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Language

S

Sifu Blackirish

SOC-14 1K
I listened to this NPR article and it tickled my TRAVELLER bone...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105134163

IIRC there was a JTAS article that discussed this as well. Anyone have a reference?

IMTU American English is, as it is in RL, the interstellar language of commerce and space traffic control, but things are so fragmented in my "Open Season" exodus that there are lots of places where foreign and obscure languages survived and thrived.

Now i realize i have to go through my stories and introduce some odd-looking words as another way to help players recognize that they aren't in Kansas anymore.

Anyone remember how language is handled in the OTU? Anyone have diplomats with permanently attached translators, or do they force everyone to speak their language, after the Roman model?
 
blackirish56 said:
I listened to this NPR article and it tickled my TRAVELLER bone...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105134163

IIRC there was a JTAS article that discussed this as well. Anyone have a reference?
Click to expand...

It sounds like you're thinking of the article "Languages in Traveller" ion p28 of JTAS 16 (also in Best of JTAS 4).

IMTU American English is, as it is in RL, the interstellar language of commerce and space traffic control, but things are so fragmented in my "Open Season" exodus that there are lots of places where foreign and obscure languages survived and thrived.

Now i realize i have to go through my stories and introduce some odd-looking words as another way to help players recognize that they aren't in Kansas anymore.

Anyone remember how language is handled in the OTU? Anyone have diplomats with permanently attached translators, or do they force everyone to speak their language, after the Roman model?
Click to expand...

Looking quickly through the CT material, that JTAS article seems to be the nearest thing to an "Official Standard Way". You either learn the local lingo or find someone who can act as an interpreter.

Regards,
 
blackirish56 said:
I listened to this NPR article and it tickled my TRAVELLER bone...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105134163
Click to expand...

rantum scoot (n) An outing with no definite destination (Usage: scattered)

Interesting, I'm from Northern Ireland and 'rantum scoot' makes perfect sense to me. If some on has to leave a place we say 'I've got to scoot', and rantum I guess is a stand in for random.

hell-for-leather (adv) At top speed, in great haste. (Usage: scattered, but especially the West Coast)

This is not a universal phrase?!
 
Starviking said:
rantum scoot (n) An outing with no definite destination (Usage: scattered)

Interesting, I'm from Northern Ireland and 'rantum scoot' makes perfect sense to me. If some on has to leave a place we say 'I've got to scoot', and rantum I guess is a stand in for random.
Click to expand...
Rantum scoot to me implies a bit of hostile intent... going out for mischief.

Starviking said:
hell-for-leather (adv) At top speed, in great haste. (Usage: scattered, but especially the West Coast)

This is not a universal phrase?!
Click to expand...

No. I get wierd looks when I use it that way with US east coast denizens.

"Hell bent for leather" doesn't.

Then again, there are strange things done in the land of the midnight sun...
 
A freind of mine from Newcastle has moved to the US. Because of her North-Eastern accent & her use of lorry instead of truck and trainers instead of sneakers etc His 8 year old daughter nearly ended up in an English as a foreign language class

As far as I can see the biggest diffences between Englishtm and it's US variant seem to be in slang & swearing.

There's only a difference of a three thousand miles / eight hours between London & New York. God knows what sort of variations of galanglic would occour given light years & weeks of travel between populations. I suspect there would be real problems in understanding. Although there might well be a "space" accent & slang used amoung starship crews & the denizens of starports.
 
abomination said:
God knows what sort of variations of galanglic would occour given light years & weeks of travel between populations. I suspect there would be real problems in understanding. Although there might well be a "space" accent & slang used amoung starship crews & the denizens of starports.
Click to expand...

Probably at least one variation per world if not more. Interjecting local terms with Galanglic. Plus Trader slang, Core/Noble Parlance, a big difference between Rimward and Spinward, MilSpeak (with variations in the different military and scout branches).
 
blackirish56 said:
IMTU American English is, as it is in RL, the interstellar language of commerce and space traffic control
Click to expand...

Is American English the international commerce standard? I worked for a telecomms company back in 2000 that had to distribute different language versions of its customer billing software to different offices around the world. Amoung these we had both English and American English ... but while several international offices took the English version, *only* the US office took the American English version.

Anyone remember how language is handled in the OTU? Anyone have diplomats with permanently attached translators, or do they force everyone to speak their language, after the Roman model?
Click to expand...

I've not really used it, but there was an article on languages in an old issue of Dragon Magazine. Basically it treated languages as skills, assigned some defaults, and had some suggested rules uses. Something about "What did you say about that Aslan's mother?"

Meanwhile, I've just been watching all three seasons of Deadwood on DVD and the English in that is pretty hard to follow. Assuming that the show's writers were correct as far as word use is concerned then looking at how much the language has changed in that short a time I doubt English (American or otherwise) would be recognisable at all.
 
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
 
BlackBat242 said:
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Click to expand...

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee
Where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the south to roam
'round the pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold
seemed to hold him like a spell.
Though he'd often say in his homely way
that he'd sooner live in hell.

That's from imperfect memory, but pretty close...
 
There are strange things done out beyond the sun
By the men who trade for gold;
The Spinward trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The jumpspace lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the bridge of the Lady Midge
When I spaced old Sam McGee...
 
I like it Andrew!

But so I don't feel guilty for derailing the thread, I tend to agree that there would be much room for local variations on Galanglic.

From experience, my first language was Navy, with a heavy Coast Guard accent...

Growing up, we did not have floors, walls, ceilings, doors, stairs, or a bathroom. We did have decks, bulkheads, an overhead, hatches, ladders, and a head. When I started school I had to learn English, or at least the American dialect, because the teacher didn't know what I meant when I asked to use the head. And much later I learned Army and the sport of assigning new meanings to acronyms. Lots of fun to be had there.

And since I've been in the Army and stationed in many different states, I've learned the difference between soda and pop, coke and co-cola, that barbecue means a different thing no matter where you are, that in some places 'mash' means the same as 'press' just as 'trim' can sometimes mean 'sharpen'.

What all that means to me is that two parties speaking galanglic can make themselves understood for the most part, but there is plenty of room for misunderstanding in any conversation. And that leaves plenty of opportunities for the ref to use those misunderstandings to his advantage.
 
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