The History of Roshar in the Cosmere

[ThatRedHead717]

I don't think I have seen a fully Cosmere-aware timeline of Roshar so I decided to make one for myself and I'm also posting it here. Please correct anything I messed up! I love this world and I want to have the most accurate information available about it. Enjoy!

 

Pre-Shattering

So in the beginning, there was a capital-g God. And his name was Adolnalsium. Among other things, he created Roshar. He made the Highstorm and the spren and the chasmfiends and the Dawnsingers and little cremlings and shalebark. He made it all to work together perfectly.

He made the highstorms, and the Stormfather, and spren; and he made them to have bonds with the creatures of Roshar. With chasmfiends that are too light. And with ryshadium, with the Dawnsingers, with lots of things.

Post- Shattering

And then, Adolnalsium was shattered and Honor and Cultivation came to roshar. And they kind of did nothing. They kept the status quo. They left what Adolnalsium had created, and they just let it flourish. Eventually, Rayse got trapped in the Rosharan system by Honor. Somehow.

Humanity
Then Rayse, Odium, went to Ashyn and he created humanity. Eventually, they found surgebinding and destroyed their planet. And, (presumably, Odium helped them with this step) they traveled to Roshar. The dawnsingers gave them Shinovar. And they lived there for a while. They planted the grass and strawberries and basically founded the Shin. At some point, humanity decided that Shinovar wasn't enough and so they expanded over. That was the First Desolation. For a while, the humans were winning. So the dawnsingers went to Odium for power and he gave them The Fused.

Then. The dawnsingers were winning with Odium's help. So humanity went to Honor, who gave them the Honorblades.

Now, with that power. The humans can fight back. There's still losing though. So, they formed the Oathpact. They make a pact to trap the souls of the Fused and the spren of Odium on Braize. Weird thing about that deal, the Harolds had to go with the forces of Odium to Braize. This means they could be tortured into breaking their Oaths (because humans can break their Oaths) and returning everyone on Braize to Roshar. They let the Voidbringers return to Roshar.

 

The Heraldic Epochs

That happened for a little while. The heralds would try to prepare humanity for the Desolation. And then voidbringers would slowly start to come over like we see happen in Oathbringer. Then, there's kind of a full-scale war. Like we see in Rhythm of War. At some point, humanity realizes that they're going to lose. They can't beat the Voidbringers this time. So they talk to the heralds and they're like, "all right, it's time. We're not going to be able to win this right now" (like we see Jasnah propose in RoW). To answer that plea, the heralds all die one way or another to all return to Braize together so they can keep back the voidbringers from Roshar.

Eventually, they discover the Knight's Radiant, which helps in all of that. Eventually, the heralds decided that there might be a better way. So they leave Taln to fight for himself on Braize. And they all stay on Roshar and it works. For six thousand years it has worked. The voidbringers and Odium can't get off of Braize.

 

The Era of Solitude

The Era of Solitude is the 6000 years without Taln on the planet, from Aharietiam to the Coming of the Everstorm. The Rosharan records of this time are much more complete than the previous histories so it isn't as much of a mystery in the Cosmere what happened during the Era of Solitude.

False Desolation

Around 2500 years after Aharietiam, Ba Ado Mishram (an Unmade) Connected with all the Singers on Roshar. She gave them all forms of power, much as Odium did. But she was not as powerful as Odium so she was able to be trapped in a gemstone, severing her Connection with the Singers. This made nearly every Singer on Roshar into a parshendi. I say "nearly" every Singer because a group ran away just before all of Ba Ado's drama went down. They named themselves the Listeners and settled in Natanatan.

The Recreance

The Radiants had handicapped an entire race of people and that tends to shake up Oaths from people who consider themselves of Honor. Around the same time, Honor was losing his mind due to unknown actions from Odium. He started to speak of the First Desolation and the destruction of Braize. He told the Radiants that their powers had already destroyed one planet and that they would destroy this one.

For those reasons, the Knights Radiant and their Spren decided to abandon their Oaths and their powers. This became known as the Day of Recreance. All bonded Spren (save Highspren) became deadeyes. Nearly all of the Honorspren and several other varieties were wiped out in a day. The Spren will remember this pain for generations to come.

The Death of Honor

We know very little of what caused Tanavast's death and the subsequent shattering of Honor by Odium. We do know that he was losing his mind in the time leading up to this. We know that he knew it was coming because of his actions regarding the Stormfather.

Up until this point, the Stormfather was just the Spren of the Highstorms. A very powerful Spren but not directly related or Connected to a shard of Adolnalsium. But when Honor was dying, he kind of took over the Stormfather. Put some of the power of Honor into the storm. He left the Visions that Dalinar and others see before the True Desolation. He prepared for his death and the coming of the Everstorm.

I believe Honor's death and shattering happened in the location that would become the Shattered Plains. I think that when Odium shattered Honor, it created such a strong force that the plains broke into thousands of symmetrical plateaus.

 

The True Desolation

Eventually, forces of Odium on Braize work around Taln. They create their own Everstorm. This storm acts as a portable perpendicularity. A source of Odium's power and a way for his troops to walk back to Roshar. This storm only existed in the cognitive realm (as that's as close as they could get it to Roshar while they were stuck on Braize). Then, they sent Ulim in a gemstone to the Listeners via a world hopper.

Ulim worked with a Listener to discover Stormform and summon the Everstorm. This act caused the deaths of almost all Listeners.

