And frankly, demanding this level of realism out of fantasy is absurd, and we only do it because the founder of modern fantasy happened to be a linguist. He was also an appalling historian to judge by his timeline, which is so ludicrously long it rips me out of the story every time it comes up. Golarion has the exact same problem, as does Faerun and Westeros. Stupidly long timelines. But I'm a historian.
Is the time line stupidly long, though? Bear in mind that we're neither elves nor dragons.
The Epic of Gilgamesh dates to about 2100 BCE; the pyramids a little earlier, so we're roughly 5,000 years separated from the pyramids. That's roughly 100 human lifespans or 200 generations, which is a hell of a long time by our standards.
But an elvish generation is roughly 200 years, and an elvish lifespan is up to 850 years. Something that happened 800 years ago, if you're an elvish child, is a story that your great-grandfather will literally tell you about because he was there. And something that happened 1200 years ago is something that a great wyrm may be able to tell you about because she was an eyewitness.
So 10,000 years of history is only 50 draconic generations away. That's basically the Battle of Hastings in human terms.
And Tolkien's elves were literally immortal. If you wanted to know what Valinor looked like, you could ask Galadriel. Cirdan is older -- he literally missed the ship that took the rest of the Teleri to Valinor. It's hardly unreasonable for the elves to have written history dating back a few thousand years when the people who were writing it are still around and able to attest to its accuracy.
This is probably really silly, but I would love, as in actually pay money, to get my hands on a tome of constructed languages of the pathfinder multiverse.
Anyone willing to help me bribe/steal/hire the guy who created the languages for Game of Thrones?
This is probably really silly, but I would love, as in actually pay money, to get my hands on a tome of constructed languages of the pathfinder multiverse.
Anyone willing to help me bribe/steal/hire the guy who created the languages for Game of Thrones?
Don't know him, but David Salo is a fellow Badger. :-)
Don't know him, but David Salo is a fellow Badger. :-)This is probably really silly, but I would love, as in actually pay money, to get my hands on a tome of constructed languages of the pathfinder multiverse.
Anyone willing to help me bribe/steal/hire the guy who created the languages for Game of Thrones?
Thanks Jessice. You're right though, Salo's a good one. David J. Peterson is who I was thinking of.
Something you might be interested in Dothraki TEDtalk Podcast
Modules Overlord
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They were always really helpful! Its funny, as I've always had a fixation for halflings and I always remembered your name as "the guy who wrote the halfling name generator." >_> My apologies.
No apologies needed! First, it's nice to be remembered for *anything*. Second, I *love* what I did with the halfling name generator, so I am glad to find fans of it. :)
*The Ravenloft Gazetteers did this perfectly - a small selection of key words of phrases likely to be used in each domain based on the kinds of adventures you were likely to play there. Each was also based on a real world language, so if you really wanted more it was pretty easy to figure out which real-world language was being used as a base and work from there. As additional domains using the same language came up, more terms were added that were thematically appropriate to that domain.
Although let me say, as one of the Gazetteer designers, that our choice to utilize real-world languages, while useful in many contexts, also led us down the occasional blind alley(1) and caused the even more occasional, entirely unintentional, offense(2). If I were to do it again, I dunno, I might back away from the use of real-world languages structures entirely, with the unfortunate side effect of severely limiting the utility of those introductory glossaries. (Or not; I've noticed that Kelish terms that turn up in Golarion tend to be modified Arabic or Turkish, and so to be honest I glom those vocabularies together willy-nilly when I need to come up with Kelish terms on the fly in my home games.)
1. Taking the Ravenloft domain of Tepest for an example, we were essentially the third-generation design team to tackle that domain. From the original design team we inherited the domain's entirely fantastical place names. From the second design team we inherited a heavy Celtic feel, including many fey with Gaelic-inspired names. As a result, I found myself kinda constrained into using a Gaelic tongue as the domain's native language, and then having to rationalize why the town names sound really absolutely nothing like what that language would produce.
2. Utilizing foreign words for basic terms (such as, say, "Black Forest") can be a minefield for an English-speaking designer with extremely limited time and resources to thoroughly research the alternative contexts of words most likely just pulled out of a dictionary. If you don't already have a strong grasp of the language you're pulling from, it... well, it can be tricky, let's just say.
2. 2. Utilizing foreign words for basic terms (such as, say, "Black Forest") can be a minefield for an English-speaking designer with extremely limited time and resources to thoroughly research the alternative contexts of words most likely just pulled out of a dictionary. If you don't already have a strong grasp of the language you're pulling from, it... well, it can be tricky, let's just say.
