TRP2 Languages

[Reigen]

The way I understand it is that it's not supported, but not exactly disallowed. Basically it means that other players do not have to include you in if they're speaking another language and do not have to accept that you say your character speaks said language. For example:

Player A is a human and sees a group of blood elves speaking Thalassian. He can tell them "Hey, can you use tags instead of the actual language? My character understands it."

The Blood Elves can either:
A] Accept the human speaks it and start using tag
or
B] Tell the player they really don't support a human speaking Thalassian and keep using the ingame language so the human does not understand.

In either case, it is up to the other players and the GMs will more than likely side with the blood elves if they pick option B so long as they are not rude about it. Player A cannot force the Belfs to pick option A and has to accept the decision they make.

It's how it was explained to me at least when I asked for clarification. I personally like using the ingame language because I feel it prevents meta-gaming opportunities.

[Yau]

So night elves couldn't know thalassian and blood elves couldn't know darnassian?
The languages are not identical, but are extremely similar; thalassian specifically has pure darnassian phrases and words in it. http://www.wowpedia.org/Thalassian

[Caravan]

I should say no; the languages are different enough now as languages naturally change and split from one another.

Ah, a quick edit: For reference, think of how different Modern English is from Old English. Though we still retain some words from Old English (Wife, Chicken, House, etc), the vowels have shifted, other languages have influenced it, and syntax has changed.

[CappnRob]

The rule of languages is that if you can justify it IC, then feel free to use it IC, but the GMs can't force people to cooperate with you about it.

There are a few "expected" multilingual races, such as Dwarves and Gnomes should understand each other, and so should Orcs and Trolls. Lordaeron humans who were below the poverty line should maybe know Gutterspeak, as it's -technically- just a dialect of Lordaeron common spoken by the criminals and lowlifes.

Blood elves and Night elves, though, shouldn't understand each other, because their languages are very separated by time and culture.

So yeah. There you go.

[Yau]

"Blood elves and Night elves, though, shouldn't understand each other, because their languages are very separated by time and culture."

Well.... no they aren't, not by time. You have to remember not only that they come from the same people and that the languages come from the same root language, but that the people themselves have very long lives so that the differentiation that would occur over time would occur more slowly.

In WoW, the languages are very similar. In the lore outside of the game, the languages are very similar. There is even an instance when a High Elf spoke with two Night Elves briefly in Darnassian.

If everyone knows common now, shouldn't they also understand gutterspeak?

[Caravan]

Oh. they are quite separated by time -- thousands of years. Though they are long-lived, they were in relative isolation and any language kept in isolation will evolve from its parent language. Languages are not static entities; they grow.

Taken from Ze Wowpedia~!

So far, linguistic scholars have opted to err on the side of caution in documenting Darnassian terms and phrases that are also considered part of the Thalassian language. Certainly this issue, however delicate, merits further research. Nevertheless, addressing a high elf or blood elf with a Darnassian-specific word or phrase can be considered offensive or at the very least rather foolish, and so the speaker must handle the situation with care.

Though Thalassian may still contain Darnassian words, definitions of words change over time: They can either mean something completely different, or the opposite of what they originally were, or they can become so utterly obsolete as to be rendered absurd.

While (forgive me, I do believe I forgot the exact term) "Shakespearean" (16th century) English is pretty recognizeable to us, Middle English (Around the 12th Century) begins to stretch as some words become unfamiliar. Old English requires study to read and interpret accurately. That's a lot of change in, say, a thousand years. Expand this to, what, four thousand? That Thalassian and Darnassian continue to resemble each other closely at all (despite the extreme cultural differences) is pretty neat. Then again, take a language like Icelandic that has hardly changed at all -- a professor told me that Icelandic speakers can still read (though pronounciations are of course difference) the Sagas in the original. Not knowing any Iceland..ians... I can't confirm this for myself.

I will not pretend to know the instance of the High Elf speaking to the Night Elves, so I cannot address the brevity of the conversation nor the education/age of the High Elf, but if the former was a scholar perhaps this conversation would be feasible. Then again, it may have just been for the sake of story.

(I studied the evolution of the English language, so that is why I keep coming back to this. It's wonderful to be able to examine the evolution of Thalassian and its differences!)


