the Danelaw (which consisted of roughly the northeastern half of the country). The viking contact not only gave Old English a bunch of new words, it affected the grammar of the language: Old Norse was related to Old English but had a vastly different set of grammatical inflections, so the English and vikings quickly realized that they could make themselves understood by just dropping the inflections and relying on word order and helper words to convey grammatical information (what linguists call analytical grammar). This quickly became the spoken standard even in areas technically outside the Danelaw, most notably London. Meanwhile the written standard was based on the West Saxon dialect spoken in the court of Alfred the Great and which continued to be spoken in the southwest, and was therefore essentially free of any Norse influence, including the shift from an essentially inflected to an analytical structure. Thus by 1066, the written standard language was no longer much like what most English people spoke, especially outside The West Country and certain western parts of The Midlands.