Even if you have a strong grasp, it can still be tricky. Naming a child's bed "Lolita," for example. This is a mistake I would not expect an English company to make, but I'd not be surprised by a foreign company not being familiar with the associations.
You're talking about spectrums (how broad are the descriptions of religions, how complex are the political relationships, etc.), and I'm talking about a binary (randomly generated examples of languages, vs. predetermining aspects of the language to ensure quality and consistency). So it's not really a good comparison.
A fair point, and I do appreciate the complexities involved. I still think that people are more interested in a few odd words and phrases here or thereto make tavern names, place names, and character-building expressions, which don't necessarily require the entire syntax to be developed. But your point is well taken
And frankly, demanding this level of realism out of fantasy is absurd, and we only do it because the founder of modern fantasy happened to be a linguist. He was also an appalling historian to judge by his timeline, which is so ludicrously long it rips me out of the story every time it comes up. Golarion has the exact same problem, as does Faerun and Westeros. Stupidly long timelines. But I'm a historian.
Is the time line stupidly long, though? Bear in mind that we're neither elves nor dragons.
The Epic of Gilgamesh dates to about 2100 BCE; the pyramids a little earlier, so we're roughly 5,000 years separated from the pyramids. That's roughly 100 human lifespans or 200 generations, which is a hell of a long time by our standards.
But an elvish generation is roughly 200 years, and an elvish lifespan is up to 850 years. Something that happened 800 years ago, if you're an elvish child, is a story that your great-grandfather will literally tell you about because he was there. And something that happened 1200 years ago is something that a great wyrm may be able to tell you about because she was an eyewitness.
So 10,000 years of history is only 50 draconic generations away. That's basically the Battle of Hastings in human terms.
And Tolkien's elves were literally immortal. If you wanted to know what Valinor looked like, you could ask Galadriel. Cirdan is older -- he literally missed the ship that took the rest of the Teleri to Valinor. It's hardly unreasonable for the elves to have written history dating back a few thousand years when the people who were writing it are still around and able to attest to its accuracy.
That would be a good excuse, if the timeline of Golarion was about elves or dragons. But the vast majority of incidents are about humans. And this perpetuates a really flawed notion about the middle ages (which, let's face it, is the default of fantasy) where nothing happened and nothing changed for a thousand years between the dynamic histories of Rome and the modern world. We already mash together events and technologies from across the Middle Ages (and beyond) that actually make no sense together, with various forms of arms and armor being the most obvious but political institutions no less so.
Tolkien has a bit better excuse, but still, the notion that in 3000 years nothing of importance happens technologically or really even culturally in Gondor is pretty ludicrous. I get that Elves are static and have reasons for being so, but they exert remarkably little influence on the day-to-day human world. And unlike in Golarion you don't have the magic excuse, because Middle Earth is decidedly "low-magic".
TDL: It perpetuates the myth that stuff only happens once you hit the modern world.
*The Ravenloft Gazetteers did this perfectly - a small selection of key words of phrases likely to be used in each domain based on the kinds of adventures you were likely to play there. Each was also based on a real world language, so if you really wanted more it was pretty easy to figure out which real-world language was being used as a base and work from there. As additional domains using the same language came up, more terms were added that were thematically appropriate to that domain.Although let me say, as one of the Gazetteer designers, that our choice to utilize real-world languages, while useful in many contexts, also led us down the occasional blind alley(1) and caused the even more occasional, entirely unintentional, offense(2). If I were to do it again, I dunno, I might back away from the use of real-world languages structures entirely, with the unfortunate side effect of severely limiting the utility of those introductory glossaries. (Or not; I've noticed that Kelish terms that turn up in Golarion tend to be modified Arabic or Turkish, and so to be honest I glom those vocabularies together willy-nilly when I need to come up with Kelish terms on the fly in my home games.)
1. Taking the Ravenloft domain of Tepest for an example, we were essentially the third-generation design team to tackle that domain. From the original design team we inherited the domain's entirely fantastical place names. From the second design team we inherited a heavy Celtic feel, including many fey with Gaelic-inspired names. As a result, I found myself kinda constrained into using a Gaelic tongue as the domain's native language, and then having to rationalize why the town names sound really absolutely nothing like what that language would produce.
2. Utilizing foreign words for basic terms (such as, say, "Black Forest") can be a minefield for an English-speaking designer with extremely limited time and resources to thoroughly research the alternative contexts of words most likely just...
I take your meaning, and if there was one thing I would have liked the gazeteers to do, it would have been to be less restricted by the Ravenloft that had come before, because you guys clearly had amazing vision and a knack for storytelling that far surpassed earlier authors of the material. That having been said, I've never been able to sell or even pack away my Gazeteers. They are in my opinion some of the finest examples of roleplaying writing I have ever had the privilege to read. My only regret is that there were not five more. I would have loved to have sailed the seas of the Core, explore it's terrifying islands, and venture to the clusters and beyond. The loss of the Ravenloft license and the death of Arthaus is the #1 thing I wish I could change in the history of gaming.
