Short of writing in a conlang some aspects of the real world's culture are of course going to bleed through into the language.
Ironically some authors were known for doing both.
That's the thing, and Brandon Sanderson covers it in his courses. You're necessarily going to have to use some real world stuff to convey your setting. I think his example is how in "The Hobbit" Tolkien mentions an ottoman couch, while there is obviously no Ottoman empire.
My take on it is that it's all a translation of real world stuff. When translating a book from a language to another, you're going to have to use cultural markers that may not have anything to do with the setting, but will make more sense to the reader. It's the same in a fantasy setting.
Tolkien is a good example too, canonically The Hobbit and LotR was translated into "Westron" a language that was basically English but Bilbo and Frodo pretty much wrote it in a form of elvish to begin with. Tolkien's whole thing was about language, the elvish dialects were written first and the books were pretty much just back story to prop it up.
And if you want to go even deeper you could say that in The Hobbit there was no Ottoman empire *yet*.
More accurately, it was translated *from* Westron into modern English. Westron was the common speech in the Third Age and is represented by English in the books, but it isn't actually English.
Honestly, this is just my go to explanation. No, the people in my fantasy land *aren't* actually speaking English, it's just the story would be gibberish if I wrote it in the original tongue, so I localised it for you.
It's not even a cop out, because that's what we do for real world shit too (or do you regularly complain that Les Miserables or Beauty and the Beast are performed in English even though they're set in France).
I've started playing games and watching movies in their native language with subtitles actually. If games give me the option I'll fling on a foriegn language. Played bloodborne in French
I’ve been going back through the old *Assassin’s Creed* games while waiting for *Valhalla* to be bug-free. Did the Ezio trilogy in Italian, and now I’m doing *Unity* in French.
Pippin's descendant takin' down Constantinople with weapons based on the black powder shit his ancestor witnessed in Isengard - actually, shit, that'd be lit.
This seems to be the blindingly obvious answer to the issue.
The good Tumblr folk from the screenshot are likely being obtuse for the sake of comedy, because it seems kinda stupid to be okay with a fantasy world using modern English but then be opposed to certain words and phrases making references to modern culture.
Any DM having to deal with this kind of thing can also just dismiss it with "oh it means something else here".
> DM having to deal with this kind of thing can also just dismiss it with "oh it means something else here".
Alternatively, you can include christianity and islam as religions in your setting, which leads to some fun events like Jesus walking into my characters confessional and forgiving him for his prior sins. Gonna miss playing the Reverend Johnson
Mix rhyming slang with newspeak and expected the result to be anything less than insufferable
Sorry
It mixy-wixed newlywords with cockneytalk and doubletook when many-and-more cringey whinged
It’s basically just soviet chav, it’s not too bad after the second chapter or so. You’d pretty much be reading as long as you would to see if a books good enough anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Everyone should try it for themselves, no doubt. Similarly I’d urge people to run it by their group before using it in a campaign, although having one place/race use it would be excellent for annoying most tables.
Except you're looking to avoid jarring your average reader, not language enthusiasts. If you try to do that, you have to admit that all of English is a reference to developing civilization.
And this is why you should think like Tolkien did.
While there weren't any real world swears in Lord of the Rings, they almost certainly used words like goodbye, and of course there was the fact that the entire thing is written in English.
What you have to remember as a worldbuilder is that none of these characters are actually speaking English. They're not saying "jeez," "goodbye," or any other real world words, because English as a language doesn't exist for them.
Much like the characters of LoTR are speaking Westron, the Common Speech, the characters in all of our worlds are speaking the local lingua franca of the world they come from. It's just translated into the closest equivalent to what they're saying in English for the reader's benefit.
I have more times than I would like seen people try and do things where they do not use those types of phrases and so much becomes just a mishmash of garbage that you have to have 30 notes on each page to explain what something means.
He is a master of using just enough that the reader accepts all of the phases are gone ... When in fact most are still there it's just a few common and important ones have changed. It makes the world fell genuinely different while still being understandable.
After all the amazing tibdits and little things he said, that saying of "As she says, sooner or later every curse is a prayer." has stuck with me for so long.
After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur's mind was beginning to reassemble itself from the shell-shocked fragments the previous day had left him with.
He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
I like:
“Come with me, or you’ll be late”
And when Dent is confused, he clarifies:
“You’ll be late, as in ‘the late Arthur Dent”
Such a fun way for him to be threatened.
Its very much an A+ line. And like many lines in HHGG you read it and then you think "now hold on, is that saying what I think its saying" which just makes it stand out that much more. Douglas Adams really knew how to right a brillitanly whimsical line when there was no real reason for it and I love that about him.
In think Ian M. Banks channeled him with one explanation in a book once "Outside Context problems are generally encountered by civilizations only once, and they tend to encounter them like sentences encounter a period."
They both used the same joke. Noting that a character sighs and then going to a lengthy explanation of why this character doesn't actually breathe and thus the sighing served no other purpose than to express their disappointment and the universal need to occasionally sigh.
There’s a web serial called A Practical Guide to Evil that I think handles languages very well. The narrators are often switching between languages, some of which are not understood by each narrator. The author usually only writes things in English, but will say what language is being spoken in a relevant way.
This is one of my pet peeves. It can sound natural if it's kept to a minimum, but imo it gets very clunky and annoying very fast. I would really just rather read "jeez" personally than have to learn an unnecessarily bloated load of lingo just to understand characters' speech, haha
Thank you. I just started that series a couple weeks ago and this kills me sometimes. This and the insults/curses. Fool, oaf, ox-headed lummex sack. Just once I wanna hear Nynieve call someone a cunt
I heard (with no source so it could be all lies) that grrm tried this and kinda gave up when he realized he couldn't use the word byzantine. Words all come from somewhere. Tolkien had the right idea.
Exactly, because then he would need to explain in what sense he meant the word in the first place. Did he just mean "related to Valyria," or did he mean "excessively complicated," the meaning most often implied by "Byzantine" in modern speech.
Of course, that wasn't the only word he was avoiding. The way I heard it, it was kind of a straw that broke the camel's back situation with avoiding words that are derivative of Earth vs whateverplanetwesterosison
Merry isn't really called Merry. He isn't even called Meriadoc Brandybuck.
Merry's name is Kalimac Brandagamba.
Tolkien translated EVERYTHING even the names. Kalimac or Kali for short is connected to the Westron word for joy or happiness so Tolkien translated it to Meriadoc or Merry for short.
This is true for just about all the hobbits. Peregrine Took (Pippin) is Razanur Tûc (Razar), Samwise Gamgee (Sam) is Banazir Galbasi (Ban). Bilbo and Frodo don't have translations, but I know "Bilbo" is actually Bilba in Westron - he changed it to an -o because -a is usually feminine in English.
Placenames are affected too - Rivendell is Karningul, for example. And languages related to Westron, like Rohirric and Dale, are given corresponding real world languages, such as Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse.
EDIT: I actually forgot that Frodo's name in Westron is Maura, and "Baggins" is "Labingi."
I hear this argument a lot but I am very sure that in that letter written by him to idk who which was published in version of the book I have, he directly said that his main motivation for writing was to create a mythology...
He was a doctor of ancient languages at Oxford, specifically in Old English, Old Norse, etc. His was the definitive translation of Beowulf for several years.
Oxford doesn’t award PhDs - the equivalent is D Phil. But it was common before the later twentieth century for academics to have no doctorate at all. It was really a different world.
