RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Caspar · **10-18-2016, 03:17 AM**

(10-18-2016, 02:14 AM)Flynn Rosenberg Wrote:
(10-18-2016, 02:10 AM)Teadrinker Wrote: I tend to put this in a very realistic light.

So on Japanese servers, their Eorzen characters are speaking Japanese. They are natively Japanese so it very likely doesn't have the same fantasy connotation as it does for us in America/EU/Elsewhere.

Effectively, there would be no differences between the two spoken languages besides maybe an accent and dialect changes which they quantify for in the lorebook.

TL;DR Same language from what I can gather here. Your Doman character might have a Doman accent or dialect but they are speaking the same language as the Eorzeans. Your Doman might be familiar with Ninja names and abilities where your Eorzean character would not.

OOCly, you can think of this as both areas of the world speaking English if you're from America with some differing words and accents thrown in.

If you're from Japan it would be like both Doma and Eorzea speaking Japanese expect some differing words and accents thrown in.

ICly, this means they both speak "Common", each with a slightly different inflection.

This is just for the Raen/Domans. The Xaela are their own beast obviously. That's how I interpreted it anyway, someone throw a flag at me if I missed anything important.

I think you hit it spot on. That's how I see it too. Since it says Xaela use Ancient Auri I can only assume that's Fantasy Japanese to English players, like they stick to the old ways while the others don't.

I doubt any more needs to be said at this point or it's just gonna drag on. We're adults, let's just accept what's been written and laid out for us.

The Xaela's naming scheme doesn't reflect Japan in any way though, and the connection between Xaela and Doma is otherwise pretty tenuous in the lore.

It strikes me as a bit unfair to characterize the prior concerns as childish when the same sort of hairsplitting is going on in the Dragoon thread and it's gained considerable acceptance. Had this not been lore based around Fantasy Japan, I doubt the reaction would be the same. I think it's honestly worthy of consideration.

There's no contradiction in the JP version because Japanese is the default. That's fine with me, but it doesn't clear up the difference in untranslated terms between versions. Select phrases don't just evolve a totally different syntax and written form out of nowhere. Sure, what we're looking at is an approximation of fantasy equivalents translated to real world languages to make them comprehensible to us, (rather than actual Japanese and English) but the terms are left untranslated for a reason, generally to reflect words that are not mutually intelligible. I'm fine with the languages in-setting being the same, but the difference in terminology, either the untranslated JP terms in English, or the untranslated European terms in Japanese, won't disappear as easily. There really ought to be a reason for it, even if it's as simple as them picking up terminology from another local region.

Related to that, the other possibility I've also considered is that the untranslated terms aren't Doman, but this I would have to research. They could be terminology that came from the homeland the Ninja traveled from. Or they could have been loanwords originally from another region near Doma. If the entire language is not separate, or they aren't bilingual, that would seem pretty reasonable as an explanation for divergent vocabulary, stark enough to necessitate that the writers reflect the difference with the contrast between alphabetical and syllabic words.

It's probably overthinking, as ability and character names are decided to give a certain feel, not necessarily be meaningful in every circumstance, or reflect world building so much as just be cool. But I dunno, it still seems fishy to me. I went out of my way to never use <this kind of speech> as much as possible when playing and even I still think that centuries of isolation have a much more profound effect than twenty years of contact.

Then again, bigger than even things like this are the questions that arise in my mind when I read certain ability or weapon names. The Dragons in Stone Vigil and elsewhere occasionally have Slavic names, yet there is no culture we've seen that demonstrates a similar naming scheme. Does the existence of the Vajra daggers for NIN suggest a Vedic/Buddhist equivalent in setting with a similar spiritual symbology? Does the Yasha and Ashura gear suggest there are people in the world who believe in, or actual demigod-like war demons of the same nature? In JP, Forbidden Chakra is named Yin/Yang Qi Slash, Shoulder Tackle is named Rasetsu/Rakshasa Attack, etc. We don't see these things and yet they're inlaid within the game regardless of the cultural baggage associated with the terms, so it's probable that these kinds of questions never even occur to the designers.

On Raen language

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes