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Clarification on Foreign Languages

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 12:29 am
by rklenseth
Just need some clarification from the Players Department. I noticed in the past day that there are characters (they seem to be newspawns) that are speaking in foreign languages in the Quillanoi that is an English Area. I believe at one time it was decided that if you are playing an English speaking character then that character should not know any other language unless taught it by another character who can which at this time would most likely be foreign language character. I just want to know if that is still the case and if so then it might be best to post something that this is the rule and hopefully this is stop in Quillanoi.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 12:45 am
by west
It's not a foreign language, RKL, it's an english-based pidgin with germanic grammar. It's not that hard to understand, though, if you put a few seconds effort into it.


It's not CR break, it's RP.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 12:54 am
by rklenseth
Actually, I was talking about the guy that spoke in French then Spanish and then Italian and then God knows what other language.

Not the one that no one could understand. :wink:

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 12:56 am
by west
Yeah actually I just saw that. My bad.

But yeah.

I maintain that he's understandable, you just gotta put forth the effort.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 12:59 am
by rklenseth
I take it that the one who is speaking gibberish (or whatever you like to call it) is your character since you are being somewhat defensive about this. :wink: :lol:

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 2:45 am
by west
Don't assume. I happen to be a connessieur (however you spell it) of gibberish.

Apology

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 2:56 am
by Emandir
Oops! Mea maxima culpa! I'm the newspawn you're talking about... :oops:
First, let me say I've read nowhere that the characters had to be monolingual... As a language freak from Unilang (see the address in my signature :wink: ), I thought it was quite normal to speak several in Cantr, are we're used to here...
I know the staff's very busy, but I think that clear and complete rules are really missing...

Secondly, as I'm not an English native speaker, I must confess that I didn't understood a word, nor ever guessed one, in what |west|'s character said, and couldn't imagine it has something to do with English at all. :shock: By the way, this is really interesting, and it would be great if you could post something about it at Unilang, |west| (sorry for spamming :wink: )

Finally, rklenseth, God knows I spoke French, Spanish, Italian and Breton! :lol:

I feell really sorry for this misunderstanding and I promise I won't ever do it again! :oops:

Jean-Luc

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 3:00 am
by Emandir
"|west|" a écrit :
Don't assume. I happen to be a connessieur (however you spell it) of gibberish.

It's connaisseur in French and connoisseur in English (from ancient French spelling) :)

And if you're really what you say, Unilang is made for you!
(Now they'll kill me for these insistend ads!)

Jean-Luc

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 3:17 am
by Meh
I understand what you are saying about the rules.

In Cantr the different cultures have not meet yet so I belive that is the reason for the monolanguage.

Now that may sound silly since in real life every language in the game has close common roots and those cultures knew each other but that is the rule.

The Uni language site and stuff is neat. I was hoping that a language program from a school would be interested in Cantr. The Unilang makes just as much sense. It has got to be a good test of written language skill to try to communicate in Cantr. Even simple things like "I will pay you 50 grams of iron a day to xyz" is good pratice for begginers.

The question/statement I have for the players department is that if your chracter goes from one language area to another and you happen to know both, then are you instantly allowed to be fluent in that other language? I don't see how that could be stopped anyway if that wasn't the case. So I guess what I am saying is that it is allowed to be fluent in other languages in Cantr as long as you have met at least one character of that language or someone who had met someone etc.

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 6:26 am
by west
So anyone in Quil can now be fluent in Moorspechk! :D

Posted: Thu Feb 12, 2004 3:55 pm
by Jos Elkink
David (Meh), you have the rules right - people are supposed to play in the language of the group they spawn in and when they meet another language they are allowed to speak that language.

Of course, it would be more interesting to have a requirement that you spend some time learning that language, but such a rule would simply be too hard to control. The capital rule is bad enough to maintain :) ...

For roleplaying sake, however, it is more fun to have your character being unable to speak the language :) ... My Dutch character just met an English speaking character (who is not on an English island, so that as such is a bit bad), but simply has no clue what the guy is talking about :) ...

And Emandir, your advertisement for UniLang is fine and the site deserves it ;) ... I think Cantr and UniLang are in no sense competition of each other and both can be interesting for people interested in languages. And you speaking all those languages is not disastrous, but it is better to sort of stop it and just start characters in different language areas :) ...

Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 9:56 am
by Emandir
And what happens when your character meets someone speaking a language you don't speak in the real life :?
It just happened to me in the French area where one of my char met a Dutch one, and I can tell you it's hell :wink:

Jean-Luc

Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 12:20 pm
by Dipsy
I know, I am a dutch guy in a french area and I try to talk to a french guy (guess you Emandir) and in real-life my french also stinks.
But I try to not to know any words without him (Emandir) kinda teaching me in-game. Sorry for that Emandir. My character never met a French or english character before so he doens't speak it in game :(

excuse moi

BTW never knew that was a french area.. oops I am a long way from home.

Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 2:37 pm
by rklenseth
Well, now you all know how it felt when people from different lands met up and couldn't understand what the hell they were saying. :wink:

Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 2:50 pm
by Wouter_Broekhuizen
Watch out Dipsy! I had a long time ago a dutch character already in the French area but they where very hostile to me. I get killed in 2 days and didn't no the reason! We had a very short conversation in English because my French is much worser than this english right here :wink: but as i understand now that's forbidden?