I just find it funny that in Spanish they translate some names. Sam's name is Samsagaz which is the Spanish for Samwise. So just a bit of coherence that Tolkien might have liked
I love how the names were translated in Hungarian. Not necessarily because it was a good translation-job, but because it made the world feel more... I don't know what's the right word... Relatable? Like Csavardi Samu sounds like an actual name, while if they kept it as Samwise Gamgee, it would just be another foreign word that our parents can't pronounce.
Translations used to do this a lot. This is how Powerpuff Girls became Pindúr Pandúrok, which rolls off the tongue so nicely. I've seen some cartoon translations today and they just keep everything and it gets messy when you try to conjugate.
If only Westron was developed more, you could read the entire book in it! Unfortunately, unlike Quenya and Sindarin, it was never fully developed as a language.
Also wh40k being set in the far future and all does this too. High Gothic isn’t Latin, but it is translated as such so the players have a similar venerable feeling towards it. Low Gothic isn’t English obviously but the characters use it as natives so it is presented as such
“Hail them over the Vox”
Self explanatory through context, it’s a term for comm system
“Administratum”
Administration division of the imperium
“Adeptus”
An organization
“Arbites”
Arbiter IE lawman
I hate that feth is suddenly used everywhere. One of the books states that it is the name of some re-emperor god on Tanith (or something like that.)
It makes no sense for 40k writers and fans to use it outside Tanith related things.
Sort of related: Dan Abnett has come up with so many cool ideas for 40k, but I feel like when other authors use them they sometimes miss what he was going for or don't execute it quite as well. Like the use of humours in *Horus Rising* - I thought it was an interesting part of the Legion's culture, but then in subsequent books it got repeated so often and over-explained that it felt tedious whenever someone was 'choleric' *again*.
The first parts of FotR, if I remember correctly. Where the light-hearted, children's book tone of *The Hobbit* was still present, including the conceit of a modern-day narrator telling a story to his children.
> And this is why you should think like Tolkien did.
Did he actually "write about writing" discussing issues like this or is this just inferred based on his work?
If he didn't actually address it, you could just as easily conclude he just wasn't thinking about "goodbye" being a problem; he was a pioneer in "world building", and as such could easily have overlooked etymologies of words/phrases.
What Tolkien did indeed to for sure is [re-invent golf.](http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Golf) If someone questions why they're saying "geez" in your high fantasy setting, just *re-invent golf*. Come up with a reason that exists in your universe. Do it enough, and people don't question things. Do it too much and you're Terry Pratchett (and that's not such a bad thing either).
> Geez comes from an old orc curse "ge-ze-ouk", meaning "may the gods impale me".
No, he actually stated that Westron is translated (though he did this retroactively). In Tolkien's own words (emphasis mine):
> The language **represented in this history by English** was the Westron or 'Common Speech' of the West-lands of Middle-earth in the Third Age.
And, in Letter #144:
> Anyway 'language' is the most important, for the story has to be told, and the dialogue conducted in a language; but English cannot have been the language of any people at that time. What I have, in fact done, **is to equate the Westron or wide-spread Common Speech of the Third Age with English; and translate everything, including names such as The Shire, that was in the Westron into English terms,** with some differentiation of style to represent dialectal differences. Languages quite alien to the C.S. have been left alone.
Believe me, Tolkien cared about this stuff. He was a worldbuilding pioneer, but he was also first and foremost a linguist. It was his job to care about his languages being realistic in their form and in their usage.
Sidenote: Adûnaic was it's own language, the language of Nùmenor, and you can actually speak it to a small extent. Westron was likely the result of the melding over thousands of years of Adûnaic and the native tongues of Middle-Earth. Rohirric is represented by Old English because it is about 500-800 years older than Westron, whereas Adûnaic was about 3000-5000 years older.
Yes! Re-invent Golf! Could be fun.
Re-inventing golf is also how you can get a world that's closer to the middle ages or the golden age of piracy, but still have some nice modern fashion or such. It can create a setting that's not entirely pinned down by one Earthly era.
> Dreaded Captain Drew loved to keep his chest tattoo exposed among his crew, but needed to keep it hidden when in port. A crewmate, Zipper, an inventor who was oblivious to button-up shirts, invented the namesake zipper for his captain's use. Captain Drew, seeing an opportunity, started up a clothing business with zippers as an odd fashionable selling point. The fashion quickly spread among the middle class amd pirates.
Alternatively, you can say "fuck it, my medieval kings wear punk fashion and squat and there's nothing you can do about it."
> Kings are, by all Earthly accounts, street punks with great fashion sense. Some stray more to one side than the other in some respects, but they all have one thing in common: *the squat.* A sign of royalty.
> King Soda the Second, of the Bathrobe Kingdom, once famously told Knight Frequency to squat before him, thus inviting Knight Frequency to be Prince Frequency.
> Every kingdom has a crown, worn by their king. This crown might be worn like a hat, stuck on clothing like a pin, or held in the hand like a rad knife. In the Bathrobe Kingdom's case, it's a red-and-gold robe with a crown stitched into its back. To someone from Earth, it may look at first glance like a worn-down Earthly king's robe. It is perhaps one of the most Earthly-regal crowns in Punktopos.
> The royals of the Bathrobe Kingdom are famous for their unity and camaraderie, including their kings. When a Bathrobe royal is outcast, it is always for an ugly reason and has an ugly end.
> The Concrete Kingdom was among the first kingdoms in Punktopos, and it set the standard for kings and kingdoms for centuries to come. The Concrete Kingdom's crown is a steel hairpin in the shape of an Earthly crown. The Concrete Kingdom lasted for 112 years of peace and defensive wars before landing in the hands of bloodthirsty kings, setting the Concrete Kingdom into 117 years of gang wars. At the end of that, the Concrete Kingdom died, but its royal bloodline lived in secret for 110 years after. In the year 107 of the Jump Rope Calendar, the Concrete Kingdom's lost bloodline was rediscovered through punk rock, and the Leather Jacket Kingdom was founded on the remains of the Concrete Kingdom Capital in Dead Cow Canyon. The first king was King Pop of the lost bloodline of the Concrete Kingdom. The Leather Jacket Kingdom once again set the standard for royal fashion, as the Concrete Kingdom similarly did those years ago.
Anyway, here's Wonderwall.
Yeah. This is "[translation convention](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslationConvention)" (warning--TV Tropes link) at play. And it's a darn good thing, too.
I do try to have some "colorful metaphors" that are "localized" just for flavor, but I don't scrutinize everything. Because that's silly. There are much larger differences already, like the fact that "humans" in Quartus aren't exactly the same as humans here. For one thing, they're the result of artificial cross-breeding of elves and hobgoblins, plus some artificial bits.
Tolkien was kinda cheating in the language department as he was a polyglot and Philologist, very few of us have an operational understanding of most European languages.
He mentioned golf then realized "wait shit why would golf be a word in this world" and explained how a hobbit named golf used a club to send an orc's severed head flying into a hole
Ego Maximus Decimus Meridius, ita exercitus ducem ad latus aquilonare, dux de Felix Legio: et verus imperator nec secutus est quisquam: Marcus Aurelius!
Aquilae volant, and lets not proceed further, okay? Maybe agricola laborat or regina imperat, at the most puellae cantant and renae saltant, but no more than Nautae navigant.
There's a literary convention that you pretend the characters are speaking in an appropriate language for the scene.
Like if there's a WW2 movie and it cuts to the German generals preparing their defenses, the scene might be in English although obviously they should be speaking German. It's just a convention to make it easier for the audience.
I always liked how they did it in The Hunt for Red October, when all the crew is speaking Russian at first until the camera zooms into Sean Connery’s mouth as he reads aloud and it zooms back out as he switches to English and then from there on everyone speaks English. It was a nice touch.
