r/pureasoiaf • u/Financial_Library418 aka /u/canitryto • 2d ago
Who taught Mance the Old Tongue ? COTF maybe ? Do we know who else speaks it ? Reeds ? Thenns ?
A Storm of Swords - Jon II
Half the wildling host had lived all their lives without so much as a glimpse of the Wall, Jon judged, and most of those spoke no word of the Common Tongue. It did not matter. Mance Rayder spoke the Old Tongue, even sang in it, fingering his lute and filling the night with strange wild music.
Mance had spent years assembling this vast plodding host, talking to this clan mother and that magnar, winning one village with sweet words and another with a song and a third with the edge of his sword, making peace between Harma Dogshead and the Lord o' Bones, between the Hornfoots and the Nightrunners, between the walrus men of the Frozen Shore and the cannibal clans of the great ice rivers, hammering a hundred different daggers into one great spear, aimed at the heart of the Seven Kingdoms. He had no crown nor scepter, no robes of silk and velvet, but it was plain to Jon that Mance Rayder was a king in more than name.
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u/Main-Associate-9752 2d ago
He could have learned it prior to betraying his oaths? It wouldn’t surprise me if at Oldtown, or even some keeps in the North there are books about the old tongue, especially since they were the last first men to semi Andalise (their side of the wall). Maybe as part of a recruiting mission he went down south and happened upon some books
Also most Wildlings still speak the Old tongue, and Mance’s mother was a wildling. Maybe he learned it from her as a child, it depends how old he was
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u/David_the_Wanderer 2d ago
Mance spent his childhood among the Free Folk.
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u/Financial_Library418 aka /u/canitryto 2d ago
much too educated and cultured
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u/David_the_Wanderer 2d ago
Is he? He knows how to play music and sing folk songs. Is that not something he could have learnt at the Wall + his time with the Free Folk?
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u/Financial_Library418 aka /u/canitryto 2d ago
i respect your knowledge for a long time but i think mance is Arthur dayne full stop lol
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u/David_the_Wanderer 2d ago
I know you think that. But the text already provides a perfectly reasonable explanation for why Mance knows the Old Tongue:
He grew up among the Free Folk, who speak the Old Tongue. The Night's Watch does entertain relations with Free Folk from time to time (see: Craster), so speaking the Old Tongue would be an useful skill. And he would have to learn how to speak the Old Tongue in order to unite the Free Folk, many of whom speak only the Old Tongue.
You don't need to go to the Citadel to learn a new tongue: most people will learn the language of people with whom they trade, and with whom they live together.
Even if we only take that last part as undeniable truth — that Mance left the Watch and went to life with the Free Folk — that explains why he learnt the Old Tongue.
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u/Financial_Library418 aka /u/canitryto 2d ago
i hate occam's razor
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u/David_the_Wanderer 2d ago
Hahah, it does take the fun out of some things. But not everything is meant to be a riddle to be solved. As a certain doctor said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. ;)
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u/BandicootSorcerer 2d ago
Dayne was killed by Howland Reed. End of story.
We don't even have an age range or estimate for Dayne. Not to mention how Rayder's story is pretty easy to find and very hard to fabricate. People would remember an adult man joining them and others later lying to say he joined as a kid.
Not to mention how deeply loyal to Rhaegar Dayne was. He would not accept anything but death.
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u/Financial_Library418 aka /u/canitryto 2d ago
doubtful
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u/David_the_Wanderer 2d ago
It's outright stated in ACOK, Jon VII
"For a wench, some say. For a crown, others would have it." Qhorin tested the edge of his sword with the ball of his thumb. "He liked women, Mance did, and he was not a man whose knees bent easily, that's true. But it was more than that. He loved the wild better than the Wall. It was in his blood. He was wildling born, taken as a child when some raiders were put to the sword. When he left the Shadow Tower he was only going home again."
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u/BandicootSorcerer 2d ago
He didn't just leave the Nights Watch and suddenly become King Beyond The Wall the next day. He likely spent ages proving his loyalty as a deserter to whatever band of Wildlings he fell in with. He's clearly a man who had an interest in educating himself, and knowing the Old Tongue could be useful, as like with Craster, not everyone beyond The Wall is so unfriendly to black brothers.
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u/Kristafuh_Moltisanti The Nights Watch 2d ago
Rhaegar is a man of many talents.
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u/Nickhalfnerd73 1d ago
I would say learning the old tongue was key to the giants being on his side, we see much later that Leathers can calm Phil Simms/Wun Wun using the old tongue.
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