Talking about languages and accents in the WRA Community RP Discord (https://discord.gg/WDHc5nQy) got me excited to think about languages in Warcraft.
What are your headcanons, thoughts and ideas about it?
One of mine that I’ve been thinking a lot about is the parent language for trolls and elvies, something like Proto-Zan-Sian which the Darnassian and Zandali language branch from. Then as we know, as population of elves spread out and eventually develop separate languages Thalasian and Shalasian.
However what I think is probably the most interesting and fun to speculate about is Zandali. We know all trolls at least in game speak Zandali which originated amongst the Zandalari who settled in a place called Zandalar (who’d of thunk it!).
Yet that’s not the fun part, the fun part is speculating on regional dialects and language drift amongst the different troll tribes. So I headcanon that among the lesser tribes Zandali spoken amongst traders, upper class and so forth amongst the different troll tribes keeping it alive in their regions, maybe a bit like how Latin survived amongst the Catholic Church. However there is “lower” Zandali spoken by common folks that starts to diverge and get weird depending on the region.
So maybe upper class members of the frost trolls and sand trolls could communicate with one another in standard Zandali but the peasants with their regional isolation has resulted in them speaking very different languages.
Anyway link to the community project discord thread caused this brain worm to fester in my rotten head.
Honestly I’d put Orcish as being German-like, it sounds very angry but really they’re just discussing the weather. I’ll touch on the rest later, I gotta get ready for a 14 hour shift because some moron decided to not clean a machine correctly last night while I was off, and it has caused problems .
There was also some discussion about what kind of script do people write in, specifically around Common. There’s three in game examples of Cyrillic, Cuneiform and Runic scripts used to represent Common writing.
With Humans (and Dwarves and Gnomes) being the descendants of the Titans, I suspect that they once spoke whatever the Titans spoke (Titanic??). So what if after the curse of flesh ran its course and the different communities broke and separated some of them had to redevelop writing, especially since you use what you have available. So perhaps Cuneiform which I remember watching a lecture on, used a type of reed that was available in the area to make it’s etches into clay blocks. So what if Cuneiform came out of communities settled around the Wetlands and used the local reed available to them to use as writing utensils from the clay bricks they made from the mud.
Maybe this is just me, but when it comes to Zandali I imagine it’s more so variable like the Philippines, where Zandali might be the most common, but there’s nothing refute that tribes and former empires had their own language that either sounds relatable, or grew separately from it. Given how trollkind has been and is divided up, a language variation like this very much makes sense to me without needing to dive into lesser or higher versions of a language to separate or connect a group of peoples. But I also don’t like the idea of applying “lesser”/(or lower tbh) to languages, trolls or other races that lend from irl cultures especially.
Puts a bad taste in my mouth, not that I’m trying to stir anything but you know, cultural sensitivity.
I’m not well versed in my own tribe’s language yet to say, but learning about the ties of my own tribe’s language to other indigenous languages about… I think if anyone really wanted to insist on a dialect(or language, really) division, a spiritual angle would make more sense in regards to zandalari, and then perhaps you have some more casual or common dialects that branch off from this the more removed from The Holy Mountain and direct dealings with Loa that a troll tribe or group is.
Oh no worries, I apologize if it came off in poor taste.
That’s a good point about the Loa, I totally forgot. Maybe it’s their connections to the different Loa that unifies their languages resulting in less divergences and drifting like we see with the different elf communities?
Nah it’s understandable, it’s not something most people think about or consider, and I’ve had my own discussions on pandaren having a joke race front and center that tends to lack that same sensitivity. Or just. The Other Issues with them.
That does give me something to think about while writing more zandalari things though!
I’m assuming Draenei runes represent whole words like some east asian forms of writing
Mainly because we put a single character on our forehead during magical stuff and it makes more sense for that character to represent “Light” or something rather than just like
So I am going to touch on the Mogu language and by extension “Pandaren” as a language with some speculation on the top like sprinkles.
So with the Mogu being of Titanic origin, we’d assume that they would have spoken in the titanic language however, we don’t see this in-game when conversing with Mogu. Much like the tolvir who have their own language (which iirc we haven’t heard vocalized without universal translation). When we do actually hear actual Mogu is when Pandaren speak in “Pandaren” (Source: The Pandaren Problem).
Now, I know that Pandaren is a joke language because how could a language of just “Nom” be an actual language? Here friends is where my speculation comes in. Based off the fact that Mogu is literally only one ‘word’ I infer that the mogu language is more about intonation, resonance, and possibly spiritual/elemental magic orientated originally.
