Ogre at Memorial Day 2018

[TheAmishStig]

Originally Posted by Mack_JB

I like these three (courtesy Google Translate, may not be 100% correct):

Zulu: isiphayiphi

Finnish: putkieläin

Luxembourgish: Päifstéier

I can't begin to pronounce the Finnish one, but it certainly looks cool!

Love the idea of there being some culture that either doesn't know or is too proud to adopt "foreign" words for these monsters, so do what languages do best and invent new compound words based on descriptive portmanteau.

Languages within the PEF would know the worlds at least in some PEF official language or another, and Sahara Combat Zone is a political minefield waiting to be stepped in (allegations of "what are you, racist? Why do the primitives have to be in Africa, huh?")...

Still, it makes me wonder, and...yes! Yes, yes yes yes yes yes. It's clean, it's crisp, it's something we silly westerners can say without tripping over our own tongues, they're a power player in the Ogre universe, and it's absolutely something a country like China would do.

I wonder how open Steve and Drew are to adopting "Guǎn shòu"...literally "Pipe Beast", and pronounced "Gwan Show"...as the Chinese Hegemony's native word for "Cybertank".

It seems especially poignant given both "Guǎn Yu" (a warrior so skilled the ancient Chinese deified him) and "Guǎn Dao" (said warrior's polearm) have deep respect within Chinese culture...

[ColBosch]

Keep in mind that all languages can develop names for things that aren't literal translations. "Tank" is an excellent example from English: it was the codeword assigned to the Mk. I project by the British to conceal just why skilled machinists and steel were being diverted. The original German terms - sturmpanzerwagen or panzerkampfwagen - are more literal, but "tank" became so synonymous with AFVs that now panzer is taken to translate to "tank" more often than its original meaning of "armor."

So guǎn shòu could literally translate to "pipe beast," but when used in context any Chinese speaker would understand it to mean "cybertank," as would translators. For that matter, I'd like to suggest that the specific Chinese name for the Dragon landship be Lung wang. It might not be properly amphibious, but it likely resembles a turtle more than it does the typical serpentine Eastern dragon.

[TheAmishStig]

Originally Posted by ColBosch

Keep in mind that all languages can develop names for things that aren't literal translations. "Tank" is an excellent example from English: it was the codeword assigned to the Mk. I project by the British to conceal just why skilled machinists and steel were being diverted. The original German terms - sturmpanzerwagen or panzerkampfwagen - are more literal, but "tank" became so synonymous with AFVs that now panzer is taken to translate to "tank" more often than its original meaning of "armor."

So guǎn shòu could literally translate to "pipe beast," but when used in context any Chinese speaker would understand it to mean "cybertank," as would translators. For that matter, I'd like to suggest that the specific Chinese name for the Dragon landship be Lung wang. It might not be properly amphibious, but it likely resembles a turtle more than it does the typical serpentine Eastern dragon.

Rightright. Starting there comes entirely from J.Durr and Mack_JB's thinking my nephew's so cute his name for Ogres deserves to be lore...and was thrilled sitting there playing with Google Translate that one of the languages that'd be meaningful to the Ogre universe had such a good-sounding name.

Thinking that the word would keep its original non-compound connotation for long would be like insisting English speakers hear "butterfly" and think "churned milk airborne nuisance", not "a butterfly".