Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Mazanec
In worlds like Shikaku-mon or Ming-3, which diverged over half a millennium ago, how different would English be? I know no penalties are listed in the sourcebooks, but I've heard renditions of how different English was in the 1400s, and figuring independent development from there, it might be quite different, I would expect. Could I talk to someone from one of those timelines?
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How much linguistic inertia does the worldline have?
I seem to recall a passage somewhere in
Infinite Worlds about worlds being on or near Quantum 5 because they had some similarities to Homeline - if I'm remembering that correctly, then one of the similarities could be similarity of language, and the English of some random worldline would be similar to the English of Homeline despite it not making sense for a divergent worldline to have developed its languages the same way Homeline did.
On the other hand, if the players enjoy roleplaying out difficulties in communication, go for the probably-realistic idea of different social stresses from the Point of Divergence onward producing different languages.
(Slight digression: It took me a few minutes to realize "PoD" didn't stand for "Print on Demand".)