headscratcher: Any theories on how the Knights communicate with Cephirans

[Antoinette Veronica]

it is a long time since I posted.

When I watch Rayearth and other stories in which in Earthling ended up in another world. It always baffles me how the Earthing communicate with those people in the other world. How come the people in another world speak Japanese/English/Spanish whatsoever?

Any theories?

Cephiro should have its own language, doesn't it?

[suzanami]

A lot of people have detailed headcanons about this

but I'm always happy to accept the whole "suspend your disbelief" when it comes to things like this!

[Scotch Bonnet]

I think Mokona included some sort of magic on the knight summoning that gave them a translation bubble around them or something. Both parties know the other is speaking a different language, but they understand it. That's why words like "Magic Knights" and "Palu" stick out. The former, the girls recognize. The latter doesn't translate to anything specific. *shrug* 

[Down]

I cannot find the current half-draft of the essay on the lingustics of Cephiro and what it means for that society, so have a copy-paste of an old half-written one of great informality. BECAUSE I CAN. MUWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. warnings - half written and old and may not make sense. Also it stops before it hits trying to work out Autozam. Mostly because I think I needed to listen to the anime again, this was all done in one weekend without any fact checking, I SHOULD NOT BE POSTING IT BUT THERE WAS A QUESTION AND THIS ISN'T EVEN AN ANSWER TO IT XDDD.

In which I ramble inanely trying to work out the linguistics of Cephiro

?through attempting to analyse the Japanese in the anime and manga?

(A task up to which my language skills should probably not be put. XD)

(also mainly through contrasting everyone with Clef, because lo, I am an obsessive obsessive. XD)

SO. The language of Cephiro is, clearly and blatantly, not Japanese - though that?s the medium it?s presented through - even in the anime, where they have ?translated? the titles and the spells by ignoring the ?cephiran? pronunciation guides which are in the manga (where each spell is written with kanji for meaning, but with a pronunciation in katakana beside it, which indicates a foreign pronunciation), and gone with the Japanese pronunciation of the kanji - as you can?t do the kind of doubling up of meaning and sound in the anime any more easily than you can in english. So that element gets lost out of the original manga. But though the Cephirans use a limited amount of Japanese honorifics in the anime, they for the most part ONLY use plain form - unless I am very very much forgetting things, which I might be! Which implies heavily this isn?t Japanese, because it contrasts with the varied forms of Japanese - highly formal, normal boyish plain, and entirely informal and girlish plain - used by Fuu, Hikaru, and Umi respectively.

So, I think the use of actual honorifics is being used here to indicate the actual use of a cephiran respectful title - sama for Zagato, hime for Emeraude - which indicates there are words roughly equivalent to ?sir? and ?princess? in Cephiro over and above the role/job-related titles - and also points to the structure of the society but let?s not get into that right now or I?ll lose all the day to it~ XD (Also the word-order is different with these than the job-titles. Guru/Madoushi Clef, Emeraude-hime. Emeraude's 'title' isn't princess, it's [Pillar], which is always in quotes to indicate its role as a title, I suspect? But because she's the pillar she is addressed respectfully as 'hime'. 'Hime' is therefore not her job role, and not the REASON she's addressed respectfully, but a consequence of it. In the same way, Zagato is Soru/bother-what's-the-Japanese Zagato, but addressed by those who have the most respect for him as Zagato-sama - 'sama' is because of what he is, not the what itself. AND THEREFORE 'Ferio-ouji' is, by the same logic, respect for who he is - close family to the Pillar - but not a job-role. Pretty certain he'd actually be Daru, like LaFarga, except he's been off doing the wandering swordsman thing instead of any formal job - and thus he doesn't have a job-title used for him~!) (And - I need to check this - but Kairu is only used for Lantis in terms of 'this is what you are/were' - he isn't performing that job anymore, not formally, so I don't think he gets CALLED Kairu Lantis in Rayearth 2?)

There?s also the fact of Mokona. When I originally watched this, as a kid who grew up on Dr Who, I decided Mokona was a TARDIS. (Or that the TARDIS is a Mokona. XD) but there?s clearly SOMETHING helping the Knights understand the language about them which doesn?t work on the written language - there are inscriptions in the background and in some of the illustrations which are almost completely unintelligible, apart from the words ?magic knights? and the names of the Mashin - which speaks to the part where those words were brought from Earth, from English/other languages, and have been retained for whatever reason with their original spelling/form. (Which raises the question of what the heck Selece and Windam are meant to mean, but~) And when I was a kid I declared it was Mokona, or a spell put on them as they were summoned, possibly by Mokona, and then Tsubasa came out and justified everything and I cackled loudly for a while. XD Which is all rather avoided by the anime, probably because of what they didn?t know/changed about Mokona, but as there?s no real alternate explaination I stick to that one and usually just decide Mokona is as he is but doesn?t reveal himself in this timeline. XDD ANYWAY Mokona is the reason they can understand Cephiran, but it only works on verbal communication.

