Since the inception of the modern fantasy genre by J. R. R. Tolkien, fictional languages have been a common element of fantasy and science fiction literature (e.g. Tolkien’s Elvish languages and Klingon). As narrative devices, they facilitate worldbuilding by making fictional settings more believable. Both Warhammer Fantasy (The Old World as of late) and Warhammer 40,000 revolve around fictional empires with their own imperial languages: Reikspiel and High Gothic. Unlike Tolkien’s more elaborate constructed languages, they were never furnished with functional grammar and extensive vocabulary. They mostly consist of loanwords borrowed from existing languages, namely from German (in the case of Reikspiel) and Latin (in the case of High Gothic). These source languages, however, merely represent their fictional counterparts. They are not supposed to be identical to them.
This paper demonstrates that this method of representational borrowing was already utilised by Tolkien when he invented the language of the Rohirrim for The Lord of the Rings. Just as German and Latin were used as sources for the languages of Warhammer, Old English served as the source language for the Riders of the Rohan. In all three cases, the phonoaestetics and the cultural connotations of the respective source language are transferred to the fictional target language.
Based on these methodological considerations, I will attempt a translation of the recently published High Gothic hymn Never a Silent Night, the first and currently only extensive piece of High Gothic. To this end, I will provide an interlinear gloss of the hymn, revealing that its source languages include far more than just Latin, in keeping with Games Workshop’s recent efforts to diversify Warhammer.
Author bio
Jonas Hermann holds a PhD in Germanic Languages & Literatures from Harvard University. He is currently a postdoc at the University of Freiburg (DE), where he studies and teaches medieval Germanic languages and literature.