Then, the events of Oathbringer, Rhythm of War, and Knights of Wind and Truth.

[Firesong she/her]

3 minutes ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

I don't think I have seen a fully Cosmere-aware timeline of Roshar so I decided to make one for myself and I'm also posting it here. Please correct anything I messed up! I love this world and I want to have the most accurate information available about it. Enjoy!

Humanity
Then Rayse, Odium, went to Ashyn and he created humanity. Eventually, they found surgebinding and destroyed their planet. And, (presumably, Odium helped them with this step) they traveled to Roshar.

Where did you get this information? I have no memory of this being established anywhere. I am willing to be wrong, but this appears to just be a guess with the current information we have. We do not know the origins of the Ashynite humans. 

[Treamayne]

25 minutes ago, Firesong said:

32 minutes ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

Humanity
Then Rayse, Odium, went to Ashyn and he created humanity. Eventually, they found surgebinding and destroyed their planet. And, (presumably, Odium helped them with this step) they traveled to Roshar.

Where did you get this information? I have no memory of this being established anywhere. I am willing to be wrong, but this appears to just be a guess with the current information we have. We do not know the origins of the Ashynite humans. 

Actually, we know this cannot be accurate. To create humans on Ashyn, Odium would have to have invested himself. He did not invest anywhere (and took pains to avoid investing himself anywhere) until he had no choice after being bound by Honor. 

Spoiler

Coppermind:

Quote

Unlike most other Shards, which typically pick a single world and settle there, Odium has been traveling freely throughout the cosmere for a long time, deliberately refusing to Invest himself anywhere.

WoB:

Quote

Questioner

Did Odium originally have a planet he was Invested in?

Brandon Sanderson

Odium's plan always involved not getting stuck on one

Quote

Questioner

When one of the shards, like Odium, move from world to world in the cosmere, does their presence, like the metals they leave behind and their magic, leave with them?

Brandon Sanderson

Odium never really settled on a planet.  He is now settled on Roshar and his magic has permeated things.  Leaving would be very difficult for him. It would either involve leaving behind some of his power or ripping that out, which would be a difficult process.  So yes it is very tough to leave.

Quote

Hoidonalsium

What was the order of the Shards coming to Roshar and changing allegiances? Did humans come with Odium?

Brandon Sanderson

So... you're talking about on Roshar specifically? So, Odium had visited Roshar. The humans gave him more of an ear... The Dawnsingers would have considered him the god of the people who had come, but-- I mean, it wasn't like they necessarily brought him. He was capable of getting around before that. I mean, he did kinda come along with them, he was instrumental in what happened there.

Hoidonalsium

Okay, but he was separate, and after Honor and Cultivation had really settled there?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, he was after Honor and Cultivation had settled.

Note the bolded part - humans were already present, and he manipulated them - but did not create them. It is likely, though unconfirmed, that Ashyn Humans had migrated from Yolen (pre-or-post-Shattering) since we do know Yolenites migrated at some point.

 

Edited September 7, 2023 by Treamayne
SPAG

[Firesong she/her]

Also, the Era of Solitude is 4500 (4950) years long, not 6000. But it is indeed the period between the Last Desolation and the True Desolation. 

[alder24]

40 minutes ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

So in the beginning, there was a capital-g God. And his name was Adolnalsium

Questionable:

Spoiler

Questioner

In Stormlight, Dalinar mentioned that <if he can die, he's no longer a god>, so to speak. And throughout the cosmere, gods died *inaudible*. Is there an omniscient, omnipotent, actual God in the cosmere?

Brandon Sanderson

Is there an omniscient, omnipotent God in the cosmere? Some people believe that there is. You guys laugh about this, but I don't mean it to be a laughing thing. There are certain questions I will not answer in the cosmere, specifically because it would too much undermine some of the characters' beliefs. And I want to treat characters respectfully. So whether there is life after you pass into the Beyond, and whether there is a God of gods, an omnipotent, as we would define "monotheistic God," are questions that I don't answer, and I let the characters deal with. Because if I answer that, then the character discussions about this are meaningless. Not really, but they kind of are. So there are a couple things I won't answer about the cosmere, because the characters don't have these answers.

Questioner

<Do you know the answer>?

Brandon Sanderson

I know the answer, yes.

Arcanum Unbounded release party (Nov. 22, 2016)

 

39 minutes ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

And with ryshadium

They evolved from Ashynite horses, they weren't created pre-Shattering.

Spoiler

Questioner

I'm really curious about Ryshadium. Is there something bigger about them?

Brandon Sanderson

It's not super-huge. They are non-native species who have started to form spren bonds like native species do. So, a symbiotic bond with a spren has started happening. Ryshadium are horses that have done that, basically. You could say that humans have done the same thing. Non-native species that have started to form spren bonds. The Ryshadium are the only other non-native species that that has started happening. Like the chasmfiends have a symbiotic relationship with the spren that they have, the Ryshadium have a spren.

It's not as visible, but it is there.

Idaho Falls signing (July 21, 2018)

 

43 minutes ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

Post- Shattering

And then, Adolnalsium was shattered and Honor and Cultivation came to roshar. And they kind of did nothing. They kept the status quo.

Not true. They invested in Roshar and the system, they created more Splinters, developed sapient, True Spren (all sapient spren are post-Shattering, including Stormfather), Honor invested in Highstorms, changing them, while Cultivation created Nightwatcher. They also became gods of Dawnsingers. 

