Alternate title: Something about Tongues (I was afraid people would assume I was talking about the addon that probably doesn’t even exist anymore).
A recent encounter got me thinking about this. On occasion I have endeavored to alter a character’s manner of speech slightly when they speak in a different language; not entirely changing how they talk but rather altering what they’d say in an attempt to emulate an approximate translation in accordance to how I perceive the language works compared to Common.
To give an example of what I mean, take the language of Death. From what I remember, cursory research made it seem like a rather pragmatic, utilitarian language, therefore I may stick with relatively simple and straightforward sentences when using it, as I imagine a language like that wouldn’t have much room in its lexicon for slang, metaphors or prose.
It has only recently occurred to me, or rather it recently truly hit me, that this approach to ic communication in alternate tongues might be pretty unique, though that kind of thing seems relatively rare in general. It has also occurred to me that, beyond my given example, I may be making some hefty assumptions on the often-incomplete components of Warcraft’s conlangs. I suppose, however, to some extent, that is par for the course in roleplaying.
I do similar with my character’s orcish, though this draws more from how my multilingual grandparents talk than from observations about how language structures would alter translations. I’ve had to draw a line in regards to how kholwa’s way of speaking comes across without becoming too confusing, though, as some examples from my family definitely go that way. It’s no fault of their own, english is annoying as is and some of them are grappling with their native tongue, the national language, the local language, and either arabic or mandarin where it applies.
When it comes to warcraft’s conlangs, the race languages have little world building thought to them beyond slapping words and such into the language parser ingame. I talk enough about gross implications regarding how the authors viewed all things regarding trolls, so I won’t do that here. What I will say though is that I find it funny that we’ve gotten one suggestion in all of the lore that Zandali might have regional accents. Rather than, idk, dialects. Sure, it can be assumed that all troll tribes regularly visit Zuldazar, and thus that can reinforce the teaching of the zandali language vs growing dialects, but it’s such an after thought of an idea. I suppose?
The same can very well be said for orcish clans, including having distinctions and growing into their own languages as a mark of what orcs were born and raised on draenor vs brought up on Azeroth.
In both cases, I’ve thought a lot on making a fan zandali and fan orcish conlang, but this is understandably a lot of work and research, so it’s been on the backburner for a while.
There’s also cultural quirks to take into consideration, certain concepts might never have evolved socially which can make 1:1 translations tricky, if not impossible, humor often does not translate well across the language barrier and of course social boundaries can make talking about or expressing certain things taboo, or socially detrimental.
A thing that got brought up multiple times with the Nippon/English, Dutch and French traders issue was that the Japanese elite at the time refused to speak to or translate to the merchants, so they learned Japanese from those they could reach, the merchants, and more commonly, the Oiran, or prostitutes of the special trade district where outsiders were permitted to trade. This resulted in the merchants speaking in a submissive, feminine style, as was required by the Oiran of that time period when speaking to a male, especially a social elite from a higher social caste. This, needless to say, resulted in a even more negative view of these ‘outlanders’, while those merchants found themselves bewildered because many terms in that era’s version of the japanese language had many gender-based terms that, having learned to speak the language from a generally female and lower-caste portion of the culture, they were unfamiliar with and did not understand how to use these terms and social cues themselves.
Language alone is only a part of communication. Some societies may see eye contact as aggressive and rude, a challenge to a higher ranking individual, while others might see it as respect, seeing one who averts their eyes or drops their gaze as untrustworthy or dishonest. Some might insist on a still body posture, while others literally cannot properly convey the meaning of what they are saying without shifts in body posture and hand movements, like many indo-pacific languages before colonists got involved. It is a fascinating study, even if it does get significantly deeper than I could feel comfortable diving into.
I do this with my old night elf druid! He speaks very formal common. Using almost no slang and no Contractions. Because that is how he learned to speak it, and doesnt have a full grasp on what is a fledgling language to him.
When I started learning my tribe’s language, they outright tell you this too. Concepts like sorry simply don’t exist because there’s no expectation that you would mean to do harm to another tribe member to need to apologize for. Meanwhile, you can call someone fat in tagalog and it doesn’t carry the same rude tone as it would here, but speaking about someone’s “guts” being big is incredibly insulting.