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Old 04-22-2021, 02:06 PM   #31
maximara
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Default Re: Banestorm language question - english?

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Originally Posted by Rupert View Post
From further down p.33, English won't help you. French might if you land in just the right place. Being able to read Classical Arabic and speak either Classical or modern Arabic is good in the Muslim places, and Church Latin is good in Christian lands - these will at least let you speak to scholars and other educated people.
All language even Latin drift. What Latin Sounded Like - and how we know

As for the rest I seriously doubt any modern language would allows you function above broken. English when though a major change in pronunciation and spelling to the point it is called the great vowel shift

Take Chauser from the 1380s to 1400s:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Now here is those lines in modern English:
When April with its sweet-smelling showers
Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid
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Old 04-22-2021, 02:18 PM   #32
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Default Re: Banestorm language question - english?

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Originally Posted by Stormcrow View Post
Since the Banestorm happened in 1050, the "medieval English" mentioned is Old English, just prior to the Norman Conquest.

How well do you understand this? https://youtu.be/oFX1nbD3dV0
As a native English speaker and having somewhere between Broken and Accented Danish, I think I'd have Broken level in understanding (though not speaking) that Medieval English. If Anglish has Norman French influences, that would bring it just a bit closer to something like Modern English. So I'd give the OPs characters Broken in Anglish.'

Last edited by Donny Brook; 04-22-2021 at 07:17 PM. Reason: Added 'understanding'.
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Old 04-22-2021, 03:34 PM   #33
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Default Re: Banestorm language question - english?

I think the problem is even worse. First nowadays we are used to global or at least nationwide media, everybody hears the right pronounciation of his language many times daily. I had a friend who collected old dialect in his mother language and was a lot of times shocked how much a accent changes even in a small radius, and how fast a language develops.
Ok there is latin which every scholar at least can read, correct pronounciation is another matter, I´m quite sure Octavius wouldn´t understand a word of a todays latin teacher. Also the elves have a trade common language which given the long leve of elves would change slowly, than there are several organized religions, which would preserve anglish or arabic quite well.
But in the country? The gentry and the scholars / priests may have a good level at their language, but the rest of the population especially in the hinterlands will most certainly have " language" that is a nonunderstandable mishmash by foreigners, and foreigners is everybody from more than a days journey. This people live for generations in the same place with little or no contact to foreigners. Just read some old medieval travel logs maybe from ibn battuta and you will see how often this well educated folks needed a guide just because nobody could understand the local language, even in the same realm. Now imagine a world where people from several worlds and races came together.
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Old 04-22-2021, 04:12 PM   #34
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Default Re: Banestorm language question - english?

I'd be tempted to give language a Familiarity Penalty for local accents. Spend a couple of days listening and you are back to just the penalty for Broken or Accented but passing through a town yeah another -2 or -3. When my dad was stationed in Germany in the early 60s my parents noticed how much difference a couple of towns over meant in understanding. I was too young to notice.
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Old 04-22-2021, 04:25 PM   #35
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Default Re: Banestorm language question - english?

I know it's a stretch but I feel tempted to say the brainwashing magic used by the Ministry of Serendipity leaves a very bare bone understanding of the local language as side effect.
They're wiping your memory of anything that could be useful, so might as well leave something in exchange, right?
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Old 04-22-2021, 06:33 PM   #36
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Default Re: Banestorm language question - english?

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Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
Norwegian and Danish are more similar than Cockney and Hoi Toider, despite the former pair being considered two separate languages and the latter being considered accents or dialects of English. I would imagine if you put somebody from London and somebody from Okracoke in a room, it would be a while before either of them realized the other was even speaking English.
Native Londoner here, although not a Cockney: that's a dialect confined to a small part of the city. I just tried a couple of YouTube videos, and Hoi Toider isn't particularly hard to understand. Cockneys all understand ordinary London English, just as Hoi Toiders understand ordinary American English; they'd get the hang of each other pretty fast.
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Old 04-22-2021, 08:38 PM   #37
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Default Re: Banestorm language question - english?

Gurps likes Science! and tends to assume scientific processes by default. I've emntioned that Yrth Anglish diverged from our English's evolution halfway between Beowulf and Chaucer and "should" be no more familiar than that.

However, there are Mysterious Forces at work in the IW setting. Centrum English diverged from out timeline almost as far in the past and yet is no worse than Accented. Then there's some reason that the language in the United States of Lizardia is even closer than that.

The languages of Yrth do not _have_ to be reasonable in their relation to Homeline's.
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Old 04-22-2021, 09:00 PM   #38
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Default Re: Banestorm language question - english?

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
However, there are Mysterious Forces at work in the IW setting. Centrum English diverged from out timeline almost as far in the past and yet is no worse than Accented. Then there's some reason that the language in the United States of Lizardia is even closer than that.

The languages of Yrth do not _have_ to be reasonable in their relation to Homeline's.
To be fair, even if English was useful in understanding Anglish, it would still bother me more that an Anglo-Saxon tongue became dominant.
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Old 04-23-2021, 09:13 AM   #39
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Default Re: Banestorm language question - english?

If you really want English that you can't understand immediately, there are some dialects in the carribean that are pretty unintelligible to american speakers until you've listened to them for a few weeks. I hear people talk about taking a month or two to get used to it, but I think my own time was closer to two weeks before I understood most of it. (This was the Georgetown Guyana Creole, others vary in difficulty).


I never had to learn to speak the creole, just to strip out of my English all the words and grammar they didn't have.



I have my doubts if Creoles represent normal linguistic drift though. They are the result of teaching a bunch of displaced people a new language altogether at once.



Quote:
Originally Posted by Sorenant View Post
I know it's a stretch but I feel tempted to say the brainwashing magic used by the Ministry of Serendipity leaves a very bare bone understanding of the local language as side effect.
They're wiping your memory of anything that could be useful, so might as well leave something in exchange, right?

Is the Ministry that quick and thorough? I always think of them stamping out technology rather than processing banestorm victims. Though possibly that's a more benevolent mode of operation...
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Old 04-23-2021, 09:27 AM   #40
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Default Re: Banestorm language question - english?

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Is the Ministry that quick and thorough? I always think of them stamping out technology rather than processing banestorm victims. Though possibly that's a more benevolent mode of operation...
If they wanted to have new banestormees standing out they'd have to do something about Language and Cultural Familiarity (as well as clothes and similar).

Unfortuantely, having the Ministry work out with the RAW of Gurps Magic is actually quite dificult. Geasing people rather than using Permanent Forgetfulness would probably work better. Granting a language would be a multi-hundred pt Ensorcelemnt.
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