Spoiler

Questioner

Do the spren that we know of as the Cryptics exist before Honor and Cultivation came to Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson

Ah, good question! No. Cryptics would be one of the forms of spren that were a later creation. Creation is the wrong term, but yeah. 

Billy Todd, Moderator

Later development? Evolution?

Brandon Sanderson

All of the sapient spren are later developments. 

Billy Todd, Moderator

Are they evolved from the earlier spren?

Brandon

Evolution doesn't work the same way on the spren, right? The spren were created more than evolved, I would say.

Billy Todd, Moderator

Maybe cultivated?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, cultivated. *laughter*

JordanCon 2018 (April 21, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

Pre-Shattering magic in books?

Brandon Sanderson

Let's see. I would count the highstorms as that. Highstorm predates the Shattering. Now, the highstorm has been changed dramatically by certain events, but the highstorm does predate the Shattering.

Oathbringer San Francisco signing (Nov. 15, 2017)

 

49 minutes ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

Humanity
Then Rayse, Odium, went to Ashyn and he created humanity.

There is no information about it anywhere.

50 minutes ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

Eventually, they found surgebinding and destroyed their planet

Dawnshard was involved, Odium encouraged Ishar to experiment with Surgebinding. Also Odium got permission from Honor and Cultivation to settle in the system:

Spoiler

Questioner

It’s really heavily implied in the first Oathbringer letter that the Shards made a pact not to settle near each other. Given that a full half of the Shards ended up doing that, what is the cost for them breaking that oath? You implied earlier that there’s always a cost for Hoid, for taking his protections.

Brandon Sanderson

The wording of those things allows them to agree together, but it also gives them a little bit of power over one another, and you’ve seen the side effects of that on the planets where it’s happened. It has not gone well for any of them, if you kind of run the numbers on that. But the wording of it allows two, later on, to say, "Okay, we both agree." (If one said no and one said yes, then they were in trouble.) This should imply to you that Odium did get permission, as well.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

 

52 minutes ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

And, (presumably, Odium helped them with this step) they traveled to Roshar.

For all we know that was just Bondsmith-boosted Elsecalling (keep in mind Rosharan Surgebinding didn't exist in that form on Ashyn, that's just what Rosharan would call it).

Spoiler

Questioner

Could you use AonDor to manipulate Connection? If so, would a real AonDor smarty be able to do something similar to a Bondsmith?

Brandon Sanderson

The short answer to your question is: yes. Let me give some explanation.

Even when you are seeings some things happening in Elantris itself, you are seeing them manipulate Connection. It is mostly reinforcing Connection, but it is, in a way, manipulation. Rewriting Connection, rewriting Identity are both things that they can do. So with enough power, with enough smartiness, what a Bondsmith can do can be done.

In fact, we have seen short-range Elsecalling done by… Obviously Elsecalling’s not Bondsmithing, but you know that a Bondsmith powered a big Elsecalling [to migrate from Ashyn], one of the big things you’ve seen a Bondsmith do is get people between planets. And you have seen people use AonDor to Elsecall. You’ve seen them Lightweave, you’ve seen them do a lot of these things. They also could do some of this same stuff.

Basically, rule of thumb is: almost anything in the cosmere that is possible can be replicated with AonDor with the right program. But you may need an injection of Investiture in certain ways.

Dragonsteel 2022 (Nov. 14, 2022)

 

55 minutes ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

At some point, humanity realizes that they're going to lose. They can't beat the Voidbringers this time. So they talk to the heralds and they're like, "all right, it's time. We're not going to be able to win this right now"

What? Where did this come from? No. Herald had to return to Braize after some time, because if they didn't they would risk another Desolation. They either just died or knew they needed to go, without humans asking them to go (as humans would likely had no idea how Oathpact works).

Spoiler

luke.spence (paraphrased)

What caused a Desolation to end? Was it just the defeat of Odium's forces? Because the Desolations start when the Heralds break under torture.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Because the Heralds can no longer be in existence. There is a certain period of time that they can be there, and after that, if they're there, they will start a new one. So the Heralds do need to leave for a Desolation to end

darkanimereal1 (paraphrased)

Oh. So they've got a time limit.

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

They do. Otherwise the Desolation will start again. What they discovered is not all of them have to. As long as one remains, the Desolation will not start again.

luke.spence (paraphrased)

So, by the nine leaving, did that actually break the Oathpact for them? Did it change the cycle of Desolations?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

They have not completely broken the Oathpact, despite what they may think.

Words of Radiance Dayton signing (March 19, 2014)

 

1 hour ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

Eventually, they discover the Knight's Radiant, which helps in all of that. Eventually, the heralds decided that there might be a better way. So they leave Taln to fight for himself on Braize. And they all stay on Roshar and it works. For six thousand years it has worked. The voidbringers and Odium can't get off of Braize.

Radiant were founded by Ishar after spren started to bond with people and mimic powers granted by Honorblades. I wouldn't call it "a better way", they just couldn't bear it any longer. And it was 4500 years, Aharietiam was 4500 years before WoK. Check WoK prelude or OB ch 38.

1 hour ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

I say "nearly" every Singer because a group ran away just before all of Ba Ado's drama went down.

The Last Legion abandoned Odium before or during Aharietiam - most likely, most evidence seem to point to that date, not during the False Desolation. 