That would be a good excuse, if the timeline of Golarion was about elves or dragons. But the vast majority of incidents are about humans.
Which would be relevant if elves or dragons never interacted with any other race. But given that a human child of a half-elf parent might have an elven grandfather who is over 800 years old (and similarly for a draconic-blooded human sorcerer) I think we can discard that.
As it is, most Elf and Dwarf PCs can remember the world before Aroden's death. That's already kind weird.
snip
ashtinna - lady
qitha - well
Er-Qithat - City of Wells
sharat - waters
lianhabar - helloWhat do you say to the Qadiran women?
Lianhabar, ashtinnat! ("Hello, ladies!")
Because we've given you several nouns that end in -a, and we've given you one of them in both singular and plural form (qitha, qithat), and we've given you another plural noun ending in a similar way (-at).
And now you can look at the plurals qithat and sharat, and guess that the plural of...
If only it were so simple. Qithat could be the genitive plural (of wells) and sharat the partitive (some waters) or even the 3rd person singular present indicative active (he waters). And given that we're presumably looking here for the vocative plural rather than the nominative, even ignoring those possibilities may not help.
And 'lianhabar' might be quite appropriate at another time of day, or to a single man, or to a child, or to a servant, but not to multiple women. Or it's a well-wishing greeting with a very specific meaning (eg if 'lian' is 2nd person singular present subjunctive of 'to eat' and 'habar' is singular accusative of 'meat'.
So what you might be saying is not "Hello, ladies!" but "May you eat meat of the women!"
Aren't languages great?
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snip
ashtinna - lady
qitha - well
Er-Qithat - City of Wells
sharat - waters
lianhabar - helloWhat do you say to the Qadiran women?
Lianhabar, ashtinnat! ("Hello, ladies!")
Because we've given you several nouns that end in -a, and we've given you one of them in both singular and plural form (qitha, qithat), and we've given you another plural noun ending in a similar way (-at).
And now you can look at the plurals qithat and sharat, and guess that the plural of...
If only it were so simple. Qithat could be the genitive plural (of wells) and sharat the partitive (some waters) or even the 3rd person singular present indicative active (he waters). And given that we're presumably looking here for the vocative plural rather than the nominative, even ignoring those possibilities may not help.
And 'lianhabar' might be quite appropriate at another time of day, or to a single man, or to a child, or to a servant, but not to multiple women. Or it's a well-wishing greeting with a very specific meaning (eg if 'lian' is 2nd person singular present subjunctive of 'to eat' and 'habar' is singular accusative of 'meat'.
So what you might be saying is not "Hello, ladies!" but "May you eat meat of the women!"
Aren't languages great?
Sure, but designing the language that way would be completely missing the point of designing a tool that was easy for players to use to form their own utterances.
I had run over by the tank.
I was run over by the tank.
I love language.
Sure, but designing the language that way would be completely missing the point of designing a tool that was easy for players to use to form their own utterances.snip
ashtinna - lady
qitha - well
Er-Qithat - City of Wells
sharat - waters
lianhabar - helloWhat do you say to the Qadiran women?
Lianhabar, ashtinnat! ("Hello, ladies!")
Because we've given you several nouns that end in -a, and we've given you one of them in both singular and plural form (qitha, qithat), and we've given you another plural noun ending in a similar way (-at).
And now you can look at the plurals qithat and sharat, and guess that the plural of...
If only it were so simple. Qithat could be the genitive plural (of wells) and sharat the partitive (some waters) or even the 3rd person singular present indicative active (he waters). And given that we're presumably looking here for the vocative plural rather than the nominative, even ignoring those possibilities may not help.
And 'lianhabar' might be quite appropriate at another time of day, or to a single man, or to a child, or to a servant, but not to multiple women. Or it's a well-wishing greeting with a very specific meaning (eg if 'lian' is 2nd person singular present subjunctive of 'to eat' and 'habar' is singular accusative of 'meat'.
So what you might be saying is not "Hello, ladies!" but "May you eat meat of the women!"
Aren't languages great?
But doesn't that mean you should just include plural forms (and a vocative case, if you're going to bother with declension) in the vocab lists you publish? I'm saying avoiding the whole reverse engineering process sounds more user friendly than making the reverse engineering easy.
Dude, the post I provided was a very abbreviated vocab list I made up on the fly to illustrate a very simple example.