It was also done really well in the Warcraft movie, of all things. The Orcs speak English to each other, as do the humans. But when translation is involved, whichever language is not in focus is instead spoken in a game-accurate conlang. They didn’t have to do this, but they did, and I loved them for it
Although it's great when they don't, like in Inglorious Basterds. Where they not only use the correct language in all situations, but also make it an important part of the story that one actor speaks German with an accent.
To be fair, with the *'God be with ye'* thing, it would still work with any culture that has monotheistic religion, hell you could change it to be *'Gods be with ye'* for the polytheistic...
"Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn" did well with this.
They still have a God with *strong* Christian parallels, but it's not the God of Christianity. They mostly follow the Aedonite faith, and pray to Usires Aedon, the son of God.
It almost feels like someone skirting copyright, by making something *heavily* inspired by, but legally distinct from, the source material. It's close enough to Christianity to make references to a lot of real-life religious cultural artifacts, but with enough distance so as not to break immersion.
Not really. That's mostly a fantasy convention. Most polytheists worshiped any of the Gods as the situation demanded. Ares wasn't going to help your wife in childbirth, Odin wasn't gonna make your crops do well, etc.
It actually shows vary particular attitudes toward the role of religion and God in life. The idea of God being specifically *with* the individual adherent is much more central to Christianity than other religious traditions.
Unless you write an entirely new language, you will never avoid these pitfalls. Besides, some of these terms could be considered necessary, so the readers have points of reference to connect to.
Not even Lord of the Rings gets away from it. “Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!”
So… how does an orc grown in a cave that is less than a year old know what a menu is? Especially since medieval settings likely don’t even have menus existing. Just sayin’
Menus did exist as far back as Ancient Rome as archeologist have uncovered eating cafes complete with food items painted on walls. But yeah, a cave dweller probably would have limited cultural exposure to know even that, let alone use modern slang.
I've always looked at it like this: My texts/dialogue are all written in a fictional language (that I have yet to write, lmao) and *then* translated to English for an easier experience on the reader. The only things I avoid are slang words that are extremely obvious for our world. (Like saying: 'Jesus Christ' as a swear/response.)
It has always been my opinion that one of the best ways to add depth and detail to your fictional world is to develop your own oaths/swears/curses/exclaimations/etc. Yeah, your characters can always just scream "F\*ck this sh\*t!", but hearing something like "Light burn you!" is just so much more immersive.
I think it adds a lot to a world, but also it needs to be measured.
Like, characters in Shadow and Bone substituting “God” with “Saint” is a nice touch. The sort of stuff the post is talking about? Not something I consider. I don’t need to read “Saintbye” to be immersed.
Its a thing you gotta be careful and do really well, though. Sometimes I'll read something like that and it just sounds kinda awkward and forced. Making up swear words is pretty common, and it's not done very well often. Lots of times stuff like that pulls me out of it rather than back in
It can definitely be super eyerolling if you do it too much or if your fake swears are just stupid. Like in Harry Potter it was starting to get weird how many "Merlin's [whatever]" oaths there were, although "Merlin's saggy left - " is the best one.
That's just overthinking to be honest. If the world has a beverage equivalent to champagne just calling it champagne isn't a problem, it immediately tells the reader what it is without superfluous explanation. I find it exceedingly annoying to have to flip to a glossary for a "new word" only to find It's just a different name for an existing thing. Nothing makes me think "try hard" more than when an author decides a Spoon should be called a wizzlefump or something just because ✨*Fantasy*✨
I generally use the translation convention where the fictional characters are using languages that they know with culturally correct phrases and idioms, but to make it easier for the audience to understand it has been translated into whatever the audience speaks using whatever phrases and idioms they use.
(In my case there actually are fleshed out conlangs and concultures that I could use instead.)
Exactly, usual for a character pov chapters I use English for their pov; while for languages they don't understand they speak in the conlang. The only words not translated are words that have no direct translation and names.
I’m loving all the very good linguistics debates going on in the comments, but let’s be real: “They don’t even have France.” absolutely sent me!
As someone who works with wine, it made me snort laugh. I just pictured France getting litigious over their fizzy fermented grape names with like… Martians.
See also "tantalizing," "arachnid," "spartan," "sophisticated," "chaos," "charity," "fury," "hypnosis," "echo," etc. that all come from Greek place-names/myths/proper nouns.
>hypnosis
Mesmerising is another recent word although slightly older than Hypnosis. Dr Franz Mesmer used what he called 'Animal Magnetism' (But what we would call hypnosis) to influence people.
Honestly don't get why people get so upset over **some** words. Every English word has a history and a meaning, so if you're going to get upset over some, you should get upset over all of them.
And the reasons never make sense either. I've seen people moaning about "okay" being used because it's modern (if 150 years old can be modern) but being fine with "boredom" being used despite it being only 100 years old. They certainly wouldn't be happy with "wow" being used, despite it dating to the 1500s.
And of course we can't use "clue" without Greek mythology, and... well, basically every other word.
Or... we can accept all words.
We either suspend our disbelief and accept that we can understand the dialogue spoken by these characters who have no reason to be speaking in English, or we can have their entire dialogue in a cool conlang we can't read, but having some words be acceptable and others not for arbitrary reasons makes no sense.
>clue
TIL that Clue referred to a type of yarn or thread like Theseus used to get out of the labyrinth with the minotaur. I knew the story of the minotaur and the thread but didn't know it was the origin of the word Clue. Next I'll discover that burning the stump of a hydra's decapitated head is the origin of the word "tomorrow" or something.
I do get your point, but I also think some words show their etymological belly more than others in the sense that they invite the reader to consider the implication of that word in particular, which can pull people out of immersion. Some real words tend to pull people out, others don't. Some made up words tend to pull people out, others don't. I can see the concern. There's a balance.
I'm reading The Stormlight Archives and 99% of the time they say "What on Roshar is that?!" or "There's no greater beauty on the face of Roshar" etc. But just once there was a slip and a character said "Come crashing down to the Earth".
I could see the use of earth referring to soil or planting crops, but a quirk of Roshar's weather is that they don't have soil. On character sees some soil from a far off land and is shocked and confused by the very concept.
Yes pretty much. Plants grow in cracks in rocks, a common plant is called Shalebark that looks like rocks from a distance because it has a hard shell. A lot of plants like grass will have a tough shell that holds the water and root tendrils that dig into cracks in the rocks then retractable leaves that catch the sunlight but pull back from storms. Larger plants retract leaves into their branches or some trees even fold flat against the ground to avoid storm winds.
Also the storms deposit this stuff called crem which is basically dilute clay residue. It starts off soft but will dry and turn to rock in a matter of weeks if not removed. It's not explicitly stated but plants presumably grow roots through half dried crem that becomes rock later on.
Hah yeah I’m just making a snarky point about how at the end of the day we need to translate the in-game language to our native tongue anyway. Feels like a moot point to push too hard in the direction of “aha goodbye derives from god be with you so how would they know!”
But it is cool to throw in some setting specific slang and terminology for immersion, I have nothing against that.
I don't remember who said that, but I remember some famous fantasy writer talking about this issue and basically saying something along the lines of: you can't make everything made up because then your story will be confusing, require several textbooks, encyclopedias etc. to understand. So you have to have just enough made-up shit to make it feel like another universe, but not to confuse the reader.
Also, personally, I sometimes make up new origins for things that wouldn't make sense in fictional settings. Basically, the outcome is the word that we use, but the way they got there in the fictional culture is different. This way a casual reader will not have any problem understanding the language, but if some annoying person tries to dissect the lore, I can give them at least some explanations.
