unless darnassus the city was named after the darnassian language (bc the city is like 12 years old) im confused why nightborne and night elves cant cross-speak… when did the language change for kaldorei/shaldorei/queldorei… i kind of get why thalassian became a thing… i think? i mean it should be closer to “shaldorei” speak… i dont get it
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Thousands of years of isolation from each other would absolutely Lead to regional dialects forming.
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I imagine it would be like the difference from ionian greek to linear a or b.
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That’s questionable when it’s the same people that are still alive after those thousands of years lol. It’s like that kid that does a semester in the UK and comes back with an accent.
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Have you ever tried to understand a legit Scottsman speaking?
Same for france french / quebecois french. People from France barely understand people from Quebec and that’s barely 200 years apart.
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It is said that Polybius was unable to read the oldest treaty in the Roman archives even though he was fluent in classical latin.
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I love that analogy. I know someone who speaks with a British accent and spent the first 25 years of their life in Canada.
But look how much language has changed just in the last 20 years. Things exist that weren’t around then, and meaning of words have changed. And that’s only two decades. Give it 10,000 years of two peoples never talking to each other, and their language will evolve in two different directions.
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I’m givin’ it all she’s got cap’n! My wee bairns, they canna take any morrrre!
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I really have to agree here.
Just look at english. You could realistically only go back about 400 years and still be able to communicate to an english speaker of the time. Imagine Being isolated for 10,000 years.
How Far Back in Time Could an English Speaker Go and Still Communicate Effectively? - YouTube
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https://i.pinimg.com/236x/54/d5/5d/54d55d3428f46eeb86a17230380699be.jpg
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I’unno. It’s not really “two peoples”, it’s literally the same exact people. These are immortals, one of whom’s population is going to be strictly controlled because dome, the other has a massive chunk of theirs off sleeping with the green dragons.
Also keep in mind, both of these cultures were hyper-isolated and insular - one fomented only around Ashenvale, and the other was literally sealed in a dome. Languages change through immigration, trade, and conquest - none of which applied to either society. Invention happened, sure, but that’s going to be hyper-limited for the reasons above.
It’s definitely not a one to one comparison of “real” language, modern or otherwise, to what the factions of Kaldorei would face. Their circumstances and perception of time is so far removed from ours that drawing parallels isn’t that simple…
… Then again, it isn’t like Blizzard can ever be bothered showcase anything other than the default human mindset when it comes to things like the passage of eons anyways. So… yeah, 10k years later, Shaldorei vs. Darnassian is probably like reading l33t sp3ak vs. Beowulf in the original Old English.
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Or this:
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That was my whole point. Language is always evolving. Even if it’s the same people speaking it.
If you were to call someone a “Karen” 20 years ago, they would just say “that’s not my name…” it wouldn’t be recognized as an insult.
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Right, but you have to remember 1 all important detail. Life for both groups was radically different after the sundering.
Circumstances being drastically different would change the context of certain phrases and some words would mean different things. New words would be invented to deal with new situations. We wouldn’t see the massive disparity of language in 400 years like we see in real life, but in 10,000 years their languages would likely have drifted apart quite significantly.
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But then why do the elves in Dire Maul speak the same language as the Darnassus elves? It’s been 10,000 years.
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They shouldn’t. And they wouldn’t. It’s an oversight on Blizzard’s part. Or they just didn’t feel like putting the code into the game to signify that they were speaking a separate dialect.
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Well… in regards to the difference between the Nightborne and Darnassian tongues…
The Nightborne have been living in the same city with the same people for 10,000 years. Regular Night Elves have not, and have been widespread enough to have developed different pronunciations and accents over that time, as well as have more children.
It’d be like the difference between Parisian French, and Cajun French, which both stem from the same root French language, but thousands of miles and hundreds of years apart:
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I kinda wish night elves and Nightborne spoke Darnassian.
I mean blood elves and void elves speak thalassian.
So it’s not a cross faction talking thing.
I do imagine that over time Darnassian or Shalassian could evolve (and apparently did) over time into their two respective dialects and then into differing but similar languages.
It happens all the time.
I think as far as Darnassus and Darnassian that’s more a situation where the night elves established Teldrassil and Darnassus realized it was a turning point in their history and renamed their language to mark it.
No doubt whatever the night elves spoke ten thousand years ago is probably different than whatever Shalassian, Darnassian and Thalassian is today.
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every race should have their own native language, cept maybe undead and human who should be able to speak multiple.
these language barrier things are awesome for fantasy imo
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Even the thalassian/darnassian split is funny because the parser uses literally the same vocabulary for both and all we know is that there’s minor quirks between the two that barely qualify as dialectalization.
Which makes sense, these “thousands of years” amount to like 2-3 lifetimes considering Anasterian Sunstrider was king for half of Quel’thalas’ existence.
That the devs never really tried to pretend the three elven dialects were radically different in-lore has always been proof imo that the language barrier was the same stupid gameplay conceit as the reason Forsaken lost the ability to speak common during the original beta
But like every subgroup with cross-faction communication that the devs thought was a bad idea in retrospect everytime, I’m convinced the reason given (people being too rude to each other in chat) is a lie and the devs are worried cross faction communication that doesn’t require a bunch of annoying steps might mean too many people who prefer to cooperate rather than kill each other for those precious team jerseys.
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