Reflections on the Dįvonësë War: The Dįvįnë Will Bear Witness to Fate

Chapter 5 - A Slave No Longer

Digression 2
38th Day of Ope in the Third Month of Snow's Fall
4633 A.G.G. (Present Day)

Castle Įcħor-Nåbįlå, North of the Yavan Mountains
The Continent of Kazakoto
1:45 P.S.R. (Pre Suns Rising)

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On the Subject of Slave Speak

Much of the Balani culture was lost to them after slavery took hold within the larger world. The Ma'Jong as well. And as the law didn't extend to either of them as people, but as property, they were treated rather poorly.

Actually, to say that both peoples were treated poorly is a gross understatement.

It was illegal for a slave to learn to read or write for fear of organization, rebellion or attempted escape. The same was true of large gatherings, such as religious services. They were also forbidden from speaking openly concerning anything that had to do with their former "inferior" cultures. Both peoples, in fact, had been forced to speak common for so long that their original languages were all but lost and utterly forgotten generations ago. 

Slaveholders themselves are famous for spreading that "...erasing one's individuality and 'humanity' is key in creating a mindset of subservience in a dog ear or gump/mupp". Gump and mupp referring to the fair skinned Balani. Dog ear, of course, being a slave master's term for a Ma'Jong.

Disobedience was swiftly punished by any number of travesties. Branding, isolation, shackling or hot-boxing awaited those on the fortunate side of things. However whipping to the point of bleeding, raping, hanging, beating, burning and all manner of mutilation were some of the more preferred forms of discipline for the cruel at heart. Slave owners had become quite adapt at dreaming up unique forms of punishment. Especially as it involved pregnant slaves. Practices such as belly-burying prior to beating were sadly commonplace. After all, you didn't want to hurt an unborn child if you could help it; that's an extra laborer that you didn't have to pay for. 

That's your money working for you.

In response to all of this, many slaves began to shape their own collective language in order to pass on what they could remember of the stories of their people, and for general communication in privacy or planning escapes.

This "slave speak" wasn't often used around non-slaves however. Songs concocted by slaves were more often used as a means of communication regardless of the fact that many slave owners had gotten it into their heads long before to flog slaves for singing songs that they felt linked them in any way to their previous culture. 

It was also widely speculated that slaves had developed a series of markings, or a written language, to that effect as well. But it was even rarer to see that than to hear slave speak itself. So rare in fact that it was suspected to be a conjecture or a rumor by some.

Aoleon always supposed that, in this instance, the widely held belief that slaves were intellectually inferior to the "master races" had worked to the slaves' advantage. No one ever suspected in these modern times that slaves, especially Ma'Jong slaves, were smart enough to have a real language outside of what was allowed to them...

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Aoleon

While slave speak was very rarely used around her, Aoleon still had a desire, however well-meaning and possibly misplaced, to learn the language. But because there was an understandable secrecy-born-of-fear atmosphere that permeated slave culture, Aoleon had never gotten the chance to truly assimilate the language of the castle servants. And regardless of how well received as she often was, there were none that were fully willing to speak of it or teach it to her. Even the free born servants like Tana or the ones who'd earned their relative freedom fighting beside her father in the war would tell her that they didn't feel it was something that was meant for her, for lack of a better phrase.