Ever since Neil Gaiman posted this ask, it’s been living in my mind rent-free. So let’s discuss: what language do Aziraphale and Crowley speak to one another?
At first, I always thought that Aziraphale and Crowley would speak the language of the place where they were, because there was really no telling whether angels and demons still speak the same language.
But with Neil Gaiman’s post, consider: angels speaking the actual angelic tongue, and demons speaking a “dialect” of this angelic tongue. For reference, the Wiki definition of dialect is “a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group… dialects of a language are closely related and, despite their differences, are most often largely mutually intelligible.”
Coming from the same original stock, they would speak the same language initially, but demons would have to develop this language into something they could use (I suppose there are some words demons regularly use that angels would not, and vice versa). Plus, as time went on, presumably the angelic tongue that was spoken before the Fall would also change from what it originally was, as language does to accommodate the new context of the times.
But it could also be entirely possible that despite the deviations from the original angelic tongue, the angelic/demonic languages are still more or less the same, the way Heaven and Hell are depicted as being mirror images of each other, two sides of the same coin. In the same vein that good cannot exist without evil, the language they speak must contain elements of both for the language to have any meaning at all.
I imagine Crowley and Aziraphale speaking this angelic/demonic tongue throughout the years interspersed with bits from various human languages, because humans have concepts that would not occur to angels and demons and therefore would not exist in their language. For example: humor, sarcasm, metaphors - these things escape them, for the most part.
Imagine Crowley and Aziraphale speaking the angelic tongue with a hodgepodge of the languages they’ve learned over 6,000 years. They probably have words from ancient Sumerian back from when they were in Mesopotamia in their inside language that no human has heard in millennia.
(It reminds me of how sometimes, multilingual people speak English and their mother tongue all in one breath. Sometimes, one word has a more appropriate meaning in one language, or maybe a word has no direct translation in the other. Or frankly, from personal experience, sometimes the brain is just stupid and can’t remember words – I use words from one language or the other to fill in the gaps.)
In the beginning when they first met, Crowley and Aziraphale spoke two different dialects of the original angelic tongue. They sort of understand more or less what the other is saying, but they’re not quite on the same page all the time.
Today, they speak a language that makes sense only to the two of them, the angelic tongue with bits of French and Spanish and ancient Sumerian and ancient Greek and probably a bit of Chinese and a sprinkling of Filipino thrown in for good measure. A language totally incomprehensible to everyone except the two of them. They evolved their own language just from the sheer amount of time they’ve spent with each other on Earth. JUST IMAGINE.
One last note: Language is also nonverbal, and it is entirely possible that this nonverbal language also makes sense only to them. Makes you wonder… WHAT DOES ALL THIS PASSIONATE GAZING MEAN TO THEM? HMMM WHO KNOWS. WHAT A MYSTERY.
ohmigod, never have i so quickly adopted a headcanon
I love the idea of them both gradually becoming incomprehensible (when they speak to one another) to the rest of humanity, to heaven, and to hell.
Okay, but this also makes all that talk of “second alternative rendez vous” and “don’t call me NICE” fucking hilarious, because none of it matters in the slightest.
Crowley could ring Aziraphale up and be like “hey angel, want to meet up under the bandstand in St James Park at exactly x time on the dot so we can catch up and chat about how we’re both totally traitors and also I’m actually kind of a good person sometimes? Cool, ciao!” and it would basically mean the same thing to Heaven and Hell, whose surveillance teams are currently wondering if their mics are working, because they only caught about two words of that, and those don’t make sense in context.
This also explains how they are able to have some frankly disturbing conversations in full view of the humans about horrifying floods and trying to circumvent the apocalypse and so forth, and none of them say anything. They’re all just trying to work out exactly where those two nice looking gentlemen are from. (They’re pretty sure they caught some shaky sounding French a few sentences ago, but now that one is speaking what sounds a bit like Japanese, and the other one made some noises in response that they’re not sure human vocal chords should be capable of…)
Aziraphale and Crowley are aware that their superiors prefer them to speak in enochian (or whatever the angelic language is called), and that they have to try and speak more formally when they’re not on Earth, but they haven’t quite realised that the reason Gabriel looks at Aziraphale funny and tells him to “speak up” when he lapses into the sort of language he uses with Crowley is because the two of them have essentially developed their own personal creole. The transition from demonic and angelic enochian, to demonic and angelic enochian with some human words thrown in, to a combination of the two and also a various mixture of every human language they’ve ever become fluent in, was gradual enough that they didn’t really pick up on it.
This also raises the possibility that either they had to spend a lot of time teaching each other their respective dialects the night before the bodyswap (which might not be that hard, if the language they usually use is just a combined version of both of them) or, more entertainingly, one of the reasons why Gabriel was so short with ‘Aziraphale’ at his execution is because he genuinely has very little idea what he’s saying, but he’s pretty sure he just caught the enochian for “greater good” in amongst all the babble (although the accent is fucking bizzare), so he’s going to seize on that and hope that he can make Aziraphale stop talking before any of the other archangels realise that he can’t understand him.
How DARE you hide this in the tags @cheeseanonioncrisps
#good omens #aziraphale speaks angelic enochian with a slight english accent #during the warlock years crowley’s demonic enochian becomes more and more scottish #good omens meta#good omens headcanons #crowley is talking to Aziraphale on a bus #and a nearby human says ‘hey you’re in england! speak english!’ #they both switch to old english #nobody gets it #except for the one student at the back of the bus #who’s been studying anglo-saxon literature #and now has to explain to her friends why she’s giggling so much #they drive their superiors mad #crowley uses whatever language he likes in his reports #knowing that hell’s desk workers can’t keep track of current human writing systems #during the ancient egypt craze of the 1920s #he sent in a few written in what he remembered of hieroglyphics #knowing that by the time they translated it to something his higher ups could read #he would have done something more impressive to get them off his back about that several decades long nap #but even his enochian is… off #because he’ll slip into the angelic dialect without realising #aziraphale does the same with demonic slang #(michael notices but doesn’t say anything and sometimes asks ligur to translate some of the newer words) #they talk to each other more than they talk to heaven and hell
