Lexicon

Definitely not people. She was standing at a crossroads; the streets were single lanes in each direction but still as wide as highways. There were a handful of buildings like they had fallen from above. The sky felt oppressively low, as if it were pressing down, combining with the blasted earth below to crush this town to nothing, and it made her feel as if she were expanding, like her insides wanted to crawl out of her body like supposedly happened in space, where there was nothing to hold you in. “Home,” she said. It was supposed to be funny, but she felt like crying until she died.

CONFUSION OF TONGUES
    Event in which a common language is abruptly replaced by many disparate ones. Considered mythical; see: origin tales.
    Prominent examples:

    1. Tower of Babel • Judaic myth
    i. construction
    ii. dividing of speech
    2. Enki • Sumerian deity
    i. divides speech
    ii. “The Deluge”
    3. Great Dividing • Kaska origin myth
    4. Hermes • Greek deity
    i. conflict with Zeus
    ii. divides speech
    iii. punishment
    5. Jabbering Madness • Wa-Sania myth
    i. famine
    6. Tongues of a Thousand Corpses • Kaurna myth
    i. cannibalism
    7. Vatea • Polynesian deity
    i. construction of tower
    ii. divides speech
    8. The Sun of Wind • Aztec myth
    i. construction of
Zacualli
(tower)
    ii. dividing of speech
    iii. crossover mythology: Mayan, Nahuati

    More >>

THE STORY OF TAJURA’S NAME
    Myth (Confusion of Tongues): Indigenous Australian

    In the Dreaming the land was flat. There were no gorges and no hills, and no rivers. The animals lived in one tribe and spoke with one tongue, so they could understand one another.
    One day Tajura, the Rainbow Serpent, carved his name in the bark of a coolabah tree. He said to the other animals, “Look what I have done, I have written my name on this tree, so you must do what I say.”
    The animals were impressed and did as Tajura said. They offered their food and made him a great shelter. They brought dirt from the land together and put it beneath the coolabah tree so that it was raised up, so they could admire Tajura’s name, and that was the first hill.
    But Borah, the kangaroo, was not impressed. “Why should we give Tajura our food, our best bark, and work for him?” he asked. He climbed the hill and tore the bark from the coolabah tree where it spoke Tajura’s name and buried it in the ground.
    The animals were ashamed and said, “We shall speak in our own tongue, so we will not be impressed by Tajura’s words.” They went away, some north, some east, some west, some south, and that is why today the dingo howls, the frog croaks, the cockatoo screeches, and none can understand the other.

INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES
    At the time of European arrival, the indigenous peoples of Australia are estimated to have spoken between 250 and 400 languages, making it one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world.
    Almost all indigenous languages share several distinctive phonological features (e.g., lack of fricatives), which suggests the existence of a relatively small set of ancestors, or perhaps even a single common language. Why this would have been abandoned, given its utility to intertribal communication, is unclear.

[THREE]
    The waitress brought food and coffee and instructed them to enjoy. Wil watched Eliot spread a napkin across his lap, pick up his cutlery, and begin to dissect his eggs. He popped bacon into his mouth and chewed.
    “Go on,” Eliot said through bacon. “Eat.”
    Wil picked up his knife and began to push food around. It was beyond him how Eliot could shoot people dead and fly all night and then tuck into a hearty breakfast. It was wrong. Because Eliot had known those people at the ranch, including a woman he’d shot dead, Charlotte Brontë, and you shouldn’t have an appetite after something like that. It suggested that Eliot really was psychopathic—not the crazy,
voices-told-me-to-kill
way, but actually, medically psychopathic, in the sense of lacking the ability to feel anything. But even this bothered Wil less than the
way
Eliot was eating, which was with quick, purposeful movements, his eyes sectioning up the plate for maximum efficiency. This was wrong because Eliot hadn’t slept since Wil had met him. He should be exhausted.
    “This is even better than I expected,” Eliot said. He pointed at Wil’s plate with his knife. “You need to eat.”
    Wil ate without enthusiasm. His bacon tasted like nothing. Like a dead animal, fried.