World Languages

[Gossamer]

But if it's agreed that Common really is English, we can just copy/paste from Wikipedia's English article and use the writeup I did for a different language like Pavi or something.

Please note: We do not copy paste things from any resource on the net for use in our own wiki. We are taking only original work as submissions.

[Sefra]

Am I too into the whole Conworlding idea, maybe? Goss, you're the voice of the Founders in this thread: do you guys even care about having this level of detail?

[Gossamer]

Actually, I have very little opinion on language development in terms of the technicality of the speech. I won't ever pretend to understand conlangs at all. Conworlding is totally different and indeed its what we've done here. I don't think personally it adds much to the game world to develop a new language in the depth and breath of every intricate part like the Trekkies did with Klingon because this isn't a spoken medium but rather a written one. It's hard to incorporate tones and inflections into written word anyhow.

A more beneficial development, in my mind, is along the lines of what Jil said... vocabulary or phrasing. I wasn't planning on piping into this thread at all since I have a noted lack of interest (other than preserving my own development within it - the languages I've created and their very tiny lexicon) but... I do like to keep facts straight which is why I pipped in on your writeup - Common in my mind is English. Others might disagree but I'm willing to debate that.

Each of the founders speak for themselves. I know Tarot has a heavy investment in this topic and did a good job of steering the thread in a direction he'd like to see the development go.

[Cayenne]

I'll be honest. Speaking strictly for myself, I do not want to get into grammar rules and phenomes and tones and all of that when it comes to the languages of the Myrians, Dhani, and Charodae.

I don't much see the point. Trying to force structure into that with the verb and noun and adverbs and so on and so forth is a hamper on the writing - everyone has different styles.

I'm happy to just see a descriptive of the language being used IC, like, say...

"Yes, I understand," the Myrian youth snapped at the human before cupping a hand around his mouth and letting out a burst of the quick, almost harsh speech of the Myrian tongue. "<She's not too bright, is she?>"

Most races that have made mention of languages have already noted how they sound. That, along with the occasional lexiconal use, is really about as far as I want to go.

[Tarot]

Okay... we need some order in here, folks. The law has come to this town! *shows off sheriff's star*

I think we are all better off if common is English, not something rendered as English. I'm not worried about the language's ancestry - mostly anything can turn into English given 8000 years. This probably just means we can put an occasional word in the ancient tongue that recalls its English equivalent.

Secondly, on the matter of how in-depth we should go, I think the answer is "as deep as we can comfortably go without forcing unrealistic expectations on RPers". Anyway, remember it's ALWAYS possible to write "He said 'Quick, go fetch my chamberpot from the other room' in Pavi/Myrian/Vani/etc" or even color code the lines in a foreign language. However, there are also those who want to go the extra mile. As long as these people include translations and don't expect everyone else to do the same, I can't see harm being done.

For the ancient tongue, we can probably go pretty hardcore because it's a dead tongue with few words and only optionally used by wizards in their casting - if you want to show off, that's a fantastic way to do so. For more modern languages, high-level grammar and phonetics (which you can't do away with if you want to have any lexicon) are probably enough for most people. I understand not all race creators may enjoy dealing with language, but it shapes a great deal of the culture, so it'd be a great addition. My races don't have own languages just so I could avoid fleshing them out.

About the ancient tongue, Tarot thought it'd be cool to borrow phonetic and composition rules from ancient Egyptian and throw a few Aztec sounds and Japanese grammar into the mix. Phonetically though, the ancient tongue is not a tonal language the way Chinese or Japanese are. In fact, the pronounciation and accents on the vowels probably changed a lot from place to place or throughout the centuries. Much like Egyptian, the vowels were not recorded in the writing and are later guesses based on more modern languages spoken in the same areas.

[Sefra]

*worships Tarot as a kindred spirit and voice of reason*

Okay, so while I still fail to see a reason why NOT to make a page for Common, I agree fully with you on how in depth it would be nice to go.

As I've already reiterated, my intent was never to build fully-fleshed languages that players would then use IC. I've been working on my own conworld (during work, of course XD ) where some of the characters speak a made up language. It's HARD to do, and I never expected, even as I wrote for Common, that players here would do the same. I expect only that they almost never give a second thought to the languages beyond 'my character is going to insult this other character in his own tongue' and an appropriate description. For those who are more interested in that aspect, I applaud you .

So, with all of that (hopefully) out of the way...

Tarot:

I guess I misread something on the wiki about tones, but no biggie. That was just a matter of raiding the Windows character map, anyway.

The IPA/X-Sampa symbols, I think, are a bit more important. Mostly because with those a person could go to, say, Paul Meier's thing that I linked to and hear the sounds. (Personally, I had some trouble imagining what was meant by "halfway between 'live' and 'lead'" without hearing it.)

Should I put them on a diagram, also?

[Liminal]

I think I agree with everyone else about the Common/English thing.

As another thought regarding ways to RP things, my PC speaks Kontinese as a foreign language. As such, when she speaks in it, I write her saying things like "she wished for me to see if I could locate you for the purposes of conversing with you, and I agreed to oblige her" rather than "She wanted me to find you and talk to you, and I said yes."

Also, although I've done little in the way of actual language development, I've written some about post-Valterrian linguistics study in the articles for Bethany Edgetower and An Account of the Circumnavigation of Mizahar.

[Colombina]

When I use phrases or create them I tend to use a real life inspiration and study the reasoning and roots of a language. I haven't used a lot, but I'm more inclined to a brief overview of the language paired with an abbreviated Lexicon.

I like how we've done something here showing the roots and development. I, for one, have been using approximated ancient Egyptian when trying to derive things based on the "ancient tongue". On rare occasions, though, I may have cheated and used Latin.

As far as individual races go, I'm a little possessive of the theme/sound of the actual lexicon. If we started getting more specific I'd like to be able to keep the spirit of what I have begun.
For example, Symenos is influenced by Slavik languages, Shiber by ancient Hebrew, Tawna, Native American, Arumenic, modern Egyptian. I do my best to tailor the languages to how I conceive they would develop in the game. They're not mirrors, more sketches with a strong dose of fabrication.

Each inspiration was chose for similarity in geographical and cultural situation. Since we're not using an entirely made up language (due to the nature of writing in English and drawing from real languages for the ancient tongue) I think it's appropriate to adopt languages that really do intersect with rl counterparts.

Anyhoo, that's how I approach language making. My goal is to have a broad picture and a decent vocab with room for contribution, apart from that I get a bit bored.

For an example, note the very brief discussion I have under the Language section of the Eypharian writeup here.

[Alina Westwood]

I'd like to help with Lexicons, specifically the Pavi Lexicon. It's important when giving commands to animals brcause they are trained to respond to Pavi and I'd like to have actual conlang vocab for it.