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Use of other langauge words in English area

Posted: Mon May 09, 2005 11:07 pm
by formerly known as hf
What's the rules about this? It's nice to see people RP different accents/colloquial terms that are found in english - but what about the use of non-english words? I guess it's not a problem if they're already fairly commonly used with English speakers?....

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 1:11 am
by swymir
Perhaps you can give an example of what you have been hearing?

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 2:01 am
by mortaine
Not from game, but something like "capiche?"

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 2:09 am
by swymir
Are you sure they weren't saying "Capuche". :lol:

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 2:18 am
by DylPickle
I've heard a few people use "Madame" before...

And "ciao", but that's fairly international now.

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 2:55 am
by nitefyre
The MacGregor Clan has used a Scottish accented tongue for couple of hundreds of days now...and I don't see why we should change our tradition.

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 2:58 am
by swymir
Well that is part of their culture. Rather interesting in my opinion. I see no problem with using other words so long as it makes sense and can still be read by people who only speak english. Now if someone spoke almost every other word in spanish I would have a bit of a problem. Speaking of Spanish when is one of my characters going to die so I can create a spanish character and actually feel like I'm studying while playing cantr.

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 3:06 am
by nitefyre
:twisted: Don't tempt me.

Anyways, you'll probably just end up using a translator. :oops:

But anyhow, can we move this out of GS to GD so we can discuss this?

Lang bide th' clan!

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 11:27 am
by formerly known as hf
I've heard the scottish accents, and I like them. I'm not against the use of accents and foreign words at all, I like it. I can't think of any examples, I was just wondering where (if) there was a line?

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 1:24 pm
by wichita
There was the nutter in Lake Village that started rattling off what appeared to be complete sentences in what appeared to be Dutch one day. I'm not really sure if that crossed the line as much as the insane OOC responses to it, but I didn't care for the whole scene personally.

Accents and gibberish are great, but I personally think actual foreign languages should be kept to a minimum in each area, except for those situations when two language areas actually meet each other. Then it's a completely different situation. Actually, I guess I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more mixing of language groups. Probably wouldn't want it to get too extreme for danger of causing mass confusion, but it would definitely be cool if there were a few more Columbus lands in the West Indies type of encounters.

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 1:51 pm
by The Industriallist
nitefyre wrote:The MacGregor Clan has used a Scottish accented tongue for couple of hundreds of days now...and I don't see why we should change our tradition.

I think those accents, and a lot of Mac Gregor culture, are terrible breaches...(could you guess?) However, they also date back to a day when, if you look at old events and items and such, it's pretty clear that the CR was much, much fuzzier...

Now doing anything about them would cause a much bigger CR problem than leaving them alone and noting that wherever it came from, their culture is now in character.

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 2:21 pm
by wulf
My English speaking characters haven't encountered anyone using another language (apart from badly mangled English!).

On the other hand, my Spanish character has encountered several German speakers. It's really hard to roleplay learning a language; you can pick up a few nouns but anything beyond that is going to be very hard because of the limited means of physical interaction. Unless you're fluent in the language of the other person, how can you reliably explain to them the actions you're taking to give meaning to your words?

Since that character has now encountered German speakers several times, my solution has been to rely on my limited school-boy German to communicate with them. Picking up all the nuances via a translator would seem like cheating but being able to exchange a few simple words seems a reasonable way to keep the wheels of the game turning in areas where language groups regularly meet.

Wulf

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 4:09 pm
by mortaine
Well, you can do what they did in the French area, and point to something, say its name, have the other guy say its Norwegian name, and then write the two names down in a "dictionary."

It's not perfect, but it gets the point across. If someone says to you:
'Gobbly boggly goober "500 g stone"?'

You know they're probably asking for 500 grams of stone.

It's even easier now that you can point to buildings and paths:
"Gobbly boggle boggle mooka?" *points to path to somewhere else, then goes down it*

Yeah, you can sit there and puzzle out meaning, or you can make the intuitive leap and say "he probably wants me to follow him."

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 6:15 pm
by Nick
mortaine wrote:Well, you can do what they did in the French area, and point to something, say its name, have the other guy say its Norwegian name, and then write the two names down in a "dictionary.""


Dutch, not Swedish.

And I suppose the MacGregors should appear cool and authentic to any newish players. But since my character knew the founder before he for some reason changed his name scottish and started to speak in a scottish accent, I find it quite lame.

Posted: Tue May 10, 2005 6:24 pm
by mortaine
"Dutch not Swedish"

Who said Swedish? Anyway, since I no longer have French characters, all I could remember was that it was:
a) not a language I could remember
b) a language from that general region of the planet
c) called "Sil" in Cantr.