1 hour ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

But when Honor was dying, he kind of took over the Stormfather. Put some of the power of Honor into the storm

He invested in storms way before. But this time Tanavest's Cognitive Shadow merged with Stormfather.

1 hour ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

I believe Honor's death and shattering happened in the location that would become the Shattered Plains.

The Shattered Plains were already Shattered before Recreance (as the Oathgate wasn't locked) and because Listeners songs talk about it, so it has to be before the Last Legion went into that area.

1 hour ago, ThatRedHead717 said:

Eventually, forces of Odium on Braize work around Taln. They create their own Everstorm. This storm acts as a portable perpendicularity. A source of Odium's power and a way for his troops to walk back to Roshar. This storm only existed in the cognitive realm (as that's as close as they could get it to Roshar while they were stuck on Braize). Then, they sent Ulim in a gemstone to the Listeners via a world hopper.

Actually there was a storm around Braize in CR, Odim separated a piece of it and slowly moved it towards Roshar, which became the Everstorm. But it isn't a perpendicularity, just a way for splinters to get to and stay on Roshar. RoW ch 86:

Quote

To that end, a large portion of the roiling storm had been broken off by the god of gods, the ancient one called Odium. This storm was his strength, his essence. Over painful months, he’d moved the storm across the landscape— unseen—until it arrived here. Kind of. Almost.

[Chandlerhimself]

I'm pretty sure a few of the assumptions here aren't correct. Odium most likely didn't create the human's on Asyn. He didn't want to invest in a planet and also humans don't have any cultural connections to him. Maybe the iriali are influenced by him a bit, but none of the other cultures seem to be. 

 

It is also extremely unlikely that the shin and other humans are related. Most seem to think that humans started on Shinovar and then left, but it seems much more likely that there were 2 groups of humans who came that were unrelated. My guess is that there was a misunderstanding and Odium instigated problems that turned into a war. 

 

The Shin and the other humans are extremely different physically. The other humans such as the Alethi are described as tall Asian looking people. The Shin are described as short white looking people. There isn't enough time for evolution to make those types of changes. Even if we assume there was enough time we know it wasn't a result of evolution because the Heralds look like people from Alethkar, Azir, etc. None of them look shin. They also have different religions and don't seem to even know about historical knowledge of the other. On top of that their languages aren't related. The other humans languages are all from the same group, but the Shin's language is related to the dawnsingers. 

 

All this leads me to beleive the Shin came way before the other humans. I'm guessing the other humans didn't know about staying on Shinovar and the Singers thought that they were invading. Odium caused them to start fighting over a misunderstanding. 

[alder24]

5 hours ago, Chandlerhimself said:

humans don't have any cultural connections to him

Well, Thaylen believes in Passions, that's a big connection to Odium - however we know from Dalinar's visions that humans fought on the side of Odium in every Desolation, this belief could just develop during one of such moments and later spread over the whole Thaylenah.

5 hours ago, Chandlerhimself said:

Maybe the iriali are influenced by him a bit, but none of the other cultures seem to be. 

Iriali came to Roshar in separate migration, some time later from migration from Ashyn, from a different place - they are a worldhopping group of people. They would be even less influenced by Odium than the rest of Rosharans.

Spoiler

Argent

How many waves of human populations have migrated to Roshar? So I'm thinking the Ashynites coming from Ashyn, right? Was that just the only humans that ever came as a population?

Brandon Sanderson

It depends on if you count the Iriali?

Argent

That's specifically the one I'm thinking of.

Brandon Sanderson

They came in a separate migration.

Argent

Not from Ashyn?

Brandon Sanderson

Not from Ashyn.

Argent

From whatever the Third Land was.

JordanCon 2018 (April 22, 2018)

 

5 hours ago, Chandlerhimself said:

It is also extremely unlikely that the shin and other humans are related. Most seem to think that humans started on Shinovar and then left, but it seems much more likely that there were 2 groups of humans who came that were unrelated. My guess is that there was a misunderstanding and Odium instigated problems that turned into a war. 

The Shin and the other humans are extremely different physically. The other humans such as the Alethi are described as tall Asian looking people. The Shin are described as short white looking people. There isn't enough time for evolution to make those types of changes. Even if we assume there was enough time we know it wasn't a result of evolution because the Heralds look like people from Alethkar, Azir, etc. None of them look shin. 

But they are. Look at Heralds - Ishar looks like Shin, Nale looks like Makabaki, Taln looks like Makabaki, Jez like Alethi etc. All except for maybe Ash, came from Ashyn. Stormfather and Raboniel also confirmed that humans came from Ashyn and settled in Shinovar. Look at the Earth - people of different races evolved in different regions of the world, and then spreaded out and mixed with each other. Why wouldn't the same thing happen on Ashyn and Roshar? Especially that evolution in Cosmere works much faster than in the real world. 

Spoiler

Willshaper Wallar

...Were the Heralds alive for the human exodus from Ashyn?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes. They were not Heralds then, but they all made that trip. I believe. My timeline-- You can't nail me down on that one, because it's possible that Ash was born after, but I don't think so.

Skyward Denver signing (Nov. 15, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Argent

Now that we have canon art of Ishar, Shalash, Jezrien, and Vedel, what Rosharan nationalities would you say they resemble the most?

