Would it offend the RP community?

[Ariel Arilon]

Unto the most noble and upright RP community, Ariel of Arilon sends thee greetings,

Tis a question I would ask all of thee. There is no right or wrong answer, and I wouldst take into consul and carefully consider every reply.

The question is this:

I know PlaneShift is not Middle Earth and it would not be right or proper to impose that lore here. But would you find it offensive if I created an elf character and used a bit of the elven language (Sindarin)?

Limited use of the language helps me immerse in character and adds a bit of high fantasy to the environment.

But I wished to ask the community first.

All comments are welcome. This is, after all, your world and I wouldst wish not to disrupt it.

What say you?


thy humble servant,

Ariel

[Ariel Arilon]

P.S.  You would be right to suggest that I instead play LOTRO. But that requires a high speed internet connection and I am on a dial-up modem, so that seriously limits which MMORPGs I can play. I have read that PlaneShift runs reasonably well on a dial-up modem.

[Venalan]

The main problem with this would be that 'In Character' nobody would know what you're talking about. It would be the same as just making words up.

We do however have this on the wiki. It is very limited but would be the closest thing we have to Dermorian words.

http://planeshift.top-ix.org/pswiki/index.php?title=Dermorian_Language

[LigH]

Dwarfs, Enkidukai, and Klyros have own basic languages too. But only few people use such vocabulary regularly; occasionally you may hear their specific greetings. "Yliakum Common" is the most usual IC language which we will understand as English OOC.

BTW, if you are a fearless adventurer, you may even learn a few terms of Sewer Gobblish...

[BoevenF]

On this matter I must say I deeply love Klyr language, even if I'm not an applied student, and my character frowns me every time. I was abashed once when I met Grikl at Hydlaa Plaza, completely blown off by his seemingly fluent language (I'd put a choir here: "you don't say?"). I grinned for half an hour after logout.

It could inspire more comic strips, unfortunately I'm not in the mood of thinking about it as of late.

Miss you Klyros Junction 

Anyway talking Sindarin here is not offensive nor prohibited. Probably you'll gain strange reactions from other characters.
I'd like to hear an interaction with some brodr.

[Rigwyn]

Not that I care anymore, but there are ways to work around limitations like this. For example, if the character is not from "Middle Earth", but "thinks" it's from middle earth, then it could certainly act that way and perhaps speak some language that only he/she knows. If you go this route, I would say expect other role players to ICly react to this as if it was odd or alien behavior.

Before trying something like this, it's good to be well acquainted with the existing lore. Without that background knowledge, it might be hard to integrate an idea like this in a consistent way.
 
Role players who are less serious about being consistent, ic and in-setting, will probably not notice and just be like uhh... OK... I'll be a friendly, rainbow colored demon with feathers and lollipop tears. \o/

On a serious note, I think it's an interesting idea, personally. If you can weave a consistent story in and make it consistent with the settings, you might be on to a great idea.

Good Luck and whisper bless!

[Ariel Arilon]

Middle Earth (Midden Geard in Old English) was a world belief that existed thousands of years ago in ancient minds.

Middle Earth simply referred to the lands which lay betwixt the eternal frozen north and the burning sounds to the south. Tolkien simply adopted this concept in his writings.

I am not fluent in Sindarin, knowing only a few words and phrases, and have kept the use of it (in the last world I was in) to Hellos, Goodbyes, and a tiny bit more so as to not confound those unfamiliar with the tongue.

Only last year, the entire New Testament has been translated into Quenya (High Elven), was completed. A quick search on your fav search engine will bring up the web page.

How's that for a Geek-gasm?  : D

[Ariel Arilon]

I forgot to add…

Thank you so much for that link! I did follow it to the Wiki language project.

I read it and now have it Bookmarked : )

[Volki]

But would you find it offensive if I created an elf character and used a bit of the elven language (Sindarin)?

Yes. Please, don't.

[Dilihin]

It wouldnt be offending, but it just doesnt make sense. Best solution i see is that you read wiki a bit and decide what language is most elven for your intended use and use that.

But its good idea to use a bit of different languages in general, to spice up RP a bit.

[Tidebringer]

But would you find it offensive if I created an elf character and used a bit of the elven language (Sindarin)?

It's not that this would offend me, exactly... it would probably just bother me a little. Mainly because lore-wise, the race-specific languages have been almost lost do to the government's insistence upon all races using common so that they can understand each other. (And so another language, that isn't even one of the races', would be unlikely to even exist.)

This, however, hasn't stopped me from using Klyran or Enkien now and then while playing. I mean, really, it doesn't make much sense that the languages are actually dead by now. There are probably many linguists and the like in Yliakum attempting to reconstruct the languages and restore them to their previous glory.

That being said, I would recommend that you try using one of the languages on the previously-linked-to wiki page for your purposes, as then it would be easier to immerse yourself in -this- world without the worries of offending or annoying any of the other players, presuming they would even care. It would also make it easier for the players of other characters to look up different words so that they and their character could understand what you were saying, and allow them to respond if they saw fit.

Some of the PlaneShift lore is available here, here, and, well, even here, too.

Welcome to PlaneShift, Ariel, and have fun!

By the way, Ariel: I like your sig.

[Proglin]

[Edit] This wasn't supposed to go here.