The Morozi Accent, Linguistic Purism, And Why We Need A Third Morozi Accent

[Spungus]

I'd like to start this by saying I do not condone language purism or the concept of accents being tied to prestige OOCly.
Now that that's out of the way...
Primaries and Secondaries of the Empire. The wiki page touches on the idea of Secondaries being elevated into the status of a Primary. It does not describe how this happens or what the differences between them are other than that they're shorter, which, frankly, I don't think anybody really needed to know. Normally, nobody would care about this. But I am a stupid asshole and I like to play characters who have achieved things in their life. One of these characters was born a Secondary, graduated a Strelitz academy with high honors, and was adopted into House Strelitz proper, with all of the fluff and honor of a member of the Great House itself (further cemented by her service in the Royal Morozian Orbital Assault Regiment), with the caveat that she doesn't own land, and, since she is abroad, cannot own land.
The Empire's page is full of these double standards where nobility is not clearly defined and the process of secondaries becoming primaries is hinted at, but also discouraged, often within short spans of one or the other (e.g. "Land-owning nobility going abroad to seek employment or for extended amounts of time is a major social faux-pas that will inevitably see their land redistributed to another member of their family, their title stripped and their status as a member of the nobility placed in question," - At the top of the Peerage, Noble Orders, and Titles dropdown, followed by  "Lord/Lady: A generic title used to refer to a landless noble lacking other honorifics, such as the children of a noble," which seems to imply that non-land-owning nobles exist and can be played.)

I digress. The main issue I seek to bring to light is the lack of separation between Born Primaries and Secondaries-Turned-Primaries (henceforth referred to as Elevated Secondaries) at a glance.
There are two Morozi accents, Vulgar and High Morozi. Vulgar Morozi is considered to be the dialect of common people, while High Morozi is considered to be the prestigious dialect of those above them. High Morozi is described, in the accent description, as being commonly taught to wealthy secondaries to brush shoulders with nobility (and the concept of Elevated Secondaries is noticeably lacking).
As it stands, with accents, you are either a commoner or a noble, and there is no in between.
My proposed solution is this: Give Dominians a third accent similar to how Eridani characters have Dreg, Suit, and Reinstated Dreg. In this case, something like Vulgar Morozi, High Morozi, and Elevated Morozi, to distinguish characters between Secondaries, Born Primaries, and Elevated Primaries. Educating people on how to "properly" speak was a very, very common practice right up until around the late '60s in a number of places and would fit the Empire's lore well. No self-respecting Great House would have somebody bear their name and go abroad speaking with the accent of commoners. The Great Houses should be concerned with, if not teaching the proper High Morozi accent to those they accept into the House, at least teaching those that they accept how to speak in such a way that makes them distinct from their Secondary roots, and, possibly, separates them from those who were born into the House.
A reinstated Dreg accent is viewed as better than a non-reinstated accent, but worse than a Suit accent- An Elevated Morozi accent is viewed as better than a Vulgar Morozi accent, but worse than a High Morozi accent.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Spungus

[HanSolo1519]

+1
I can understand complaints about bloat, but this seems like small thing with enough use cases to be warranted.
I already know a few characters that fit in the "Reinstated dreg" niche in regards to lowborn-turned-highborn, and separating those "higher class peasants" from the "peasant-peasants" may make VMR feel properly lower class. Due to VMR already being treated like reinstated dreg in enough cases, I definitely support any way to open up more avenues for obvious nonnobles.

[Carver]

I'd like this if it's, similarly to HMR, exclusive to Goddess-abiding citizens of the Empire. I wouldn't want to see HMR 0.5/VMR 1.5 used for yet more contrarian Dominians, as some replacement for their "loss" of HMR availability.

[Spungus]

2 hours ago, Carver said:

I'd like this if it's, similarly to HMR, exclusive to Goddess-abiding citizens of the Empire. I wouldn't want to see HMR 0.5/VMR 1.5 used for yet more contrarian Dominians, as some replacement for their "loss" of HMR availability.

The accent, like HMR, is for members of nobility- however this accent would be for those who were relatively-recently elevated into the nobility.
To visualize, High Morozi would be used for people who were either born into nobility or were otherwise raised in nobility.
Elevated Morozi would be used for people who were elevated into nobility past a certain age, most likely 14 or 16.

TL;DR If you were nobility as a child you speak HMR; if you became a noble as an adult you speak EMR.

Edit: 2 hours later I realize this didn't address your concerns at all, but, in essence, this is High Morozi Lite - Secondaries that are loyal to the empire and considered part of nobility would take it, and would have the same, if not more expectations as their born-primary counterparts.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Spungus

[DeadLantern]

I disagree with this. 

