On Raen language

[Valence]

So I thought this warranted a thread of its own.

 

Lore panel and lore book seems to state that only the Xaela continue to speak the auri ancient tongue, but that the now sedentary Raen took the habit to speak the language of the doman Hyur. 

 

It would seem that a japanese/weeb language is out of the way for them.

[BumblingSeaBiscuit]

It could be argued that Doman-common, or the "common Doman tongue," is, in fact, Japanese. That the Xaelan tongue is different. We do see Japanese naming systems in both spells, items, and even their actual names. So it's less, "They can't speak this language," and more, "They're speaking Doman, not Raen." The actual lore quote is:

 

 

Dissecting this, the argument (for the point of providing debate fuel) can be:

 

Domans have a hyur majority so.

 

Have adopted the common tongue of the Hyur:

"Common," can simply mean "local to." This leads open interpretation to what that, "Common," Hyuran tongue is. And, on a similar point, "Common," is never specified as, "English," and changes in your region. To those who may RP in EU around French, "Common," on Eorzea would be French. So on and so forth. This continues into,

 

Their spoken language differs some from that spoken in Eorzea, which leads many to perceive it as a slightly odd dialect:

This is already acknowledging that -- at least in some ways -- the language is different. That means whereas they may not speak full Japanese, that they may speak "broken" Japanese. As in, this was a language that was whole once, but throughout the generation has wilted out and died. "Dead languages," could be supported by the fact that we -- to this day -- have pockets of people who speak dead languages. 

 

 

Some food for thought! ./bouncesout

[Flynn Bladebreaker]

*grabs popcorn*

 

I always preferred the term "Common" to "Eorzean" when it comes to the Hyur language, always felt odd hearing players say that. Glad that's cleared up.

[Maril]

When they say that common doman-hyur's tongue stands out as slightly odd dialect, I can't help but think of the difference between the Scandinavian languages - Norwegian, Danish and Swedish. Danes like to refer to Norwegian as "Danish with spelling errors" and with both languages it is generally possible to have a conversation, even though we're all only versed in our own languages. So what you might come across is a bunch of words that you understand but have a dialect (The swedish likes to say Danish sounds like we're trying to speak with a potato in our mouth) to them, mixed with words that have been adapted into their own thing. 

 

Personally I think if we assume that if the standard eorzean/hyur tongue is English then going full on doman-is-japaneese is taking it too far, rather I would see it more as the bulk of it is understandable both ways, but with some words that have evolved into being their own thing - which may then need some additional explaining or translating. And then I would probably also guestimate that their spelling deviates most of all, since even in Eorzea illiteracy is (supposedly) a common problem and there have been mentions of big changes to the given grammatical rules per region because there's no real unified consensus on how to apply grammatical rules.

[Kilieit]

Copy-pasting what I wrote on tumblr:

 

The way I am (somewhat stubbornly) choosing to interpret it is that Xaela tend to speak only the language(s) of the Steppes as a starting point, while Raen tend to speak a local language (like Doman) and also Common (a “commerce language” similar in role to Latin).

 

Doman as a language, like, obviously exists, unless they’re planning to retcon the entire NIN quest-line and half the abilities described therein… and unfortunately, as I’ve had to deal with “lore book says something stupid and contrary to in-game evidence” before (thanks WoW), I always tend to go with the more accessible medium I.E. in-game as the golden standard.

 

They’re always like “in our language” or “it’s hard to translate this word” and stuff in the NIN quest line. The separate, local language of “Doman” blatantly exists. However, they also don’t seem to be struggling to LEARN “Eorzean” despite being recent immigrants, although they appear to struggle to adjust to using it as their main/only language.

 

Which leads me to believe - in conjunction with this new info - that most Domans are bilingual, speaking “Doman” for everyday conversation and “Common” for official occurrences and trade with foreign parties or even with other villages (sometimes dialects can be, as mentioned, completely incomprehensible to people who don’t speak it, especially if there’s no method of communicating standardised pronunciation across distance).

