imperial culture
- Thread starter flykiller
- Start date
So your limiting your canon to OTU golden age (CT)? Perhaps a bit of Hard Times? That's fine. I was addressing the overall canon culture.
It would be difficult to define US culture by standards of the first settlers. 1000 years of Imperium is a lot of bandwidth.
Actually, I do think the four major regional Anglophone cultures in the US do indeed bear the strong and lasting imprint of the Colonial waves of settlement that transmitted and created them.
Not my thesis, of course.
David Hackett Fisher. Read Albion's Seed for the full treatment.
Anyway, I do not think there is much chance of everyone in this thread agreeing to the " canonical" status of the exact same list of sources. And if we did agree, we would still differ in our subjective ideas and our opinions.
Nor, IMO, is there enough information in the GDW sources to form a generally clear and well defined description of something as broad as Imperial culture. One has to extrapolate and speculate. Be creative. Fill in the blanks.
We can discuss our various takes on "The OTU. " That seems fun.
I note that Aramis points out that even Miller and Wiseman have divergent interpretations.
Ya, I do tend to ignore most later stuff. In part because I do not own it.
These days I am more interested in running a full on ATU than a variation on the GDW "boxed" setting.
On the other hand, I do own the old Atlas of the Imperium with the star map and those scads of UWP tables. One can do a lot with that and some of the early little books...
Something I have discussed elsewhere is the idea that Capitol is a metropole wold, with its fashions and mores showing a strong influence on manners and style among the elites of multiple periphery worlds. More on some, less on others.
I do think the Imperium needs more to hold it together than trade networks and a military.
The techno- feudal structure and family system described in some of the sources could go a long way towards binding things.
A widespread ( in the institutions, and Capitolanian colonies, anyway) political/civic religion might also do it. Perhaps one that opposes psionic, given the early published reference to a psionic heresy?
The religion might be more like the Roman cultus of the emperor's divine genius than anything more familiar to present day people. It can overlay and complement native beliefs. It might also take quite different forms on different worlds further from Capitol.
YMMV
Not my thesis, of course.
David Hackett Fisher. Read Albion's Seed for the full treatment.
Anyway, I do not think there is much chance of everyone in this thread agreeing to the " canonical" status of the exact same list of sources. And if we did agree, we would still differ in our subjective ideas and our opinions.
Nor, IMO, is there enough information in the GDW sources to form a generally clear and well defined description of something as broad as Imperial culture. One has to extrapolate and speculate. Be creative. Fill in the blanks.
We can discuss our various takes on "The OTU. " That seems fun.
I note that Aramis points out that even Miller and Wiseman have divergent interpretations.
Ya, I do tend to ignore most later stuff. In part because I do not own it.
These days I am more interested in running a full on ATU than a variation on the GDW "boxed" setting.
On the other hand, I do own the old Atlas of the Imperium with the star map and those scads of UWP tables. One can do a lot with that and some of the early little books...
Something I have discussed elsewhere is the idea that Capitol is a metropole wold, with its fashions and mores showing a strong influence on manners and style among the elites of multiple periphery worlds. More on some, less on others.
I do think the Imperium needs more to hold it together than trade networks and a military.
The techno- feudal structure and family system described in some of the sources could go a long way towards binding things.
A widespread ( in the institutions, and Capitolanian colonies, anyway) political/civic religion might also do it. Perhaps one that opposes psionic, given the early published reference to a psionic heresy?
The religion might be more like the Roman cultus of the emperor's divine genius than anything more familiar to present day people. It can overlay and complement native beliefs. It might also take quite different forms on different worlds further from Capitol.
YMMV
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Greek Diaspora sounds like a fun take on the Imperium.
That would explain the apparent common language (Galanglic in a lot of sources).
Going back to the original post, would a youth's perspective be based on the level of integration of their homeland/world with the 3I?
Would it stand to reason that if they grew up in a state on a TL5 world that was part of the 3I their perspective would be different from that of a youth growing up in an arcology on a TL13 corporate world where they're indentured labour in all but name, which would be different from those growing up as a Navy/Scout/Marine brat moving from Sub-sector to Sub-sector but wholly within the care of an Imperial institution?