Then there are the Mashin themselves, who use rather formal high and old-fashioned (at least, I think it?s all these things? Like I said, my knowledge, lacking it be~) Japanese, and the question becomes were they created with Cephiro and this is an older form of Cephiran, which then gives the option of the other Cephirans using it in rituals (which is my preferred option because I like having old forms of languages to mix in with the current ones and it?s fuuuuuuun~) or are they older than Cephiro, from earth or somewhere else previously, and this is reflecting the older earth dialect of whatever kind they are actually speaking?

Given that the mashin don?t fit with the mythology/structure of earth as it?s presented at the end of Rayearth 2, and also because I LIKE IT BETTER, I tend to go with the first option - that they were created with knowledge of Earth and machines and everything worked into them, but they are of Cephiro. Which gives some kind of timeframe for the age of Cephiro as Old Enough To Have Language Shifts Of Some Magnitude, possibly even just since the last time the mashin were woken up, though they don?t seem to shift their language to more modern this time? XD

But there ARE things about the use of plain form by the Cephirans which indicate differences in the ways they?re using the language they?re speaking. Clef, for all that he uses plain plain plain form (and watashi as his pronoun XD) (I thought for a while that allllll the Cephirans used watashi, but lo, Ferio?s using ore, so there has to be a range of possible and probably gender-based pronouns in Cephiran?) does things with his particles which sound more ?formal, to me? Extensive use of ?no? as stressor, ?wa? as topic indicator - and he normally sticks to the more polite forms of words where there?s two options - ?you?, ?together?, uh, things like that - and there?s a difference I think I can hear when he loses his temper. XD I also think - if I?m even right about the implied more-formal, that he drops it half way through the thank-you scene with Umi, which makes me squeak like anything. XDDD Or perhaps formal isn't quite the right term - it's 'I have enough established status that it affects how I speak and the way I speak exercises that power'. It's status, it's not needing to be polite or to throw your weight about by using more-masculine pronouns like 'ore' to show you are being forceful, because you don't even need to.

I think Debonair does something similar, maybe edging more towards the language of the mashin, which implies that it?s based on power - not so much literal as societal - as everyone, even Ferio, defers to Clef linguistically, and Debonair wants to rule. Emeraude was? also something in this vein, I think, so, yes!

(side note: the only person who DOESN?T get an honorific from Fuu is Ferio THEY ARE TOO CUTE~)

THEN there?s the other lands - who understand each other and Cephiro and plainly expect to be understood - implying they all use variants on the same language - but they?re plainly VARIANTS at the same time - there?s the osaka-dialect stuff from Chizeta (which implies there are class issues bound up in language use, which again implies that there?s some politics in using some standard form of the language which matters for Chizeta - which is afterall implied to be something of a crowded small world which needs to expand? - and that dialects at least are a sign of being a backwater/low class - but Fahren (which is more Chinese) has levels of formality which are based on social position (Aska: PLAIN PLAIN PLAIN, SangYung: HUMBLE FORMAL) which they don?t care about outsiders hearing, possibly because they?re more settled ?internationally? or because it?s not a _dialect_ as such.

[Revolutionaren]

UNIVERSAL TRANSLATION DEVICE
(read: Mokona)

Much like how clone!Mokona is used to translate in Tsubasa, the original Mokona does this too, so when the Cephirans speak the girls hear Japanese, and visa versa.

This does not, however, cover the written word and also struggles to keep up with song lyrics and poems lose all meaning.

Of course, when Mokona flounces off at the end of the series, he's already put something more permanent in place, because he is the Creator and he can do that.

[Revolutionaren]

Down has put waaaaaay too much thought into this

[Trin-nya]

Down-sama I am shocked, so much information, how?!!

But, yes Soel probably holds similar traits to it's Tsubasa parallel, Mokona Modoki, for it must act as a translation device for the girls and Cephirian people... Just as Mokona Modoki does in Tsubasa~