 

Being such a varied continent, it makes sense that “Common” would also be the language that ended up being used most frequently in everyday conversation in Eorzea too, and that maybe the Eorzean accent/dialect of Common would be unofficially referred to as “Eorzean”.

[Kismet]

I've being playing my Raen as having a bit of an accent and stumbling over certain words from certain cultures that are difficult to pronounce (i.e. anything Elezen). So I was quite happy to learn that the lorebook supports this practice.

 

However, I wouldn't be so quick to fly the 'spoken Doman language = Japanese' flag. Hell, I wouldn't be so quick to say Elezen is just straight up French, either. That's always kind of annoyed me, personally. Just because a real-life language was used for inspiration and/or as a base for a fictional one... that doesn't necessarily mean that's 100% what said fictional culture's spoken language consisted of. Unless Koji confirms it as such, obviously.

 

I know some people don't like that because they want to have their fantastical magic Francophile and/or Weeb speak time. But I'd always rather be safe than sorry, and keeping things vague until word of god gives the okay to do one thing or another is the best way to keep most folks you meet in public happy.

 

This should go without saying, but of course, among your friends/FC/LS? You go and do whatever makes you happy. As long as all parties involved are okay with it and accept it.

[Nero]

It can be reasonably assumed that Domans are bilingual in Doman and Common. Not only that, but they are fluent in Common, lacking only in specific vocabulary words and certain untranslatable concepts. Yugiri speaks fluent common. All of the Domans we encounter, even the common peasants speak fluent Common. At no point do we see any Doman struggle with Common, save for very few, specific instances.

 

Oboro

I am told that this is similar to your concept of...ay-ther, was it? I must confess that Eorzean words and ways remain unfamiliar to me.

 

Even then, Oboro is being modest in his confusion. Aether is one of the only words that is considered "Eorzea-specific", and Oboro never has any trouble with the language ever again except when trying to translate untranslatable concepts like "shukuchi", which for example is written in Japanese as "縮地" which literally translates to "shrink place" referring to how Shukuchi compresses two points within the material realm to allow teleportation.

 

By extension, Raen characters should be just as fluent in both languages.

 

That said, I would be particularly forgiving for anyone who thinks the Doman language is just Fantasy Japanese. The evidence for Doman being a one-to-one analogue of Japanese--albeit old-fashioned Japanese--is strong, even without having an explicit mention or example of the language. In a sense, it's not even Fantasy Japanese: all of the names are directly lifted from 17th century Japanese vocabulary. All of the Doman words we see have direct Earth translations of Japanese. Raen naming conventions are built on Japanese kanji. Raen names also follow Japanese grammar rules like using "no" as a modifying particle. I'm pretty sure there's at least one instance of a Doman name using rendaku as well, and if the grammar rules are the same, then the sentence structure is the same. If the writing is the same, the alphabet is the same. If the words and alphabet directly translate to Earth-Japan analogues, then the words are the same.

 

If the grammar rules, alphabet, and vocabulary are all the same, then it can reasonably be equated to the same language. I'll still roll my eyes a little at gratuitous Japanese--again, Domans are shown to have fluency in Common--unless it applies to Doman-specific concepts or untranslatable stuff like onomatopoeia.

[Virella]

Being your resident Dutch/Europe scum, and dealing with dialect daily. Yeah, I legit couldn't understand people who lived 10KM away from me in one village in particular I used to live in. We have a massive river splitting us apart, so our sister village over all those years got a completely different accent over the village I lived in, despite... being sister cities.

 

People from Limbourg? Holy mother of are they even speaking Dutch? They were more speaking German from what little time I've spend up there, and I couldn't understand them for shit. (I had an easier time understanding my friend's german mother then his weirdo dialect.)

