The World of Layonara
The Layonara Community => Roleplaying => Topic started by: superdoofus on May 05, 2009, 03:42:52 PM
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It doesn't bother me just quick question that came to mind. I was thinking that we don't have to right like we talk. Like I came across a post where too dwarfs were writing like they would talk in RP. Unless the character isn't good at spelling we should write without any "Ye" "Aye" and "oi." We might say "Yo wassup man" but we don't right like that on our school or work papers. Just some thing to think about.
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Those silly Dwarfs... Goes to show you what all that mining and smithing does to ones brain... and don't get me started on the Voraxian education system
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Some folks enjoy their attempts at... how would you call it? .. "colloquial spelling"? But yes, we could simply lead in with a caveat/emote of *Bart speaks with the thick dwarven accent* and then write out the IC conversation using correct word spelling and sentence structure.
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It doesn't bother me just quick question that came to mind. I was thinking that we don't have to right like we talk. Like I came across a post where too dwarfs were writing like they would talk in RP. Unless the character isn't good at spelling we should write without any "Ye" "Aye" and "oi." We might say "Yo wassup man" but we don't right like that on our school or work papers. Just some thing to think about.
Uh huh, I very often wonder why they write their accent as well so thanks for bringing it up. :) (they actually made fun of this in one of the many comics called 'Order of the Stick' :)) Thing is [yes this is the bit where I randomnly give my opinion, when unasked for :P], not all dwarfs have to have scottish accents either. I'd like to hear a couple more dwarfs that speak more say ... posh for example, I mean, there would be at least a couple of different types of dwarf about, as there are in any community.
'Zoogmunch' has told me before he's been thinking that maybe people are thinking of the character of Gimli played in the film of Lord of the Rings perhaps? Though I'm sure that stereotype was there before. Well the actor in that film is Welsh anyhow. . . Bit of knowledge for the day. ;)
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I happen to agree with you... but to play the devil's advocate, standardized spelling is a very modern thing in RL, so doesn't it make sense that people would spell things how they say them? Why should a dwarf who says something one way spell it in a way that is doesn't sound like? Maybe a silly elf thinks it makes sense to spell something how it doesn't sound, but practical dwarves know better.
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It was just a thought. (Ummm What does "colloquial spelling" mean (I had to copy and paste the word to spell it right))
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Per Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: col-lo-qui-al
Pronunciation: \\kə-ˈlō-kwē-əl\\
Function: adjective
Date: 1751
1: of or relating to conversation : conversational
2 a: used in or characteristic of familiar and informal conversation ; also : unacceptably informal b: using conversational style
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To play the devil's advocate a little further... I just want to say I enjoy the extra RP feel those "silly dwarves" and uneducated rogues add to my message board experience... ;-)
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I've been playing a dwarf for many a year now. I have to say it is a sacrifice. I have sacrificed my spelling of real words. I once did an entire memo at work in Dwarven before I knew what I was doing. I'm glad I did spell check before sending it.
I still have a problem spelling "the" properly. I keep going to "teh" instead. I did not have this problem before I played a dwarf. :)
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Thabks for the def from websters
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It doesn't bother me just quick question that came to mind. I was thinking that we don't have to right like we talk. Like I came across a post where too dwarfs were writing like they would talk in RP. Unless the character isn't good at spelling we should write without any "Ye" "Aye" and "oi." We might say "Yo wassup man" but we don't right like that on our school or work papers. Just some thing to think about.
Part of the characterisation of dwarves is given by the brogue that they speak. Rather than come up with a unique accent, people borrowed heavily from an existing well-known and distinct brogue which (they felt) expressed the character and nature of the dwarves. This is typically Scots or Irish brogue. The accent helps to make the dwarves unique and adds color, because just by speaking, they are evoking all these (perceived) characteristics of the Scots and/or Irish.
(This is something I have felt has been unfortunately missing in the portrayal of the other races. An accent, although a stereotype, does immediately lend so much, especially in this medium of online roleplay where we have to physically type each letter and word to express what your character is doing.)
You are right that the written word "should" be unaccented. When you learn to read and write, you are taught the spelling of words; how you pronounce them is subject to your locale and the phonetic set of sounds you have available. This is (part of) what makes an accent; substituting a nearly-matches sound that you have for a pronunciation that you don't.
