I have a question for anyone who would take the time to reply.
I have been wondering lately - is the “k” in “kaldorei” capitalized, generally? More specifically, when talking about “the kaldorei people” ?
I can understand the upper case “K” in grammatical cases, like the start of a sentence or as a proper name - The Kaldorei Empire - because we would capitalize most words in that case. We don’t normally capitalize the word “black” but we would in the case of The Black Empire.
I mean in general. I was pretty sure it was almost always lower case when used. That seemed to be its thing. On most occasions I see in game and on places like Gamepedia, they use a lower case “k” when talking about “the kaldorei.” I thought that was a neat concept - that a race wouldn’t use a capitalized letter. Almost like they are saying a phrase - “the children of the stars” - instead of a name.
But since Dragonflight, I have noticed it being capitalized more and more. In cut scenes and by Tyrande, even. As in “the Kaldorei will blahblablah!” when it used to be “the kaldorei will blah blah blah!”
Just wondering if there is any knowledge/opinions out there about it. Has it been the lower case “k” , and the people writing the words for Dragonflight just didn’t pay attention? Or are they actively making a conscious choice to have the “K” capitalized from now on? Are both just accepted, now? Am I seeing a distinction without a difference?
Is a Night Elf even saying “the kaldorei people” kind of awkward, because that is like saying “the children people”?
It’s pretty bad sentence composition yes.
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I would say this is likely a writer fiat sort of situation. I am not sure I would advise reading too deeply into it at this juncture.
Kaldorei in common has sort of lost its Darnassian meaning to serve as a more generic term, which tends to happen to loan words.
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It’s kaldo’rei. It’s an homage to Lana Del Rei Skywalker from the first Star Wars.
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What we call Darnassian is something different than the mother tongue of the lost Empire… that seems clear enough judging by Suramar. I’m assuming the Nightbourne racial language is closer to what you’re thinking about.
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Pretty sure Blizzard uses both kaldorei and Kaldorei even when not referring to the old empire. They are not consistent. (This was discussed in a thread before i think)
Also, no, i don’t think they generally use “the kaldorei people” but directly “the kaldorei”…
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Yeah, I know it isn’t a big deal. Just a small detail I was wondering about, a Google search didn’t clear it up, and I figure there are people around here who pay more attention who might have information.
I have been too lazy to turn off subtitles in game , so I have noticed capitalized “Kaldorei” a lot this expansion, when it wasn’t the case before.
Since both the general night elves and the Nightborne carried over so many surviving individuals from before the Sundering, it seems feasible that Darnassian may be the largely unaltered tongue of the general kaldorei populace, while Shalassian could be the Nightborne name (in tandem with taking on a new moniker for themselves) for what amounts to a Highborne-specific Darnassian dialect. Similar enough to be readily comprehensible both ways (in-lore, if not in the game’s language mechanics), but different enough to have clearly denoted the societal class of the speaker to the listener during the time of the empire.
Which could make Thalassian and Nazja both offshoots of said Highborne dialect, with the former changing somewhat through generational turnover and the latter being the most heavily altered from having to accommodate the physiology of underwater speech.
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They also use Kal’dorei/kal’dorei. Noticed that when I was doing the Nightfallen questline on my priest.
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If it’s just one instance, I would say this is a mistake than a trend.
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Looking it up, several quests in Legion uses the kal’dorei spelling so it’s not just one instance. It was probably an attempt to make things more linear.
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In Diane Duane’s novel “Spock’s World” Human is always capitalised when it’s spoken by a Vulcan, and Vulcan is always capitalised period.
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Funny thing is, real world languages are full of these sorts of awkward redundant compositions that aren’t perceived as erroneous (and so, mechanically, aren’t erroneous) ; but in general that’s because one of the two linguistic elements in that composition comes from an earlier form of the language (or from a different prior language that isn’t spoken by the population anymore), so the semantic value of that element is lost, making way for said redundant composition. For example, take the Aran Valley (era Val d’Aran in Aranese Gascon) in northwestern Catalunya ; Aran comes from proto-Basque haran, which means “valley”, and so the region’s name literally translates into “the Valley Valley”. That’s awfully common in toponymy.
…But the thing is… Nelves still speak Darnassian, and are still aware that Kaldorei translates into “children of the stars” in Common. So yes, “the Kaldorei people” is a bit dumb. Only explanation here if we’re trying to rationalize the whole thing would be that the use of “the Kaldorei people” is so frequent among non-Darnassian speakers that the Kaldorei just generally decide to roll with it whenever speaking Common.
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As far as I could find, these are Liadrin quests, so I would chalk it up to “human” (elf?) error
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Take_Me_To_Your_Leader
Or the quest designer for this was the same as the others. In the same quest, Tyrande herself uses “kaldorei”…
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I’ve always thought of the Kaldorei as the peasant class of the Imperial period. so Darnassian (possibly even called something else at the time) would have been the low tongue with Shalassian the high tongue of the nobility, The Blood/High Elve have had multiple generations to drift away from that tongue. (The English of nine or more genrations from us would be hardly understandable to modern ears) And it could be that the Imperium was so stratified that further language division occured even among layers of nobility.
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A guildie described it more of a difference in language. Darnassian it’s Kaldorei while Thalassian/Shalassian it’s kal’dorei. Thalassian being more based on highborne tongue of Darnassian, and Shalassian being the original form of it.
Darnassian was probably what the lowborne spoke more.
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