Brandon Sanderson

Jezrien and Vedel would be seen as Alethi, most likely. Shalash would be seen as Azish, while Ishar would be seen as Shin, probably.

NightWillReign

Wait, but if Ishar looks like he’s from Shinovar, how did the Tukkari accept him as the God-Priest?

Brandon Sanderson

That's a RAFO--but is a question you're supposed to be asking.

Skyward Pre-Release AMA (Oct. 20, 2018)

 

Spoiler

Questioner

Do the Purelakers get pruney feet because of the water? If not, is it because they have special feet or does it have to do with the magic fish?

Brandon Sanderson

They have adapted over time and they do not have magic feet. They have special feet, but they have adapted over time to the situation. Now, let's make the note that most natural selection does not work on the timescale of the cosmere and so there probably have to be some magical foundations for this. The fact that everyone on Roshar is Invested with a bit of Investiture more than average is going to push people over time in a way. Kind of the rationale I give myself on this is because Intent and these sorts of things are so important cosmerelogically that we get evolution on a faster scale in most of the cosmere. And so you can see this just by adaptations that have happened since the history of Roshar itself and the arrival of humans on Roshar and things like that.

YouTube Livestream 9 (May 28, 2020)

 

We know why Shins looks different - they were isolationist for most of history, they were xenophobic and weren't mixing with different races:

Spoiler

Questioner

*Inaudible question*

Brandon Sanderson

*Repeating* Why do the Shin look different to the Rosharan significant <face>?

Because the Shin have spent a long time being very xenophobic. They haven't intermixed very much. When the original event happened, that I'm not going to say because of spoilers, different people settled in different places, and the Shin in particular just have been very xenophobic.

Idaho Falls signing (July 21, 2018)

 

5 hours ago, Chandlerhimself said:

They also have different religions and don't seem to even know about historical knowledge of the other.

The human history of Roshar encompasses more than 7700 Earth years, with dozens of end of the world events that destroyed written records and technology - do you know what happened on Earth 7700 years ago? They have a decent mythology of Desolations, Heralds, Recreance, Scouring of Aimia, Hierocracy and even "recent" Sadees invasion. Even Shins worship Heralds, calling them "son-god". I don't really get this point. 

5 hours ago, Chandlerhimself said:

On top of that their languages aren't related.

They are to some degree, like you would expect from 7000 years of linguistic evolution:

Spoiler

IneptProfessional

Since you mention languages on Roshar, are there any languages that are completely unrelated to any other on the planet?

Brandon Sanderson

Our basic language families are:

Vorin: Alethi, Veden, Herdazian, and more distantly Thaylen. Nathan is close to dead, but shares a root, and Karbranthian is basically a dialect. Other minor languages like Bav are in here.

Makabaki: Azish is king here, and most the languages around split off this. There are around thirty of these.

Dawnate: A varied language family with distant roots in the dawnchant. Shin, parshendi, Horneater. They share grammar, but they diverged long enough ago that the vocabulary is very different.

Iri: Iriali, Reshi, Purelake dialects, Riran, and some surrounding languages.

Aimian: These two are lumped together, but are very different. Probably what you were looking for.

That isn't counting spren languages, of course. I might have missed something. Typing on my phone without my wiki handy.

General Reddit 2016 (Nov. 29, 2016)

 

Spoiler

Bradtholomew

What is the origin of the name Kaladin?

My wife and I recently had our first child and that's what we named him. Just curious if there's any story behind the name.

Brandon Sanderson

I use Arabic in some of the creation of Alethi names, and Kaled (or Khaled) was the root I started playing with to come up with a new name for Kaladin, as I didn't like the one I'd used in 2002. I'd already designed Kalak after this, the Herald, and wanted a common name version of this.

When I arrived at Kaladin, it sounded right to me--likely because of the similarity to Paladin, as others noted below.

Dragonsandman

So if Kaladin's name is derived from Khaled, is it fair to assume that the Alethi language sounds similar to Arabic?

Brandon Sanderson

Alethi has some Hebrew to it too. I used Semitic language roots for the Dawnchant, which had a huge influence on Rosharan languages. While there are a few oddballs rules, and some linguistics that stand on their own, both major language groups on Roshar (the Azish family and the Vorin family) would probably sound very Arabic to you.

For example, the Alethi Kh is a voiceless velar fricative. The Azish kk or q sound is a voiceless uvular, sometimes stop, sometimes an affricate. Sometimes a uvular ejective.

No, I can't make those sounds on demand. Peter can, though. It's helpful to have a linguist on my team.

Shin is its own language, as is Iriali.

BeskarKomrk

What can't Peter do? He seems to be an expert on everything!

Brandon Sanderson

He is amazing. But, in this case, he was a linguistics major in college. So there's a little extra amazingness from him in these areas.

