One thing that struck me with Fallout is how the majority of the people you meet can speak fluent English. I was watching Threads the other day and it puts forward that even within one generation the language has degraded to be much simpler and mono-syllabic for the most part. Of course many people would survive who knew the language but as they're more concerned with survival as oppose to education it'd make sense that the post-apoc children wouldn't be very articulate. Do you really think that the English language would survive in it's current form after a Nuclear War? In reality would the time between when the bombs dropped to when the Vault Dweller emerges be too great for the English language to be sustained? Of course some would be educated, I have no doubt that some "schools" would still be run, but the people capable of articulate speech would be by far in the minority wouldn't they?
Language
- Thread starter mortiz
- Start date
The complete and total survival of clothing styles, hairstyles and morality is one of the marks of 50's futuristic pulp.
Fallout is fairly moderate in only carrying over language.
Fallout is fairly moderate in only carrying over language.
There would still be a few people who hold the English language as something that must be spoken properly in the wasteland, I'm sure. I know there are the raiders who probably don't give a shit whether or not they speak eloquently, but there would have to be some kind of 'scholar' people around to uphold the language.
Sounds ridiculous, but there'd have to be some people who wanted the language to be spoken as it once was.
But in saying that, the language could adapt to the situations. Our language has changed so much since it was like "Ye Olde English" (
) and I'm guessing the language would change over a few hundred years.
Sounds ridiculous, but there'd have to be some people who wanted the language to be spoken as it once was.
But in saying that, the language could adapt to the situations. Our language has changed so much since it was like "Ye Olde English" (
) and I'm guessing the language would change over a few hundred years.Dead language nobody ever uses, yet people are forced to learn it's crappy grammar by hard?
duckman said:There would still be a few people who hold the English language as something that must be spoken properly in the wasteland, I'm sure. I know there are the raiders who probably don't give a shit whether or not they speak eloquently, but there would have to be some kind of 'scholar' people around to uphold the language.
Sounds ridiculous, but there'd have to be some people who wanted the language to be spoken as it once was.
But in saying that, the language could adapt to the situations. Our language has changed so much since it was like "Ye Olde English" (
Well, from a linguist (i.e. me) point of view, I'd have to say that technically Mortiz is partially right.
The speed of development of languages depends more on interaction with other languages than one would think, though, and "digression" in language as we have seen in the English language is more of a symptom of it being a world language than a natural development of the language...an sich.
"Sustaining" the base tenets of a language, on the other hand, takes no effort whatsoever. Hence "raw" English would easily survive, "intellectual" English being saved for the Doc Morbid types, much as is true of Fallout. We're used to thinking sustaining a language depends on a large educational platform with all members of society being taught basic grammatical and lingual rules. Well, guess what, it doesn't.
The thought of people degrading into non-articulate or monosyllabic speech within one or two generation in a wasteland society is ludicrous at best.
What we *are* missing in Fallout is a proper sense of isolation. What happens when you isolate languages is that they will develop independantly of one another. One city in the wasteland will keep or adapt the usage of a certain word which is completely forgotten in the next town. Only merchants travel between the two, meaning changes are not spread. That is an actual realistic consequence of such a society as Fallout has.
Also note that there's a difference between using language as a tool for defamiliarization and characterization, and simply changing the language across the board because it "should" change. Any change that includes the majority of the population of the wasteland including the POV character is nearly irrelevant, because under no circumstances would they perceive their own language as strange or primitive. So you use English for that. Relative change however, used sparingly, is a tool for giving characteristic speech patterns, accents or word usages to certain peoples or individuals. For further reference, see Mark O'Green.
But changing language use to change the atmosphere of a setting can work very well, even if you apply it to everyone. See Planescape: Torment for an excellent example.Per said:
Sander said:
Or rather Planescape. However, that arguably fits with "sparingly"; you only switch out certain words, and not even consistently. The rest is plain English. What I was thinking of myself was A Clockwork Orange, where the main character uses an elaborate slang, but this isn't shared by the adult world around him.
I thought the design team for Torment specifically came up with applying old English slang to the streets?Per said:
It isn't really used sparingly, though. Berk, cutter and such are very frequent and are used to create a certain atmosphere and feeling, not just to create the idea of a difference between 'classes'.Per said:
But yes, relative change of language can be quite effective in creating the perception of a difference between people.
Per said:
Yes, in the case with Fallout the difference in languages would be quite prominent. Especially between the Vault Dwellers (that have developed as an isolated unit) which would have a language much closer to that of today’s English and the rest of the wasteland which would have many different permutations of the language. I can see how from a gameplay and a story telling point of view this would be difficult to implement. There was the opportunity in Fallout to explore the changes in language if the designers wanted to, but perhaps in the long run it'd simply complicate matters.
Sander said:
Oh, no, no. Pretty much everything in the game is from RPG products, including several NPCs like Fell. Leafing through the Planescape books you can clearly identify which tiefling illustration spawned Annah, for instance.
Sander said:
Sparingly in the sense I was talking about. They essentially find-and-replace a limited set of words, they don't go all-out mimicking how a 19th century Londoner would have talked or "evolving" the entire style of speech in a certain direction. Annah has a "Scots" idiom pervading her speech (I can't tell how accurate or consistent it is), but the general populace just has English with a few words switched out. It's different in different areas, of course. The Avellone-areas have a lot more accents, strange idioms, alien forms of communication, and so on, while most other areas are more bland. But that also falls under the "limited" heading.
mortiz said:
The risk is that by throwing large chunks of strange words and syntax at the player/reader, you hurt comprehension and engender annoyance.
Hotel California
Mildly Dipped
Thats just not fair - that book was far better for how Banks wrote everything phonetically. True it may have been hard to read at times but after a few pages I could get into the swing of things. One of the most brilliant litiary devices of these times is writing in txt spk for teenage books or like this to convey his sense of dislexia and out of touchness with the rest of his society.
I'd be all for different accents per city, assuming Besdestha has a voice for every character. It hold true that with such isolation accents would change and slang would become canonial.
However, I still can't give a reason for Loxley's wonderfully sterotypical British old chum accent except for how all American's typecast us as the mostly bad guys because we make good villians.
Hotel California said:
Sherwood Forest is in Britain?
Hotel California
Mildly Dipped
Per said:
Ummm, yeah. Explain your wonderfully sarcastic (?) statement in context please ...
Hotel California said:
Loxley is loosely based on Robin Hood, a.k.a. Robin of Loxley, who supposedly lived in Sherwood Forest, and was also an Englander. Hence the British accent. Or so I assume.