(no subject)

[beccaelizabeth]

Today I started out wondering if there's a language where you have to gender yourself to say
My Name Is
and ended up reading about Japanese pronouns.

... gender and formality and a whole bunch of connotations, and the meanings change over time and use so a really formal can turn into a really rude by sheer weight of sarcasm, and wow how does anyone have confidence to speak all that all?

And google translate will not even slightly attempt to suggest the different meanings, it'll give 'my name is' whatever version of I you put in it. Not great.

I was thinking about fantasy world conlang again, like what does Common convey about people, and now I'm thinking about formality and gender and fantasy-race and how careful you would be if someone could throw fireballs with their mind.

I mean it's fun to say gender is 'wizard'
but if there are actual wizards and actual formal modes of address, I can see people defaulting to
very carefully respectful indeed.

Like there are forms of address for the military and knights in armour and suchlike.



Do you think 'Comprehend Languages' or 'Share Language' or 'Tongues' would convey all this stuff? From Japanese to English, or English to Japanese, where there's meanings we just... don't build in in one of those languages? Maybe cheap translation spells give you the words and higher level ones give you smoother meaning...

Comments

[senmut]

We tend to have them limited when there is a cultural gap. Like a wizard using the spells to talk with a drow from a very evil city finds it almost impossible to convey 'friend' without having to sort through nuances like 'person I have not killed yet who is useful to me' to 'cannon fodder who doesn't know it', and I think that's fun to play with.

Plus occasional formality fails.

[jesuswasbatman]

That would almost certainly lead to people who used the cheap spells in high-formality cultures getting rapidly executed by enraged aristocrats who thought that they were receiving the equivalent of having their feet urinated on (look up Charles Lennox Richardson, for example).

[lokifan]

That's such an interesting point re: magic! This isn't an answer but it makes me think of how often magic users - Willow & Giles from Buffy or Merlin from T H White both being examples - have been presented as translators alongside their magic.