/r/fantasy AMA 2017 (Feb. 10, 2017)

OB I-2

Quote

“Fiksin was a boot-licker, not a scholar,” Ellista said. “Look, there’s easy proof here that the same writing system was once used all across Roshar. I have references in Makabakam, Sela Tales, Alethela … Not a diaspora of texts, but real evidence they wrote naturally in the Dawnchant.”
“Do you suppose they all spoke the same language?”
“Hardly.”
“But Jasnah Kholin’s Relic and Monument?”
“Doesn’t claim everyone spoke the same language, only that they wrote it. It’s foolish to assume that everyone used the same language across hundreds of years and dozens of nations. It makes more sense that there was a codified written language, the language of scholarship, just like you’ll find many undertexts written in Alethi now.” “
Ah…” he said. “And then a Desolation hit.…”
Ellista nodded, showing him a later page in her sheaf of notes. “This inbetween, weird language is where people started using the Dawnchant script to phonetically transcribe their language. It didn’t work so well.” She flipped two more pages. “In this scrap we have one of the earliest emergences of the proto-Thaylo-Vorin glyphic radicals, and here is one showing a more intermediate Thaylen form.
“We’ve always wondered what happened to the Dawnchant. How could people forget how to read their own language? Well, it seems clear now. By the point this happened, the language had been moribund for millennia. They weren’t speaking it, and hadn’t been for generations.”
“Brilliant,” Urv said. He wasn’t so bad, for a Siln. “I’ve been translating what I can, but got stuck on the Covad Fragment. If what you’ve been doing here is correct, it might be because Covad isn’t true Dawnchant, but a phonetic transcription of another ancient language.…”

 

6 hours ago, Chandlerhimself said:

All this leads me to beleive the Shin came way before the other humans. I'm guessing the other humans didn't know about staying on Shinovar and the Singers thought that they were invading. Odium caused them to start fighting over a misunderstanding. 

That's unsupported by evidence. We know Humans from Ashyn were the first to come to Roshar. We know Ishar looks like Shin and came from Ashyn with other Heralds that looks like eastern Rosharans. Iriali came from separate place, in different migration, but not Shins.

[Chandlerhimself]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

Well, Thaylen believes in Passions, that's a big connection to Odium - however we know from Dalinar's visions that humans fought on the side of Odium in every Desolation, this belief could just develop during one of such moments and later spread over the whole Thaylenah.

Ah, I got them confused with the Iriali.

 

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

But they are. Look at Heralds - Ishar looks like Shin, Nale looks like Makabaki, Taln looks like Makabaki, Jez like Alethi etc. All except for maybe Ash, came from Ashyn. Stormfather and Raboniel also confirmed that humans came from Ashyn and settled in Shinovar. Look at the Earth - people of different races evolved in different regions of the world, and then spreaded out and mixed with each other. Why wouldn't the same thing happen on Ashyn and Roshar? Especially that evolution in Cosmere works much faster than in the real world. 

I forgot that Ishar appears shin, however none of the others do. All the rest have epicanthic folds and appear large than the Shin. On Roshar there isn't enough time for them to evolve, but let's say it is magic. Why would the people all evolve to look like Heralds. The only way it would make sense is if the majority people with epicanthic folds decided not to listen to Honor and the those with them did. That doesn't make much sense. I think the Shin definitely could have come from Ashyn, but I don't think they were a part of the same group as the others.

 

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

The human history of Roshar encompasses more than 7700 Earth years, with dozens of end of the world events that destroyed written records and technology - do you know what happened on Earth 7700 years ago? They have a decent mythology of Desolations, Heralds, Recreance, Scouring of Aimia, Hierocracy and even "recent" Sadees invasion. Even Shins worship Heralds, calling them "son-god". I don't really get this point. 

They still have ideas of things from long ago such as the tranquiline halls. The Shin might have ideas about this, but it doesn't seem to be a major factor in their religion. The Shin and Singers both have nature gods, especially stone. No other humans except the Shin realize that they were supposed to stay in Shinovar. It doesn't seem to appear in their history at all. Their religions are completely different, which is extremely strange since they should have been based on the same events. The Vorins seem to be fairly religious, but they don't seem to remember their god telling them to stay in Shinovar and that same god never reminded them in the thousands of years afterwards.

 

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

They are to some degree, like you would expect from 7000 years of linguistic evolution:

  Hide contents

IneptProfessional

Since you mention languages on Roshar, are there any languages that are completely unrelated to any other on the planet?

Brandon Sanderson

Our basic language families are:

Vorin: Alethi, Veden, Herdazian, and more distantly Thaylen. Nathan is close to dead, but shares a root, and Karbranthian is basically a dialect. Other minor languages like Bav are in here.

Makabaki: Azish is king here, and most the languages around split off this. There are around thirty of these.

Dawnate: A varied language family with distant roots in the dawnchant. Shin, parshendi, Horneater. They share grammar, but they diverged long enough ago that the vocabulary is very different.

Iri: Iriali, Reshi, Purelake dialects, Riran, and some surrounding languages.

Aimian: These two are lumped together, but are very different. Probably what you were looking for.

That isn't counting spren languages, of course. I might have missed something. Typing on my phone without my wiki handy.

General Reddit 2016 (Nov. 29, 2016)

They seem to be in a completely different language family. All of the splits make sense(the Makabaki split from Vorin is a little weird), except the shin and singers being in the same language group. The rest of them are clearly different groups of people such as the Iri and Aimians. The quote below it doesn't really apply because it is only referring to written language and not spoken

 

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

That's unsupported by evidence. We know Humans from Ashyn were the first to come to Roshar. We know Ishar looks like Shin and came from Ashyn with other Heralds that looks like eastern Rosharans. Iriali came from separate place, in different migration, but not Shins.

Of course I don't know if it is true or not, but there is evidence to support that they aren't the same group of people. I never said they didn't come from Ashyn, I said they weren't together. They seem to be a completely separate group of people, but beyond that, if they were part of the same group, Honor seemingly didn't care that they broke a promise almost immediately after they made it. Honor turned on the singers, he had taken care of for perhaps thousands of years, for humans right after they disobeyed him. That doesn't make much sense. 

