Human Language

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ActiveRadarIsCasul
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Human Language

#1 Post by ActiveRadarIsCasul »

I've seen a few threads here regarding Keidran and Basitin language and culture, but so far nothing on Human culture. Is there a particular era and location that TwoKinds' Humans are rooted out of, perhaps multiple? Or is it just generalized typical medieval fantasy humanity with the usual cultural and literature influences? Is there a singular langauge spoken with several dialects, or multiple langauges depending on what region you happen to be in? How far does Humanity's influence reach? Is it a single part of one continent, or patches of influence across a number of landmasses?
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Re: Human Language

#2 Post by Technic[Bot] »

Unfortunately Tom rarely elaborates about anything on the comic. So we do not know for sure. He occasionally drops tid bits of info on the picarto stream or the chat, but it is uncommon.
However if i were to make an educated guess:
They seem like the usual fantasy anglo-german setting, were almost everyone speaks the local version of English.
For what we have seen Humans control the largest territory in their world. And you can probably find someone who speaks "human" almost anywhere. The slave-trade made human language "common" in keidran lands, both from freed/escaped slaves and the Keidran-Slavers needed a way to talk with their main customers.
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Re: Human Language

#3 Post by MuonNeutrino »

We haven't really been given any information on the human language. I don't believe there's ever been any mention of multiple human languages or even multiple dialects - given how frequently the language is just referred to as 'human', with no modifiers, I'm assuming there aren't multiple distinct human languages, though that doesn't rule out dialects of course. Regarding geography, one can see the extent of human territory on the world map from Tom's deviantart. Humans control the most territory out of any of the individual groups, though probably not more than everyone else put together. As Technic mentions, the influence of the slave trade likely extends the reach of the human language, though it probably does the same for the keidran language as well. It doesn't seem that it's exactly common, but knowledge of the 'other side's' language doesn't seem to be exactly rare either, in either direction.
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Re: Human Language

#4 Post by Neptune »

Technic[Bot] wrote: Tue Apr 17, 2018 5:02 am Unfortunately Tom rarely elaborates about anything on the comic. So we do not know for sure. He occasionally drops tid bits of info on the picarto stream or the chat, but it is uncommon.
However if i were to make an educated guess:
They seem like the usual fantasy anglo-german setting, were almost everyone speaks the local version of English.
For what we have seen Humans control the largest territory in their world. And you can probably find someone who speaks "human" almost anywhere. The slave-trade made human language "common" in keidran lands, both from freed/escaped slaves and the Keidran-Slavers needed a way to talk with their main customers.
In that case, wouldn't a creole from the Keidran Language(s) and "Human" be present in cities with diverse ethnicities or especially the border areas? I don't think it's that Tom is sneaking stuff to us bit by bit, he just doesn't want to elaborate much on those issues.
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Re: Human Language

#5 Post by aitaituo »

Tom has said there are no dialects of keidran, just high and low registers (high class and low class, basically). That's in spite of their being multiple keidran mouth types and geographically and politically isolated groups. I think it's safe to assume that there's no dialectical variation in human either.
Neptune wrote: Wed Apr 18, 2018 2:21 am In that case, wouldn't a creole from the Keidran Language(s) and "Human" be present in cities with diverse ethnicities or especially the border areas? I don't think it's that Tom is sneaking stuff to us bit by bit, he just doesn't want to elaborate much on those issues.
Creoles are pretty rare and only form under particular circumstances. They start as pidgin languages, which are extremely simple mashups of two languages with even simpler grammar. They usually only have a total vocabulary numbering in the hundreds and can't form long sentences with multiple clauses (a normal language can accommodate a page length+ sentence for comparison). Typically, pidgins develop among travelling merchants who need to be able to buy and sell, get directions, and find a place to eat and sleep, but not much else. Then children of pidgin speakers have to learn the pidgin as their primary language, which forces it to become a full creole language because the kids create new words and grammatical forms that are necessary to, you know, function in a society, rather than just be able to do simple transactions. Kids are really good at learning languages, so bilingualism is way, way more common, you often don't even need to try in the right environment. Slave creoles have happened, but more often the masters use bilingual supervisors who act as go betweens while the slaves learn the local language. The average pidgin is about as useful as a year of high school language, so you more often see low-proficiency second language use than the development of a regular pidgin in those kinds of situations. IIRC, most slave creoles developed where there was a high level of freeman/slave segregation and a hereditary slave caste like in the Americas.

I think Kat and Mike are the only known examples of keidran who were born into slavery and I can't recall anything that resembles plantation-style slavery.

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Re: Human Language

#6 Post by Technic[Bot] »

Neptune wrote: Wed Apr 18, 2018 2:21 am
Technic[Bot] wrote: Tue Apr 17, 2018 5:02 am Unfortunately Tom rarely elaborates about anything on the comic. So we do not know for sure. He occasionally drops tid bits of info on the picarto stream or the chat, but it is uncommon.
However if i were to make an educated guess:
They seem like the usual fantasy anglo-german setting, were almost everyone speaks the local version of English.
For what we have seen Humans control the largest territory in their world. And you can probably find someone who speaks "human" almost anywhere. The slave-trade made human language "common" in keidran lands, both from freed/escaped slaves and the Keidran-Slavers needed a way to talk with their main customers.
In that case, wouldn't a creole from the Keidran Language(s) and "Human" be present in cities with diverse ethnicities or especially the border areas? I don't think it's that Tom is sneaking stuff to us bit by bit, he just doesn't want to elaborate much on those issues.
I am no linguist so i can't answer your question. But agree on your second point. He doesn't elaborate much on minor world building points, since that level of minutiae in the comic would be ridiculous . However sometimes, when asked nicely, he elaborates these kind of details ,since is easier like that, according to the archives he used to do that here on the forum. Now he mostly sticks on his stream.
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Re: Human Language

#7 Post by Warrl »

Tom, like most creators of fictional worlds, is creating the world only as needed for the story and not thinking a lot about whether a world would actually work that way.

This is most commonly obvious in the form of planets with only one climate. Anything the size of a planet, that has a gaseous atmosphere, is going to have multiple climates depending on latitude, seasonality, altitude, effects of terrain on wind patterns, surface deposits of somewhat-volatile liquids (such as water, on this planet), effects of (possibly submerged) terrain on the movements of such liquids... and if the climates of one planet all fall so far to one extreme that WE would describe them as all the same (maybe the tropics are iced over, and the polar regions are iced over with colder ice, and the mountains have steeper ice...) then it's a planet we aren't all that interested in.

But it shows up in languages and cultures too. And sometimes biology.

There are some substantial works available on how to create languages that a writer is only ever going to use for naming things. Let alone have people carry on conversations in. I see no evidence that Tom has read any of them, or cares to. Even the place-names in non-human lands are written in the human language (i.e. English), presumably translated. Doing languages is a tool he chose not to use. Which is his prerogative as the artist.

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