Dimensions in Time - Who Reviews & History Lessons

匿名ユーザーからの質問: The post you wrote about the Gallifreyan, can be debated. River Song -in the second episode she was featured in- wrote in 'Old High Gallifreyan'. Which is very similar to that of what was written on the letter. Search it online if you have any doubts, but there were several different languages used on Gallifrey and many different variations. I just wanted to explain to you properly.

Okay, let me preface this by saying that I’m a Japanese major who has taken far too many language and linguistics classes and I’m also a Doctor Who fan too… So, I kinda had a nerd-out here. Ultimately, it is just a show =P. Your own canon is your own canon and it’d be awful for me to dictate what is right and wrong, especially in a show with as flexible a canon as Doctor Who. I wrote this more for fun than argument (because combining my greatest love [languages] and Doctor Who is really quite fun).

Oh I know there were several versions of the language. That’s not my point. My point was that the circular version that is seen in the new series is most certainly not the one commonly used by the Time Lords of the current generation (pre-they-all-were-killed-by-a-plot-device). The circular one, if a language at all, must be really quite old considering languages simplify over the course of time and the Gallifreyan we see in The Deadly Assassin is much simpler and more utilitarian. Also, just because the wiki says it is, doesn’t mean anything. Every single time this circular version was used in the new series it could just as easily be a symbol for something. “Earth” (in Utopia) could be a symbol, for example.

Just like we put the sad onion on things to denote it is not an appropriate item for 0-3…

That could easily be a series of symbols, one of which means ‘earth’ and the others are details, similar to looking at packaging like this:

This would make the most sense when compared with this:

In the bottom-right the symbol is undeniably the same sort of thing as the ‘circular Gallifreyan’ above denoting “Earth.” In this story, that symbol in the corner is distinctly stated as the seal of the Prydonian Academy. Therefore, it is unlikely to be a written form of a language, beyond possibly having some archaic language thrown in ala:

You are correct that the ‘Old High Gallifreyan’ is similar to the stuff the Doctor wrote, however that lends credence to my argument and does not dispute it. Look over the course of time and you will see writing systems change, but without an active role imposing the change, their character sets will always evolve naturally via cursive and fast-writing. Basically, what this means is that they will always look like one stage of the other. Take Japanese for example.

Now, some of them look pretty different, but you can see the ties when you see the cursive versions that lead up to them. It is not impossible to assume out that Old High Gallifreyan became modern Gallifreyan precisely because they look like each other.

Now, how exactly would either of those evolve into, or from, so-called ‘Circular Gallifreyan?’

Perhaps there ARE in-fact several writing systems in-place (if we accept Circular Gallifreyan there would be two in common use), like in Japanese, and they somehow looked nothing like each other (unlike in Japanese). Wouldn’t the circular model fall out of use rather quickly due to the amount of time it took to write? Take, for example, Boustrophedon, which looked like this:

As you might imagine, it didn’t last long. Similarly, as you will notice if you study ancient languages, due to the nature of language as a whole (becoming simpler over time) also applying to writing, the ‘circular Gallifreyan’ would likely be quite ancient (DEFINITELY pre-early-high-Gallifreyan) and would support my thesis that circular Gallifreyan is most definitely not modern Gallifreyan. However, this is assuming that the different writing systems look completely different, which is extremely unlikely without an outside influence. An example of the outside-influence theory is seen in Korean, which has two written styles, one constructed/native and one adopted from Mandarin script). Therefore, if circular Gallifreyan IS in-fact a written language, it would likely have had to come from elsewhere (like if Gallifrey had been invaded and conquered at some point, which is certainly never mentioned). Either that or the ancient Gallifreyan and the modern Gallifreyan seen above was the writing system of the invading people’s who became the Time Lords, throwing out the native people and circular Gallifreyan is similar to a dead aboriginal language.

Either way, every conclusion points to ‘circular Gallifreyan’ being something other than a modern and in-use form of Gallifreyan. Considering the places it has been used in the show thus far and the accepted canon about the Prydonian Academy seal, the most easy to accept theory is that these symbols are not representative of a language, but are instead symbolic representations.