Language

[deadly_mandragora]

I personally love languages, and believe that it is an enormous factor that makes fantasy either good or bad. Tolkien, the almost universally accepted master of fantasy actually invented his languages first, and THEN wrote the Lord of the Rings, and There and Back Again (aka the Hobbit) along with his other material concerning middle earth.  So obviously what Im leading up to is: should PlaneShift have languages for its races? I mean, not that anybody being one of those races would be obliged to become fluent in its language (like any of us actually have the time for that!) , but it would be unique and interesting to have mabey spellbooks written in both english and a second language, or streetsigns using dwarvish or nothrir characters etc. Also, mabey there could be a namebook in the different races tounges, so that anybody wishing for an \"authentic\" name for their charecter in the language of their race could find the equivalent in the namebook.

Does anybody agree/disagree ?

-Deadly Mandragora

[Shinji]

It\'s a cool idea, but I believe it\'s more complicated than you could imagine..

[-Raeon Volune-]

I think a good thing to do is to have something like a system like if you read a book telling you how to speak, lets say Elvish then you would learn so much. Like in the Sims there\'s a system like that. So if you read a book long enough you understand the languge. So if you\'re fluent in Elvish and someone says something to you in Dwarvish, to you it would appear to be some strange language. But to someone who read the dwavish books it would appears as hello or something. And if you start off as an Elf or something that makes you automatically fluent in Elvish. It\'s complicated but it could work out.

[Golbez]

They posted this idea before, but i thought it was a very good one.  There should be a universal language which everybody understand.  But everybody should have the option to talk in their race\'s ancient language. For example, Enkidukais speaks Enkidukai,  and only those who belong to that race (or that has studied it) can understand what the language.  
So, if i speak in my race\'s language and say  \"Hello, how are you?\",  people who don\'t know the language will see the letters scrambled and won\'t understand anything.  Students of the language will understand some of the words, and those who completely studied it will understand the whole thing.
This could be useful when you want to talk to a friend who belongs to the same race as you,  but don\'t want anybody to understand what you are talking about.

[Kiern]

yeps this was posted about a while ago, and as i said there, this is a great idea and i dont think it would actually be all that hard, i mean, they have it in A LOT of mmorpg\'s that i\'ve seen    

[Golbez]

I don\'t know anything about programming,  but i dont think it\'d be that hard to implement this feature. I mean, it\'s just a letter scrambler, right?  Perhaps the devs should answer that.

[Montenegro]

Besides, if ya look at EQ, there are often different languages written on signs (not always).  The symbols don\'t have to mean anything per se, just have a text associated with the object that is triggered when you examine the graffiti AND know the language.  Simple.  Easy as ...  cake, ya.

[Dragons_Hunter]

Yes, languages do add to the experience. What I dont like is the ide of the \"Universal language\", we are talkign about 12 races that came/appeared at different times...In EQ there is a server (Firiona Vie), its the RP server, each race ha its own language, so if you want to talk to a dwarf and your a human you better learn his language first. Now THAT adds to the experience....even if it sometimes get a bit exaperating hehe, I know, I\'m the leader of the Linguists of Norrath, hehehe.

[alcapalis]

Dat lijkt me niet zo handig.. want dan duurt het eeuwen voordat je ook maar iemand kan verstaan, en een mmorpg is juist zo cool omdat je met iedereen kan communiceren. Ook is het dan erg lastig om een bar of zo op te zetten want als je een dwarf achter de bar zet versaat niemand hem en verstaat hij ook niemand (zelfde probleem heb je ook bij elfjes en zo ) Dus ik denk dat je in ieder geval 1 taal moet hebben die iedereen verstaat (dus gewoon engels ) en verder is het wel leuk om talen per ras te hebben, of om je eigen taal te kunnen ontwikkelen (bijvoorbeeld als gilde en als je heel erg veel ervaring hebt).
In het echt werkt dat zo ongeveer ook.. (bijna) ieder land heeft zijn eigen taal.. en daar kunnen mensen onderling in praten zonder dat mensen van andere landen hun verstaan.. maar je hebt ook Engels.. wat bijna iedereen verstaat.. dus daar kan iedereen zich verstaanbaar in maken...

