PDA

View Full Version : Fantasy Societies and their Languages



goto124
2016-03-16, 11:35 AM
Different societies and cultures develop different languages due to their different values and ways of thinking, such as how the Japanese language is known for its honorifics.

Do people make use of this in fantasy cultures and societies, though? As discussed in a different thread, class-based language could be represented in English by referring to the higher-class not with "you", but by the the third person. "Your Majesty is certainly wise", as an example.

But could we go further?

Maybe in underground societies where color is pretty much never seen, there are no words for different colors? Perhaps in the highly misandrist drow society, the word for "man" and the word for "slave" are one and the same?

What similar things have people done for fantasy societies before?

Words such as "straight" and "gay" speak of sexual orientation in reference to the person's gender. If you say someone is straight, would that someone be attracted to women or men? Well, if the someone is a man, he would be attracted to women, but if the someone is an woman, she would be attracted to men.

Could there be a society where there are no words for "straight" or "gay", instead using their words for "androsexual" and "gynosexual"? What features would that society have, especially with regards to their ideas on sexuality?

JAL_1138
2016-03-16, 12:15 PM
Wellgnomishisprettymuchstagndardcommogn, spokegnreallyquicklyagndwrittegnwithalotofsilegnt"g"s, agndwiththeoccasiognalexplosiogn.

ImNotTrevor
2016-03-16, 11:45 PM
Different societies and cultures develop different languages due to their different values and ways of thinking, such as how the Japanese language is known for its honorifics.

Do people make use of this in fantasy cultures and societies, though? As discussed in a different thread, class-based language could be represented in English by referring to the higher-class not with "you", but by the the third person. "Your Majesty is certainly wise", as an example.

But could we go further?

Maybe in underground societies where color is pretty much never seen, there are no words for different colors? Perhaps in the highly misandrist drow society, the word for "man" and the word for "slave" are one and the same?

What similar things have people done for fantasy societies before?

Words such as "straight" and "gay" speak of sexual orientation in reference to the person's gender. If you say someone is straight, would that someone be attracted to women or men? Well, if the someone is a man, he would be attracted to women, but if the someone is an woman, she would be attracted to men.

Could there be a society where there are no words for "straight" or "gay", instead using their words for "androsexual" and "gynosexual"? What features would that society have, especially with regards to their ideas on sexuality?

Perhaps almost an obtuse similarity, I have become enamored with how language can help paint a picture in Apocalypse World.

So, basically, in Apocalypse World people are named after things (or have weird names) like Cheeto or Dior or Cadillac.

Now, the thing is that these words have endured through the media left behind by the Golden Age, but their context is gone. "Dior" has no meaning in English except as a brand name. Same with Cheeto and Cadillac. So these words become valid sources for names.

I also like to mangle common phrases to show linguistic change over time. Stuff like "Slow as Molasses" has shifted to meaning something very fast, with the assumption that a Molass was some kind of very fast creature, now used sarcastically.

goto124
2016-03-17, 05:35 AM
I also like to mangle common phrases to show linguistic change over time. Stuff like "Slow as Molasses" has shifted to meaning something very fast, with the assumption that a Molass was some kind of very fast creature, now used sarcastically.

I was literally as fast as a molass!

Actually let's not do that, it'll cause some of the players to lose sanity points :smalltongue: I suppose it's to demonstrate a "degradation" of various words, and how its meaning is forgotten over time.

But what about new words? In the recent Max Max: Fury Road movie, "chrome" or "shiny" are used to mean "cool" or "wonderful", much to do with the vehicle-obsessed culture. New vocabulary pops up as well in the radioactive wasteland: a "half-life" is someone affected by radiation, "full-life" for one who's healthy.

Language that demonstrates its close ties to the culture. That's what I'm looking for.

LudicSavant
2016-03-17, 05:48 AM
Different societies and cultures develop different languages due to their different values and ways of thinking, such as how the Japanese language is known for its honorifics.

Do people make use of this in fantasy cultures and societies, though? As discussed in a different thread, class-based language could be represented in English by referring to the higher-class not with "you", but by the the third person. "Your Majesty is certainly wise", as an example.

But could we go further?

Yes, you can and should go further. There's lots of great examples in popular sci-fi/fantasy fiction. A recent top-selling sci-fi series, the Ancillary Justice (https://www.google.com/search?q=ancilary+justice&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8) trilogy, gets an awful lot of mileage out of this.

A couple of examples from said series:

- The word for "civilized" and the name of the imperial state are the same. Likewise, foreigner and uncivilized are the same.