 

Same with Belgium/Flemmish (what I can understand/speak 70% ish of the time) It is still considered Dutch, but they have so many odd ye olde Dutch words thrown in it, and French as well, to the point I just sit there ???? at times. I'm grateful my own dialect is one who barely changed since the 1600, beyond adding more modern words, but my damn.

 

Dialects can be super duper strange, to the point you can barely understand them. Separate language? No. Does it overlap? Yeah. But can you understand each other if you don't default to the common way of speaking? Hell no.

 

So that's how I imagine the deal is with Doman/Eorzean tongue. You can pick words out, you can converse together in your common tongue, but as soon one starts slipping into their dialect, it becomes a shitfest to try to make out what the other is saying.

[Valence]

One could indeed see Eorzean as a diverging 'japanese/doman' form, that's a good point. 

 

The point I'm more trying to make is that in such fantasy worlds, it's rarely a good idea to  resort to IRL languages (with the exception of the narrative default language we use of course...).

[PhantasticPanda]

I'd still consider the Doman "language" as a dialect of the Common language now that the lore book is out stating out. As Virella points out, dialect can make a huge difference in communication, even when in a locale that relatively small. I'm Vietnamese. The whole country of Vietnam is relatively the same size as California. It consists of two or three distinct dialects. But I was American born and only exposed to the Central dialect that my family speaks. When I would visit Vietnam, I would have no trouble understanding my family in Hue and the central region. But when I would travel to the South to meet extended family, I could hardly understand them. They have their own slang, and their own pronunciation of our alphabet. I can still make out words and a few phrases, but just in general, its almost like speaking another language.

 

We should also consider what sort of language Eorzean is. We commonly revert it to English because of, well... the game is localized in English and because of naming conventions though that's more to emphasize cultural influences and inspiration. But for Japanese players, everyone would be speaking Japanese in place of "Eorzean". It could be a TOTALLY different language but you know, imagine the time and resource to develop a new language for a Fantasy game then getting voice actors to learn that.

[Kage]

Well, I mean look at the Chinese dialects Mandarin. Cantonese. Taiwanese etc. You would think they are all a different language.

[Caspar]

This is easy enough to reconcile for JP players as Eorzeans simply speaking a different form of Japanese, essentially. But it's important to note that the translation convention is in place. Eorzeans are not using English, nor are Domans using Japanese. When the game uses such a term untranslated, it is attempting to approximate meaning and intelligibility. There's definitely a unique language there, but it's not Japanese so much as Japanese is the best equivalent for it. That's generally what players have been trying to do. You could read the paragraph and argue Eorzean Hyur speak weird fantasy Japanese rather than English; that's even basically how it looks to the JP players, most likely. Yet the names don't reflect this, which leads to the same problem. So the paragraph isn't really useful or specific enough to argue either culture of Hyurs speaks or does not speak a different language entirely on top of a shared language.

 

The thought occurred to me too. It might be that Doman and the Ninja ability language is not the same,as they originated from an island community in the Far East, not Doma. So the other tongue Oboro refers to could be something else and Doman could refer to a dialect of common. That doesn't remove the naming problem but it's an interesting thought. Square is already vague enough on whether Far East is synonymous with Doma or refers to a region that Doma was in.

 

Even in this case though, the only thing the paragraph tells us for certain is that Domans do not have trouble understanding the Eorzeans. So the idea of struggling to learn Hyuran common isn't really canon.

[Kilieit]

This lore page on Othard suggests that Doma had no regular contact with Eorzea (or anywhere outside Othard) at all until two decades ago, so it seems highly unlikely to me that the two would share a basic language.

 

Sticking with my "Common is a trade language; Doman still exists as a local language" theory.

 

Edited to elaborate: Like 20 years is still a decently long time to integrate a new language into society if it's useful enough, but I also don't think it's enough time for the old language to totally die out. Othard's cultures were isolated for centuries; they will have developed language families, dialects, and all the related oddities independent of anything an Eorzean would be familiar with. Even if the two Hyuran populations either side of the mountain-range began with the same language, it's extremely doubtful they'd resemble anything like each other by the time they were reunited by air travel.