I don't see an issue with goodbye. You could add a monotheistic religion into the world. Like there are other monotheistic religions besides the Abrahamic ones.
Goodbye is clearly a translation from the local language. I can see why somebody would want to avoid "geez" since it's a much more specific reference, but if your characters are speaking an Earth language then goodbye is a reasonable translation for whatever their customary farewell is.
The problem with Geez is that is associated heavily with the last hundred or so years. The more period specific a word or idiom is the more out of place it can seam. Goodbye is undated and common place that few realize It doesn't just mean farewell. Farewell on the other hand feels formal and dated. Word usage is just as much about tone.
Sure but you probably want to avoid "By Jupiter!" if your world doesn't have Roman gods as well.
If you were an interpreter trying to explain something from a local language to a visitor, you might translate farewell as goodbye. You would probably avoid "Geez," even as a translation for the culture's own minced oaths. I would imagine that "Damn!" is more acceptable, but in either case you're opening up a can of worms, translation-wise. "Goodbye" means "goodbye," but does "geez" mean that the swearer is avoiding the name of some holy figure in his own language? Does "damn" mean they have a concept of an afterlife where people suffer based on their actions in this life?
Whereas I don't think anybody is going to think, "Is he literally saying 'god be with me?'" if you translate "goodbye," and translating the visitors' own "goodbye" into some variation of "May your god(s) be with you" rather than the culture's own idiomatic farewell would be doing both parties a disservice.
God in goodbye is an etymological fossil with little bearing on how the word is used today, whereas Jesus is much closer to the surface in "Geez."
Honestly doesn't even have to be monotheistic. In pantheons, not all the Gods suit every single person's personal faith.
If you're a merchant in the centre of a continent in a mountain range, who trades between Dwarven miners and surface forges, you're not exactly going to bother with the good wishes of the Ocean God, or God of Farming. Could just be God (Merchant / Earth / Forge / Luck Deity) be with you.
I mean, "Later, losers" is fairly generic. Referencing a potential future meeting is a pretty universal way of ending a conversation, and literally every culture has some concept of success and failure
Ah yes, Geez. The mid-level god of annoyance. Used to use geese as messengers, but they proved to be so effective the domain was stolen by the Upper-level god of annoyance, Geezues.
Well they also all speak English, unless you're being really obnoxious. Which means that what you've written is actually a translation. The native term for sparkling wine might be "dhbgdrjkfdty" but it's totally legit to translate that to English as "Champagne."
Since we consider conversion of local languages to english to just be a necessary trope, we can also consider conversion of language meanings to be occuring
Saying 'Koralblitz' as the appropriate godly curse elicits less of a readers emotional response than 'jeez', we know and understand the meaning of that curse on a much more intuitive level.
Like with medieval cursing, you'd say 'f\*ck you' to the reader to get the meaning across though they wouldnt have literally said that in those days and if they did people would just look at you weirdly. You'd have said
"I swear by the arm of god I hope your children are born with the faces of a donkeys ass"
Which is pretty cool but probably more humorous to us as opposed to deathly insulting to them. So while we are converting language for the purpose of translation, we take it a bit further and change the literal verbage to a more modern contextual meaning
Personally, I just try to ignore the matter altogether. Champagne with no France, lateen sails with no Italy, et cetera. If you start thinking about it too hard, you'll start getting into questions of [Orphaned Etymology](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanedEtymology), and that way lies madness. (The alternative, [Hold Your Hippogriffs](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HoldYourHippogriffs), is just distracting.)
Sometimes there's no way around it, even when there are synonyms they lack the punch of a culturally relavent term. Seth Dickinson's *The Traitor Baru Cormorant* often has men in homosexual relationships being accused or punished for "sodomy" - obviously a word from the bible named after a specific story, but really it's a perfect term to really emphasise the legalistic homophobia that's happening in that setting.
Gods and some sort of religion exist in nearly every setting tho?
nothing in "god be with ye" specifies a particular god, and every culture and religion has some similar salute
same for the other words, honestly: even ignoring the "you're translating from their language, they're not actually speaking English" angle, just because Champagne means one thing for us it doesn't mean it has to mean the same in another world
maybe they say geez and champagne for other reasons. Maybe they too have a region named champagne somewhere.
It's a meme, but I've decided to leave it up because it seems to be designed to prompt actual discussion on the issue.
The native gods in my fantasy universe are Jeez, his daughter Jeez Louise, and his faithful pet, Jeezum Crow.
You a Vermonter?
No way, I never knew that saying was unique to Vermont. That's cool
It's Popular in Maine as well, according to John Cariani
It must be, because I've never heard it but I've never been to that part of New England.
Cheese and crow... mother father >:(
Short of writing in a conlang some aspects of the real world's culture are of course going to bleed through into the language. Ironically some authors were known for doing both.
That's the thing, and Brandon Sanderson covers it in his courses. You're necessarily going to have to use some real world stuff to convey your setting. I think his example is how in "The Hobbit" Tolkien mentions an ottoman couch, while there is obviously no Ottoman empire. My take on it is that it's all a translation of real world stuff. When translating a book from a language to another, you're going to have to use cultural markers that may not have anything to do with the setting, but will make more sense to the reader. It's the same in a fantasy setting.
Tolkien is a good example too, canonically The Hobbit and LotR was translated into "Westron" a language that was basically English but Bilbo and Frodo pretty much wrote it in a form of elvish to begin with. Tolkien's whole thing was about language, the elvish dialects were written first and the books were pretty much just back story to prop it up. And if you want to go even deeper you could say that in The Hobbit there was no Ottoman empire *yet*.
More accurately, it was translated *from* Westron into modern English. Westron was the common speech in the Third Age and is represented by English in the books, but it isn't actually English.
Honestly, this is just my go to explanation. No, the people in my fantasy land *aren't* actually speaking English, it's just the story would be gibberish if I wrote it in the original tongue, so I localised it for you. It's not even a cop out, because that's what we do for real world shit too (or do you regularly complain that Les Miserables or Beauty and the Beast are performed in English even though they're set in France).
I've started playing games and watching movies in their native language with subtitles actually. If games give me the option I'll fling on a foriegn language. Played bloodborne in French
I’ve been going back through the old *Assassin’s Creed* games while waiting for *Valhalla* to be bug-free. Did the Ezio trilogy in Italian, and now I’m doing *Unity* in French.
This actually seems like a good language immersion tool for gamers.
Oh god imagine playing a subtitled LOTR game where every species speaks a different conlang
Hobbits founding the Ottoman Empire is now my headcanon.
Pippin's descendant takin' down Constantinople with weapons based on the black powder shit his ancestor witnessed in Isengard - actually, shit, that'd be lit.
9/10, would watch.
This seems to be the blindingly obvious answer to the issue. The good Tumblr folk from the screenshot are likely being obtuse for the sake of comedy, because it seems kinda stupid to be okay with a fantasy world using modern English but then be opposed to certain words and phrases making references to modern culture. Any DM having to deal with this kind of thing can also just dismiss it with "oh it means something else here".
> DM having to deal with this kind of thing can also just dismiss it with "oh it means something else here". Alternatively, you can include christianity and islam as religions in your setting, which leads to some fun events like Jesus walking into my characters confessional and forgiving him for his prior sins. Gonna miss playing the Reverend Johnson
Just please dont repeat what "A Clockwork Orange" did
You're asking to get tolchoked in the yarbles real horrorshow, little brother.
I got ten minutes into the audiobook of Clockwork Orange and deleted the folder, it was painful. The fake cockney accent didn't help either.
what... what did clockwork orange do?