Would it stand to reason that if they grew up in a state on a TL5 world that was part of the 3I their perspective would be different from that of a youth growing up in an arcology on a TL13 corporate world where they're indentured labour in all but name, which would be different from those growing up as a Navy/Scout/Marine brat moving from Sub-sector to Sub-sector but wholly within the care of an Imperial institution?
If all the true Imperials, as opposed to the locals who live on notably independent worlds, speak a language common across the 3I, what would the spread of accents and dialects be like? Would boarding schools or tutors for the high nobility ensure they all spoke the same way, with variations emanating away from a central accent?
According to Traveller Canon, there are four main dialects of Galanglic/Anglic:
1) Core - Spoken in the Imperial Core regions
2) Rim - Spoken around the Solomani Rim
3) Riftian - Spoken "Behind the Claw"
4) Transform - Spoken in the Antares Region
2) Rim - Spoken around the Solomani Rim
3) Riftian - Spoken "Behind the Claw"
4) Transform - Spoken in the Antares Region
Per the JTAS article, they can run all the way to indecipherable.
isolated regionality would result in dialect divergence, some quite siginificant. consider how latin developed into spanish, french, italian, and romanian. spanish derived from upper-class latin, french derived from street-level latin, and romanian, in fact the entire nation of romania, is based on a single permanent roman garrison.
but that such isolation and resultant divergence would exist is not a given. standardization of written and spoken communications would be driven by business and legal and military requirements, and would be trivial to enforce.
but isolated pockets would continue to exist. in england there are regions where people don't speak english but rather speak variants of norse and the remains of celtic languages. and some counter cultures deliberately would twist their language and pronunciation in order deliberately to isolate themselves from the larger culture. "stewardess, I speak jive."
probably enforced by nobility preference, if not by outright imperial requirement. "you cannot appear before the count speaking like a barbarian."
As I already said in post 43 this same thread, as I understand the Imperium most of people in Imperial Services (nobles excluded, for obvious reasons) are highly rotated among the various regions of the Imperium.
As they are to work with people form other Imperial regions, this helps to keep unity of Imperial cultiural traits, and I see Galanglic language as one of them.
See also that audovisual (I guess holocrystals included) support helps to keep language unity, and I guess it's very used in the Imperium...
Would you please be so kind to cite your source for this?
Not casting doubt in what you say, just curious, as I don't remember having read any of this, and so, it is either one source I havn't read or I skipped it...
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TY. then it seems I skipped (or forgot) it, as MT is the version I own more books...
In one of early Inspector Lynley mysteries by Elizabeth George there was a great passage when a local bit of the gentry (or peerage, I can't remember which) tries to snub the "lowly Inspector" as interfering in matters above his social station whereupon Lynley responds with something as his accent is described as "whispering 'eighth Earl of Asherton'"...
I've always kept that sort of thing in mind, when I talk about the differences between the various classes. I could easily see there being even differences in dialect by social class - being educated at the proper schools or by the right tutors, etc.
D.
I've always kept that sort of thing in mind, when I talk about the differences between the various classes. I could easily see there being even differences in dialect by social class - being educated at the proper schools or by the right tutors, etc.
D.
Nifty.
Brings to mind the Mid-Atlanic accent I am thinking of giving my nobles' Anglic. Because one of players is ace at, also I seem to recall that it was made specifically for film so it has that feel of a designed culture.
Good point
Working in a NATO environment is reminiscent of this sort of issue. A couple of different US accents, more different Brit accents, Canadians & Kiwis & Aussies, Germans & Austrians, Poles and Czechs & Slovaks, Romanians, Italians, Dutch & Danes Norwegians and the Baltic states, the Spanish and Portuguese. It gets most interesting in meetings when all the thick accents are most pronounced, when they all use the most commonly spoken language - English. Given how thick some of the accents are it's possible to imagine they're divergent dialects of Anglic.
reminds me of when hannibal was trying to move his troops to winter quarters, and was asking a local man where a certain city was. hannibal was no good at latin, but everyone was afraid to tell him, so the guide misunderstood the city name hannibal said and led him to the wrong place. it played a role in the outcome of his war with rome.
it would be great if you could describe one of these meetings, how misunderstandings are detected and dealt with.
it would be great if you could describe one of these meetings, how misunderstandings are detected and dealt with.
