About Learning Other Languages

[tiddy ogg]

I too, find that jars you out of the Cantr world, but can't see how anything can be done. The languages might well be officially named Burgian or whatever but I'm sure the RL titles will still occur, if only so people can find which language to translate to/from.

[Sicofonte]

I tend to call each language with the name that the native people call it.

Eg, when my character found a polish character, that guy called his own language as Polsky, and thus my character do.



About the English/German/Spanish note, I think the first English appearance in the island was a CRB (before the 1400). I believe that no one reported it, and the next newspawns and travelers took it as legal, and the snowball was growing and growing.
At least, no one uses the English publicly.
Now there are some English characters lurking around, but rather far from that place, and none of the English notes (a map and a encicllopaedia) have got there.
So... -shrugs-

About the buildings named "De España", I am sure the reason of its appearance was the continuous attacks that Wilmer (argentinian) made against Spain and "from-Spain" players in the forum. I was witness of how it begun to appear "España" buildings whilst Wilmer was flaming in the Spanish forum.
Of course, knowing the reason doesn't justify it. I would ask the Cantr staff (please, don't look at the words below my username) to remove them, but, since we can change it IC, I never did.
Now the problem is worse because there are several notes referring to the "Casa de España" (House of España).

I would ask for a complete remove of any word "España" (I live in Spain, and I love Spain, but that's not the issue)

[Joshuamonkey]

Maybe IG they went from Español to España, although I don't find that likely.

And I like Umberto Faroni talking in Spanish, even if I can only understand most of it.

Que mala memoria tienes Wilmer, ya no recuerdas ni a los enemigos, ni donde vives..... ¡¡¡¡ uyyyy !!! , tendras que tomar rabos de pasa que dicen que van muy bien para la memoria, y de paso cortate las uñas de las manos, de esa forma no confundiras la a de anvil con la c de carrot.

My Spanish knowledge:
What bad memory you have Wilmer, you already remember neither the enemys nor where you live..... (You can guess)!!!. you would have that to take rabos of passed what they said that they're going very good for the memory, and of passed cutting the nails (initially I thought of uñas as some) of your hands, of this form don't confuse the a of anvil with the c of carrot.

Wow, that was fun...and that's why I still use a translator to help me understand Spanish with my Spanish character, lol.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

Moved from CRB forum to GD as it is a discussion and the CRB forum is for reports.

[Arlequin]

Good one Josh. 'rabos de pasa' is like... that was... raisin stems *had to check the dictionary for that*. Here it is said that drinking an infusion of raisin stems improves memory.

Dropping some exceptions and complexities, Spanish would be a quite nice language. It's a total mashup of european, northafrican and american words and it was born as a simpler bridge language back when half Spain was barbarian and half muslim... sort of a XIII century Interlingua. It helped to introduce the arabic science into Europe and trigger the Renaissance.

It's a bit sad when past events like the awful dictatorship we had for 40 years or the bloody conquer of Latinamerica is mixed with what is actually a language that welcomes cultural influences.

[sanchez]

On this same topic, I recently made a Spanish character (though I'm English, and barely know any Spanish (unwise, perhaps, I know) ). But I noticed that, where my character spawned, there is a trilingual note with English, German and Spanish. That's not the problem, since I'm sure that the different cultures met naturally. The problem is that the languages are referred to in the note as English, Deutsch and Español. Also, the name of one of the buildings includes España (Spain).
As far as I'm aware, any reference to real life, countries, etc is a CRB, and I think these languages should have been given an IC name. For example, if the Spanish charries arrive in an English land from the East, the language could become known as Eastish. Or it'd be based on the name given to the land that they come from, etc.

Agreed, but it'd be tough to enforce. There is a uniquely Cantrian word in use in the Polish Zone for foreigners, 'Zamordki' (singular, 'zamordek'). It's meaning is somewhat ambiguous, as has been described to me. Perhaps someone who knows this better can correct me, but afaik it goes something like this. 'Morze' means 'sea', 'za' is a preposition, so za-morzem = 'beyond the sea', and the rest is a grammatical diminutive. But there also exist the verbs 'zabijac' and 'mordowac' meaning 'to kill', and the form 'zamordowac'.... And I'm just not sure how we are supposed to interpret it.

[Zanthos]

From my meetings with the polish...

it might mean kill all beyond the sea? Their pirates are ruthless and highly active. If push comes to shove the english zone wont stand a chance.

[Severine]

I know this is an old post but I figured I'd use this one for my question instead of making a whole new one, since it's about basically the same thing..

I only speak English, but I'm interested in learning french. At the current moment, I don't speak a word of french, but I did find some lessons online...

Can I do this? I know it's gonna be hard, but I'm a pretty good RP'er and I think I can get away with it...I just don't really know how to go about it...

Do I just click on the French language link on the top and create another character? Do I have to go back to english to play my other characters? Will I have to use a translator to understand the other characters?

[SekoETC]

You don't have to click on the link, you just log into your account in English as usual, but when you go to character creation, you select French from the drop down menu for languages. If you are spawned in a language, I think you're allowed to use a translator to understand what people are saying. Making your character some sort of a halfwit might help. But if you have no or very little previous experience in the language, it's gonna be tough. I get a headache from playing in Swedish and I've studied it for eight years. I haven't even tried French (studied 3 years of that and have forgotten most of it).

[Doug R.]

I had four years of german and spawned a german character on my first account. Half the words they were speaking weren't even in my dictionary (and not in the online translators) - slang is omnipresent. You'll have a very, very hard time unless you're gifted with languages. I let my german charrie starve.

[Severine]

Well I made a french character, just cause I'm too curious to not try it, lol.
Hopefully, I won't piss off any of the french people...
Course, I use babelfish to translate everything, but it's just so I can know what's going on, not for the character to use, she doesn't understand anything anyone is saying...but I'm hoping she'll learn and be able to communicate with them.

[Joshuamonkey]

I have a Spanish character who is much older than anyone she's met in that region. I'm just in Spanish 4 and I use translators mucho, but I definitely think it's educational.

[CantrFreak]

Is it alright to refer to ones own language Cantrian (and thus, themselves Cantrian) and call whatever the other person is (Polish I suppose) some other name or something? He's a pretty rascist guy...

[Joshuamonkey]

I'm guessing that that is preferred. At least, I don't think calling it Cantrian would be worse than calling it English. One of those things that are up to the player/character to decide.

[pipok]

Is it alright to refer to ones own language Cantrian (and thus, themselves Cantrian) and call whatever the other person is (Polish I suppose) some other name or something? He's a pretty rascist guy...

Why a rascist? If a character is living on the island which is called "Cantr" by inhabitants, he can call himself a Cantrian and his language is Cantrian too.
But there are many places, where they don't have any name for their langugage. They don't need, because they had never met people speaking any other language. And even then - they find any distinctive name for the other, alien language, not their own. Like: "NN is a Zamordek, he is speaking language of Zamordki, not ours". Everyone simply knows what "his language", "our language" is. A name for it is not needed.