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[MetalSlimeHunt]

God damn you, autocorrect.

[Loud Whispers]

I maintain the idea that the Imperium has desperate planetary cultures but also a unitary "galactic culture", which is where thrones come in.
It's like an exaggerated version of the international cosmopolitanism you see from people in cities the world over, even when some of those cities are in countries with very, very different rural cultures.

Things all 40k imperial cultures will have in common:

• At least the higher ups, nobles, aristocracy, bureaucracy or technocrats will speak some variant of old gothic or binary, forming the lingua franca, legal language and scientific language of the 40k verse. They may also have low gothic or local languages / language all over the place. Food for thought, can the languages of the adep mech have accented technospeak? I imagine there must be at least one forge world that speaks 1337
• Skulls will be everywhere in some form, in some cases floating about as servoskulls (maybe Khorne would attack the Imperium more if they hid their skulls, really asking for it when your neighbours want skulls for the skull throne)
• The quadruple taboo/paranoia of mutants, heretics, xenos and AI
• Emperor venerated in various states of depicted godliness
• All have their institutions under the control of institutions set up by terra. It is altogether surprising how on the galactic scale the Imperium manages to keep their bureaucracy, industry and military standardized, and is probably the least believable thing about the setting (or perhaps, more believable given the several thousands of years of stagnation that allowed them to standardize).
• If you have gold, plate everything in gold. If you don't have gold, build gothic architecture out of ferrocrete. If you don't know how to build gothic architecture, adorn your normal buildings in skulls and saintly statues. Nomads who don't use houses just keep skulls and aquilas on their person.

[90908]

You forgot the PDF.

[stabbymcstabstab]

Actually in pretty sure language is pretty uniformed, dialected to be completely ununderstandable without a translator but still the same language.

[Kot]

Low Gothic is pretty much everywhere, yes, but it also appears to differ a lot. It's more of a common roots - after all, both English and German are Germanic languages, and quite possibly all of the Low Gothic versions come from one that has been spoken by all the colonists back in the day... possibly High Gothic or something.

[Tack]

I thought high gothic was always Latin and low gothic was some nine billion pidgins.

[nenjin]

To be precise, High Gothic is fake Latin. Although it's a lot less fake now than it used to be. It used to be a policy for 40k writers that if they had something in High Gothic, find out the actual Latin Translation for it, then intentionally fuck up that translation.

Low Gothic is literally English.

[Cergos]

It used to be a policy for 40k writers that if they had something in High Gothic, find out the actual Latin Translation for it, then intentionally fuck up that translation.

I could live without those five declensions each with six cases. However, I always thought that simplifying latin, with less convoluted case and word order, actually made High Gothic more believable as a practical language.
But ehh, I guess good ole' Latin worked well enough in the past, so it makes some sense.

[nenjin]

I don't think the intention is quite that well thought out.

For example, Tormentor is Latin is (according to Google translate) is Tortorem.

A 40k writer might change that just so it's not straight Latin (Tortorum) or just to make it sound more badass (Torturatis.)

Here's probably the best example though: Exterminate in Latin is exterminare. Doesn't quite have the same ring as "Exterminatus" though does it? A lot of Latin word endings done properly just don't sound as badass as fake Latin.

[Kot]

A 40k writer might change that just so it's not straight Latin (Tortorum) or just to make it sound more badass (Torturatis.)

Torturatis doesn't sound badass. It sounds fucking hilarious. Like, something from goddamn Asterix and Obelix.

Here's probably the best example though: Exterminate in Latin is exterminare. Doesn't quite have the same ring as "Exterminatus" though does it? A lot of Latin word endings done properly just don't sound as badass as fake Latin.

Exterminatus is a noun. Exterminate is a verb.
I think (note that I have no fucking idea how to Latin, not that many people have) proper noun would be Exterminii in singular or Exterminiorum in plural.

[pisskop]

Im pretty sure you can exterminatus a world, no?

[spazyak]

It'd be declaring exterminatus, but exterminati otherwise

[nenjin]

Like, something from goddamn Asterix and Obelix.

It pleases me to know someone else is aware of Asterix and Obelix. Grew up reading the comics as a kid and developed an unhealthy fascination with roasted boar because of it.

Exterminii

It's been a few years since I took Latin, but generally stuff ending in "i" is "of something." Also I think proper nouns end in "um" in Latin. Again, it's been a while.

edit: nm, us vs. um is just where you follow in the sentence order, subject object, etc...

The point IS, 40k writers don't give a fuck about the actual rules of Latin. They just call it what sounds good. Something about the rules of language being lost over time, yadda yadda.

[pisskop]

-um is if its the subject.
otherwise its just the name.

[spazyak]

I just wanted an exuce to say exterminati confirmed