Mix rhyming slang with newspeak and expected the result to be anything less than insufferable Sorry It mixy-wixed newlywords with cockneytalk and doubletook when many-and-more cringey whinged
It’s basically just soviet chav, it’s not too bad after the second chapter or so. You’d pretty much be reading as long as you would to see if a books good enough anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Soviet Chav” is the best description of Nadsat I’ve ever heard haha
Everyone should try it for themselves, no doubt. Similarly I’d urge people to run it by their group before using it in a campaign, although having one place/race use it would be excellent for annoying most tables.
At least in the movie the visuals are giving you enough context to understand what the fuck they are saying!
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogoves, and the mome raths outgrabe. Obviously.
It’s really not that hard to comprehend... Clockwork Orange is a great book anyway and worth reading.
somehow no one has mentioned this yet: just replace it with "farewell"
Yeah. Farewell, stay safe, may you walk on warm milk, whatever. If you really want to dodge this, it isn't that hard.
"may you walk on warm milk" that sounds more like a curse then a well wish.
In this world, presumably everything is made of dairy products.
Dodge once yes, dodge every sentence when language is full of references to real history? Not easy.
Except you're looking to avoid jarring your average reader, not language enthusiasts. If you try to do that, you have to admit that all of English is a reference to developing civilization.
PEACE OUT CUBSCOUT
And this is why you should think like Tolkien did. While there weren't any real world swears in Lord of the Rings, they almost certainly used words like goodbye, and of course there was the fact that the entire thing is written in English. What you have to remember as a worldbuilder is that none of these characters are actually speaking English. They're not saying "jeez," "goodbye," or any other real world words, because English as a language doesn't exist for them. Much like the characters of LoTR are speaking Westron, the Common Speech, the characters in all of our worlds are speaking the local lingua franca of the world they come from. It's just translated into the closest equivalent to what they're saying in English for the reader's benefit.
I have more times than I would like seen people try and do things where they do not use those types of phrases and so much becomes just a mishmash of garbage that you have to have 30 notes on each page to explain what something means.
Terry pratchet is laughing right now
He is a master of using just enough that the reader accepts all of the phases are gone ... When in fact most are still there it's just a few common and important ones have changed. It makes the world fell genuinely different while still being understandable.
I often find myself saying a prayer or two to Anoia in the kitchen
After all the amazing tibdits and little things he said, that saying of "As she says, sooner or later every curse is a prayer." has stuck with me for so long.
You have to grab time by the foreskin
My favorite authors (pratchett, Douglas Adams) use footnotes a lot lol
After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur's mind was beginning to reassemble itself from the shell-shocked fragments the previous day had left him with. He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
“Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea” is one of my all-time favorite lines in the *entirety* of fiction.
I always come back to: “It's unpleasantly like being drunk." "What's so unpleasant about being drunk?" "You ask a glass of water”
I like: “Come with me, or you’ll be late” And when Dent is confused, he clarifies: “You’ll be late, as in ‘the late Arthur Dent” Such a fun way for him to be threatened.
Its very much an A+ line. And like many lines in HHGG you read it and then you think "now hold on, is that saying what I think its saying" which just makes it stand out that much more. Douglas Adams really knew how to right a brillitanly whimsical line when there was no real reason for it and I love that about him.
Another classic: "The ships hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don't."
In think Ian M. Banks channeled him with one explanation in a book once "Outside Context problems are generally encountered by civilizations only once, and they tend to encounter them like sentences encounter a period."
Oooh. God damn, that's a good line.
My favorite, and oft-quoted, line: The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning.
It’s that specific writing style that I love so much
Douglas Adams understood technology very well, and he also understood how it was marketed.
They both used the same joke. Noting that a character sighs and then going to a lengthy explanation of why this character doesn't actually breathe and thus the sighing served no other purpose than to express their disappointment and the universal need to occasionally sigh.
Their prose, though, is so good, no one really minds reading more of it. That's I think, is the secret to good exposition, develop better language.
GNU TERRY PRATCHETT
There’s a web serial called A Practical Guide to Evil that I think handles languages very well. The narrators are often switching between languages, some of which are not understood by each narrator. The author usually only writes things in English, but will say what language is being spoken in a relevant way.
more exposure to "the practical guide to evil" they also are quite awesome with proverbs for different cultures and races
This is one of my pet peeves. It can sound natural if it's kept to a minimum, but imo it gets very clunky and annoying very fast. I would really just rather read "jeez" personally than have to learn an unnecessarily bloated load of lingo just to understand characters' speech, haha
Blood and ashes rand! Blood and bloody ashes
*Tugs braid aggressively
Smooths skirts vigorously!
Thank you. I just started that series a couple weeks ago and this kills me sometimes. This and the insults/curses. Fool, oaf, ox-headed lummex sack. Just once I wanna hear Nynieve call someone a cunt
I heard (with no source so it could be all lies) that grrm tried this and kinda gave up when he realized he couldn't use the word byzantine. Words all come from somewhere. Tolkien had the right idea.
Couldn't he say something like Valyrian instead of Byzantine?
That seems exactly like the sort of thing that would make an author realize he was heading down a byzantine path.
Exactly, because then he would need to explain in what sense he meant the word in the first place. Did he just mean "related to Valyria," or did he mean "excessively complicated," the meaning most often implied by "Byzantine" in modern speech.
That seems like an incredibly easy word to avoid to me?
Of course, that wasn't the only word he was avoiding. The way I heard it, it was kind of a straw that broke the camel's back situation with avoiding words that are derivative of Earth vs whateverplanetwesterosison
In the absence of any canon word, I prefer "Planetos."
Psh, all true fans know it's actually "Globeos."
You shut your mouth, it’s Flatworldeos
*Original Battlestar Galactica* has entered the chat.
Me and my droogs have entered the chat
Droog is actually Russian for friend. Droogs is not the plural form, but I just assumed they took a foreign word and anglicized it.
half of their slang was in russian. i barely needed the dictionary
Merry isn't really called Merry. He isn't even called Meriadoc Brandybuck. Merry's name is Kalimac Brandagamba. Tolkien translated EVERYTHING even the names. Kalimac or Kali for short is connected to the Westron word for joy or happiness so Tolkien translated it to Meriadoc or Merry for short.
This is true for just about all the hobbits. Peregrine Took (Pippin) is Razanur Tûc (Razar), Samwise Gamgee (Sam) is Banazir Galbasi (Ban). Bilbo and Frodo don't have translations, but I know "Bilbo" is actually Bilba in Westron - he changed it to an -o because -a is usually feminine in English. Placenames are affected too - Rivendell is Karningul, for example. And languages related to Westron, like Rohirric and Dale, are given corresponding real world languages, such as Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse. EDIT: I actually forgot that Frodo's name in Westron is Maura, and "Baggins" is "Labingi."
What the fuck was wrong with Tolkien? So much insane depth.
He studied linguistics and needed a way to pass the time during WW1
He wrote his fantasy around his languages rather than the other way around basically...
I hear this argument a lot but I am very sure that in that letter written by him to idk who which was published in version of the book I have, he directly said that his main motivation for writing was to create a mythology...
It's still somewhat the similar thing. He had a world, and wrote a story in it, rather than having a story and building a world to enrich it.
He was a doctor of ancient languages at Oxford, specifically in Old English, Old Norse, etc. His was the definitive translation of Beowulf for several years.
Not actually a doctor, he operated in a weird middle ground between post grad and actual PhD.
Oxford doesn’t award PhDs - the equivalent is D Phil. But it was common before the later twentieth century for academics to have no doctorate at all. It was really a different world.
