No RL Language area? Make up our own?

[The Hunter]

All true... But..

A mightily interesting experiment.

Check out this thread, I was sceptic at first, but in spite of before mentioned drawbacks, Cantr is the only environment even remotely capable of such an experiment. Ofcourse it has little to do with the development in the real world, but then, that's Cantr Style. Besides. When was the last time people were thrown together, not knowing any language at all, and having to make up their own? Never happened.

Even though we keep our native languages in mind when creating this "new" language, it's worth the try. True, the words may be completely different, the grammar will most likely be quite simular to the English grammar. Let's just hope as many "non-English" SPeaker decidde to participate to enable a nice mix.

Still, rules would have to be strict, and participants would have to be really interested because it's quite a task. It would create an increase of workload for the PD aswell, as any "Newb" continiously talking his native RL language should be removed as soon as possible, etc.

Still... Has this been done before this way?

[Appleide]

What about throwing in people who only know one language so each (may be pair of) person speak a different language so they can't communicate until they figured out how?

It would balance the fact that you can't actually see, hear, smell or touch or taste things except reading.

I like this idea because the creation of a language take hundreds if not thousands of years. I don't want to be pessimistic, but when the basic structure of the language is built, there would be Cantr 3 and everyone would leave Cantr 2 behind and the people in the experiment goes with them and the language disappears.

[Junesun]

Not quite true... Pidgin languages started like this. When African slaves were brought to America, they came from many different regions and there's a lot of linguistic diversity in Africa, so nobody could understand the other. Their white owners didn't care about communicating with them more than necessary either, so these slaves weren't able to learn more than a few words of their masters' language either. That way, a whole generation was robbed of its language. Later on, if they had children, they didn't know any language well enough to teach to them, so the children gradually built their own language, with words from many African languages, some European ones, and some invented words. The grammar of such a Pidgin language is unlike the grammar of any other language. There are many Pidgin languages, and most of them developed independantly while slavery still existed, but there are some remarkable similarities in terms of grammar, which linguists have been unable to explain up till now.

In case you're still wondering: I'd love to take part in this experiment on Cantr.

[Appleide]

That was What i was trying to say, people with diferent languages can't comunicate so they make a new language any way. if everyone knows english, then a person might ruin it all, if they can't communicate, then they can't runin it even if they tried:P

I am disappointed there isn't an area with Chinese. But I can't type chinese anyway so doesn't matter:$

[Antichrist_Online]

I am another person who would like the attempt to work in a environment like this. I participated in a rl similar experiement with people who spoke different languages, developing a new basic language for communication in simple situations, (geography extra credit work).

[Okud]

I love the idea of this experiment! And it takes only an island to spare for it. If it doesn´t work and the new culture dies, it can still provide an interesting study for future explorers and Cantr historians.

When was the last time people were thrown together, not knowing any language at all, and having to make up their own? Never happened.

It actually happened recently, google for Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL).
Short story: after decades of civil war the situation got stable and a school for deaf children was opened in Managua. Until then the deaf children were usualy kept hidden in their homes and knew no ways to comunicate with other people. To make matters worse, the teachers in the new school had no experience in teaching to deaf children and were not able to reach them. In a few years, unaided, the children developed their own sign language - it's now a full, complex language, not related to any of the other sign languages of the world.
No teacher helped them to develop the language. They couldn't understand it anyway

[Revanael]

Wooo, people still like my idea...

I think the fact that this thread has re-awaken proves that some people like the idea. So why not try it?

[NetherSpawn]

This experiment is a great idea. I see no problems with it. It would be taxing on the players, yes, but in theory in normal Cantr you should record everything vaguely memorable that happened to every character you have, along with a list of people you know and assorted characteristics of them. I don't think anyone does this, but that's the best way to handle character memory I know of. Why should a dictionary be so much harder?
Cantr characters are spawned at the age of twenty. THERE IS NO LIFE BEFORE YOUR SPAWNING! None of this **** about growing up in the region. I don't know what Cantr characters know when they spawn, but they know NOTHING that doesn't relate to a resources, project, or tool/weapon/machine/protection/etc. I think that's been more or less established as true.

[SekoETC]

This could work in real world but lets face it, not in Cantr. You cannot point to objects or projects. What if you wanted to tell others you've invented a new word that means drop? Even if you dropped all you had, people might understand it as "objects" "things", "go mad", "throw" etc... The world is just far too limited. We'd have to use English emotes and that would spoil everything.

[Revanael]

The misunderstanding would be part of the point. It's a necessary and welcome part of it all!

Emotes for CERTAIN things should be OK. Smiling, frowning, shaking/nodding of the head, other purely physical things like that.

[Okud]

Simple worlds need simple languages. Why would anyone talk about throwing when there is no throwing implemented in Cantr?
It's actualy pretty simple:

You see X dropping some bones
X says: X pana pa trk

You see X dropping some hide
X says: X toronto pa trk

You see X picking some hide
X says: X toronto pa kodak

You see X picking some bones

Well, I already know what X is gonna say, because:
The word order is Subject Object Verb
"pa" seems to follow the object (need more conversation to be sure, but it's not that important)
It's very likely that the vocab. is:
pana = bone
toronto = hide
trk = drop
kodak = pick.

Maybe the poor guy wanted to say "I don't need bones" - bad luck, he just invented the word for "to drop".

I know that a NPL area would drastically affect RP and no fanatic roleplayer would start a char there. But it would be a great great playgound for language freaks. And yes, I'm a Unilanger

[SekoETC]

Ohh that sounded so cute... Kodak toronto language... But really it wouldn't need more than one frustrated player to ruin the whole thing. Nooo don't look at me!
I often start developing new languages for fantasy stories but I never get anything to the point that it could actually be used conversationally. My latest big project had a weird system for numbers. It had basic numbers of 0 to 5, 6 to 24 was said like "4*5 and 4", then 25 was a new basic number, there could be for example "5*25 and 3*5 and 2". I should check this next weekend. I cannot remember the next base numbers since I thought some of them started with 3... Have I miscalculated? Argh. Too sleepy to count.

[Flak Jacket]

Maybe the game shouldn't say the name of the object, but the descriptor instead(not "carrots" but instead "long orange plant that grows in ground"). Then you could use dynamic naming on everything, and make projects impossible to understand without first identifying the resources.

This would of course, require a Cantr III.

[wichita]

Wow! Nice dig! I would really like to see an in game language develop and have even thought of trying to start one of sorts, gradually throwing out new words and seeing if a dialect started to develop. Unfortunately, I think the attention span and creativity of a large chunk of the players would keep it from working....unless we did open the Neo-Language area.

[Augery]

If we get unlimited minutes for this char could it also be a 16th charecter, I would love to take part in this but I dont want to have to kill off one of my chars to do it. I rpobably would kill one of, if I had to though.