Okay. So. There are like... a lot of languages.

But none of them are really ever put to use. I mean, real use.

When was the last time you had to have a book in Loboshigaru? When you needed to speak to someone in Elfen?

Also... "something unintelligible" doesn't make it sound like a language at all. I'm just really picky with this stuff, I guess, but if there was an actual language visible to the person who sees someone speak in, say, Mugwumpi, and they were to repeat it and those who spoke Mugwumpi were to see it as:

So-and-so say, in Mugwumpi, "(whatever)"

That it'd be a lot cooler... and... I don't know. It'd feel more real.

Then again, it's a fantasy MUD.

Now I'm not sure if this belongs under rants or ideas...

e_e;

In time, everything the Deep Blue Cathedral publishes will be in each language, with the version of whatever the text is in common being heavily weighted and or distorted. With languages you really have to do your own RP thing since Viscanti get the verbal shaft. Reinstate dominance of Merian culture in Celest by only speaking Merian. Lots of Merians will join you methinks.

Sounds like a good idea... 'cept I'm a Faeling.

And most of the Wilde is Lobo or Furrikin. Me speaking only Elfen would be lost on them. :/

It would be neat if languages were like in Imperian, where if you don't understand it you get, say... "Loboshigaru says something in a low, rumbling tone, interspersed by whines and yips." I always thought that that was quite cool, and much better than the 'something unintelligible' thing.

Actually I've been doing a lot of talking in Loboshigaru recently, due to meeting quite a few new lobos that have joined the Shofangi. Talking to others in your native language feels good for some reason.

That sounds an awful lot like gaming the system for culture. Rather than publish a single book, you're publishing fifteen. Unless there was some way to toggle a translated text to not count extra, that seems like abuse.


And on the subject of actually using languages, only instance I can think of is an interaction with Zenji where we spoke Elfen to insult some non-elfen visitors.

As an Illithoid, whom don't have their own language, I created my own "tongue" which actually just is a bastardization of the common tongue (or coded if you will) following some rules. Though let me tell you, it takes longer than I'd want to translate common into it so the usage will be sparingly...

Which makes me wonder, publishing books in 15 different languages? Can you actually view the difference in languages? My god, what a nightmare... I'd like to have a look at that, whenever the first tomes of said project are released.

I don't think you can see the difference in languages, the book is just unreadable if you can't speak that language.

Give trill a language!

Seriously though, it would be nice if languages had some use. Maybe an occurrence or event where something has to be said in a certain language for it to have an effect. Or some mobs that give more background about your race or something, but you have to ask them in your language. (Bookbinders FTW)

I find it interesting that people believe that making it so that you can learn other languages (other than being a bookbinder) would make languages useless.


I have a feeling it is the other way around.

only active taurian in the game... i could talk to book binders?

Personally, I always pictured Jasato as being a "flexible" kinda guy. sorta like a "jack of a trades, master of none" bit. Only draw back is there are restrictions of sorts, and this is understandable.

I think that either a class where someone could learn the languages (like a diplomat or something of the sorts) or something of the sorts would be rather interesting.

I was thinking about this. I had an idea whose coolness I'm still trying to decide upon. So you have a skill or artifact or the like (Maybe even replace the language abilities from bookbinding with this), wherein you can learn languages from studying under others who already know the language. So you'd have to STUDY UNDER , and then you'd learn some fixed percent of the language. Deal is, you can only learn that percent amount from any single character, so if it were 5% of the language, you'd need to study under like 20 speakers to master it (though I think the percent could afford to be a little higher). As soon as you know any bit of a language, you can try to speak it, and can tell when someone is speaking that language, but can only understand/speak as much as the percent you know. By that I mean that if you know 5% Elfen, you can tell when someone is speaking elfen, but only actually pick up one word out of twenty correctly. The rest could be garbled, blanked out with periods, or even swapped with randomly generated words (How are you doing today? = Shoe my obsequious are today?)

As a further fun restriction, bookbinders/linguists/artifact-bearers can only learn up to 60-70% of any language this way. Upon reaching that cap, every thirty words (however many) spoken or heard in that language equals one percent more, so that the only way to master a language is to study it, then to apply and practice it. Better yet, you could have the first percent after the cap start at something like thirty words, then the next requires thirty-five, etc. This would be a royal pain to code, but I think it's more fitting than being a bookbinder with seemingly no limit to how long I can live, yet only able to speak five or six languages no matter how much time I spend on it.

In retrospect, I suppose you'd have to recieve a scaled down percentage learned for practicing before the study cap, to account for the possibility of there not being enough taurians to actually get you to the cap, especially ones that are willing to speak with you in their native tongue.

If we wanted to keep the bookbinding language system intact as well, it could perhaps be only native speakers and bookbinders who can teach the languages, not people who have used this learning system, although that doesn't seem to make a whole lot of RP or realistic sense.

So what about "Native" speakers like Simimi, who is Dracnari but was raised in Celest, to speak Merian? I really don't see how they could code the above system into place. Are you just not going to see articles and prepositional phrases at 70%?

They actually coded a language learning system in Achaea, and I thought it was a lot of fun. You can learn as many languages as you want, but each one gets exponentially more costly in terms of lessons (special language lessons, earned each year your character is alive). One of the most fun things about the system is that you see partial sentences when you're only partially trained in a language. So, with the basic training, you can just tell that someone's speaking the language and not understand a word they're saying (replaced with other nonsensical things), and with half training you can catch about half of the actual words, and so on. I imagine it had to be a lot to code, though.

Drawing from Jasato mentioning diplomats, what if language or race affected influencing? So if someone spoke furrikini or had an illusion on that made them look like a furrikin, they would have a stronger influence on denizens in Estelbar.

Wow! Look at all the ideas!

I really like Jasato and Xaqari's ideas a -lot-.

We should so bug the coders about this...

... maybe if/when they set it into place, it comes with an event where people no longer can speak common for a set amount of time.

It'd make bookbinders very useful, to a degree, if we followed Xaqari's example. Could you imagine a raid when everyone can barely understand each other? Hee.

People no longer speaking common wouldn't work. Non-bookbinder Viscanti, Trill and Humans would be stuck.

Agreed, it's kind of one of the main points to be able to speak with the other players in an online game. I really like Xikue's idea though. It would make a whole lot of sense too, that people would be more apt to listen to characters who speak their language, as people tend to be most comfortable in their native tongue. And yes, in my example even at 70% you'd be missing out on things like important articles and conjunctions, but that's why you'd have to keep practicing the language. It would also lead to some really fun misheard statements (I love you = I bite you/I love pork/you love you). I think it would be something fun, at least to understand a word here and there instead of just "Person says something unintelligible" or whatever. The only real problem I see is the sheer difficulty in implementing any changes to the language system. The real question would be whether or not people give a damn even if they can learn every language. Making a better system doesn't mean it serves a better purpose, the purpose itself has to be desirable or else it's a waste of time and effort, and I'm not so sure that most of Lusternia cares a whit about learning languages if they already have common. It won't stop people from speaking outside of the ears of eavesdroppers, since there are always tells, so it's all about how much people want a better way to RP language. I'm for it, but I'm also a bookbinder for mainly RP purposes (well yeah, and I want that tome.)

Edit: To Simimi, I think it would be fair if in the case of a city or commune strongly tied to certain races, those races' tongues be given a bonus to learn. So in your case if you were learning Merian, maybe you'd get a 50% increase to your learning speed, which would also make sense since if you're in a city filled with NPC merians, so you've got to be hearing it all the time. And again, I don't know how or even if it could be done, I just think it would be pretty neat.

I agree, this would all be awesome!