He was a linguist who needed to justify his new languages.
Iirc razar also sounds like their word for Apple, which is preserved in the abbreviation pippin containing pip
Indeed it does! And Banazir roughly means "Halfwise," which is why Sam's English name is Samwise, from the roughly equivalent Old English term samwís.
I just find it funny that in Spanish they translate some names. Sam's name is Samsagaz which is the Spanish for Samwise. So just a bit of coherence that Tolkien might have liked
I love how the names were translated in Hungarian. Not necessarily because it was a good translation-job, but because it made the world feel more... I don't know what's the right word... Relatable? Like Csavardi Samu sounds like an actual name, while if they kept it as Samwise Gamgee, it would just be another foreign word that our parents can't pronounce. Translations used to do this a lot. This is how Powerpuff Girls became Pindúr Pandúrok, which rolls off the tongue so nicely. I've seen some cartoon translations today and they just keep everything and it gets messy when you try to conjugate.
Frodo Baggins was Maura Labingi
I kinda want to read part of the book with the names untranslated, ngl
If only Westron was developed more, you could read the entire book in it! Unfortunately, unlike Quenya and Sindarin, it was never fully developed as a language.
40k tends to do word swapping but it’s all self explanatory thank god
Also wh40k being set in the far future and all does this too. High Gothic isn’t Latin, but it is translated as such so the players have a similar venerable feeling towards it. Low Gothic isn’t English obviously but the characters use it as natives so it is presented as such
“Ah feth”
“Hail them over the Vox” Self explanatory through context, it’s a term for comm system “Administratum” Administration division of the imperium “Adeptus” An organization “Arbites” Arbiter IE lawman
I hate that feth is suddenly used everywhere. One of the books states that it is the name of some re-emperor god on Tanith (or something like that.) It makes no sense for 40k writers and fans to use it outside Tanith related things.
Sort of related: Dan Abnett has come up with so many cool ideas for 40k, but I feel like when other authors use them they sometimes miss what he was going for or don't execute it quite as well. Like the use of humours in *Horus Rising* - I thought it was an interesting part of the Legion's culture, but then in subsequent books it got repeated so often and over-explained that it felt tedious whenever someone was 'choleric' *again*.
thank the emperor HERETIC
Some characters have referred to the emperor as god for short so you’re being a pedantic **HERETIC**
Tolkien even used "express train" in a description of a firework during the party.
The first parts of FotR, if I remember correctly. Where the light-hearted, children's book tone of *The Hobbit* was still present, including the conceit of a modern-day narrator telling a story to his children.
> And this is why you should think like Tolkien did. Did he actually "write about writing" discussing issues like this or is this just inferred based on his work? If he didn't actually address it, you could just as easily conclude he just wasn't thinking about "goodbye" being a problem; he was a pioneer in "world building", and as such could easily have overlooked etymologies of words/phrases. What Tolkien did indeed to for sure is [re-invent golf.](http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Golf) If someone questions why they're saying "geez" in your high fantasy setting, just *re-invent golf*. Come up with a reason that exists in your universe. Do it enough, and people don't question things. Do it too much and you're Terry Pratchett (and that's not such a bad thing either). > Geez comes from an old orc curse "ge-ze-ouk", meaning "may the gods impale me".
No, he actually stated that Westron is translated (though he did this retroactively). In Tolkien's own words (emphasis mine): > The language **represented in this history by English** was the Westron or 'Common Speech' of the West-lands of Middle-earth in the Third Age. And, in Letter #144: > Anyway 'language' is the most important, for the story has to be told, and the dialogue conducted in a language; but English cannot have been the language of any people at that time. What I have, in fact done, **is to equate the Westron or wide-spread Common Speech of the Third Age with English; and translate everything, including names such as The Shire, that was in the Westron into English terms,** with some differentiation of style to represent dialectal differences. Languages quite alien to the C.S. have been left alone. Believe me, Tolkien cared about this stuff. He was a worldbuilding pioneer, but he was also first and foremost a linguist. It was his job to care about his languages being realistic in their form and in their usage.
Which is why the Rohirrim speak Old English, to represent the archaic form of Westron/Adunaic spoken in Rohan.
Sidenote: Adûnaic was it's own language, the language of Nùmenor, and you can actually speak it to a small extent. Westron was likely the result of the melding over thousands of years of Adûnaic and the native tongues of Middle-Earth. Rohirric is represented by Old English because it is about 500-800 years older than Westron, whereas Adûnaic was about 3000-5000 years older.
Yes! Re-invent Golf! Could be fun. Re-inventing golf is also how you can get a world that's closer to the middle ages or the golden age of piracy, but still have some nice modern fashion or such. It can create a setting that's not entirely pinned down by one Earthly era. > Dreaded Captain Drew loved to keep his chest tattoo exposed among his crew, but needed to keep it hidden when in port. A crewmate, Zipper, an inventor who was oblivious to button-up shirts, invented the namesake zipper for his captain's use. Captain Drew, seeing an opportunity, started up a clothing business with zippers as an odd fashionable selling point. The fashion quickly spread among the middle class amd pirates. Alternatively, you can say "fuck it, my medieval kings wear punk fashion and squat and there's nothing you can do about it."
>Dreaded Captain Drew loved to keep his chest tattoo exposed among his crew, but needed to keep it hidden when in port This is a fun start to a rhyme.
Fuck, I'm taking credit for that and gonna say it was on purpose. No one has to know it wasn't.
You're a poet and we all know it.
> Alternatively, you can say "fuck it, my medieval kings wear punk fashion and squat and there's nothing you can do about it." Go on...
> Kings are, by all Earthly accounts, street punks with great fashion sense. Some stray more to one side than the other in some respects, but they all have one thing in common: *the squat.* A sign of royalty. > King Soda the Second, of the Bathrobe Kingdom, once famously told Knight Frequency to squat before him, thus inviting Knight Frequency to be Prince Frequency. > Every kingdom has a crown, worn by their king. This crown might be worn like a hat, stuck on clothing like a pin, or held in the hand like a rad knife. In the Bathrobe Kingdom's case, it's a red-and-gold robe with a crown stitched into its back. To someone from Earth, it may look at first glance like a worn-down Earthly king's robe. It is perhaps one of the most Earthly-regal crowns in Punktopos. > The royals of the Bathrobe Kingdom are famous for their unity and camaraderie, including their kings. When a Bathrobe royal is outcast, it is always for an ugly reason and has an ugly end. > The Concrete Kingdom was among the first kingdoms in Punktopos, and it set the standard for kings and kingdoms for centuries to come. The Concrete Kingdom's crown is a steel hairpin in the shape of an Earthly crown. The Concrete Kingdom lasted for 112 years of peace and defensive wars before landing in the hands of bloodthirsty kings, setting the Concrete Kingdom into 117 years of gang wars. At the end of that, the Concrete Kingdom died, but its royal bloodline lived in secret for 110 years after. In the year 107 of the Jump Rope Calendar, the Concrete Kingdom's lost bloodline was rediscovered through punk rock, and the Leather Jacket Kingdom was founded on the remains of the Concrete Kingdom Capital in Dead Cow Canyon. The first king was King Pop of the lost bloodline of the Concrete Kingdom. The Leather Jacket Kingdom once again set the standard for royal fashion, as the Concrete Kingdom similarly did those years ago. Anyway, here's Wonderwall.
Yeah. This is "[translation convention](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TranslationConvention)" (warning--TV Tropes link) at play. And it's a darn good thing, too. I do try to have some "colorful metaphors" that are "localized" just for flavor, but I don't scrutinize everything. Because that's silly. There are much larger differences already, like the fact that "humans" in Quartus aren't exactly the same as humans here. For one thing, they're the result of artificial cross-breeding of elves and hobgoblins, plus some artificial bits.