Why do I say this? Well, the mogu were once stone constructs made to serve under the keeper Ra who famously subdued the elementals. Seeing as stone isn’t the most…Flexible when trying to do speech perhaps instead communication was based on resonance. Sound being produced by vibrating stones could produce a sound sounding like 'Nom" based on titan design. It is here that the other elements could be plugged in. Perhaps meaning could be assertained by the frequency/tone of the resonance with supplementation of magic and motions to convey true meaning. We know that mogu can already control lightning (Element of air) and the arcane to aid in this.
Well millennia later after their fleshification we know that they continued to speak with a version of this language. Perhaps more focusing on motions, tonation, and facial expressions to convey meaning. (This could possibly help to explain why the mogu kill each other so easily. Very easy to miscommunicate).
We know that the pandaren had their own language (Source: The Pandaren Problem) before it was replaced by Mogu. My personal headcanon for the more modern ‘mogu’ is very physical because it had to merge with how Pandaren understand language. With Pandaren using a form of sign language in conjunction with vocal “Noms” to convey sentence structure when speaking in Pandaren.
Hope this makes sense haha I kinda rambled.
Edits: Phrasing/spelling
Oh that’s a cool interpretation! Perhaps the Pandaren sign language they do is some what subtle and can be totally missed by people not familiar with the language. An ear twitch or a slight crinkle of the nose can change the meaning of words and sentences. So to an outsider it just seems incomprehensible but is a very complex language.
AHHH, yasss. I love this thread. I have a long love of examining Warcraft languages, but none more so than Darnassian.
From the canon, we know there are 2 versions of Darnassian: 1) the Ancient version that was not originally called Darnassian, and whose name was forgotten to time, and 2) Modern Darnassian. I headcanon that Ancient Darnassian originated from ancient Zandali, and evolved when the Dark Trolls heard the voice of Elune, and she taught them new words. It ultimately became a new language altogether, but does share a few small commonalities.
I help admin a collective Darnassian Dictionary project as well, which is an open-source speculative Darnassian Dictionary resource for roleplayers, writers and other artists.
Just today, I finished drafting an illustrated version of the Darnassian Alphabet, which is available as a font download as well.
Thank you! And Exxxxactly! I could totally see it being like that. Simple words/phrases like “I am mad” being a eye twitch or “I am hungry” being more like a lip smacking motion…or something. With increasingly difficult things like “I went to the library and read a book about arcane magic” being something like some vague arm movements (Like when you’re jogging) into a page flipping motion then into a finger flutter to convert magic.
Based on my headcanon I’d like to think that Pandaren make for every good diplomats because they are used to seeing details in others that convey emotion. And can work to move around another person’s emotions. This could tie culturally into the influence of the Sha but, I’l make another post about that haha
This is absolutely brilliant, Feyawen. I’ll take a deeper look later but off the bat this has to be one of the coolest and hardest-worked upon language headcanons I’ve ever seen.
Well first I need to applaud you with actually forming an alphabet! Thats really impressive and cool!
Going back to that origin point of Zandali…For speaking do you think there is some overlap in terms of accent? With some overlapping words sounding very trollish? An extension being dialects in terms of spelling?
That’s an awesome question! I think there probably is mild overlap, depending on regional variances of the languages. My guess is the ancient forms of Zandali and Darnassian had more room for overlap; but the official translations that stand out to me the most are:
Zandali
Ma’da - Mother
Fa’da - Father
Darnassian
Min’da - Mama
An’da - Papa
Minn’do - Mother
Ann’do - Father
Specifically, the informal of Mother/Father in Darnassian (Mama/Papa, respectively) share a suffix with the Zandali language. That could be an interesting coincidence, but it seems intentional to me. I think over time, after becoming introduced to Elune, the ancient kaldorei language grew into something more formal.
We see representations of honorifics and things of that nature, but even today there are other races on Azeroth that view the kaldorei as less-illustrious than they ought to be. If I had to guess, perhaps after the Fall of the Kaldorei Empire, the Darnassian language became less formal over time, but retained the few elements that permitted them to show respect to their fellows in lieu of ownership or status.
So, the TL;DR regarding this is I think there is room for similarities between the Zandali accent and Darnassian accent, but my guess is that it would be exceptionally subtle or limited to the few vowel-sounds they share.
Ahhh this is all so amazing! I been reading through the document and there’s so much thoughtful effort put into it all. The font is fantastic and is making me inspired to put something together myself haha!!
I know I sh!t posted earlier but maybe the rune is something like Arabic calligraphy? It could be a Draeneic script written in calligraphy, which could be whole poems or prayers or names of loved ones y’know?
