Increase Language Bloat - A Brainstorming Thread

[Kaed]

13 minutes ago, DanseMacabre said:

I absolutely detest the notion that Humans should be undermaintained and treated as a secondary species that is unimportant and only exists to facilitate training players to play xenos. It is utterly nonsensical to suggest that we would be better off by not giving distinct lore, languages, and mechanics to Humans - ultimately we play in a Human setting, and by making Human lore as minor and unimportant and easy to understand we would be making our very setting less interesting and enjoyable - because we don't play in alien space. This suggestion is not "bloat for the sake of bloat" . It is to make the predominant species represented in our lore more diverse, dynamic, and interesting. After all, they are the most common race on the server, like you said. And why would we not focus most of our work and attention to what most of the playerbase plays as?

Because I don't care about them.  Obviously your mileage is different. I've been advocating for a different, non-human dominant setting for ages.  As far as I'm concerned, they're roleplaying training wheels to do something more interesting later. They're common because they require the least forethought, it doesn't make them worthy of being more special.

Edited June 18, 2020 by Kaed

[Alberyk]

15 minutes ago, Kaed said:

As far as I'm concerned, they're roleplaying training wheels to do something more interesting later. They're common because they require the least forethought, it doesn't make them worthy of being more special.

This is an opinion/vision that no one in the lore team shares. Humanity has its own place in the lore and they deserve as much attention as any other species.

[Kaed]

12 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

This is an opinion/vision that no one in the lore team shares. Humanity has its own place in the lore and they deserve as much attention as any other species.

Even if I agreed with that, by definition it doesn't mean they deserve extra attention and languages that the others don't get.

If the lore team is of the opinion that there humans are on the same ground as everyone else, I can get behind that even if I don't feel the same way.  But the topic of this thread is specifically that humans deserve more for no particular reason other than that they are the 'main' race, and that bay has a bunch.  It's even referred to as 'language bloat' in the title.

Edited June 18, 2020 by Kaed

[Alberyk]

Tajara and unathi have more than one native language. Ipc can also learn sol common. Dionae can pick sinta'unahi.  Skrells and shells have more slots than anyone else. In regards to languages, humans are somewhat barebones. I would be fine with adding one or more options to help with their lore representation.

[MattAtlas]

I have previously stated my support for more languages on the code side of things. I personally think the hardest part is getting everyone to agree on the languages and making a presentable UI for them - because as it is, we don't have one.

[OffRoad99]

On 17/06/2020 at 10:10, Guest Marlon Phoenix said:

Language in the past was primarily based on class. You can tell a lot about a character's background by the language they are speaking.

Language is also a powerful method of reinforcing social groups. Language is one of the important elements of expressing a character's culture, alongside clothing for the sprite. Call it a clique or not, but friend groups in-character more often than not share a language. Creating more languages with our limited slots will make these groups smaller in size and more numerous. It could be interesting. The break up of the major languages for humanity would reinforce the importance of basic so that would be neat. Or superfluous. Do we have any data on the languages on Bay and its impact on anything?

This. THIS.
Bay's language panel was spectacular and Humanity, like in many other sci-fi settings, seems to be pretty widespread to warrant the existance of many other languages other than Sol Common & Tau Ceti Basic. Fingers crossed, I hope we'll get this "language bloat" somewhere in the future. Hell, I'm keeping a language slot free for my character in the hope that we'll get them..

[DronzTheWolf]

Honestly, I still think there should be a bastard Human-Unathi language for use on Dominia and maybe Ouerea. 
The two(primary) places where humans and unathi live together. 

[furrycactus]

As far as I'm aware, the accents system was more or less viewed as all that was going to be implemented in terms of language bloat, so it's unlikely that we'll be getting a considerable amount of new languages with that in mind.

That said,

4 hours ago, DronzTheWolf said:

Honestly, I still think there should be a bastard Human-Unathi language for use on Dominia and maybe Ouerea. 
The two(primary) places where humans and unathi live together. 

I personally would be on board with this, but we'd need the input of the rest of the human team and the unathi team.

[Lmwevil]

What if we had insane numbers of languages but everyone has a minor ear translator so dialects still work. Some languages are too alien, gives more language options without causing clique issues.

 

edit: also on bay nobody uses all the languages because nobody would understand them

Edited August 25, 2020 by Lmwevil

[DeadLantern]

Unathi have been on Dominia for 26 years, and a large section of Dominians (Fisanduhans) actively resist Unathi culture seeping into Dominia.

A pidgin could perhaps exist on Dominia. Unathi can not select Sol Common as one of their languages, so I will assume that Unathi can only communicate in TCB. I would think TCB would service as the business/lingua franca tongue for humans and Unathi on Dominia. In some places in Dominia, where humans and unathi live very close together, or do trade with a lot but still do not understand TCB, a pidgin would probably exist, though the existence of such a place would be asspull.

Additionally, this language wouldn't even technically be a language. A pidgin isn't a language until it has people who speak it natively as a first language (then it becomes a creole). So, for a "language" to exist, there would have to be a place in Dominia where the Unathi and Humans do business talk regularly but neither of them care to or speak TCB. They decide to create some bastard language. I do not buy this for the following reasons:

The existence of such a place would be rare and certainly not representative of Dominia as a whole (so why would the entire country adopt it?)

This place would have to immediately start trying to create some bastard business language with these warlords (this could happen in 26 years, I give you that).

And, plus, it wouldn't even be a language, technically. A child would have to be born within 26 years and they would have to start learning this pidgin language as their /first/ language, not sol common or Azaziba, and enough parents would have to do this for it to be actually considered a language.

It does not make sense for there to be a bastard language on Dominia.

 

[DronzTheWolf]

1 hour ago, DeadLantern said:

~snip~

 

Fair enough, though disappointing.