Occasionally, people gearing up for Weird Adventures games drop me a line to ask about stuff I didn’t cover in the book and haven’t gotten to yet on the blog. Sometime rpg artist, Lester Smolenski wrote just this weekend to ask about languages in the Strange New World.
That’s something I can’t believe I haven’t covered! Here’s a list of some of the most important ones:
Common: The language of the Union and Borea. It grew out of a trade pidgin of predominantly Lluddish extraction, but informed by various Gallian dialects, Dwergen, and words borrowed from several Native tongues. It’s distinct from Lluddish, but the two are (mostly) mutually intelligible.
Esparian: A language family originating in Ealderde, but now more widely spoken in Asciana and Zingaro. It comes in several ethnic/national varieties including Zingaran, San Zancudan, Puerto Oroan, and Hidalgan, with various degrees of mutual intelligibility.
Gallian: A language family with varieties spoken in the states of the Gallian League and some places in the New World. Varieties or dialects include Neustrien, Poitêmien, and Averoignat. The last is not fully intelligible to speakers of the first two.
Hobogoblin cant: A Common-based argot.
Korambeckish: The language of the eastern Empire of Korambeck.
Lluddish: The language of Lludd, Alban, and the Mer-folk. See also Common.
Ruthenian: The language family originating in Ruthenia.
Staarkish: A language family of Western Ealderde. Varieties include Staarkish proper, Luthan, Graustarkian, and Doppelkinnian, which are distinct but mutually intelligible.
Vatilian: A language of southern Ealderde. All varieties (including Trysteran, Tryphemian, and Bengodian) are mutually intelligible.
Yianese: A language family of the Empire of Yian. It has many varieties.
6 comments:
I like the idea and sound of those....
I'm not sure if this is a language or lingo or cant, but don't the rich folk have their own language?
Do any of these have any real world counterparts? I love you idea of using literary countries/kingdoms in Strange Worlds setting and was inspired to do something similar. Also could I annotation list of the works you've borrowed from?
They do indeed, though they probably aren't exactly the same as their real world inspirations. There are articles on some of them in the Index page.
I don't know if at this point I could produce a full list of sources without reading the book, but on this page, for instance, you can find mention of Korambeck in Samuel Johnson's reports on Parliament, and Yian in a novel by Robert W. Chambers. Mythical provinces from Clark Ashton Smith and James Branch Cabell are up their too, as well as a micronation from the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Wikipedia Fictional Countries pages would probably be helpful.
So taking broad stroke assumption I believe the following for counterparts
Esparian is Iberian/Spanish based with Zingaran as Mexican Spanish. (Is Zingaro inspired by Zingara from Conan?)
Based on the similarity of Poitêmien to Poictesme and Averoignat to Averoigne and the fact that Neustria is a former Frankish kingdom means that Gallian is French? based.
I've tried googling both Korambeck and Samuel Johnson and I can't find anything.
Is Lludd both Britain and Wales? Is Alban England? I assume Lludish is English based because of it's source in Common.
Is Ruthenia based on Romania? Sounds like it.
Staarkish is German based? If so where is Staarkish originally from (if you remember)?
Vatilian is Italian based?
Yianese is Chinese based? If so does that mean that Yian is just China or is it all of Asia like in 7th Sea?
Here's the link for Korambeck. Shows up easy for me: https://www.samueljohnson.com/debates/174108.html
Staark isn't a reference, but it is very close to an actual German word. Googling Ruthenia will turn up something.
Several of these things (Yian, Grand Lludd) are addressed in other posts.
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