I guess that was not very readable... i think you will get that all the time when you dont have a global language in the game.. well.. i\'ll translate the upper part.. (for the non-intelligent readers )

-=TRANSLATION=-
It doesnt seem good to me (to not have a global language), because then it takes you ages to  understand the other players. Besides, a MMORPG is so cool because you can communicate with everybody. Not having a Global language will also cause problems if you want to start a bar (or a shop), because if you put (for exemple) a dwarf behind the bar, nobody will be able to understand him and he wont be able to understand anybody (well, ofcourse everybody knows the word BEER  )  so thats not a big problem ) So i think you should have 1 language that anyone can understand. I like to idea of having different languages for each race (but you also need to have a global language), and maybe it would be nice that if you are very intelligent you could make your own language (for you guild or something)

In real life every country also has his own language. The natives (hehe sounds cool ) can understand and speak it.. while other people cant. But the most people can also speak english.. so that is used as a global language.

-=End of translation =-

hmmzz.. just my stupid thought about it...

[cmhitman]

I believe that your right. Just like in real life (well now anyway) all the main contries have excepted american english as a global standard while still in a poorer area of a country where inteligence is down you might find that they only speak there native tongue. I think it should be a mixture of both having a global language and also hav restrictions on people with  low inteligence.
so if you decide to mine ore all day and not explore/learn then you\'ll be limited because you don\'t have the inteligence needed to understand the global language. you only understand your native language.







ps. AMERICA ROCKS

[wolfman]

what?? so i couldnt talk to my friends because i have low intelligance?? fuk that

[cmhitman]

In real life if you have a friend, lets say  he\'s a foriegn exchange student from puerto rico. If you haven\'t taken the 3 years of spanish needed to understand him it\'d be hard to communicate with him. Just like if your busy supporting a baby (teen pregnancy) it\'s gonna be hard to hang with your friends cause you have to work to support a family and what not (maybe your mom will support you, who knows).  

I think that i\'m just saying that if you decide to take a job as a bartender in the game instead of going to college then it would be a while befor you new anything besides your native language, or maybe it could be the other way around and you start off knowing a global language then when you\'ve learned something or explored the needed area to know your native language or some other language you\'d know what people where talking about. You could haveoptions for witch language you wanted to chat in. when you switched into native language chat mode only people who know that language can understand you. That is if there your species or they\'ve studied your language. Did you get all of that?
The possibilities are endless but the time needed to work out a real good system coud take weeks then even more time to program it into the game. but basicly i\'m thinking the languages would be incrypted then when you learned it it\'d unlock the decryption scheme needed to understand the language. Come up with twelve different text scrambling schemes an incorporate a system that let the user find the needed unscrambler that would let him/her chat with other people who have unlocked this language. could be through exploration could be through education or a mixture of both. maybe it depends on the stats of your character on how fast he/she aquires the language. Get it? So basicly we\'ve broken languages down into encryption schemes and learning a language is basicly just having enough education and accessing (this could be done through reading books/attending whatever place of education the game will have) the right decryption sceme with would showup on the user side (your screen) as either speak in: Global(english), Native(your language here), Aquired(languages other than your native/global that you\'ve learn).
so there it is, my two cents I hope you get it because i\'ve basicly worked the whole system out.

[Montenegro]

You\'re all forgetting this place...this place called Yliakum.  You know, where all the races live?   Hmmm, I kinda think it would be a stretch for them NOT to all have a common language.  After all, they\'ve been living together for quite awhile.

[alcapalis]

totally true... So i really think there should be 1 global language... but i also think there should be race languages.. i think that would be fun..
But erhm.. i dont know how the chat system is going to be.. so erhm.. wil you be able to crete privat chat channels.. ? so you can chat with your guild or something?

[Khaydra]

I think it would be a really good idea to make a second language.  It would be even better if they made many different sorts of languages, and maybe some that aren\'t used, like old languages for the game.  I think that instead of making a whole language up, somebody should just make a symbol for every letter and number.