But doesn't that mean you should just include plural forms (and a vocative case, if you're going to bother with declension) in the vocab lists you publish? I'm saying avoiding the whole reverse engineering process sounds more user friendly than making the reverse engineering easy.Sure, but designing the language that way would be completely missing the point of designing a tool that was easy for players to use to form their own utterances.
So what you might be saying is not "Hello, ladies!" but "May you eat meat of the women!"Aren't languages great?
This is kind of where rules like Chekhov's clue come in. If you're going to put an element in the game, make sure that it's fun.
There are a lot of people -- Jessica is obviously one -- that find the reverse engineering process fun and appreciate it as a puzzle. (I think there was something similar in Knights of the Old Republic, and it was quite a good/fun puzzle.)
Putting in a vocabulary list containing an unsolvable puzzle is not fun. Putting in a vocabulary list with a solvable puzzle is fun. Not putting in a vocabulary list can also be fun if the group doesn't enjoy puzzles. In that regard, it's rather like riddles -- some people adore them and some think they're just lame....
Well as I buyer, i would be interested in such a book. I always spend a lot of time on naming my PCs or NPC and I pretty much have to resort to name generator on the internet and inspiration from the list of male and female names in the race section.
Here are two of my characters I researched their names:
Perykin meaning Flower (Pery) dance (kin) in halfling. That reflect her innocent personality.
Duervarest meaning Dark (Duer) exile (var) cave (est) and being my cave druid dwarf.
The name of a character is probably (for me) the most important thing about him or her. :)
On a side note, my favorite made-up language is D'ni.
Dude, the post I provided was a very abbreviated vocab list I made up on the fly to illustrate a very simple example.
I didn't take it any other way; sorry if I came off as argumentative.
This is kind of where rules like Chekhov's clue come in. If you're going to put an element in the game, make sure that it's fun.
There are a lot of people -- Jessica is obviously one -- that find the reverse engineering process fun and appreciate it as a puzzle. (I think there was something similar in Knights of the Old Republic, and it was quite a good/fun puzzle.)
Putting in a vocabulary list containing an unsolvable puzzle is not fun. Putting in a vocabulary list with a solvable puzzle is fun. Not putting in a vocabulary list can also be fun if the group doesn't enjoy puzzles. In that regard, it's rather like riddles -- some people adore them and some think they're just lame....
I'm one of those people, too. Just this evening I was looking over the D&D playtest packet and was tickled pink to recognize some of SKR's work in among the examples of elven names.
Lord knows any language primer is completely hypothetical at this point, but I don't see how including an overview of the grammar rather than only a lexicon of words and phrases would amount to an unsolvable puzzle. Honestly, at this point I just feel like you and I are talking past each other about what we find neat about language.
That would be a good excuse, if the timeline of Golarion was about elves or dragons. But the vast majority of incidents are about humans.Which would be relevant if elves or dragons never interacted with any other race. But given that a human child of a half-elf parent might have an elven grandfather who is over 800 years old (and similarly for a draconic-blooded human sorcerer) I think we can discard that.
The issue is not that there are people to remember what happened. The issue is that there's nothing of substance happens for such bizarrely long periods of time, whether people remember it or not. That culture and technology is effectively static for thousands of years. That hasn't happened since the Bronze Age.
I'm not sure whether we need actual languages, but it would be good to have a solid idea of what each language looks/sounds like. It's fairly easy to distinguish between Spanish and Polish and Japanese and Mandarin and Swedish and Hindi and Quenya and Klingon and the Black Speech of Mordor.
So in a like way, it would be nice to tell Taldane from Elvish and Ulfen and Dwarvish and Orcish and Vudrani.
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On the boards, we can just throw what we say into Google Translate and pick a language. I typically use Norwegian for Skald, for example.
I've done Ignan in Japanese, Sinhalese for Aquan, that sort of thing.
It could be worse. It could be Danish. Then you'd shudder from the pronunciation even if he got it perfect.
I would like to explain a little what exactly prompted me to ask for Golarion specific languages. I am currently the leader of the first and only dwarf settlement in the upcoming MMO Pathfinder Online. The game devs asked all settlements to pick lore appropriate names. This excludes the use of any non English real world languages and languages developed for other intellectual properties. This has made it a bit tricky coming up with a thematic and exotic sounding name for our dwarf town. In most other well established fantasy settings this would not have been a problem as players are provided with basic info on things like place names and common racial words. Pathfinder is playing with the big kids now and needs to be ready to offer the same sort of features and depth in it's game world.
Also what does Golarion mean? It certainly is not an English word.
Also, Orfamay, thank you for that link -- I hadn't read it, and it looks excellent. :D
Anything by Piper is excellent. :-)
Language are hard. And there's a lot of them on and in Golarion.