 

[Treamayne]

16 minutes ago, Chandlerhimself said:

I forgot that Ishar appears shin, however none of the others do.

We have not yet seen/identified three Herald on-screen yet, so we can;t be sure he's the only one. 

Don't forget that each desolation they would "create" a new body when returning to Roshar from Braize. Warbreaker Spoilers:

Spoiler

As we see in Warbreaker - Cognitive shadows can affect their appearance, usually subconciously, so that they look they way they believe they should look (Cognitive Identity).

We won't know if they all appeared the same way before the first desolation until we get Herald flashback chapters in the back-half.

20 minutes ago, Chandlerhimself said:

they don't seem to remember their god telling them to stay in Shinovar

There is no indication that Honor (or Cultivation) told them to stay there. The Dawnsingers gave them Shinovar when they arrived as refugees. There may or may not have been a treaty amongst the mortals that they would remain in the area they were given, but humanity is notoriously bad at upholding treaties from previous generations - especially considering exponential population growth.

22 minutes ago, Chandlerhimself said:

They seem to be in a completely different language family.

So are Greek and Latin. And German. Doesn't mean they didn't all use Latin as the language of scholarship for a long time. Ditto in Asia where Korean and Japanese have almost no grammatic similarity to Chinese, but still use hanze (Hanja, Kanji) daily in their languages. We also do not yet know how many racially and linguisitically different peoples from Ashyn were among the refugees. 

[alder24]

9 minutes ago, Chandlerhimself said:

I forgot that Ishar appears shin, however none of the others do. All the rest have epicanthic folds and appear large than the Shin. On Roshar there isn't enough time for them to evolve, but let's say it is magic. Why would the people all evolve to look like Heralds. The only way it would make sense is if the majority people with epicanthic folds decided not to listen to Honor and the those with them did. That doesn't make much sense. I think the Shin definitely could have come from Ashyn, but I don't think they were a part of the same group as the others.

Shalash lacks epicanthic folds too.

Ishar came with the rest of them. Only one migration from Ashyn happened as the atmosphere was probably ignited, killing most people there - Ashynites that arrived on Roshar had burn marks all over them, and their animals - there was no time for a second migration, when the whole planet was on fire. All different races came from Ashyn, but only Shins remain in Shinovar, while the rest expanded and conquered Roshar, gain new resources, new living space, which spark rapid population increase and intermixing, while Shins remain isolated in Shinovar - that could explain why their population is relatively low and while they are so different. 7000 years is a lot of time for Cosmere's faster evolution to work. 

17 minutes ago, Chandlerhimself said:

They still have ideas of things from long ago such as the tranquiline halls. The Shin might have ideas about this, but it doesn't seem to be a major factor in their religion. The Shin and Singers both have nature gods, especially stone. No other humans except the Shin realize that they were supposed to stay in Shinovar. It doesn't seem to appear in their history at all. Their religions are completely different, which is extremely strange since they should have been based on the same events. The Vorins seem to be fairly religious, but they don't seem to remember their god telling them to stay in Shinovar and that same god never reminded them in the thousands of years afterwards.

I don't think we know for sure if humans were forbidden from leaving Shinovar at all.

Why would eastern Rosharans have mythology that they were supposed to stay in Shinovar when they've disobeyed that and invaded, causing the First Desolation? They have mythology about the First Desolation and that's enough. Why would they remember a bit about Shinovar, when most likely their ancestors wanted to mislead future generations about who is to blame for the First Desolation? Shins worship Heralds too, they hold their Honorblades. But we still know too little about Shins and their culture and religion to say what they know about past events. 

Honor actually did tell every generation of Radiants that humanity came from Ashyn and caused the First Desolation - this knowledge seems to be at least available to Radiants - but Recreance happened, Honor died, and there were 2000 years without anyone straightening facts - it's easy to turn those events around and forgot about the real cause in 2000 years. And then Hierocracy happened, this would influence Vorinism even more. Not to mention that during those 2000 years humanity forgot who the real Voidbringers were. If they forgot Voidbringers, why would they remember about Shinovar, 3.5 times further in the past than Recreance? 7000 years is a loooot of time for religion to change and forgot about the beginning. Shins know where Urithiru was as Szeth visited it shortly after being exiled, and knew that he could walk on those stones, while rest or Rosharan simply forgot about its location and even claimed it to be a myth. So people forgetting something important from the past isn't really any argument, as we were proven time and time again how fragile are human memories.

49 minutes ago, Chandlerhimself said:

They seem to be in a completely different language family. All of the splits make sense(the Makabaki split from Vorin is a little weird), except the shin and singers being in the same language group. The rest of them are clearly different groups of people such as the Iri and Aimians. The quote below it doesn't really apply because it is only referring to written language and not spoken

Horneaters are part of this group too. But again, there is no single planet in Cosmere where all would be speaking in the same language (maybe except Threnody, but they are on the edge of extinction) so why would Ashynites all speak in the same language, all look the same etc? No, Heralds prove that proto-Alethi, proto-Makabaki, proto-Azish, proto-Shin appearances were present on Ashyn already. They would have their own Ashynite languages, influenced by Dawnchant, that would develop into modern languages. Why would you think they would all speak in the same language?

