From "The Ring of Solomon", page 230:

"There was a good deal more of this, all very archaic, not to say long-winded, and spoken in a tortuous South Arabian dialect that was difficult to follow. But I'd been around the block a bit. I got the gist".

This funny passage somewhat puzzles me. I mean, it implicitly says that spirits do not understand and speak all languages. As a consequence, they might be summoned by someone who is unable to give them orders. This is particularly evident if we think that sometimes a spirit may not be summoned for centuries and then, when he is summoned again, all languages he had come into contact with have certainly disappeared.

How do spirits acquire a human language? Is it possible for a magician to summon a spirit and then realize he cannot speak with that spirit? Could the spirit exploit this to ignore orders, or even to deliberately kill the magician ("Sorry, I did not understand you said I could not kill you!")?

Another event from the trilogy comes to my mind. When Lovelace summons Ramathra, he gives him orders in English. Ramathra had apparently never been summoned before, so how could he have understood his orders?

Thanks in advance for your attention.

Regards,

Nick

Hi Nick!

Hope all's well with you. How's the translating going? There should be a nice Italian edition of Ring of Solomon out pretty soon - I think this summer, if memory serves.

It's a good question you throw at me there. I think my answer has to be that Bart is being his usual slightly facetious self here, and what he says shouldn't be taken completely literally. You're quite right that if spirits weren't able to pretty much instantly interpret and understand any given language, then there would be all kinds of disasters: magicians wouldn't be able to summon anything unless they used Ancient Sumerian or something, and even then you'd wonder how the first Sumerian magicians 'taught' their slaves the language. I think they have the power to immediately speak any language or dialect, but that doesn't stop Bart being needlessly rude about Asmira's diction here. He's basically just saying that she's a small-timer from a remote rural backwater, who isn't smart and up-to-date like him. Typical Bartimaeus, really.

All best wishes,

Jonathan