Capital Rule and Languages

[El_Skwidd]

What annoys me, and maybe I'm just being weird, are the thirty-year-olds that can speak fluent English, Spanish, and German. I was under the impression that if your character was spawned in Spanish, that he only knew Spanish.

Think of it this way. A situation that applies to the majority would be if a longboat full of Spanish-speaking characters invaded say, Olip West. My character there goes outside after the foreigners are beaten off and reads the note on one of the corpses. I as a player could probably decipher the note, but is it justified for my character, who had no idea that another language even existed, to understand the note? No.

For the same reason, I don't think it justified to start a character that knows three separate languages. It's more in the spirit of the game, and in my eyes more rewarding, if you hash out the communication using what you have available to you. It's hard, especially if the player behind the character doesn't know English or whatever language you put your emotes in, but it's fun. For me. And I'm not even easily amused (for the most part).

[wulf]

Also, the rule is that you mustn't play a character in a foreign language area if you don't really know the language. Using an automatic translator doesn't count, because most of the time they just return gibberish. Trust me, if you have taken one year of language classes and you own a good dictionary that you're not afraid to use, you can make yourself understood better than any machine translator currently can. If you need an automatic translator in order to play in a foreign language area, you shouldn't be playing there.

My first Spanish character was created when I didn't really know much Spanish at all. I relied on translation engines a lot, although I tried to play a character who was slow of thinking and thus using very simple speech anyway. Eventually it grew too frustrating and he died of starvation, played out as a lingering illness, even while he worked hard to farm onions to heal his travelling companion's wounds. I don't think I damaged the fabric of the Spanish lands too much and I did learn some words, like las cebollas (onions) so I profitted from the experiment.

I've subsequently started learning Spanish in earnest, although I'm still very much a beginner, and so I've taken up another Spanish character. This time I've got a much better sense of what I want to say in Spanish, although I'm still using translation engines as tools, filling in words I can't quite remember, checking that what I want to say looks reasonable when translated back to English and helping me understand what else is going on.

I wonder how my character sounds to native or fluent Spanish speakers? On the other hand, my English characters have come across plenty of Cantrians who don't speak grammatically correct English, whether because they are roleplaying a dialect or because it looks like the players aren't brilliant at writing, even if it's their native tongue. I can't say I've noticed any that have made me think, "Aha! One of them furriners usin' a grammar checkin' machine", but I don't think it would necessarily be a detriment to the game.

I think there's a place for very basic level language students to play, using the wealth of tools that are available! Having said that, I'd still like the option to spawn on a linguistic border in order to play out the process of learning a language or playing a Cantrian child, whose parents need to teach it their native tongue!

Wulf

[El_Skwidd]

There's nothing wrong with using a translator to look up individual words, it's basically the same as the dictionary I have on my desk right now. Without them, my character would have bit the dust a long time ago trying to survive off champiñones (mushrooms). As long as you have a good grip on the grammar, you can fill in the vocabulary pretty easily. Cantr has actually helped me develop my vocabulary.

And now that I read Junesun's post on the thread summary, that's pretty much what she said

[Thomcat]

We can see what a Cantrian "hears", because it is text. (separate issue - if one user doesn't have the right fonts, they see gibberish, not foreign characters...)

We can see some of what a Cantrian "sees", if emotes are given. (separate issue - what language should the emotes be given in? The interface is still mostly English...)

We can read everything a Cantrian "reads", assuming we know (and have loaded) the character set for that language. If our Cantrian cannot understand the writing, they would have to learn. (separate issue - how do Cantrians learn reading and writing anyhow???)

That's all. I hypothesize that a Cantrian sees more than just emotes. If a character is talking about attacking, or hunting, or harvesting, they are probably also making gestures, actually doing what they are speaking of, etc. These are logical words to go into a "dictionary" even though nobody has said "work translates to this word".

I further hypothesize that a Cantrian can read and write anything they can speak or say, unless they want to roleplay illiteracy, blindness, or deafness.

Personally, I will roleplay my characters learning bits of the language while in contact with it. After a few Cantrian years of contact, they will probably have a pretty good command of it.