Theoretically, this "Elevated Morozi" accent would merely come from Secondaries attempting to speak in the Tradeband-accented way of High Morozi, but I do not think the inability to speak in a perfect High Morozi accent constitutes the addition of an entirely new accent. It would probably be obvious that the Secondary you're speaking to is trying to imitate a High Morozi accent, but I feel like that is best noted in the flavor text. Hypothetically, you could have a very talented Secondary who manages to speak High Morozi in a way that is imperceptible to native High Morozi speakers. In that case, that character should just take the High Morozi accent. I do not agree with the idea that someone failing to sound completely like a certain accent is enough to justify the addition of another accent. For the record, I also disagree with the Reinstated Dreg accent for the same reasons.

This is different to the case of, say, the Old Ya'ssa accent and the New Ya'ssa accent present in the NKA. New Ya'ssa deserves to be its own accent as these noble Tajara are specifically learning to speak New Ya'ssa--not Old Ya'ssa. Presumably, New Ya'ssa has simplified/standardized pronunciation, made certain things regular, has more loan words from Siik'maas, etc. This is not simply a case of Tajara failing to speak perfect Old Ya'ssa--it is an entirely different way of speaking the same language. It is roughly equivalent to Classical Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin. Both of these different accents/pronunciation systems exist because they are simply different ways of pronouncing the same texts. People learning Ecclesiastical Latin are not trying to learn Classical Latin and failing to adopt the "correct" pronunciation. This is, however, presumably the case for the Secondary learning Tradeband and the High Morozi accent.

For the reasons above, I disagree with this addition of this accent, and if this one fails, I would also call for Reinstated Dreg to be removed as well. You can easily just note in your flavor text that your character sounds like they had a Secondary upbringing, or a Dreg upbringing, and that explains their slightly off but telling accent.

In the case of your character, I would say that they should use the Secondary accent but note in their flavor text that their Tradeband (or even their Sol Common/Morozi) sounds similar to a High Morozi accent, but is not quite perfect.

[SilverSZ]

6 hours ago, Spungus said:

The Empire's page is full of these double standards where nobility is not clearly defined and the process of secondaries becoming primaries is hinted at, but also discouraged, often within short spans of one or the other (e.g. "Land-owning nobility going abroad to seek employment or for extended amounts of time is a major social faux-pas that will inevitably see their land redistributed to another member of their family, their title stripped and their status as a member of the nobility placed in question," - At the top of the Peerage, Noble Orders, and Titles dropdown, followed by  "Lord/Lady: A generic title used to refer to a landless noble lacking other honorifics, such as the children of a noble," which seems to imply that non-land-owning nobles exist and can be played.)

Firstly, it is indeed correct that non land-owning nobles can be played, and there's multiple ways outside of being born to a noble to gain a noble title without being given land. Such as military service or being ennobled through marriage or the granting of a title. Their status as a member nobility being placed into question, for a land-owning noble who chooses to go abroad, exists in the case of the fact that they fucked up so badly being doing this, the complete removal of their titles and status could be on the table.

Every Dominian noble on the Horizon, aside from potentially Consular Officers, will be inherently a non-landed noble, as intended by the current guidelines. There's plenty of ways in which a secondary can be elevated to nobility, as mentioned before like marriage, military service, personal honours or even stuff like the Red Castle system on Zhurong. I've personally used both marriage and military service for ennobled secondaries of my own.

 

 

7 hours ago, Spungus said:

*The Actual Proposal*

Now, as for the proposal of an intermediate accent between HMR and VMR. I'm mixed on the idea. The idea is potentially good but I feel like at the moment, from doing some reading on accents and origins that how HMR is currently intended to be used is a little unclear to me. 

The High Morozi accent description says that "While most typically associated with nobles it is often taught to wealthy commoners in order to more easily brush shoulders with nobility." The Dominian Noble origin says that "The Primaries are the noble and liturgical classes of the Dominian Empire's humans, though the noble class of Dominia often sees Secondaries adopted into it." and "Secondaries that are elevated to nobility, though still primaries, tend to be slightly shorter than older families" which seems to imply that this origin is intended to be the one used by ennobled secondaries as well, which would mean they would be locked to HMR as an accent, specifically. 

However, my reading has always been that an origin should be based on your birth e.g: A Konyanger immigrant later in life to Xanu Prime would use the Konyang origin, not the Xanu origin. 

