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Discussion Regional Temple City Dialects

Discussion in 'Fluff and Stories' started by Paradoxical Pacifism, Jul 2, 2019.

  1. Paradoxical Pacifism
    Skink Chief

    Paradoxical Pacifism Well-Known Member

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    Rather unimportant, but also immensely interesting fluff wise. Would it be feasible for any regional differences between temple cities' usage of Saurian? I would say fairly likely if it calls for any temple city to deviate from standard procedure in order to decipher plaques and other mysterious stuff. Another good case for idea drawing are some of the cultural differences too - Tlaxtlan primarily focusing on astrology, Hexoatl's militaristic status, and so on.
     
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  2. Scalenex
    Slann

    Scalenex Keeper of the Indexes Staff Member

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    Lizardmen are very conservative and have a fairly stagnant society. This would suggest very little development of dialects.

    Lizardmen temple cities are very old and mostly isolated from each other and the world for centuries at a time. This would suggest very strong dialects developing.

    I guess it's up to fluff writers to figure out which of these is stronger.


    In my own fluff I've put forth the idea that Lizardmen in Lustria and the Southland and really different accents. Now accents in foreign language are very hard to translate. I made Southland's Lizardmen sound like ye olde English with "thees and thous" and a sort of snooty context, but that's probably not a good metaphor.

    I do figure that since Lustria and the Southland were separated for thousands of years and the Southlands has generally much less contact with warmbloods that they would develop distinct dialects. The Southlands also has fewer Lizardmen in it, and only one major city rather than four. I'm guessing the Southland's dialect of Saurian is a lot closer to the original dialect of Saurian spoken beofre the polar warp gates broke than the Lustrian's dialect.

    Going over the Big Four.

    Hexoatl's Lizardmen are on average, more active and dynamic than the Lizardmen of elsewhere, so they'd probably have more linguistic idioms evolving. They are the most militaristic city so they militaristic jargon and cadence probably permeates the language in peace time not unlike a military base or training camp.

    Xlanhuapec is probably the opposite. They rely on stealth and misdirection to protect themselves so they probably have the least contact with outsiders of the Big Four. They are likely the least proactive of Lizardmen so they probably have relatively little linguistic evolution. Because of their comparatively low population, a love of being subtle, and a culture of being mysterious, they are probably terse when they talk.

    Itza is the biggest city and they are the centralized city. It's likely they are the city that is most likely to meddle with other cities so they are probably going to have a lot of influences from other temple cities and kahoun influence their linguistic idioms. They are likely to be conservative and resist change though so they probably dislike slang and like formal speak.

    Tlaxtlan Lizardmen would have the stereotype of having their heads in the clouds, almost literally. I'm betting even the Skinks who are not priests are more contemplative and methodical. They probably speak slow and carefully. Given that their leaders have to debate nuances of prophecy and lore they probably have a culture of not giving a straight answer and playing devil's advocate.

    Lizardmen in Kahoun and occupied ruins might be the salt of the earth type. They have far fewer Slann and more contact with the jungle. They have smaller populations and lots of work to do so they are probably very pragmatic. They are probably the Lizardmen equivalent of country bumpkins. I don't know what this would sound like in Saurian. Given that they are often literally down in the mud, they probably use cruder slang.



    PS I indexed this under Day to Day Culture
     
  3. pendrake
    Skink Priest

    pendrake Well-Known Member

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    This .... ^


    My guess would be the opposite. I would guess the smaller more isolated population would suffer more language drift away from the original.
     
  4. Scalenex
    Slann

    Scalenex Keeper of the Indexes Staff Member

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    You can drift by standing still while everyone else moves. That's what I was going for. But your interpretation is equally valid. The end result would be the same. Southlands and Lustrians would talk differently.
     
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  5. Warden
    Slann

    Warden Tenth Spawning

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    But is the language of the Lizardmen learned though? Do the saurus and skinks get spawned innately knowing the language already, or is this something they learn through being taught/speaking with their fellow lizards?

    If the language is something encoded in their spawning/lizard DNA then I would think their would be less divergence, maybe only slight varieties pending on which spawning pool the lizard comes from?
     
  6. Paradoxical Pacifism
    Skink Chief

    Paradoxical Pacifism Well-Known Member

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    Interesting! I had thought about how much the dialects themselves could characterize and distinguish the temple cities, and these ideas help out a lot. Will shamelessly steal for my own fluff pieces when necessary ;)


    I've always thought the first would spawn with an innate ability to speak Saurian as it pertains to their role in society. That being Saurus already knowing how to speak their usual battle tongue instinctively, and skinks knowing versatile, sociable language by the time they're spawned too.

    Since i like to think saurus and skinks have their intelligence scaled equally (or quotient), saurus can be taught saurian in order to be sociable in a conversation, whereas skinks won't know the saurian battle tongue instinctively, but can be taught in order to speak it (just like us when it comes to military jargon IRL!)

    Just that in official fluff, there's next to no reason for a saurus to strike up a conversation.
     
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