 

Then maybe "Common", introduced from over the mountains by the newly arrived travellers, is easy to pick up - so maybe it quickly gained popularity even internally to Doma, as a way of communicating between isolated communities with incomprehensible dialects - so in modern day, lots of Domans speak it (and thus find it easy to acclimatise to Eorzea, which only has a slight difference in accent from the Common they learned at home). But I think it pushes the bounds of belief to suggest that everyone in Doma would be perfectly happy to abandon their old language (thus rendering it dead) in favour of this one, in the span of a generation. And we already know Raen live in Doma for the most part... so...

 

IDK. Maybe there'd be teenagers who grew up speaking Common only, but I reaaaally don't think it'd be the norm.

[Caspar]

""This river passes through the great swath of grasslands in which the Auri Xaela clans live before winding through Yanxia."

Excuse me for a moment.

...

 

Alright. I've calmed down.

 

Anyway, I could see there being pretty explosive cultural change due to the airship trade. Sounds awfully familiar. I wonder what real world nation experienced such a huge cultural upheaval?

 

But yeah, I think that Common might be learned regularly in Doma, and perhaps is even compulsory after Garlemald conquered them, assuming that's the Empire's official language. The isolation, however, really suggests that there's no reasonable way they'd have the same exact language as those from Eorzea. Originally anyway.

[Teadrinker]

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.

[Flynn Bladebreaker]

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.

[Caspar]

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 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.

[Valence]

We have to keep in mind that the common HYUR language, while probably evolving a lot over centuries, has also a strong base coming from all those previous eras. Especially the allagan one that unified pretty much everything. So there is that too.

[Jana]

I think it's worth noting that unless the graphics are different on a JP server, all the text we see around Eorzea like the "No Entry" signs would still be in "English". In that case, I'd take it that the characters' spoken language, even on JP or EU servers, will still be a separate, English-y language, and won't resemble the Japanese-y native language of Doma.

[Valence]

Honestly, I just roll with all of those language being fictionnal languages. Some take inspirations from japanese traditional culture, others... less. Trying to equate them to IRL stuff is a slippery slope. There is just Auri, Common Hyur, Common Hyur (Doman), etc etc. Why do we need more? 

 

English (or japanese for the japanese audience) just happens to be the narrator language. A convenience. Using IRL languages to flavor fictionnal languages ingame is... weird to me. It's not Earth. It's Eorzea.

[Kilieit]

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.

[Valence]

Probably closer to the difference between old frank and modern french? It's very hard to understand. But you can still get half the words and roots, if not more.

[Kilieit]

I lowballed it because it was early in the morning and I only skimmed the paragraphs again, but re-reading and:

 

 

Thousands of years.

 

More like the difference between ancient Egyptian and modern Egyptian, except pretend the Egyptian people were split in half for the interim 2000 years and then expected to understand each other afterwards.

[Valence]

I don't know. The thing is, even the statement that they use 'common hyur', is if I recall correctly, more accurately using 'the common tongue of the hyur'. It doesn't really say 'the Common Tongue of the Hyur' (emphasis on capitals). It can be anything, the common tongue of the Hyur (implied, the Hyur from Doma), for example.

 

So, there is that.

[Koti Nexus]

I'm just going to drop something in here, which may have already been brought up, but I saw someone talk about how in game its one way, but the lore book says another (or something like that)-- Let us all remember that the Echo is an automatic translator in our heads and to our lips.

 

So, while someone in Eorzea may hear a different language, we as the players hear it as "common". This is just some old lore from way back when, as I don't think its covered in 2.0 (It might be, but I'm old).

 

I now return to my popcorn eating ways and shadow lurking.

And sorry if that was irrelevant.

 

PS - Did that lore page say Dalmasca???

Doma and DALMASCA?!?!