I don't know if terrible weapons of war are necessarily restricted to advanced worlds. I know there are some from our world...well, some of the weapons we use, Heroes' Relics from an age long past, can turn people into mindless monsters, if you try to use them without the right Crest. And that's not even getting into things like...man, I don't think we've even figured out how they did it yet, but some enemies of ours drove the people of a town crazy and violent, so that they started killing each other. Or what about the enemies who snuck into our midst, magically disguised as innocent people that had actually died or been killed years ago? [Claude shakes his head with a sigh, running a hand through his hair.] Or the way they managed to force students to turn into monsters somehow, even without any relic weapons.
It seems like people will always find horrific weapons to use against each other, within whatever means they've got available to them.
[He smiles when Steven offers to let him hear Spanish, though; he's happy for a lighter topic.] And sure. I'm curious if it's similar to any other languages I know snippets of, if nothing else...and even if it's not, I'm still interested.
Oh that's true. Just because we have terrible weapons of science doesn't mean that a magic-based society can't come up with terrible weapons of magic. And everything you've described sounds pretty damn awful in itself.
[Clever as hell, though, in terms of waging war and he has to admire the ruthlessness of it, even as it's objectively awful for the people caught up in whatever mess is happening in Claude's world.]
But yes. Right. Spanish. Mind you, I suspect even if you know a language it sounds close to, it's likely to be a different dialect to the one that I speak--I speak Mexican Spanish, not the Castilian Spanish from the old world, but. Well.
[And Steven starts speaking in (Latin American) Spanish for Claude, in much the same fashion Claude had spoken in Almyran: unhurried and a bit careful with his pronunciation.]
[Claude listens intently, head cocked to the side, looking thoughtful. Once Steven finishes, though, he has to shake his head.] No...that's not a language I've heard, unfortunately. And I've heard the languages of Brigid, Dagda, Almyra, and Fodlan...it's not really one I recognize from any of them.
[Unfortunately not many details on Brigid's and Dagda's cultures, and neither Claude nor his player are the people who should be making up headcanons about them, so for now they are simply being assumed as 'they're based on something probably from the real world, but the language is likely not Spanish'.]
Ah well. It would have been useful to have another Spanish-speaker around. Still, we did narrow down Almyran's counterpart and we know Fodlan's is English. That's definitely more than we knew before.
Ah, hell, maybe I'm wrong and it's all translation effect. Excuse me while I attempt to deliberately throw my first language at you.
[And it takes a hell of a lot of concentration to deliberately speak the language you default to without translation effect taking hold, but he's going to try anyway.]
Translation effect? Is that why we can all understand each other despite coming from completely different worlds? I was wondering if there was just some common language that all the worlds conveniently have in common, probably due to their being connected the way we've been talking about...but then that does seem to be just too wild a coincidence. You're saying that this place automatically forces a sort of lingua franca on everyone?
[In that case...no wonder Steven has to focus and make an active effort to speak his own tongue. What they're speaking and understanding now...it may not be their native language(s), as they understand them. (Or, in Claude's case, one of his native languages.) It's more like a new language they all intrinsically can speak and understand, that they never had to make any effort to learn...or even perceive as being separate from their native tongue.
It's a little disturbing, albeit fascinating. But the only alternative explanation is that somehow they all are speaking their own disparate languages, but something is automatically translating them - with perfect understanding of tone, slang, inflection, and who knows what other subtleties - to each other. That somehow seems even more unlikely.
Claude listens to Steven speak, then shakes his head again.] I mean...I do understand you, but I'm not sure how much that tells us. Is your language the language of Fodlan, or is it this translation effect you're talking about? It's impossible to tell. We'd only know for sure if it was distinctly not Fodlan's language, and that's only one possibility. One we already agree isn't even the likeliest one.
Talk about confusing. Honestly, I never thought too much about why we can all understand each other...or maybe it's more like it was one of the many mysteries with no possible explanation I was confronted with when I first got here, and I set it aside rather than drive myself crazy trying to figure it out. But it might also be that the language of Fodlan is pretty widespread where I'm from - people outside Fodlan often know it, though the fluency can vary. So it probably didn't seem as strange as it could have to me. If lots of people unexpectedly understood Almyran, I think I would've sat up and taken more notice.
Yeah. And English is basically the lingua franca in my world. It's easy not to think too hard about it all.
[Steven sighs and runs his fingers through his hair, away from his face.]
