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[Urist McArmok]

Hi! I haven't been able to play DF since it was 2d, so I might just not know if anything's changed. Apologies if this doesn't make sense or has already been brought up (Searching just gave threads about literacy/books and other random stuff), but does Toady intend to implement language in a more believable way? I mean, the current system with hardcoded vocabularies used for naming and an implied common tongue works, but it seems that it would only help to have them be used in game as well. For example: The Chain of Puppies dwarves would mostly just speak Hill Dwarf, but their neighboring dwarf civ The Wheels of Joy, would speak the related Mountain Dwarf, and their primary human trading partners the Axes of Armor would all speak Low Goblish thanks to being part of a goblin civ during world gen, so you'd have to make sure that your trader not only was a good liar but had above average linguistic ability to understand the traders. Or, for adventure mode, your human outsider who can currently talk to an elf civ leader from the other side of the world with no problems whatsoever would actually have to learn Western Elf just to talk to him, and Refined Western Elf to make him want to reply instead of just have the guards throw you out... Okay, maybe it shouldn't go into prestige dialects yet, but it's just vaguely irritating that a human adventurer born in year 1400 with no linguistic ability whatsoever can perfectly understand the engravings on the first dwarf fort ever built.

[Jeoshua]

It would be nice, indeed, if only the language that you speak was ever translated into English.  Going to a community that speaks a different language would have people saying their name was "Officius Argentum", and cities would be "Araelintara" not "Sillywords", instead of translating it.

This would mean every cave would have a fittingly arcane name, instead of being sent to "The Hills of Boring" to kill "Apetits, The Fruit of Slime"

[NW_Kohaku]

It's not hardcoded anymore.  You can make up your own languages if you want, and stock it with as many words as you want.  There are even some scripts for making a custom-built language if you want.

I don't think there's a way to actually make a single civ have more than one language, however.  I think that all dwarven civilizations will just speak the language you set for dwarven civilizations to speak.

A procedurally changing language would be somewhat interesting... although if it changes every single time, then there's no way to "learn dwarvish", and you might as well just have gibberish at that point. 

We have recently discussed the notion of a literacy skill in adventure mode, however, and that could possibly be something closer to what you seem to intend.  Having adventurers have to learn "ancient languages" as a skill, and maybe using their linguistic ability attribute as a way to get to learning new languages before you can start speaking with other races would be more interesting, and wouldn't necessarily need to actually procedurally generate a new language - the game could just say "you don't understand".

[Jeoshua]

I don't think there's a way to actually make a single civ have more than one language, however.  I think that all dwarven civilizations will just speak the language you set for dwarven civilizations to speak.

Actually, I've had civs recently that end up somehow adopting a different language than they originally spoke.  I'm using LFR's Nephilim, gave them Latin as a language.  They have been fighting with the Dwarves, and somewhere along the line at around year 390 or so they stop using Latin and switch to English for their names.  Which is weird because the Dwarves speak Dwarven, still.  I think it has something to do with their proximity to civilizations of Humans, who DO speak English in my modded game, and they both [LIKES_SITE:CITY], so there is some sideways mobility of their cultures.

I really need to go adventuring in that city and see if they have any Human items for sale.  Maybe culture CAN shift around, through trade.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, I've had civs recently that end up somehow adopting a different language than they originally spoke.  I'm using LFR's Nephilim, gave them Latin as a language.  They have been fighting with the Dwarves, and somewhere along the line at around year 390 or so they stop using Latin and switch to English for their names.  Which is weird because the Dwarves speak Dwarven, still.  I think it has something to do with their proximity to civilizations of Humans, who DO speak English in my modded game, and they both [LIKES_SITE:CITY], so there is some sideways mobility of their cultures.

I really need to go adventuring in that city and see if they have any Human items for sale.  Maybe culture CAN shift around, through trade.

Are you sure you aren't just dealing with a human civilization whose population mostly consists of nephilim?

[Jeoshua]

They might have taken it over, but LegendsViewer reports it as a Nephilim town, 100% Nephilim population, and they've never been at war with any Humans since I hacked both their ethics to match closely enough that they don't war (they still don't like Dwarves, tho... and vice versa).

[sockless]

I think a good way of implementing it would be for civs to take up words from other civs, so the dwarven civ "The Rings of Clasping" might use some human words instead of the equivalent dwarven ones.

Maybe they could swap some vowels and consonants as well. Using Maori as a case study, some tribes use "Wh" instead of just "W", e.g. "Whangarei" instead of "Wangare", this causes much contention, but that's another story. Vowels could also be changed, so some civ might say "Aethereal" and another might say "Ethereal", or one could go so far as to just change vowels, so that "Cannot" could become "Cennat", or something like that.

[Urist McArmok]

Hm.. That's kind of how I meant, mostly. Having names translate to ones you do know (The goblins would know Zustashlibash as Axoxagun, for instance), and just putting it in English (Maybe both?) during a conversation, with "You don't understand" or "You understand a word here and there" (With the sentence in the original language except for the known words in English) or "You don't fully understand, but the gist is: Go kill Apebalded, the Crown of Bees". I do agree with Jeoshua about the "Apetits" thing, but I'm not sure how names can be rendered more sane from this. The "River of Dryness" would still be the River of Dryness, just known to Standard-Elf speakers (Both elves and non-elves whose home town was conquered/heavily populated by elves or just learned it) as Mimale Sari.

[Jeoshua]

I believe it is already the case that civilizations name the surrounding area according to their whim.  In worldgen, you will notice that nothing has a name until the civs have been placed.  Also

Code: [Select]

[SELECT_SYMBOL:ROAD:NAME_ROAD]
[SELECT_SYMBOL:TUNNEL:NAME_TUNNEL]
[SELECT_SYMBOL:BRIDGE:NAME_BRIDGE]
[SELECT_SYMBOL:WALL:NAME_WALL]

These tags are on every entity.  The entries are always the same, and I have yet to find any in-game references to the name of a road or bridge or tunnel... but apparently they are named.  I only assume that by using different variables, one could have civs select different symbols for their cities, as well.

But that's not what we're talking about.

I think it would be nice if each entity had a list of what THEY called things, as McArmok says.  Also nice if you only really understood the language that you were born to, to start with, but could learn other languages by immersion and having a decent Linguistic Ability score.

So when you go to another country, initially every name is rendered faithfully from the civ's file, but eventually as you learn words, it starts translating it into English for you, the player, to be able to understand.  It might cause some confusion initially, as Urist turns into Dagger and maybe you don't really know him as Dagger, but Urist, in your own mind.

[Urist McArmok]

I didn't actually think of that implication.. Interesting.. So you could play as a monolingual elf and, after doing enough business with the dwarves, you could have picked up enough from trading or something to know that Tosid Koganusin's name is Datome Efeyerathi in your own tongue, and (if you ever get around to learning Human/Common?) translated further?

[Starver]

I've still got the link around here from another recent-ish thread, so don't need to go searching for it, but I believe most of what I'd want to add to this thread is mentioned either in this post or in other posts (by myself or others) around it.

(There's an awful lot in there not so far relevant to this particular discussion, of course, so expect a lot of chaff with the wheat if you are reading it purely in context to what's been said here, so far.)