26 minutes ago, Chandlerhimself said:

Honor seemingly didn't care that they broke a promise almost immediately after they made it. Honor turned on the singers, he had taken care of for perhaps thousands of years, for humans right after they disobeyed him. That doesn't make much sense. 

We know nothing about those events, we don't know what happened and why. But Leshwi suggest that Dawnsingers offended or betrayed spren, which might suggest that Honor switching sides could be because of actions of Dawnsingers, RoW ch 109:

Quote

“Sorry…” Leshwi said. A joyspren burst around her, beautiful, like a blue storm. “Sorry? Venli, they’ve come back to us! They’ve forgiven us.”

 

[Firesong she/her]

On 9/8/2023 at 7:33 AM, Treamayne said:

So are Greek and Latin. And German. Doesn't mean they didn't all use Latin as the language of scholarship for a long time. Ditto in Asia where Korean and Japanese have almost no grammatic similarity to Chinese, but still use hanze (Hanja, Kanji) daily in their languages. We also do not yet know how many racially and linguisitically different peoples from Ashyn were among the refugees. 

I agree with your point, but I will note that Greek, Latin, and German, while in different minor families (Hellenic, Italic, and Germanic respectfully), are actually part of the same major family (Indo-European), while Korean and Japanese are basically universally accepted as entirely separate, being the Koreanic and Japonic-Ryukyuan families. So not the best comparison. 

And yes, we don't know how many different ethnic groups came from Ashyn. We also shouldn't use the demographics of the Heralds to determine it, as they are just ten out of what is probably a several million. 

[Treamayne]

3 hours ago, Firesong said:

but I will note that Greek, Latin, and German, while in different minor families (Hellenic, Italic, and Germanic respectfully), are actually part of the same major family (Indo-European),

Well, theoretical language family, widely beleived to be descended from Proto-Indo-European (based on a theoretical reconstruction of a possible parent language) that, coincidentally, is also beleived to have fragmented into language families about 6000 yrs ago (4000 BC) - timeframe for language drift sound familiar?

3 hours ago, Firesong said:

while Korean and Japanese are basically universally accepted as entirely separate

My point with Korean and Japanese was not about how they are or are not related (upon whether one believes in the Ural-Altaic theory or not, or how much the migration of PaekJe from Korea to Honshu in the Korean Three-Kingdom's period affected language development on the islands as they drove out the Ainu) - it was about how much "language contact" can affect independant non-related language drift. Chinese, Korean and Japanese (probably) do not share a common root, the the impact of Chinese on both Korean and Japanese is significant.

[Firesong she/her]

14 hours ago, Treamayne said:

My point with Korean and Japanese was not about how they are or are not related (upon whether one believes in the Ural-Altaic theory or not, or how much the migration of PaekJe from Korea to Honshu in the Korean Three-Kingdom's period affected language development on the islands as they drove out the Ainu) - it was about how much "language contact" can affect independant non-related language drift. Chinese, Korean and Japanese (probably) do not share a common root, the the impact of Chinese on both Korean and Japanese is significant.

Yeah, Chinese had a lot of influence on early Japanese and Korean. A ton of loan words, and all three Japanese scripts descend from Chinese Hanji. Because, fun fact, Hanji were once used for their phonetic value, like how Chinese transcribes foreign words nowadays. It was a mess and very hard to read, and over time the main Hanji used were simplified, becoming Hiragana and Katakana. 

Korean actually did the exact same thing before, known as Hanja, in began in the Gojoseon period. However, Hangul is not descended from it, and was actually a constructed script instead of one that was born out of script evolution. 

Because, fun fact, a ton of scripts are all descended from the same script, that being Egyptian Hieroglyphics, which became Proto-Sinaitic, which became Phoenician, which began to really spread out across Europe and Asia. To the extent that if you find any script in Europe, the Middle East, or western Asia (mostly the Indian subcontinent), chances are it came from Phoenician. It is fascinating. 

Indian scripts (Like Devanagari and Avestan. And of course all of the intermediary states between Brahmi and Devanagari like Siddham and Gupta) tend to descend from Aramaic, which was a different branch from most of the very European scripts (Like Cyrillic, Greek, and Latin) are their own branch. Abjadiya and Alefbet Ivri also descend from Aramaic, which explains a lot of the similarities between the two and Devanagari, like a lack of vowels. Though this manifests in different ways, with Abjadiya and Ivri being abjads and Devanagari being an Abugida. But Abjads can easily develop into Abugidas. 

Sorry for the ramble. I find linguistics fascinating. 

[Treamayne]

32 minutes ago, Firesong said:

Sorry for the ramble. I find linguistics fascinating. 

Ditto, which is part of the reason I was a linguist for 15 yrs. 

Fun fact: when you look at the myriad Sanskrit derived alphabets, Traditional Mongolian is currently the only vertically written language that is still left-to-right rather than right-to-left.

34 minutes ago, Firesong said:

Korean actually did the exact same thing before, known as Hanja, in began in the Gojoseon period. However, Hangul is not descended from it, and was actually a constructed script instead of one that was born out of script evolution.

Yeah, SeJongDaeWang (Great King Sejong) wanted to increase literacy and decided that independance from Hanja was the key, so he commissioned a scientifically derived alphabet (based on mouth position and structure when making the sound) to create Hangul - 14 Consonants and 10 vowels (plus dipthongs). Easy alphabet to learn, difficult language to master.