Well, I've been buried in details and the car problems and haven't gotten back to you. Thank you for shedding some light on a subject hidden in shadows!
Sounds like I will be smart about this and not try to reproduce any of the languages being used in the story. It's a contemporary fantasy, but one of the major characters is 500+ years old. He spent his first fifteen years being raised by Asian dragons, and then the next 100 years or so in Japan as it was -- before being forced (by the dragons catching up to him) to leave the part of the world he knew best and head for any place he could hide with a minimum of magic for others to sniff out.
The dragons are, some of them, very, very old. They have their own language, and speak more Sanskrit than anybody else still does. They also learn languages fairly easily and generally speak whatever is used in the area they live in, and whatever is the language of trade. I'm guessing that as my wizard raised by dragons wanders the world, finding other dragons, he speaks mostly to them in either the old dragon language, or whatever that tribe of dragons thinks of as their native language. (It could be English, Spanish, Scandinavian Germanic -- whatever.) Sounds like having lived during the Warring States period in Japan, he probably would have picked up both Japanese and Chinese.
Would the Chinese in this situation be a literati type of Chinese, or a port/trade type of Chinese? He became a samurai and served one of the shogunates before deciding he could no longer hide his apparent immortality and leaving.
I think I need occasional words he might use for naming a cat, for example, or a nickname for a lover. I think his real name might be Sanskrit, but when you come from a culture (dragon) next door to one where aristocrats take new names to celebrate every life change, what's "real?"
Thank you again for all your help! It helps to muse aloud and get sticky notes back! :^)
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Sounds like I will be smart about this and not try to reproduce any of the languages being used in the story. It's a contemporary fantasy, but one of the major characters is 500+ years old. He spent his first fifteen years being raised by Asian dragons, and then the next 100 years or so in Japan as it was -- before being forced (by the dragons catching up to him) to leave the part of the world he knew best and head for any place he could hide with a minimum of magic for others to sniff out.
The dragons are, some of them, very, very old. They have their own language, and speak more Sanskrit than anybody else still does. They also learn languages fairly easily and generally speak whatever is used in the area they live in, and whatever is the language of trade. I'm guessing that as my wizard raised by dragons wanders the world, finding other dragons, he speaks mostly to them in either the old dragon language, or whatever that tribe of dragons thinks of as their native language. (It could be English, Spanish, Scandinavian Germanic -- whatever.) Sounds like having lived during the Warring States period in Japan, he probably would have picked up both Japanese and Chinese.
Would the Chinese in this situation be a literati type of Chinese, or a port/trade type of Chinese? He became a samurai and served one of the shogunates before deciding he could no longer hide his apparent immortality and leaving.
I think I need occasional words he might use for naming a cat, for example, or a nickname for a lover. I think his real name might be Sanskrit, but when you come from a culture (dragon) next door to one where aristocrats take new names to celebrate every life change, what's "real?"
Thank you again for all your help! It helps to muse aloud and get sticky notes back! :^)