Hooold on a second, Pandaren

Lore Story Forum
1

When a player listens to a pandaren speak without knowing the language, all they see is nom nom nom, right?

But when the mogu enslaved the pandaren, their original culture and language died out, and they could only learn the language the mogu used instead.

Doesn’t that mean that mogu language should sound like nom nom nom, since that’s where the pandaren learned it?

2

Obviously trying to rationalize the selective nature of just when things are or aren’t translated in-game is kind of futile, but one might perhaps speculate with the mogu in particular that since they as a race are uniquely all “born” (i.e. made) already able to use magic, they might basically have “built-in” translation magic that allows them to automatically understand and be understood by any other race they encounter.

They reverse-engineered the Curse of Flesh after all, so the mogu basically regained some of what they had when they were still mass-produced soldiers under Ra, which could include built-in magic for automatic comprehension of spoken languages.

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3

Yes.
But really, just chalk it up to 2 things. Either:

  1. Blizzard was lazy and didn’t want to make up fake words for the Pandaren.
  2. They were afraid that their fake quasi-Chinese language would be taken in offense by Chinese players so they kept in the temporary joke language.
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4

Pandaren isn’t spoken in-game. It’s a dead language that only scholars know.

The language the pandaren people speak is actually Mogu.

The “om nom noms” we see in-game are an easter egg joke and not ever meant to be taken seriously.

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5

It’s too late Cannibal.

This is canon.

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6

aggressively updates Wowpedia NOT IF I GET A SAY!!

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7

The best kind of canon.

8

That would mean most of pandaria speaks nomnom.
Jinyu, Hozen, grummles, Saurok, yaungol, the celestails (to communicate with the lesser races)?
Do they all say nomnom?

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9

It’s quite the…phenomnom. :eyes:

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