Wheel of Time　「Aes Sedai (Servants of All)」

Old TongueOfficial EnglishFan English
Greanin saidin
Shaiaal Tar Valon
Begratan feide so’de
No pakita souvra’an		Channellers of power,
The women of Tar Valon
Who cannot speak untruths
Yet twists minds all the same
Alien’tsuqa
Loviyagae der yugae
Bala’vakye shaia
Valon bat yugae’rhiod
Al aes sedai
Greanin an saidin		Cautioned by the memory
Of the breaking of the world
The Aes Sedai
The first two verses are also used in the track Tar Valon.

Official Sources

Old Tongue

14th Street Music – Twitter Video Post

Translation

14th Street Music – Twitter Image Post

Translation Commentary

There is an ENG<->OT dictionary for the Old Tongue, linked in the Further Links section, which is allegedly sourced from the official Wheel of Time Companion. Having not read that yet, I can’t confirm whether or not this is an accurate reproduction, but I have begun my (lengthy…) re-read of the series, and I’ll take a look at it myself after I finish the books proper.

I don’t know if there’s an official grammatical guide, though. Credit is given to a Naomi Joy Todd for creating the Old Tongue and schooling the actors on pronunciation, but I can’t find any associated social media or promotional posts about formalised grammar, syntax, punctuation, or vocabuluary, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to contact her directly unless you’re a client.

I did send a quick tweet to Lorne Balfe to ask after this, but, understandably, I didn’t get a reply. Official translations and transcriptions are posted through the 14th Street Music official Twitter account, so I may try contacting them about it… Or, potentially, the official Wheel of Time Twitter account, since they already blasted me on main for calling Lan my baby girl – which is a sentiment I reiterate and stand by to this day.

Note: I’ve since asked 1th Street Music about some additional lyrics, but no reply as of yet.

I am curious as to the pronunciation. In the lyrics, you can hear gae pronounced as d̠ʒiː in loviyagae, but as what sounds like gɑːɤ in yugae and yugae’rhiod – is there a reason behind this, or is the Old Tongue similar to English in that it stole a lot of words from varying language families and has inconsistent pronunciation rules as a result? Or does Old Tongue use another written system and this is merely a transliteration into our Latin alphabet?

(n.b. I don’t have much experience with phonetics, so this might not be the best way to render these sounds.)

I did find some other fan translations, which I might read through this weekend. And, if Amazon renews the show, I’ll go bash the Wheel of Time Companion and see if I can reverse engineer some of the language/grammar myself, too.

…And I may be making notes of how the Old Tongue is used in the books as I read them. May be. Potentially.

Narrative Commentary

As little as I know about the Old Tongue, it’s curious they use the word for the male power (saidin) rather than the female (saidar).

Further Links

English to Old Tongue Dictionary: https://reactormag.com/the-wheel-of-time-english-to-old-tongue-dictionary/

Fan translation by Fandom user Excelsior-28: https://wheeloftime.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Excelsior-28/Aes_Sedai_theme_translation

Analysis of Old Tongue as a functional language by Dragonmount user E James Todd: https://dragonmount.com/forums/topic/101603-old-tongue-as-a-spoken-language-%E2%80%93-sounds-and-grammar/