#language lore

We use Bah here as a surprised expression. Like "Baaah, she's dead?" Or "Bah, that's dope". There's the good surprised Bah, the disappointed Bah and the "what the fuck is this" Bah. Also, come to Minas Gerais, they love cheese and you will be VERY well received, we love visitors (seriously we love visitors, we will talk your ear off)

Ohh I'm taking notes ! Learning little stuff like that about spoken languages is so interesting ! It's always fun to listen and/or read and realize there's similarities from one language to another ! Though sometimes even if the languages are similar there can still be confusion and yeah the first exemple hat always comes to mind is the gato/gâteau sounding the exact same but not being the same thing at all. But that just makes the situation funnier imo

Today’s question is: Are there any sayings or phrases in your setting that would be confusing if someone used them in real life? This can be anything from swearing by a deity, to idioms referring to a setting-specific plant or animal.

Happy WBW, Sam! Thanks for the ask!

There are a few sayings in AASOAF, I don't think they are very confusing, but I wrote them, so I don't count haha. Also, Axtapor has a really particular way of speaking bc of his background, so I imagine if anyone spoke to him in any capacity, they would be rather confused!

"Orran provide."

Orran is the god of humans, and can be swapped out for any other god's name. Basically, a way of asking for that god's favor, particularly if one has come across a bad omen.

"Right proper." or "Right set."

Axtapor's way of saying something has been done correctly.

“Avast yer whingin’ and whinin’.”

Axtapor's way of telling you to stop complaining.

"Swift winds guide ye, sea carry ye well and true."

Also, never knew you guys used bah too?! It is also a common onomato- word thing in the south of Brazil! But here is used to mean almost emotion(happiness ,anger,sadness, surprise). And it's curious how the word merde is similar to merda in portuguese (they mean the same thing btw)

Idk just some cool things i noticed

Ohh it has way more variety than our french "bah" that’s interesting !

I believe "merde" sounds similar in spanish and italian as well ! We got this word directly from latin

I remembered a language thing tho ! In the south of France there are dialects that sound partly like the neighboring countries, and in "provençal" slang dialect they say that someone crazy is "fada" and I believe it means fairy in portuguese ? And I’m pretty sure there is a link between the two words/significations

But I can’t for the life of me learn a full language. That being said, I pick up random words in different languages all over the freaking place.

French? Yup. Italian? Check. Russian. Mmhmm. German. Yes. Sign language? Odd one out but yep. Spanish? Who doesn’t know a few odd words when you live in the US.

I DONT GET HOW PEOPLE CAN FULLY LEARN OTHER LANGUAGES WHEN MY BRAIN IS JUST LIKE “I like these words. Yeah. These are good. That’s it though. :)”

Helppppppppp I love language but language only wants a friends-with-benefits relationshippppppp

Oh I totally get it honestly, language learning is not that easy usually especially when it comes to grammar which feels like a hellhole whatever the language you try to learn ! I did learn german at school and all I remember are a few sentences and christmas songs but the grammar is all forgotten already ugh.. Tried to learn japanese and grammar lost me again. As for finnish I just randomly say stuff and pray it is understandable, not an ounce of knowledge on it’s grammar.

The best way imo is to listen to other people speak the language more than try to learn the basics via grammar, sure it is important but getting the hang of a language by hearing it helps a lot !

Oh and I know a good online site I use as a French to English and vice versa dictionnary ! It’s called Wordreference it helps me quite a lot whenever I have doubts on some word’s meanings or when I remember a word in english but not in my own language…

And yeah, I gave a weird grammatical exception up here in french, that’s partially why hearing a language helps better than trying to understand the grammar first… We also have lots of words with a silent "t" at the end like "chat" (cat) which you pronounce "sha" or "rat" (rat) pronounced "rat" and then you have a few exceptions where the t is not silent all of a sudden like "brut" (crude/variety of champagne/brute)

What languages are spoken in your fictional world(s) aside from English/the common tongue/etc.?

Happy (late) WBW, Ella! don't worry im responding to my asks late too lol

I have so many languages, and I blame the Lizardfolk because I went NUTS giving each social stratum its own dialect, so I won't list them all, but here are a few! (Under a cut bc again v long)

Common

I know you said aside from this one but I'm putting it in anyway BECAUSE, it does not sound like English. It actually sounds like Old Spanish, so most people in AASOAF would have Spanish-ish accents if they spoke our English.

My Overly Long Explanation of What I Wanted Out of Warclema's Human Language

For the most part, I want to keep language barriers a non-issue with my Warclema setting. I want to have one language that everyone speaks, even alien invaders... and a second language that only serves to keep the fistari culturally divided from the rest of Warclema, but that's going to be tomorrow's post.

Anyway, I had put some thought into why there would be just one language used throughout Warclema, and it pretty much comes down to the humans being responsible for the creation of each talking life form except for the fistari. They took neutroslime and shapeshifted some into human brains, creating the first neutromorphs, which would learn human language from them. The Pouyannian mimic of them known as "felves" would of course learn to mimic the human language. The demons from another dimension were taught the human language by the lotorians that created them. Those lotorians had learned the human language from the human-made computers and robots that they evolved around, and learning the language allowed them to give voice commands to those computers and robots. The people in the same dimension that the lotorians ended up in would find that the lotorians had some of the best stuff to trade for, and would learn their language to help secure better deals. Also, the demons they make would of course try to enforce a change to that same language whenever they took over whatever dimension the lotorians sent them to. I had a decent idea of why this one language would be widespread.

I plan for Warclema's human language to be pretty much the "three languages in a trench coat" interpretation of English taken to the extreme of having assimilated all of the other languages into one universal, yet confusing language. It'd be the sort of language where you would likely recognize enough loan words to communicate some basic information, but you'd keep finding yourself using the wrong language's conjugation rules for a word, making mistakes like using the word "beginned" instead of "began". Some words (such as "plant") would have been replaced with the equivalent from an assimilated language or some slang, but still get used in certain names or whenever someone wants to include some old terms in their vocabulary.

This would of course go mostly unused as dialog and text would be translated for the benefit of the audience. Exceptions to this translation would probably be in background text and members of the Vok family line that like to use outdated vocabulary, which would prompt some translator's notes subtitles explaining the term and helping setup the eventual joke of a translator's note explaining a term from the language the work is already being presented in. It would also come up with Annul, an isekai protagonist that I had put in back when I originally started thinking up Warclema around 20 years ago, not as an obstacle that they are dealing with, but one they had overcome already because their adventure starts after they've already settled into Warclema.

The Actual Language Lore

The history of the human language of Warclema would pretty much be that way back before humans came to Warclema, they had the same languages that we do, but global communication coupled with easy translation made it easier for language barriers to be bypassed, and sometimes, people would pick up on words that don't translate well, and add those words to their vocabulary. Slowly, people picked up more and more of each others' languages until those languages started to combine. Languages that were already popular to learn and were open to accepting loan words from other languages, such as English and Japanese began to assimilate each other and fuse together while languages that tried to maintain their identity would become less and less relevant. By the time of the Exodus to Warclema, the humans were all using one language Frankensteined from various other languages.

Master Post