- No gendered words at all. Since this applies to the narration just as much as the characters, you don't actually know the gender of many of the characters in the story.

goto124
2016-03-17, 05:56 AM
- No gendered words at all. Since this applies to the narration just as much as the characters, you don't actually know the gender of many of the characters in the story.

I would talk about how (not) gender-neutral English is , but I remember what conclusion the other thread came to:

"English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary".

Which means it's a hodgepodge!

LudicSavant
2016-03-17, 06:00 AM
Elaborating on the previous post I made:

The imperial society that had this gender-neutral language makes practically no cultural distinction at all between man and woman, to the point that couples of the same sex and couples of the opposite sex follow a similarly painless procedure for getting a child (thanks to the options afforded by technology). Fashion is similar, jobs are similar, pronouns are the same. Its citizens even have considerable trouble correctly identifying gender when they go to foreign lands. They're also stunned by the completely obvious (at least, when held up in comparison to them) hypocrisy of other cultures that claim to have equal rights for men and women.

goto124
2016-03-17, 06:05 AM
A gender-equality-related idea: a more gender-equal society with words for "housekeeper" and "breadwinner" instead of "husband" or "wife". Okay, they do that words for "husband" and "wife", but they're clinical-sounding terms used purely in the context of reproduction, much like how the nouns "female" and "male" sound clinical in comparison to "woman" and "man". So if you see an woman breadwinner and call her "wife", people will glare at you and wonder why you treat her as a baby-making factory.

"Housekeeper" would be whoever stays at home, cleans, cooks, and takes care of the children. "Breadwinner" would be whoever goes out to work and earn money for the family. The words "housekeeper" and "breadwinner" sound weird in English, but in that society they're as natural-sounding as "husband" and "wife".

(This was inspired by people saying they've met female husbands and male wives, and they are thus not sexist. I could only imagine those people have ideas of what "husband" and "wife" means beyond "male spouse" and "female spouse".)

LudicSavant
2016-03-17, 06:08 AM
A gender-equality-related idea: a more gender-equal society with words for "housekeeper" and "breadwinner" instead of "husband" or "wife". Okay, they do that words for "husband" and "wife", but they're clinical-sounding terms used purely in the context of reproduction, much like how "female" and "male" sound clinical in comparison to "woman" and "man". So if you see an woman breadwinner and call her "wife", people will glare at you and wonder why you treat her as a baby-making factory.

"Housekeeper" would be whoever stays at home, cleans, cooks, and takes care of the children. "Breadwinner" would be whoever goes out to work and earn money for the family. The words "housekeeper" and "breadwinner" sound weird in English, but in that society they're as natural-sounding as "husband" and "wife".

(This was inspired by people saying they've met female husbands and male wives.)

Expanding on that, I imagine that there could be a variety of role, job, or class-based "genders."

Also note that there are a variety of real cultures that identify more than 2 genders, such as the Hijra in India. (https://www.google.com/search?q=India+third+gender&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

Joe the Rat
2016-03-17, 09:36 AM
My Wood elves use the same word to describe humans and bugbears - the literal cognate is "bear-person," referring to how hairy, heavily built, and insatiable they are (compared to elves, at least). It becomes a matter of context to which they refer.

Their word for Goblin is "cub-person". Their word for Hobgoblin is etymologically unrelated.

Yes, that says something about the parents of half-breeds.

I also use a lot of double-meanings, but that's less about language and more about me screwing with the players and their expectations.

Âmesang
2016-03-17, 09:45 AM
Language in fantasy has crossed my mind, but usually no more than wanting a character to speak in a certain way (such as ignoring conjunctions whilst speaking calm and eloquently, yet slipping back into their use when angry), or simply wondering if the various "Common" tongues are different or coincidentally the same (does Mordenkainen have Speak Language [Toril Common], or does he just use comprehend languages and tongues when conversing with Elminster and Khelben?).

Xuc Xac
2016-03-17, 03:54 PM
- The word for "civilized" and the name of the imperial state are the same. Likewise, foreigner and uncivilized are the same.


In European languages influenced by classical Greece and Rome, the word for "civilized" literally means "city building" and a "barbarian" is someone who can't speak Greek (they just keep saying crap like "bar bar! bar bar!" like a dog barking). In many East Asian languages, the word for "civilized" literally means "literature producing" and a "barbarian" is someone who lives in the undeveloped wilderness.



"English is a language that lurks in dark alleys, beats up other languages and rifles through their pockets for spare vocabulary".


That's hardly unique to English. Spanish is full of Arabic and Native American words. Indonesian, Malaysian, and Japanese are full of Dutch and English words. Everybody around China has Chinese-derived vocabulary just like English has a lot of Latin vocabulary. In fact, French has so many loan words that the Academie Francaise even has a uniquely French term for it: "faire le borrowing".