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Yllish Knots Record Sound, Making Them a Way to Write Deep Names

plausible mechanism · popularity 340 · 1 source thread

Yllish knots record phonetic sound rather than meaning, allowing deep names to be transcribed by one person as another speaks them.

About: Yllish Knots, Naming

Also involves: The Lackless Box, Chronicler, Elodin, Iax, The Moon, Inyssa

The theory§

The Yllish people never developed a written language but instead used a system of woven knots, which Elodin notes predates the pictograms of other peoples. This theory turns on Inyssa's correction that the Yllish lacked written, not recorded, language: their knots record sound rather than meaning. That distinction matters for naming. A deep name cannot be set down in ordinary script, because anyone writing it would write only the common word the listener hears ('fire'), not the name itself; but a system that captures raw sound could preserve the name as spoken. This explains the Yllish knots carved into the Lackless box, read as a deep name spoken aloud by a powerful Namer and transcribed in knots by another. The mechanism parallels Chronicler's purely phonetic notation, by which he can transcribe a language he does not understand, and the dictation pattern of Rethe speaking ninety-nine stories while Aethe wrote them down, since things that cannot be self-written must be preserved by two.

Evidence§

  • The Lackless box has Yllish knots carved into it because you can't write down someone's deep name. You'd hear "fire" and write down "fire", right? But Yllish knots aren't written language, they're *recorded* language. They're recorded sounds.
    OP's core claim: deep names can't be written, but Yllish knots record raw sound — u/Smurphilicious
  • “I didn’t say they lacked recorded language,” Inyssa muttered. “I said written language.”
    Book quote establishing the recorded-vs-written distinction the theory hinges on — u/Smurphilicious
  • It’s all sound. I could conceivably transcribe a language I don’t even understand.
    Chronicler's phonetic notation parallel: sound can be transcribed without understanding — u/Smurphilicious
  • That's how you write down someone's deep name, one person says it, and the other person transcribes the sounds. One person can't do it on their own, it requires two people.
    The mechanism: deep name requires two people, speaker and transcriber — u/Smurphilicious
  • Rethe dictated nine-and-ninety stories, and Aethe wrote them down
    Supporting precedent of the dictation pattern requiring two people — u/Smurphilicious
  • you're supposed to read them with your fingers, not by looking at them
    Comment adds Denna's line that knots are read by touch, likened to the blind knowing only by touch — u/TrentBobart
  • Yllish knots could be a way to record sounds or it could be just a language that has "words" for the deep names. But it doesn't really prove anything beyond what we are told in the book IMO.
    CounterCounter: knots may just be a language with words, theory unproven — u/Cerberus011

Book refs: WMF ch 15, NOTW ch 7, WMF

Tier reasoning§

no change

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