I'd like to reiterate additional context, also from the lore book I added in my post on the last page.
Othard and Ilsabard/Eorzea were, again, completely separated for hundreds of years [ETA: actually thousands; see below] and only reunited in the last 20.
I think comparing native Othardian languages' relation to Eorzean to American English vs British English is extremely unrealistic. England and English-speaking America were only socially separated a couple hundred years ago, and they kept in contact with each other via letter and trade and soon telephone, then video, and so forth, which stopped the languages diverging from one another too much. Othard was completely isolated for far longer than that.
How would they speak the "same language, but with minor differences" after all that time?? Unless people from Hydaelyn are magically 1000x better at maintaining the exact same language on two sides of a barrier than real people, I don't buy it. Without telecomms and regular contact, real life humans can't even maintain the same language across about 20 miles and 10 years.
It's not a case of "accepting what we were given", it's a case of not taking quotes out of context and assuming that's the be-all and end-all of the lore.
We're at a disadvantage for interpreting this lore book in ways that make sense until it's in everyone's hands who wants a copy or some scummy pirate releases full scans online. We cannot jump to complete conclusions based on the information from one paragraph from one page alone. The book was intended to be taken as a whole, and the lore about each region is scattered across multiple pages accordingly.
Like a real life history book, this book is not a set of objective tenets - it requires user interpretation to understand. Basing that interpretation around one paragraph from one page, and completely ignoring another, longer set of text, because it doesn't fit the conclusion you drew from the first paragraph... it's bad scholarship.
Sorry I'm still high key salty about the WoW UVG and it's not helping me be sweet about this lore book either.
Othard and Ilsabard/Eorzea were, again, completely separated for hundreds of years [ETA: actually thousands; see below] and only reunited in the last 20.
I think comparing native Othardian languages' relation to Eorzean to American English vs British English is extremely unrealistic. England and English-speaking America were only socially separated a couple hundred years ago, and they kept in contact with each other via letter and trade and soon telephone, then video, and so forth, which stopped the languages diverging from one another too much. Othard was completely isolated for far longer than that.
How would they speak the "same language, but with minor differences" after all that time?? Unless people from Hydaelyn are magically 1000x better at maintaining the exact same language on two sides of a barrier than real people, I don't buy it. Without telecomms and regular contact, real life humans can't even maintain the same language across about 20 miles and 10 years.
It's not a case of "accepting what we were given", it's a case of not taking quotes out of context and assuming that's the be-all and end-all of the lore.
We're at a disadvantage for interpreting this lore book in ways that make sense until it's in everyone's hands who wants a copy or some scummy pirate releases full scans online. We cannot jump to complete conclusions based on the information from one paragraph from one page alone. The book was intended to be taken as a whole, and the lore about each region is scattered across multiple pages accordingly.
Like a real life history book, this book is not a set of objective tenets - it requires user interpretation to understand. Basing that interpretation around one paragraph from one page, and completely ignoring another, longer set of text, because it doesn't fit the conclusion you drew from the first paragraph... it's bad scholarship.
Sorry I'm still high key salty about the WoW UVG and it's not helping me be sweet about this lore book either.
![[Image: tUzrT.png]](https://puu.sh/tUzrT.png)