And similarly, when you are using the various language ears to speak. Native speakers don't speak their native tongue with an accent, so the words typed to be translated "shouldn't" be in an accent or brogue.
However, to write or speak such flat english as a dwarf is to lose a huge part of the dwarven characterisation. So, some people chose to keep it when expressing their characters in that medium.
I have done both. When my current (dwarven) character writes a written response, it is unaccented(1). For my previous (dwarven) character's journal, although the dialog was spoken in dwarven (and hence "should" have been written in "flat" english), I put it into brogue in order to convey its essential dwarvish nature.
'Zoogmunch' has told me before he's been thinking that maybe people are thinking of the character of Gimli played in the film of Lord of the Rings perhaps? Though I'm sure that stereotype was there before.
Dwarves have been speaking in brogue since long before LotR was a twinkle in Peter Jackson's eye. ;)
Regards,
Script Wrecked.
(1) although it does contain her particular grammatical mangling of Common.
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Yeah I kinda think of elves as having a harsh voice.
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Yeah I kinda think of elves as having a harsh voice.
Elves might be highly variable, as they have many distinct and separate cultures. Sun and Grey elves are smarter and more civilized than the rest, I bet the noble suns use a highly artistic form while the greys use a very clod and dry descriptive one. Wood elves and wild elves would have lots of woodland terms and metaphors with a simpler text and structure, moon elves somewhere in between. And then dark elven might have a thousand words for pain and sufferiing but very few for love, and sea elven would be mostly gargling bubbles. There are many different types, so its hard to peg them as a whole.
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Not to mention that as a general elves would be more paused and artistic in their way of talking. Since they take so darn time to make a simple decision see almost a decade.. and they live so long, I would think they that would also reflect in their way of speech.
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and... there's certain characters that speak like idiots with an accent just to get a rise out of people, even though said character speaks three languages fluently. I have one who continually infuriates people just for fun...
*winks at the Toranites*
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oh dont get started on wild elves now, for those who forgot that Drogo played almost a year and a half real time mangling common
not to mention being fun, making it so the character evolves being near city folk, it gives one initial aspect that help you get into the characters head
rrrrrrrrrrrrrunnnnnn lymun berk
dum dum pallydum
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Getting into the weeds here, but....
The thing I've been interested in with the language ears is if the loremasters can actually form up variable languages instead of letter translations.
By variable I mean idiomatic, for example - structure of passive sentences. The direct spoken translation of German to English, for example, uses a passive phrase that places the action/ verb at the end of the sentence, which is a significant structural difference from english.
What I would find interesting is if Layonara, since it's its own beast of lore, created baseline rules of spoken and written language using real life examples, then spinning them off into fantasy. It could start off as guidelines describing spoken and verbal sentence structure, and very very general nuances of the language. Then, players could start with their own racial language thread to develop idiomatic phrases. This would grow over time and in years to come - would really come to encompass its own distinct language style.
Take 'it doesn't matter'. Direct translation from german is 'it makes nothing'. If you have a general guideline (which would certainly take some thought), then I would think that by the time the MMO starts we could be moving towards language structure that was unique, creative, and a solid consensus-based foundation.
And... nobody would have to rewrite the letter for letter language converters.
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Getting into the weeds here, but....
The thing I've been interested in with the language ears is if the loremasters can actually form up variable languages instead of letter translations.
By variable I mean idiomatic, for example - structure of passive sentences. The direct spoken translation of German to English, for example, uses a passive phrase that places the action/ verb at the end of the sentence, which is a significant structural difference from english.
What I would find interesting is if Layonara, since it's its own beast of lore, created baseline rules of spoken and written language using real life examples, then spinning them off into fantasy. It could start off as guidelines describing spoken and verbal sentence structure, and very very general nuances of the language. Then, players could start with their own racial language thread to develop idiomatic phrases. This would grow over time and in years to come - would really come to encompass its own distinct language style.
Take 'it doesn't matter'. Direct translation from german is 'it makes nothing'. If you have a general guideline (which would certainly take some thought), then I would think that by the time the MMO starts we could be moving towards language structure that was unique, creative, and a solid consensus-based foundation.
And... nobody would have to rewrite the letter for letter language converters.
That is on my wishlist (not even on the to-do list, there's another list, my wishlist ;)
But to quantify it as "some" work is a bit of an understatement I think! :)
And regarding the initial post *goes back on topic* most people who RP dwarves want to keep it clear their character is a dwarf. Like SCriptWrecked indicated, just by writing with the accent, it is immediately clear that we're reading about a dwarf, which wouldn't be the case otherwise.
Sure, you could start with a sentence that the following is written in dwarven, but that doesn't capture it as well as a whole piece of text written in "dwarven".
In the end though, it's up to the player how he/she wants to do it.
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How do you do that Originally posted by _______ thing.
Anyway. On the Website we should have an elven, dwarven etc translator. This can be used by anyone but it would be bad RP to respond as if you understand it unless your char has an ear or understands that language.
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ifn ye be affin problem wit me ax-cent..oi gots a one ye kin argu wit. :p
grenna rockbasher
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Wow. How did this post get so controversial...
OOOOOOOOOOOOh yay. The Hak files. They're downloading!
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It doesn't bother me just quick question that came to mind. I was thinking that we don't have to right like we talk. Like I came across a post where too dwarfs were writing like they would talk in RP. Unless the character isn't good at spelling we should write without any "Ye" "Aye" and "oi." We might say "Yo wassup man" but we don't right like that on our school or work papers. Just some thing to think about.
Getting back to the original post, and feeding off of Script Wreck's arguments a little, I'd like to add that while we don't write like that on our school or work papers, we often write in various language forms informally as in text message.
Similarly, other language forms often find their way into the works of literature. Some examples would be slave dialect in many slave narratives and later African American literature, NADSAT from A Clockwork Orange (which as a form of slang pulls a lot from both English and Russian), and Newspeak from 1984. And while I realize the Dwarven community does not rise to the literary genius of Douglass, Burgess, or Orwell, there is a common feature among them all--a sense of a separate community. The Dwarf-common language form marks a particular set of Dwarves. Part of living in this community and adopting this culture is adopting the particulars of its speech. In this way Dwarf-common has almost been given a life of its own from the common; it is no longer an accent. It no longer represents how any one player types, but how an entire community uses a language to form a specific culture.
In my particular Dwarf's RP, I do the accent to represent his inability to grasp common completely. I don't speak with the accent when I speak Dwarven. Part of this has to do with Nokka's stubbornness, and part is an OOC reason relating to insufficient intelligence to speak two languages fluently. I like when people RP not understanding Nokka's broken speech, too. It adds a nice element.
As far as accented writing goes like "Ye", "Aye", and "Oi". It could be that the Dwarves learned phonetically and not through word-recognition. Thus, when their teacher told them to "sound it out" there could be much room for error. Also, "Ye" and "Aye" just come from an older form of English, and are not necessarily transformations of language particularly for Dwarves.
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Good lord.
My character says 'ye', 'naah', 'bovver' and so on because they are speaking in what I hope is some sort of accented speech. I have to write the words they speak, so I write them as I want them to sound.
By the way, I know people who say 'nuffin' and actually spell it like that, so superdoofus, some people's inablity to pronounce words correctly may actually mean they cannot spell them correctly either.
Dicsuss....:D
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Personally I prefer players 'animating' their use of words, helps me imagine what it would actually sound like, or how the character pronounces things
For example:
*The drunken dwarf slurs his words as he speaks in a thick accent*
I'll tell you when I've had enough, and I haven't. *bangs his mug down*
Or...
Ah'll tell ye' when ah 'ad enoof, I aint'. *bangs his mug down*
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Pretty sure I've just stated the difference between a scottish and an english pub though too.
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*a small Halfling wearing mirrored goggles which hide his eyes approaches, holding up one hand for a moment in what may be a greeting (though the tiny bits of electrical current jumping from fingertip to fingertip might just as well indicate he's about to unleash a spell).*
"Current! Emwonk cognates multiple variable vocalization parameters facilitate excessive positive experiential flow processes, joint nominal submersive features."
*he pauses for a moment to regard the various onlookers*
"Cognate?"
*when it appears to the Halfing that most of those observing seem to have absolutely no clue about anything he's just spoken, he turns to leave the area and is heard to mutter something that may be a curse judging by the tones of his voice.*
"Null cognative avian cranials!"
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"what? You wanna build a boat wee man. A boat that can be sumersed?"