I stood up and approached Eala. Not knowing what to do, I guessed that some consolation was needed. So I just patted her head lightly. She looked at me, and bowed again, repeating “Buiaciss-ort” she had said before. That actually reminded me of the problems with our communication. We could not really rely on puppet shows to transmit our intentions, could we?
After a while, I sat with Eala near the fire. Not that it was cold or anything, but it had somehow become a resting area. Eala had apparently calmed down, and I felt that it was a good time to sort out the relationship between us.
—
I looked at Eala, and began talking slowly and clearly, hoping to find a common language or at least something related. And talking would get her mind off her companions.
The first, of course, was eternal “Suilad, mellon!”. Response was silence, and slightly puzzled look. Alright, no Sindarin then.
As it turned out, Eala did not speak Quenya either, with “Namárië!” not eliciting a reaction either. Pity, for a long-time Lord of the Rings fan like me, finding a proof that Middle-Earth exists, would have been an awesome discovery.
I got no answer to using “Mer”, “N’wah” and “Gah’Julan” either, making me cross out the Tamriel from possible origins of Eala. But really, perfect memory really helped digging up some phrases from Morrowind that I had played more than a decade ago.
After listing some more random fantasy phrases, including as unlikely candidates as Klingon, I only managed to get some faint response like thoughtful expressions and headshakes when going through Gaelic and Nordic inspired languages like Elder Speech from The Witcher saga. Guess that reading that piece of Polish fantasy back when I was learning Russian turned out to be helpful, after all.
—
“Mmm, let’s go then with ancient languages…” – “Ati Me Peta Babka?”
“…”
“Nomen mihi Legio est, quia multi sumus?”
“…”
“Gnôthi seautón?”
“…”
“Kíimak ‘oolal?”
“…”
—
“What about modern languages?” – “Guten Morgen?”
“…”
“Err, Ni Hao?”
“?”
“Privet, kak dela?”
“…”
“What about a drink?”
“?”
“Drink, yes, dri-ink” – I showed her a cup. She nodded and accepted the water while we continued.
—
To be sure, I spent several hours digging through my memories and listing common phrases in as many existing living and dead languages from Earth as I could remember. Mostly owing to Internet, the amount of words and phrase snippets that I had read over the years covered most common language groups from the history of the Earth. Latin, Greek, Coptic, Assyrian, Hebrew, Hindi, Chinese, Arabic, Turkish, Japanese, Swahili – I kept remembering at least random words from most unexpected sources.
Unfortunately, she did not respond to any of the languages I spoke fluently. I felt like giving up, and while thinking, uttered an exasperated “What clan are you then, for fuck sake?!”.
What I did not expect, was a reaction from Eala – “Clann?”
That got me to ponder again. Then I remembered, that while I had gone through Saxon and Old Norse, I had missed Gaelic. Trying to find some suitable words, in the moment of excitement I could come up only with “Sgian-dubh?”.
Eala thought a bit, and then repeated “Skeean-do” and formed a figure of a dagger out of the water on her palm, and pointed at a piece of coal lying near the fire. That would be a black knife, I interpreted. While the proper translation for the traditional Scottish sgian-dubh should be “hidden knife”, I remembered that “dubh” had a meaning of “black” as well.
Then it came to me – Eala’s “Buiaciss-ort” from earlier was a form of gratitude, with “Buíochas” being an old Irish Gaelic form for “thanks”. Me knowing the words only through books and reading resulted in not comprehending proper spelling and misunderstanding when hearing words too archaic or misspelled over time.
But at least it proved, that Eala, or at least her people, knew something about the Earth. Most likely Ireland, and although the lead felt like a very old one, perhaps there was my chance to get home?
—
Unfortunately, my knowledge of Gaelic was limited to only five or so words I had picked up from novels, movies and translators’ footnotes from ballads, legends, songs and myths I had read during my studies.
But there was still something I could use. Names. I did not know the words, but names remained. And elves in myths had different names as well. Aes Sidhe? Or perhaps even greater ones, Tuatha Dé Danann?
As I mentioned Aes Sidhe and Tuatha Dé Danann to Eala she was surprised. As I pointed at her and repeated, she looked slightly displeased and shook her head.
She brought her hands forwards and created figures from water. First, she created a figure of a big man. Eala pointed at him, and named him – “Nemed.”. Then, Nemed split into multiple smaller figures, which Eala called as “Clann Nemid”. Then those were divided into groups where they fought against some outer forces, most died and the rest scattered.
One group of the remaining figures Eala called Tuatha Dé Danann before returning their figures into water and pointed at the last remaining group and herself – “Tash-ta-lue”. After some repetitions and comparison, we got it down to “Taistealaithe”. Not that I had any idea what that meant. But it seemed, that her “Clann Taistealaí” was a sister clan of Tuatha Dé Danann. That was some badass family, I had to admit. Some researches did classify Tuatha Dé Danann as old Irish gods, didn’t they?
However, as it turned out, Eala’s gasp of old Irish was not very good either. She only knew some basic words and terms related to the history of her clan. Having no languages in common, we had to teach each other. Taistealai whistling language required precise control of sound frequencies, tones and a complex use of vowels, causing me an infinite amount of frustration.
Instead, I decided to teach Eala to speak English.
Circle of Shards 