I know when I use certain words in Spanish, they don't translate over, but is it because the pokeworld lingua franca is English? Or is it because I specifically want to use those words in Spanish? It could be either, really. It feels like if you concentrate really hard you can short-circuit the whole 'translation effect' and that's about the same amount of effort I just put into speaking English just then--but it is the language I default to unconsciously and there's a chance that the 'translation effect' only works on your unconscious default language.
Ugh...even as much as I love learning new things, this is giving me a headache just thinking about it. It's too confusing, and it doesn't seem like there's any good ways to confirm anything.
That said...I don't really know if I have an unconscious default language. I grew up speaking both Fodlish and Almyran interchangeably, since I had parents with a foot in both worlds. I suppose I've spoken Fodlish almost exclusively for the past six years or so while I've been in Fodlan, and surrounded by people who don't know any Almyran, and I'm still with people here and now where that remains the case. But does that make it my personal default, or just what I'm using situationally?
Agh, we should probably just stop thinking about this before our heads explode.
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fingersandteeth) wrote2022-02-21 05:11 pm
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It seems like people will always find horrific weapons to use against each other, within whatever means they've got available to them.
[He smiles when Steven offers to let him hear Spanish, though; he's happy for a lighter topic.] And sure. I'm curious if it's similar to any other languages I know snippets of, if nothing else...and even if it's not, I'm still interested.
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[Clever as hell, though, in terms of waging war and he has to admire the ruthlessness of it, even as it's objectively awful for the people caught up in whatever mess is happening in Claude's world.]
But yes. Right. Spanish. Mind you, I suspect even if you know a language it sounds close to, it's likely to be a different dialect to the one that I speak--I speak Mexican Spanish, not the Castilian Spanish from the old world, but. Well.
[And Steven starts speaking in (Latin American) Spanish for Claude, in much the same fashion Claude had spoken in Almyran: unhurried and a bit careful with his pronunciation.]
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[Unfortunately not many details on Brigid's and Dagda's cultures, and neither Claude nor his player are the people who should be making up headcanons about them, so for now they are simply being assumed as 'they're based on something probably from the real world, but the language is likely not Spanish'.]
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And then I realize we hadn't figured that out
Ah, hell, maybe I'm wrong and it's all translation effect. Excuse me while I attempt to deliberately throw my first language at you.
[And it takes a hell of a lot of concentration to deliberately speak the language you default to without translation effect taking hold, but he's going to try anyway.]
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[In that case...no wonder Steven has to focus and make an active effort to speak his own tongue. What they're speaking and understanding now...it may not be their native language(s), as they understand them. (Or, in Claude's case, one of his native languages.) It's more like a new language they all intrinsically can speak and understand, that they never had to make any effort to learn...or even perceive as being separate from their native tongue.
It's a little disturbing, albeit fascinating. But the only alternative explanation is that somehow they all are speaking their own disparate languages, but something is automatically translating them - with perfect understanding of tone, slang, inflection, and who knows what other subtleties - to each other. That somehow seems even more unlikely.
Claude listens to Steven speak, then shakes his head again.] I mean...I do understand you, but I'm not sure how much that tells us. Is your language the language of Fodlan, or is it this translation effect you're talking about? It's impossible to tell. We'd only know for sure if it was distinctly not Fodlan's language, and that's only one possibility. One we already agree isn't even the likeliest one.
Talk about confusing. Honestly, I never thought too much about why we can all understand each other...or maybe it's more like it was one of the many mysteries with no possible explanation I was confronted with when I first got here, and I set it aside rather than drive myself crazy trying to figure it out. But it might also be that the language of Fodlan is pretty widespread where I'm from - people outside Fodlan often know it, though the fluency can vary. So it probably didn't seem as strange as it could have to me. If lots of people unexpectedly understood Almyran, I think I would've sat up and taken more notice.
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[Steven sighs and runs his fingers through his hair, away from his face.]
I know when I use certain words in Spanish, they don't translate over, but is it because the pokeworld lingua franca is English? Or is it because I specifically want to use those words in Spanish? It could be either, really. It feels like if you concentrate really hard you can short-circuit the whole 'translation effect' and that's about the same amount of effort I just put into speaking English just then--but it is the language I default to unconsciously and there's a chance that the 'translation effect' only works on your unconscious default language.
Basically, Claude, it's a goddamn mess.
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That said...I don't really know if I have an unconscious default language. I grew up speaking both Fodlish and Almyran interchangeably, since I had parents with a foot in both worlds. I suppose I've spoken Fodlish almost exclusively for the past six years or so while I've been in Fodlan, and surrounded by people who don't know any Almyran, and I'm still with people here and now where that remains the case. But does that make it my personal default, or just what I'm using situationally?
Agh, we should probably just stop thinking about this before our heads explode.
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