#languageposting

(Regarding your tags on this post: https://www.tumblr.com/macaroni--penguin/824324030988468224 )

ok so my original thought was

if you paint a picture, your medium is paint, but if you use paint and pencils, you're using mixed media

while if you are talking about the difference between the medium of painting and the medium of film, you are discussing two mediums

which felt inconsistent until I remembered

if you have one deer and another deer, you have two deer, but if you are talking about two species of deer instead, you then have two deers. many words have plural forms that act like this

in short I was tired and forgot how grammar works, english teachers of tumblr please forgive me 🙏

You know that trope of a character getting isekai'd to another world? Well, in this game that happens to you. You get teleported into another world but you have no idea why you are there because...

YOU. DON'T. SPEAK. THE. LANGUAGE.

The characters speak an entirely made up language. At the start of the game you select what language you (the player) speak, and the modes in which you want to play. The game has several modes both for languages and for story: Easy, Normal, Hard, Extreme and Realistic (the difficulties of both modes are independent, you can pick easy language mode but hard story mode and such)

Language modes:

Easy mode: the language spoken by the characters has a very similar grammar and rules to your native language (the equivalent of a Spanish speaker trying to learn Italian). Characters don't mind repeating stuff several times. An npc points at a tree, says a word and you get several options and need to choose what you think the word they said meant. In this mode, once you learn a word, the translation will be featured under it in any in-game texts.

Normal mode: the grammar and rules of the language spoken by the characters are noticeably different from your native language (the equivalent of an French speaker trying to learn German). Characters will only repeat stuff two times. Instead of choosing what a word means from several options, you need to type your guess. You will still get the translation of a word under it once you learn it, but instead of always being visible, you need to activate the subtitles by pressing a button.

Hard mode: the grammar and rules of the the language spoken by the characters are very different to your native language. Characters don't repeat stuff. No subtitles with translations or menus that ask you to guess what a world means. If you want to remember what something means, you will need to rely entirely on your memory or take notes.

Extreme mode: extremely different grammar and rules, and, on top of that, a different alphabet (the equivalent of an English speaker trying to learn Japanese). Characters don't repeat things. No subtitles with translations or menus that ask you to guess what a world means. You will need to take notes, a lot of notes.

Realistic mode: why is it called realistic? Well, because a world were people only speak one language would be unrealistic, right? So... in this mode, the people speak different languages, and as you travel through the world, you might need to learn more than one language to get by.

Story modes:

Easy mode: you get taken in by a family of farmers in a small village. The family you live with provide you with food and shelter in exchange for a small part of the wages you earn by helping them around the farm or doing errands for the townspeople. Everyone in the village is kind and eager to help you learn their language. As your language skills progress, so does the story.

Normal mode: an innkeeper in a medium sized village offers you work in their inn. Half your wages go to cover your food and room. As the days progress, so does the story, regardless of your progress in learning the language.

Hard mode: you appear in a city and need to fend for yourself since day one, doing whatever is necessary to get by. You will need to pay for your own food and shelter, but finding a job in a foreign world where you don't speak the language won't be easy, so at first you might need to resort to trickery or thievery to survive.

Extreme mode: you will appear in a war torn area and be forced to pick a side in the conflict, but you won't know which one is the good one, if there is any. You can choose to stay there or gather resources to earn enough money to travel to other areas untouched by the war.

Realistic mode: you will appear in a random location, it might be the middle of a forest, a quiet little village, the middle of a battlefield, a pirate ship... In previous story modes your actions and decisions could change the story. The same will happen here, however, the story won't wait for you, and you will be able to reject the call. You might be the prophesied hero destined to stop an evil wizard, but you might find out too late to stop them from conquering half the continent, or you might not feel like risking your life and opt for a quiet existence in a farm.

While the game is supposed to be about the player being transported to a different world where they speak languages different from our own, if you want to, you can select a real language to learn it through the game.