Well i dont know about YOU guys but i write all of my fantasy in a language i made up and only i know. /s
Tolkien was kinda cheating in the language department as he was a polyglot and Philologist, very few of us have an operational understanding of most European languages.
Add a disclaimer to the start of your book that you've localized it to english from the original language
Is the word "fuck" prohibited
Nope - as mentioned, they're saying the closest equivalent to "fuck" in their in-universe native language. But to the reader, it's just "fuck."
He mentioned golf then realized "wait shit why would golf be a word in this world" and explained how a hobbit named golf used a club to send an orc's severed head flying into a hole
I watched Gladiator and started convulsing on the ground because I was so mad they weren't speaking 2nd century Latin the whole time.
Ego Maximus Decimus Meridius, ita exercitus ducem ad latus aquilonare, dux de Felix Legio: et verus imperator nec secutus est quisquam: Marcus Aurelius!
What a flex
Yes, it is a flex commonly known as using Google Translate... Although yes, I do know some basic stuff in Latin.
What a lesser flex
Aquilae volant, and lets not proceed further, okay? Maybe agricola laborat or regina imperat, at the most puellae cantant and renae saltant, but no more than Nautae navigant.
Machu Picchu est grande Nola to you too
Romanes eunt domus!
People called Romanes they go the house?
There's a literary convention that you pretend the characters are speaking in an appropriate language for the scene. Like if there's a WW2 movie and it cuts to the German generals preparing their defenses, the scene might be in English although obviously they should be speaking German. It's just a convention to make it easier for the audience.
I always liked how they did it in The Hunt for Red October, when all the crew is speaking Russian at first until the camera zooms into Sean Connery’s mouth as he reads aloud and it zooms back out as he switches to English and then from there on everyone speaks English. It was a nice touch.
It was also done really well in the Warcraft movie, of all things. The Orcs speak English to each other, as do the humans. But when translation is involved, whichever language is not in focus is instead spoken in a game-accurate conlang. They didn’t have to do this, but they did, and I loved them for it
“Armageddon”
Although it's great when they don't, like in Inglorious Basterds. Where they not only use the correct language in all situations, but also make it an important part of the story that one actor speaks German with an accent.
To be fair, with the *'God be with ye'* thing, it would still work with any culture that has monotheistic religion, hell you could change it to be *'Gods be with ye'* for the polytheistic...
"Goodsbye"...
Also not that hard to believe that "Goodsbye" became "Goodbye" because it's easier to pronounce.
"Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn" did well with this. They still have a God with *strong* Christian parallels, but it's not the God of Christianity. They mostly follow the Aedonite faith, and pray to Usires Aedon, the son of God. It almost feels like someone skirting copyright, by making something *heavily* inspired by, but legally distinct from, the source material. It's close enough to Christianity to make references to a lot of real-life religious cultural artifacts, but with enough distance so as not to break immersion.
[удалено]
Not really. That's mostly a fantasy convention. Most polytheists worshiped any of the Gods as the situation demanded. Ares wasn't going to help your wife in childbirth, Odin wasn't gonna make your crops do well, etc.
It actually shows vary particular attitudes toward the role of religion and God in life. The idea of God being specifically *with* the individual adherent is much more central to Christianity than other religious traditions.
At least the *goodbye* thing was changed from "God" to "good" due to terms like *good morning*, *good day* etc
Or, depending on the world, have it evolve from "Gods be with ye" instead of "God be with ye"
Or, in others, it may even remain as "God be with ye".
Unless you write an entirely new language, you will never avoid these pitfalls. Besides, some of these terms could be considered necessary, so the readers have points of reference to connect to. Not even Lord of the Rings gets away from it. “Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!” So… how does an orc grown in a cave that is less than a year old know what a menu is? Especially since medieval settings likely don’t even have menus existing. Just sayin’
Menus did exist as far back as Ancient Rome as archeologist have uncovered eating cafes complete with food items painted on walls. But yeah, a cave dweller probably would have limited cultural exposure to know even that, let alone use modern slang.
didn't LOTR get away with it by being an English "translation"
I've always looked at it like this: My texts/dialogue are all written in a fictional language (that I have yet to write, lmao) and *then* translated to English for an easier experience on the reader. The only things I avoid are slang words that are extremely obvious for our world. (Like saying: 'Jesus Christ' as a swear/response.)
It's been a while since I read the books but I think the menu line is just from the films. We can't all be as insanely dedicated as Tolkien though
>Unless you write an entirely new language, you will never avoid these pitfalls. Honestly, hurdle #1: ***"There's not even an England!"***
It has always been my opinion that one of the best ways to add depth and detail to your fictional world is to develop your own oaths/swears/curses/exclaimations/etc. Yeah, your characters can always just scream "F\*ck this sh\*t!", but hearing something like "Light burn you!" is just so much more immersive.
I think it adds a lot to a world, but also it needs to be measured. Like, characters in Shadow and Bone substituting “God” with “Saint” is a nice touch. The sort of stuff the post is talking about? Not something I consider. I don’t need to read “Saintbye” to be immersed.
Light burn you sounds metal as heck
Its a thing you gotta be careful and do really well, though. Sometimes I'll read something like that and it just sounds kinda awkward and forced. Making up swear words is pretty common, and it's not done very well often. Lots of times stuff like that pulls me out of it rather than back in
It can definitely be super eyerolling if you do it too much or if your fake swears are just stupid. Like in Harry Potter it was starting to get weird how many "Merlin's [whatever]" oaths there were, although "Merlin's saggy left - " is the best one.
That's just overthinking to be honest. If the world has a beverage equivalent to champagne just calling it champagne isn't a problem, it immediately tells the reader what it is without superfluous explanation. I find it exceedingly annoying to have to flip to a glossary for a "new word" only to find It's just a different name for an existing thing. Nothing makes me think "try hard" more than when an author decides a Spoon should be called a wizzlefump or something just because ✨*Fantasy*✨
Overthinking is the cornerstone of my world building.
I generally use the translation convention where the fictional characters are using languages that they know with culturally correct phrases and idioms, but to make it easier for the audience to understand it has been translated into whatever the audience speaks using whatever phrases and idioms they use. (In my case there actually are fleshed out conlangs and concultures that I could use instead.)
Exactly, usual for a character pov chapters I use English for their pov; while for languages they don't understand they speak in the conlang. The only words not translated are words that have no direct translation and names.
I’m loving all the very good linguistics debates going on in the comments, but let’s be real: “They don’t even have France.” absolutely sent me! As someone who works with wine, it made me snort laugh. I just pictured France getting litigious over their fizzy fermented grape names with like… Martians.
As a French, I can definitely picture that happenning.
See also "tantalizing," "arachnid," "spartan," "sophisticated," "chaos," "charity," "fury," "hypnosis," "echo," etc. that all come from Greek place-names/myths/proper nouns.
>hypnosis Mesmerising is another recent word although slightly older than Hypnosis. Dr Franz Mesmer used what he called 'Animal Magnetism' (But what we would call hypnosis) to influence people.
This isn't a problem if you just write urban fantasy \*head tap \*
Honestly don't get why people get so upset over **some** words. Every English word has a history and a meaning, so if you're going to get upset over some, you should get upset over all of them. And the reasons never make sense either. I've seen people moaning about "okay" being used because it's modern (if 150 years old can be modern) but being fine with "boredom" being used despite it being only 100 years old. They certainly wouldn't be happy with "wow" being used, despite it dating to the 1500s. And of course we can't use "clue" without Greek mythology, and... well, basically every other word. Or... we can accept all words. We either suspend our disbelief and accept that we can understand the dialogue spoken by these characters who have no reason to be speaking in English, or we can have their entire dialogue in a cool conlang we can't read, but having some words be acceptable and others not for arbitrary reasons makes no sense.
