#narn

Anyway, Minbos first:

The Minbari have three main languages: Adronato (Religious Caste); Lenn'ah (Warrior Caste); and Vik (Worker Caste). Having three separate languages basically based on what your job is kind of a wild concept. The explanation I could come up for it was this: the Minbari were a spacefaring race even before the first Shadow War. It looks like, for convenience's sake, all the spacefaring races we see onscreen have a commonly used language of their most dominant culture - or some sort of creole or Lingua Franca combination of their main/most spoken languages. If your entire world has come together to explore the stars, it makes sense to have a very basic level of standard communication amongst one another - before finding whole other races you have to communicate with, from some baseline.

The splits between the castes only worsened since Valen's time - so it makes sense that those three Caste languages would be more like dialects of one unified Minbari language. Obviously, Warriors are going to come up with more words for describing blowing shit up, types of duels, honorable reasons for killing, etc.; whereas Religious are going to develop more specialized philosophical terms; and Workers are going to be able to spew technological and mathematical jargon much more easily.

It also makes sense as a cause and an effect of the rifts between the castes: you have to trust that the Worker fixing your ship knows what he's talking about because you, a Religious Caste member, don't quite have the words to describe exactly what he's going to do to your engine. The Religious spew incomprehensible stuff about "souls reborn in foreign bodies" and while you, a Warrior, know 50 different ways to say "I will kill you with honor," the actual depth of what that means isn't immediately accessible to you.

But, obviously, a basic level of communication is entirely possible, because the language these dialects originated from is the same – and mutual intelligibility is entirely possible. Now, obviously, this only works BECAUSE they're Minbari – they're able to preserve entire crystal cities for 1000 years, surely they can do the same with language. Because if you look at Human language 1000 years ago? That was 1025. The Byzantine empire was a thing. If somehow we wanted to have a chat with the people of that time - without lots of specialized knowledge, and command of several dead languages - we would not be able to at all.

Now for the Centauri:

In the show, the Centauri seem to fall into several categories of accents: the vaguely Eastern European-meets-Italian accent that characters such as Londo, Urza, and Refa talk with; Emperor Turhan's accent (although that's just the actor being Turkish, so I'm still not sure whether to count it); the very proper RP English accent that characters like Virini and Timov have; and the very standard American accent of Vir, Minister Vole, and many others. I am going to take this at face value - that in-universe, these characters all sound different from one another, in the context of their culture and language.

Which makes me think of various regional dialects and languages that the Centauri have – although, again, as an advanced spacefaring race, they do have a unified standard language for their species. When all Centauri were unified under the first emperor, it's not a stretch to think that there was a standardization of language – in CCP China, for instance, the Northern Mandarin pronunciation was assigned the standard, and the writing system was simplified and standardized. And the many other languages – I know they're called dialects, but all they have in common is a writing system, they are very often not mutually intelligible – are still prevalent across different parts of China. So, I'm thinking something similar to the Centauri – regional dialectical differences but one unified standard language.

Another factor that I think would be important in Centauri language is formality and rank. Many languages have this, to varying extents; a polite second-person pronoun versus an informal one in many European languages, or entire forms and cases of the language itself like Japanese honorific forms. There are whole separate verbs/nouns/sentence endings depending on how polite you are being to someone else, or how much you are humbling yourself in relation to the person you are referring to.

All this being said, it would make sense for them to have a Common Centauri, and a Courtly Centauri, as well as dozens of regional dialects. Courtly Centauri would be used in speaking to the Emperor, writing a legal document, projecting an air of distance between oneself and the subject, perhaps even used mockingly. Conversationally, Common Centauri would be used - which would also make sense as a significant component of Interlac, seeing as the Centauri were conquering people and trading across the galaxy for a long time.

(Another thing I thought of was a uniquely Imperial form of the language: not just a 'royal we,' but an entirely different way of speaking, open only to one man. Something a future emperor may well practice in the mirror, out of earshot, long before he's crowned. Or something he has to get used to on the fly, every slip-up being seen as significant in the Royal Court.)

Narn time now!

Unlike Minbari, Centauri, Humans, etc. Narn unification as a species and their need for wider communication arose from entirely different circumstances.

Imagine if Earth was colonized and forced into servitude by aliens tomorrow! It would become vastly less important who was German or Iranian or Javanese - the important thing would become getting those bastards out of here. The Centauri themselves wouldn't have cared about the cultural and linguistic differences between various Narn populations: all they needed was a work-force, and when it came to a long-term occupation of a population, education also becomes a factor. Just like with most occupied peoples', the occupiers' language is taught in the schools. So it makes sense to me that Narn schools during the occupation were taught in Common Centauri.

Post-Occupation, I can imagine several different camps that Narns would fall into linguistically speaking: those who become language purists, who would want to preserve and regain traditions pre-Occupation, the desire to return, culturally and linguistically to a time untouched by the Centauri; and those who would be more practical in the sense that they would support Narn Standard as the way forward, as a spacefaring race and sudden major players on the galactic board.

Narn Standard being something like a creole of most dominant Narn languages - with Centauri loan-words: especially for technologies, pejoratives, and cuss words. For instance, in Russian, the word for "idiot" is дурак "durak" –> which comes from турок lit. "Turk," a Turkish person. I feel like there would be a lot of similar things going on with Narn and Centauri.

But I'm imagining a lot of words like this in both Narn and Centauri

There are still very many different languages that Narns from various countries/areas would speak - especially older generations; but the younger generations, those born during the occupation and after would speak a more and more standardized form, with some regional/dialectical differences.

This, of course, brings me to my favorite character of all time: G'Kar!

The various prophets of Narn and their various associated religious texts would of course be in the various languages of wherever they happen to be from. Canonically, the Narns make perfect reproductions of their holy texts (including all the rips/burns/coffee stains) these religious texts would continuously be published in the same archaic language they were written. Imagine reading the Christian Bible in Aramaic!

This brings me to the Book of G'Kar. G'Kar was born during the occupation, so it is not a stretch that he would have written his book (basically his diary that he didn't intend to have published until after his death! I bet the poor guy didn't even get to edit it properly!) in Narn Standard.

This would have massive cultural significance on Narn - obviously his may followers, but also those against it, as giving legitimacy to the cultural/linguistic heritage of the Narns post-occupation, Centauri influence and all!

This whole post, and the whole rant I uploaded to discord back in September, was all inspired by Na'tak Burella - the Prideful WInd-catcher, G'Kar's nickname for Londo in the Book of G'Kar.

Given what we know about the way Narn sounds and the way Centauri sounds, 'Na'tak Burella' seems like an example of Centauri and Narn languages enmeshed. 'Prideful,' perhaps being a play on words for some Centauri loanword, and 'na'tak'-> 'wind-catcher' (wind-sock? windbag?) 'easily influenced' or 'gaudy and annoying.'