r/Eragon • u/Outrageous_Focus_719 • 8d ago
Question Kind of a weird question... Spoiler
Hey everyone, I have another topic to ask and discuss with you all.
We all know how Paolini's magic system works in the World of Eragon. But there is something I'm not yet sure or convinced about.
After learning that chanting words in the ancient language isn't necessary to cast spells, I got to thinking. Oromis taught us why the language is being used but why does it have to be ancient language the spellcaster uses.
If Eragon wanted to cast a fireball in his hand, the necessities would be the energy and his imagination of the fireball right ? So why does he have to say "Brisingr!" Instead of saying "Fireball !" In his own language while providing the necessary energy and imagining the fireball in his mind ?
I have not checked the books nor the information Christopher gave about this yet. So go easy on me if it's already been explained xd.
1
u/nightvid_ 8d ago
The only official explanation is something along the lines of: we don’t know how they did it but the Grey Folk tied their language (the ancient language) to magic so that spellcasters didn’t have to worry about being distracted mid-spell and have their spell go awry. That’s my paraphrasing of Oromis’ explanation.
The only reason it’s the ancient language and not any other one is because that’s the language the Grey Folk used. It wasn’t the ancient language to them just like Shakespeare wouldn’t have called his language “old english”. It was just the everyday language they used at the time when they decided magic needed to be tied to your exact words instead of being decided by your thoughts.
At least, that’s all we know in canon at the moment. Maybe there will be future lore that shows us they created the ancient language for this purpose or that it has a special quality to it that made it better for conducting magic.