I wonder if 9.2 will have any revelations about languages in Warcraft since there’s a new faction you will gradually begin to communicate with as you (grind rep) research the relics left behind or something I haven’t read a lot about 9.2 except how to get horrible robot wasp mount and pets.
Also this has me thinking how Elune/Titan World Soul/First One??? and just magic in general potentially influences language in Warcraft. It’s a fantasy world and there’s a lot of possibilities that are fun to speculate on.
Perhaps the influence from Elune and her association with Arcane magic and Arcane being considered the primal force of “order”. This influence from Arcane itself may “order” Darnassian and other cultures touched by it to conform to something similar.
Which could be fun! Maybe that’s how the Draenei and Night Elves were so quick to connect when they arrived on Azeroth.
Being a magic race influenced by Arcane and coming from a planet with it’s own Titan world soul. Perhaps the Draenei language evolved to have similarities to Darnassian and then with a few flicks of magic it was easy to decipher and communicate with one another.
You could then wonder, since Common is the (un)official(?) language of the Alliance and has it’s origins stringing back to the Titans, it made it easy for the Alliance to quickly break down language barriers so they could communicate with each other.
Writing on the other hand is a whole different thing and we could have multiple scripts all over the place. It makes me think about my Partner who is Canto and when we went to Taiwan, they could read everything but they couldn’t speak to anyone. So it’d be the opposite of that, people can talk to each other but writing gets complicated when everyone has their own scripts. It makes me think about the Rosetta Stone, with it having hieroglyphics, coptic and greek on it, perhaps postings around the Alliance is similar to that and you have multiple scripts conveying he same message.
So the thought of written language (Thanks to @Feyawen) has piqued my interest and after some reflection and looking at in-game sources for pandaren written language I am now going to present this speculation/headcanon…Because if blizzard is gonna leave it empty ima build in that sandbox! Enjoy!
So going back to the main point of the “Pandaren”/Mogu language in that it’s a one-word language that doesn’t reflect well in writing. If it’s all about intonation and physical expression you can’t exactly write that ALL down in one word no matter how many accents you provide. It also doesn’t reflect well in the in-game examples of written Pandaren works which on a surface level draws inspiration from Chinese, Korean, and Japanese characters. We also see this disconnect in the song Ballad of Liu Lang which is a vocal song sung in a language that IS NOT the same language as what is spoken when we PCs speak.
To avoid the whole “Well we know its just Blizz trolling us” I believe that there is a way for all three of these language separations to exist: They are indeed separate languages.
Now, what do I mean by this? Well, we know that the Pandaren people HAD a language that was forcibly replaced by modern Mogu but, who is to say that the Mogu themselves had a written language at that point? We don’t see Mogu poetry/art or even mention of explicit writing that was before the enslavement of the Pandaren people. So my assumption is that when Raden went full depression mode he left the mogu without an official writing language. They were just enforcers/builders after all they didn’t NEED to know how to write. Now here would be the interesting part, we know that Mogu are arrogant but, my suspicion is that they didn’t FULLY erase the Pandaren language. Instead, they adopted the written Pandaren language with an addition of some Titan runic influence and merely claimed that it was their language. They did see themselves as superior after all.
Now a potential hole for this theory is “If they had the written language why don’t Pandaren actually speak it?” Well, friends, I have a real-life example and reason for this. Without reinforcement of the vocalized language, no one would really know how to ACTUALLY speak it. What do I mean by this? We know that Mogu aren’t the most…Forgiving for those they view as breaking their laws. With them forbidding the vocalized Pandaren language who would actually teach it? Why would they when it’s just easier and safer to speak the Mogu tongue? Our real-life example that provides some plausibility is the loss and eventual revival of Hebrew. As a language, it was eventually ‘lost’ despite having written examples of the language over the course of cultural assimilation in existing countries aka: Why speak a language that no one uses outside of us and isn’t taught? What was kept was oral tradition via prayer. (This is a GROSSLY oversimplified version but I don’t want to write an actual essay) It was eventually revived in the 1800s and is continued to be in use today.
How does this apply to Pandaren? Well, my headcanon is that while the spoken tongue of Pandaren died out it was eventually revived partially AFTER the fall of the Mogu empire (Which had lasted for at least a couple of generations). We can see that this had to have happened because of the existence of The Ballad of Liu Lang which details an event that happened after the sundering. Also observed is that current Pandaren DON’T use it in everyday usage. So my interpretation is that Pandaren use it like Latin in that it’s mostly religious and artistic. (Which parallels latin opera and prayer). This is most likely because the Pandaren kept prayers about the celestials as a vocal tradition during their enslavement because it’s easier to remember a song than grammar.
I’d continue on but, idk if people want to read more haha. Thanks for reading this far!
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