#conlang

so yesss!!!! my hypothetical anthrpology #myhypotheticalanthropology

I kinda wanted to approach Eden and the COI not as Evil Cult Society and Evil Industrial Society (since personally i just find that less interesting) but more as two diverging human cultures that adapted to intense circumstances in different ways. that isn't to say that there aren't harmful aspects to them, much in the way that there are harmful aspects to real human societies.

So anyway back 2 my markiplier space movie conlang

Word usage that differs by language, class, region, religion, etc. Think: pop vs soda or lift vs elevator

Differing homophones by accent. Think: Mary-merry-marry merger, pin-pen merger

Mutual unintelligibly of dialects. Think: regional dialects of Arabic

Mutual intelligibility of spoken languages/dialects but unintelligibly of signed languages (or vice versa). Think: American vs British English and ASL vs BSL

Divergent languages in former colonies or geographically separate areas. Think: Brazilian Portuguese vs Portuguese in Portugal

The two main ideas I had for the languages of each society went something like this:

The COI would have had the closest thing to modern English. I have decided that this is a very efficient verbal shorthand. Communication happens extremely quickly between people. It takes minimal effort to get a point across.

Eden is archaic. Their language evolved that same shorthand, but it quickly grew around scripture and poetic phrasing rather than efficiency. They are the opposite of "literal" and never say what they truly mean, which has caused the COI to very rapidly decide that they are untrustworthy and difficult to understand.

Meanwhile Eden folk think the COI dialect was made for jarheads. It's extremely obvious if you're from the COI to a native Edenite.

Literally none of this is supposed to make sense linguistically because I know fuck all about that. I just like the concept of putting language barriers on everyone LOL

Here's my little paper on how to use it in a writing setting! I've translated an Iron Lung line so you can understand how it works up front:

Original

"I just want to live. Is that so wrong? Why doesn't anybody else want that?"

Edenic, Casual

Oi jus' ƿant to live. Þat so ƿrong? Ƿhy n't no'n ƿant þat?

We know of at least two diagetic writing systems used in the world of minecraft— enchanting table language and some form of the Roman alphabet. We know that some form of the Roman alphabet is diagetic, because it exists in the world already before the Player arrives. Whoever built the desert temples assigned significance to the letters "TNT" enough to put it on their explosives. Pictographic writing also seems to exist, based on naturally-generating chiseled blocks, but that's harder to definitively state isn't purely decorative.

Villagers also presumably use some form of writing, given that they have librarians, but whatever that writing is, it doesn't seem to be legible to the Player, since we can't read books until we write in them ourselves.

The villager/illager species definitely creates symbolic art, given the use of banners by the illagers and of creeper face symbols on clerical robes. Piglins also use symbolic art, given the snouts carved into bastions, and it seems reasonable to conclude that they have some form of language.

This gives at least three languages in the world of minecraft— Piglin, Villager, and Desert Temple. Possibly a fourth, with Enchanting, but that could just be the writing system used by villagers, given that the Player doesn't seem to be able to read it.

What would those languages be like? What kinds of poetry are written in the Hnnngs and Hrrs of the villagers, or the grunts and snorts of the piglins? Could a piglin and a villager learn each other's languages, or are they too different not just in terms of vocabulary but in terms of the physical features required to communicate? Do piglins carry information in the flapping of their ears? Do villagers produce complex tones by resonance in their large noses?

Repetition to indicate emphasis could be a semantic feature of Eridian, or could be a result of a limited shared vocabulary. Ex: "Amaze amaze amaze!"

Rocky refers to himself by name in the first person, and come to think of it, doesn't use many pronouns at all. I can't think of him saying "I," but does use "me" and "my" such as in "fist my bump" and "fist me." (It was in the book istg) It could be that in his language, one refers to themself by name in the nominative case, but with a pronoun in the accusative.

The pidgin doesn't use articles (ex: "Life is reason" as opposed to "life is the reason,"). That could be for simplicity in communicating, or it could just be Eridian syntax. Russian does something similar.

It's cool that Eridian has a semantic/morphological marker for a question, instead of a pragmatic one like most human language. They seem to use the same structure for a yes/no question as with a statement because of this word to indicate questions.