So I think what needs to be answered here is are commoners who are ennobled at some point in life, early or late, intended to use the Dominian Noble origin? In this case, it can be assumed speaking a proper HMR accent would be a requirement behind such ennoblement and if you wanted to imply it was learned or forced that would be best left to flavour text as DeadLantern suggests. Otherwise, if ennobled commoners are meant to use the origin of their birth. I wouldn't be against an intermediate accent being added to specifically show this aspect of their origin. Reinstated Dreg at least shows a precedent for accents being used in this way, and this is a place it would fit and could bring some benefit to a specific character archetype that would be cool to see.

In Summary. I would like to hear Human Lore's thoughts on what ennobled commoners should be selecting as an origin. Should they be picking the recently made noble one and intentionally be locked to using HMR? Or should they pick their origin based on their common birth? Which would open up the possibility for a specific ennobled commoner accent 

[Spungus]

Quote

So I think what needs to be answered here is are commoners who are ennobled at some point in life, early or late, intended to use the Dominian Noble origin? In this case, it can be assumed speaking a proper HMR accent would be a requirement behind such ennoblement and if you wanted to imply it was learned or forced that would be best left to flavour text as DeadLantern suggests. Otherwise, if ennobled commoners are meant to use the origin of their birth. I wouldn't be against an intermediate accent being added to specifically show this aspect of their origin. Reinstated Dreg at least shows a precedent for accents being used in this way, and this is a place it would fit and could bring some benefit to a specific character archetype that would be cool to see.
 

Secondaries that become primaries, according to this character complaint that was just answered a few hours ago, are intended to use Vulgar Morozi, and, by extension, the origin of their birth.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Spungus

[SilverSZ]

4 minutes ago, Spungus said:

Secondaries that become primaries, according to this character complaint that was just answered a few hours ago, are intended to use Vulgar Morozi, and, by extension, the origin of their birth.

Thank you!

In that case, whilst I personally think that you can use flavour text just fine to describe the intended accent whilst using VMR or Others. Reinstated Dreg sets a precedent for these middle ground accents existing and having more ways to customize a character is usually good in my opinion. Plus, highlighting this specific social class within Dominia would fit with how the other accents immediately place your position in society as VMR would be fully a Commoner Accent and EMR/HMR would be an immediate mark of nobility.

[Dreamix]

I agree with DeadLantern's reasoning.

I really do not like the idea of this accent (same as the reinstated dreg accent). I prefer when characters roleplay things like that out, note it in their flavor text, and make it a bit more nuanced than, like, the accent literally just telling you their backstory. I do not like when accents are treated as a origin/culture pronoun pins equivalent.

[Spungus]

See, but the thing with Dregs and Suits is the overwhelming presence of slang for each. Reinstated dreg can be remedied by having a dreg use suit slang in conversation. Morozi doesn't have any of these conventions, thus making the gap between Vulgar and High Morozi, effectively, unbridgeable except for flavor text

[Dreamix]

49 minutes ago, Spungus said:

See, but the thing with Dregs and Suits is the overwhelming presence of slang for each. Reinstated dreg can be remedied by having a dreg use suit slang in conversation. Morozi doesn't have any of these conventions, thus making the gap between Vulgar and High Morozi, effectively, unbridgeable except for flavor text

It absolutely is bridgeable - by acting like a like an elevated secondary. Wealthier than other secondaries, more refined manners, better quality clothing and jewelry, doing jobs that primaries do (like command or science), and not roles that secondaries prefer (like ops, engineer, secoff). There are so many ways to show these differences that are more nuanced and interesting than just wearing the "I AM ELEVATED PRIMARY" accent tag badge. This applies to dregs too.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Dreamix

[Zundy]

For me I guess it depends on if it's an important element for a lore detail. Are uplifted Secondaries a key aspect of Dominian lore or just a potential character concept someone could have? If the latter, wanting a specific accent for a specific scenario sort of opens the door to a sort of limitless selection of cross accents which seems in my opinion to be over the top. If the former then it makes sense since that's what accents are for, and the argument against them could be made for accents in general (just flavour text them). 

 

Are uplifted Secondaries intrinsic to Dominia lore?

[Spungus]

6 hours ago, Zundy said:

For me I guess it depends on if it's an important element for a lore detail. Are uplifted Secondaries a key aspect of Dominian lore or just a potential character concept someone could have? If the latter, wanting a specific accent for a specific scenario sort of opens the door to a sort of limitless selection of cross accents which seems in my opinion to be over the top. If the former then it makes sense since that's what accents are for, and the argument against them could be made for accents in general (just flavour text them). 

 

Are uplifted Secondaries intrinsic to Dominia lore?

I'm not a loremaster, but I AM a moron who gets confused over simple things and doesn't like things how they are.

I would make the argument that they are, because the concept is featured kind of prominently in the lore pages for it (specifically the idea that, though stratified, the Dominian social structure can be navigated with hard work and/or networking).