Talk:Language and Culture

From Scandia

• I've got some questions about certain languages:
  Roman, Brazillian, American, Isrealian, Australian, Canadian, Argentinian, Cuban
  • American: Is this Native American or American English? Should there be a name for American English?
  • Australian: What is the use of thinking of a name for a dialect. If for example Australis(a country in Scanida I) was colonized by the country where they speak Ingallish the dialect should be Australis, not Australian, Australia doesn't exist in Scandia.
  • Argentinian, Canadian, Brazillan, Cuban, the same as stated above.
  • Roman, is this Latin? Than it should be removed.
  • Israelian, is this Hebrew(ancient Israelian) or Ivriet(modern Israelian)?
    —Sense Hofstede

• Excellent questions, Sense. Many of the Scandian equivalents were ported over from the original version and probably need some clean-up. Here's my take:
  • Ingallish is Ingallish and various dialects are just that. I'm in favor of deleting American, Australian, Canadian and whatever other variants.
  • Amerindian is Native American, represented by Native Vendan, which should be kept
  • Brazilians speak Portuguese so I recommend this earth equivalent be deleted but the Scandian equivalent of Portuguese be changed to Labellese to suit Labella's player; the original player who labeled Portuguese as Tãereoç is not part of Scandia II
  • Casatan is Casatan and, as with Ingallish, the Argentine, Mexican, and other dialects should all be part of the Spanish analog
  • Ancient Roman is probably Latin and I think it should stay. Latin is different than Italian and the other languages that devolved from it. Besides, it's analog, Valanian, is the official language of Valania
  • I suspect "Israeli" is supposed to be Hebrew and we should probably rename it that so it's clear
  • I don't see Ivriet or modern Israelian on the list
    —Jph2 16:30, 17 October 2007 (EDT)

• Just to say I noted these questions. I don't really have an opinion on this. Change as it suits you, as long as you have reasonable arguments. And as Jerry notes, keep the stuff of 'active' players. Active players are mostly recognized by some existing wiki pages for their country. --Oligarf 06:12, 20 October 2007 (EDT)

• My two boderu on the languages and other equivalences ... it's all just for convenience. Nothing to be dogmatic about. Take Haromszek -- it's the size of most of western Europe. Room for dozens of languages - just one would be hard for me to justify. Single language implies a monoculture, or nearly so. I would LOVE to devise my own set of related and contrasting languages from scratch to highlight the varegated cultures. But I don't have time or expertise to build my own! So I just borrowed a number of earthly languages. But I do not claim any degree of exact equivalence, I just want the Czech-like one to be consistent, the French-ish one to sound alike from use to use to use. The one loosely based on Romany gets to be mysteriously related to the sorta-Magyar, yet not. I get the benefit of a set of names that millions of people have worked for a thousand years to associate with a language, a culture, a style. So I mention Generale Jean-Jacques Porteau and you can hear him being, well, French! You suspect he's a wine affectionado if not outright zealot. Maybe my caption under the photo of him and business tycoon Gyorg Vozny just lists the names, and you just *know* he's the one with the pencil-thin moustache sipping onion soup, where Vozny must be the guy with a walrus moustache, swarthy complexion, and the bowl of goulash. Shortcuts.

So I keep a link to a Czech translation site, a french-english-french one, etc. If I'm online, I use those to come up with company names, automobile models, whatever. If I'm away from my computer, well, I've soaked up enough familiarity with each to wing it, and have the name of the railroad still seem Loirisian. Sort of.

Which all goes to say ... my community of immigrants from a former Taerocese colony isn't likely to speak any recognizable dialect of Portugese. Not European, not Brazilian, not Angolan. They're exiles of exiles ... probably as crazy a dialect as cajuns or creoles have of French. And if I decide the main Turayiec newspaper is Gorazdej Vigy because that means "Clarion of Truth", nobody but the native Slovak speakers need know those are nonsense words :-).

Also note we won't likely have the full variety of earthly languages and cultures -- see my opening comment about not enough time or energy to run an appropriate number of distinct societies, nor the time and energy to figure out all their current and past interactions. <shrug>... it's a game, a rough simulation of a world ... doesn't have to be perfect. No need to pre-assign Canadian French vs. Haitian French vs. West African French ....

User:Jake - 25 October 2007