As for Gutterspeak, that is an interesting question. It may just come again to an issue of dialects and not being able to accurately grasp a conversation, though some words and phrases may be similar.

[Lystaa]

To my understanding, most of those who would understand the 'Gutterspeak' dialect are probably dead (or undead). Either wiped out in the Third War, or the second invasion of the Scourge. Dialects aren't often the exact same as the root language, some words have different meanings or entirely new words are introduced. It's possible those who know common may be able to pick apart pieces of Gutterspeak though.

Also, isn't there an Addon that lets you understand/speak multiple languages? Though, I think it may only work with other people that has the same addon...

Edit: Caravan, your avatar totally wigs me out. I interpret it as the lady punching herself in the mouth, with all the bloood.... Ergh. :P

Second Edit: Tongues! That's what I was thinking of.

[BountyHunter]

Gutterspeak would sound like pure gibberish to someone who doesn't know Gutterspeak. The whole point of Gutterspeak originally was by shady criminal guilds to speak to one another privately. It is based around a very low form of Common with aspects of Dwarvish and Thalassian chucked in. You wont be understanding it.

[Caravan]

The whole point of Gutterspeak originally was by shady criminal guilds to speak to one another privately.

Learn something new every day! Thanks, Bounty!

(And... yes, Lystaa, it is a little crazy. If it helps, the character in the avatar is eating a horse heart. For a fertility ritual. NBD. :3 )

[CappnRob]

"Blood elves and Night elves, though, shouldn't understand each other, because their languages are very separated by time and culture."

Well.... no they aren't, not by time. You have to remember not only that they come from the same people and that the languages come from the same root language, but that the people themselves have very long lives so that the differentiation that would occur over time would occur more slowly.

In WoW, the languages are very similar. In the lore outside of the game, the languages are very similar. There is even an instance when a High Elf spoke with two Night Elves briefly in Darnassian.

If everyone knows common now, shouldn't they also understand gutterspeak?

Um, no, guy, there was like a 10 000 year difference between the Exile of the Highborne and the modern day of Azeroth. They ARE separated by time and culture. Just because languages are similar, does not make them mutually intelligible. Example: French, Italian, and Spanish are similar and share a root in Latin, but are not mutually intelligible. At best you can make an educated guess at what one is saying with them, assuming you know one of the others.

As for gutterspeak, again, it is a DIALECT, which are unique to their culture, their location, and their time. Unless you have a human who happens to be a Lordaeron survivor who lived in the criminal underground before the Third War, there is no way he'd understand Gutterspeak. It is completely unique to lowlife Lordaeron society, and nowhere else.

lrn2linguistics.

[Lystaa]

(And... yes, Lystaa, it is a little crazy. If it helps, the character in the avatar is eating a horse heart. For a fertility ritual. NBD. :3 )

(That's actually much better. Less self-harm inducing! Also, go go fertility rituals! ^^ )

[Aadora]

Seems to me a lot of peoples problem with races knowing the languages of others is that it blocks them off from being able to retreat behind their own language to hide what they are saying.

Problem is that is a real life situation. Trying to speak in a different language so that someone close to you won't understand you, only to find out they in fact understand everything you say.

Of course the languages aren't all alike. But Japanese isn't anywhere near English, yet thousands of people can speak both.

The Draenei have been here what, a few years? And many of them can speak fluent common. '

So it just seems pretty strange that races that have been here for hundreds of years can't understand the languages of others. What is stopping them from knowing it?

[Harmonic]

The rules are. To prevent metagaming and to give people a chance to have IC private conversations with those of their race without having to worry about being forced to share it with others.

Edit: I don't see what the fuss is about. I mean, the rule stands that if someone doesn't wish to do that, then they don't have to. To me that seems perfectly understandable, considering that -really- it seems like a way to prevent people from rolling tons of characters that know multiple languages.

I'm of the opinion profiles are getting crazier and crazier, but that's me.

[Yau]

But that means humans and orcs don't have that luxury.

[Aadora]

Yeah, humans don't know any languages that they could use to keep others from knowing what they are saying... Because as said, pretty much everyone knows Common.