Making Ya'ssa Accents Actually Usable

[KingOfThePing]

Lore Impact (Small/Medium/Large): Medium

Species: Tajara

Short Description: Adding an accent to Ya'ssa, so it requires less mental gymnastics to use a Ya'ssa accent.

How will this be reflected on-station?: Tajara with an appropiate background can select an accent for an otherwise de-facto dead language.

Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: Yes

Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team? Yes

Long Description:

An excerpt from the wiki ( Wiki Languages Page )

Quote

Siik'maas was the widely spoken language of Njarir, though amongst themselves they preferred to use the Ya'ssa dialect. Presumed to be the traditional tongue of the nobility, it uses a more refined alphabet and speech pattern believed to have evolved from a less-used ancient dialect. Hadii members have been recorded to still use Ya'ssa, though ultimately with the widespread annihilation of noble families, this language has fallen into disuse until its revival by the New Kingdom of Adhomai.

 

We can deduct from this excerpt, that modern day (New Kingdom) Tajara have a reason to speak Ya'ssa. Especially the quasi re-instated nobility from the NKA would have an interest in reviving (quote from the excerpt) language, to be more commonly used by the nobility, if it was only to differentiate themselves from the common folk. According to the wiki this revival happened, yet the only Ya'ssa accent represented and possible to select is the following:

Quote

Old Ya’ssa: the tongue of the old Tajaran nobility, spoken by those who were born before the first revolution. It differs from the modern Ya’ssa by having a far more complex set of rules, long-drawn-out sentences, and compound words. Old Ya’ssa is a dying tongue; as the version taught by the New Kingdom of Adhomai has mostly replaced it in the post-revolution noble generation.

 

Playing a normal Tajara, selecting this accent requires insane mental gymanastics, unbelievable backstories, insane justification or a combination of that. There exists a single character that has a believable justification to use this accent. This makes it a de-facto dead accent, if it cannot resonably be used by a character. Thus I propose to introduce a logical, lore-friendly and sensible way to be able to have Ya'ssa accents.

In my mind there are two possibilities. An accent that older nobility Tajara tried to adopt during/after the Second Revolution and an accent that younger noble Tajara (or applicable Tajara) would have learned in school "from the ground up". Meaning: one is an "imitation" accent for older Tajara and one is a "proper" one for younger Tajara to pick from.

 

"Rejuvenized Ya'ssa: After the Second Revolution, the newly seceded New Kingdom of Adhomai did it's best to revitalize it's old language of the nobility. Taught to young and aspiring nobles, this accent tries to replicate the long, drawn-out sentences, from traditional Ya'ssa, with a reduced set of rules to ease learning the language."

 

"New Ya'ssa: Born out of the Second Revolution, nobles all over the New Kingdom tried to bring back and revive the language of Old, with varying success. Less complex sentences and often plagued by intonation problems, depending from which accent was tried to learn away, this accent of Ya'ssa is often spoken by nobles who are in their best years, trying to mask away whatever language or accent they had to adopt before."

Edited March 16 by KingOfThePing
My grammar suffers after midnight

[Alberyk]

What accent should noble characters who were born and raised before the First Revolution should be pick with this change?

[KingOfThePing]

The existing one - Old Ya'ssa. It's not meant as a replacement for Old Ya'ssa, but an expansion on the accent in general. Maybe should have made that more clear.

I also didn't want to say that Old Ya'ssa is a bad accent, even if I am quite critical about it in this post. It's just not feasible for most, if not almost all characters, and this is my attempt to fix this., I am also not dead-set on the names and/or descriptions on the accents, obviously.

Edited March 17 by KingOfThePing

[Bear]

I would condense this into just New Ya'ssa. For both the generations born after the first civil war into today.

It would be a fun change I think to see some pompous accent for newer generations, however, two is a bit excessive for the amount of time elapsed.

[KingOfThePing]

That's fine by me. The initial idea was just to differentiate between a quasi "fake" Ya'ssa accent and one learned from the ground up. Maybe instead the Old Ya'ssa accent can be re-written to have less restrictions on who it can take. For example young nobles who got to learn the "proper" Old Ya'ssa during eduction or something similar as well.

Edited March 17 by KingOfThePing

[EJJ]

I love the idea of an Old and New Ya'saa accent, though I think rolling the two new ones into a single new accent would be for the best. If loredevs were comfortable with it, a performative "definitely fake ya'saa" accent could be an interesting third accent, though I don't know how you'd really distinguish it too much to not just make it New Ya'saa but slightly different.

[Carver]

My concern with making the Old/Pre-FR accent less restricted would be potentially running into the 'HMR Issue' where it's concerningly overused. As it stands, you have to strongly justify a character to have it - and I think rare accents with a strong lore tie-in are interesting! But I do also like the idea of a separate, new/imitation accent for younger nobility - and think that should be the more common/widespread option.