suib0m wrote:I believe it is all made up, though methodically.
The languages have been made up, but the players picked up what they could from the game, especially:
- cities
- crafts
- named animals
- PNJs
They often tried to interprete those names, they inspired them for the sonorities and the way words might be built (with particles, prefixes and so on). Craft names have actually been a good start since we have plenty of them. But PNJ names are too close to real languages (latin, chinese, gaelic, english, italian...) so the players did not use them too much. A matis language based on italien would have been to close to french for example. Also, when words had been created before these proper languages appeared (especially for fyros and zora), they have been included. But some other languages inspired the creators as well:
- The inventor of the fyros language is a linguist (maybe not professional, not sure). He tried to create an efficient and straightforward language that would fit in the tough life that fyros have. He said that the influences (nothing is really borrowed) come from japanese, korean, with a hint of akkadian, arabic and hebrew.
- The zorai language has some words that directly come from chinese, but I am not sure about the rest (possibly japanese). Religion is very present in this language, just like it is in arabic for example.
- The inventor of the matis language wanted word that would look and sound beautiful, so he search for inspiration in the Quenya language (spoken by elves in the Tolkien's novels) between other things.
- The tryker language is inspired from gaelic, as Hekla said.
suib0m wrote:I'm not a fan of using language like this as a general thing, since it adds an awkward barrier to how a character acts, since the acting in an MMO is largely text based.
seawe wrote:Players getting into creating their own lingos among the players is one thing (and neat), but getting a language into the game in a nonsupperficial way is much more complex, and I really don't see my self being able to learn an entire vocabulary language; unless its connected to actual actions, items, or missions in game.
acridiel wrote:But I also agree with Seawe and Suibom, that in creating a whole new set of languages the game gets even more complicated.
And while it being a great opportunity for nice roleplay, new players could be either hard pressed to get into a game with a whole new language or intrigued by it.
Well, don't misunderstand the purpose of these languages. I believe they have been created in order to help everyone to feel part of a people, and for fun as well
The lore let us think that every people had their own language before and the players reused this idea, since Nevrax would never want to create a language for them (it is a good example of the "power to the players"!). Practically, most RP players use these languages for greetings, which is a good start. For some reason the trykers are a bit more fan of their language so they use it more often, translating words like "yes", "no", "thanks", and they often use the "ny-" or "nair-" (giving different levels of respect) prefixes when talking to someone (especially in meetings).
Other uses include guild/alliances names, titles inside a guild (one of our fyros guild has four leaders called "Kun Bekun", one zorai guild has a leader called "Ma Da Kwai"), guild's mottos, war songs (saved in macros :-p ) or longer salutations in beginning/end of letters posted on forums, etc. These languages exist, have a fair amount of vocabulary, they often offer simple ways to create new words, so RP players use them as long as it not boring and not too complicated. A newby would only have to learn the two or tree greetings and I think that RP newbies actually enjoy that because they feel more part of something.