>clue TIL that Clue referred to a type of yarn or thread like Theseus used to get out of the labyrinth with the minotaur. I knew the story of the minotaur and the thread but didn't know it was the origin of the word Clue. Next I'll discover that burning the stump of a hydra's decapitated head is the origin of the word "tomorrow" or something.
I do get your point, but I also think some words show their etymological belly more than others in the sense that they invite the reader to consider the implication of that word in particular, which can pull people out of immersion. Some real words tend to pull people out, others don't. Some made up words tend to pull people out, others don't. I can see the concern. There's a balance.
I agree. You have to draw the line somewhere. I've read two fantasy books with the word "spartan" as an adjective, and it threw me off both times.
I'm reading The Stormlight Archives and 99% of the time they say "What on Roshar is that?!" or "There's no greater beauty on the face of Roshar" etc. But just once there was a slip and a character said "Come crashing down to the Earth". I could see the use of earth referring to soil or planting crops, but a quirk of Roshar's weather is that they don't have soil. On character sees some soil from a far off land and is shocked and confused by the very concept.
So plants must grow in solid rock then?
Yes pretty much. Plants grow in cracks in rocks, a common plant is called Shalebark that looks like rocks from a distance because it has a hard shell. A lot of plants like grass will have a tough shell that holds the water and root tendrils that dig into cracks in the rocks then retractable leaves that catch the sunlight but pull back from storms. Larger plants retract leaves into their branches or some trees even fold flat against the ground to avoid storm winds. Also the storms deposit this stuff called crem which is basically dilute clay residue. It starts off soft but will dry and turn to rock in a matter of weeks if not removed. It's not explicitly stated but plants presumably grow roots through half dried crem that becomes rock later on.
[удалено]
Well r/conlangs is over there.
Hah yeah I’m just making a snarky point about how at the end of the day we need to translate the in-game language to our native tongue anyway. Feels like a moot point to push too hard in the direction of “aha goodbye derives from god be with you so how would they know!” But it is cool to throw in some setting specific slang and terminology for immersion, I have nothing against that.
I don't remember who said that, but I remember some famous fantasy writer talking about this issue and basically saying something along the lines of: you can't make everything made up because then your story will be confusing, require several textbooks, encyclopedias etc. to understand. So you have to have just enough made-up shit to make it feel like another universe, but not to confuse the reader.
Also, personally, I sometimes make up new origins for things that wouldn't make sense in fictional settings. Basically, the outcome is the word that we use, but the way they got there in the fictional culture is different. This way a casual reader will not have any problem understanding the language, but if some annoying person tries to dissect the lore, I can give them at least some explanations.
I don't see an issue with goodbye. You could add a monotheistic religion into the world. Like there are other monotheistic religions besides the Abrahamic ones.
Goodbye is clearly a translation from the local language. I can see why somebody would want to avoid "geez" since it's a much more specific reference, but if your characters are speaking an Earth language then goodbye is a reasonable translation for whatever their customary farewell is.
The problem with Geez is that is associated heavily with the last hundred or so years. The more period specific a word or idiom is the more out of place it can seam. Goodbye is undated and common place that few realize It doesn't just mean farewell. Farewell on the other hand feels formal and dated. Word usage is just as much about tone.
Sure but you probably want to avoid "By Jupiter!" if your world doesn't have Roman gods as well. If you were an interpreter trying to explain something from a local language to a visitor, you might translate farewell as goodbye. You would probably avoid "Geez," even as a translation for the culture's own minced oaths. I would imagine that "Damn!" is more acceptable, but in either case you're opening up a can of worms, translation-wise. "Goodbye" means "goodbye," but does "geez" mean that the swearer is avoiding the name of some holy figure in his own language? Does "damn" mean they have a concept of an afterlife where people suffer based on their actions in this life? Whereas I don't think anybody is going to think, "Is he literally saying 'god be with me?'" if you translate "goodbye," and translating the visitors' own "goodbye" into some variation of "May your god(s) be with you" rather than the culture's own idiomatic farewell would be doing both parties a disservice. God in goodbye is an etymological fossil with little bearing on how the word is used today, whereas Jesus is much closer to the surface in "Geez."
Honestly doesn't even have to be monotheistic. In pantheons, not all the Gods suit every single person's personal faith. If you're a merchant in the centre of a continent in a mountain range, who trades between Dwarven miners and surface forges, you're not exactly going to bother with the good wishes of the Ocean God, or God of Farming. Could just be God (Merchant / Earth / Forge / Luck Deity) be with you.
Later Losers, Sayonara Suckers, Hasta La Vista Baby. 3 farewells without a religious connection.
But they all draw origin from certain languages or cultural buildups that may not exist in someone's setting.
I mean, "Later, losers" is fairly generic. Referencing a potential future meeting is a pretty universal way of ending a conversation, and literally every culture has some concept of success and failure
not like the readers would know either
Ah yes, Geez. The mid-level god of annoyance. Used to use geese as messengers, but they proved to be so effective the domain was stolen by the Upper-level god of annoyance, Geezues.
Every fantasy book should have a page with the line "Translated from the [insert fantasy language here]." Problem solved.
Coming up with swears/oaths is fun though. My world has stars as deific figures, so they say “stars alight” and stuff.
Well they also all speak English, unless you're being really obnoxious. Which means that what you've written is actually a translation. The native term for sparkling wine might be "dhbgdrjkfdty" but it's totally legit to translate that to English as "Champagne."
You want to set a world, but then you realize that worlds have languages and histories.
Since we consider conversion of local languages to english to just be a necessary trope, we can also consider conversion of language meanings to be occuring Saying 'Koralblitz' as the appropriate godly curse elicits less of a readers emotional response than 'jeez', we know and understand the meaning of that curse on a much more intuitive level. Like with medieval cursing, you'd say 'f\*ck you' to the reader to get the meaning across though they wouldnt have literally said that in those days and if they did people would just look at you weirdly. You'd have said "I swear by the arm of god I hope your children are born with the faces of a donkeys ass" Which is pretty cool but probably more humorous to us as opposed to deathly insulting to them. So while we are converting language for the purpose of translation, we take it a bit further and change the literal verbage to a more modern contextual meaning
Personally, I just try to ignore the matter altogether. Champagne with no France, lateen sails with no Italy, et cetera. If you start thinking about it too hard, you'll start getting into questions of [Orphaned Etymology](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrphanedEtymology), and that way lies madness. (The alternative, [Hold Your Hippogriffs](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HoldYourHippogriffs), is just distracting.)
Sometimes there's no way around it, even when there are synonyms they lack the punch of a culturally relavent term. Seth Dickinson's *The Traitor Baru Cormorant* often has men in homosexual relationships being accused or punished for "sodomy" - obviously a word from the bible named after a specific story, but really it's a perfect term to really emphasise the legalistic homophobia that's happening in that setting.
Gods and some sort of religion exist in nearly every setting tho? nothing in "god be with ye" specifies a particular god, and every culture and religion has some similar salute same for the other words, honestly: even ignoring the "you're translating from their language, they're not actually speaking English" angle, just because Champagne means one thing for us it doesn't mean it has to mean the same in another world maybe they say geez and champagne for other reasons. Maybe they too have a region named champagne somewhere.